Technology will make a fundamental contribution to the ability of the Alliance to meet current and future threat challenges. NATO must exploit emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) to offset some of the requirements for mass.
EDTs have consisted of data (removed now from the list as seen as mature), autonomy, AI, space, hypersonics, biotechnology and human enhancement, and quantum technologies. New additions include novel material and manufacturing, energy and propulsion, and next generation communications networks. Technology development often starts with inflated expectations followed by a trough of disillusionment and then a plateau of productivity. The job of the scientist is to give a best estimate of the likely time scale for each capability to reach maturity.
The public release version of the report of NATO’s Science and Technology Organisation (STO), Science and Technology Trends 2025-2045, provides an overview of socio-technical trends that will shape the technology landscape over these two decades. The report describes six major macro trends that are shaping and/or will shape NATO’s strategic landscape and influence how EDTs continue to evolve. These macro trends are:
- Evolving competition areas. S&T advances will shape and transform the nature of global strategic competition in both traditional and non-traditional military domains and geographical regions.
- Race for AI and quantum superiority. Competition in these critical technology areas between dominant actors will accelerate over the next 20 years, creating a major challenge to retain talent and for like-minded nations to pool expertise and resources.
- Biotechnology revolution. Synthetic biology will drive the next technology revolution, with most impact probably coming over the longer term. There will be a need to balance the benefits of collaboration against the need for security and safeguards against the huge risks of harmful uses of synthetic biology.
- Resource divide. Upcoming shocks (such as climate change) will exacerbate global tensions between those nations that can more easily recover, and those that cannot.
- Fragmenting public trust. Trust in science, institutions and government is vulnerable to further undermining and fragmentation, creating a need for improved technology education and global leadership around the responsible uses of EDTs.
- Technology integration and dependencies. Interoperability will become more critical but also more challenging than ever for Allies in the next 20 years. New capabilities need to be interoperable by design and integrate with legacy systems. Economic cooperation will be needed between likeminded nations and with private sector partners.
NATO efforts to exploit EDTs will be informed by key judgements regarding these six S&T macro trends. These judgements include that technology is increasingly developed and drawn from the private sector; individual technology should not be considered in isolation as it is the combination of new technologies that produces disruptive effects; AI driven autonomous systems will be very impactful; the breadth of technology change is as important as the pace; and the increasing importance of human-machine interactions will be a complex feature of future warfare. In this latter area, of particular note is how the soldier psychologically interacts with autonomous machines.