Try to imagine warfare in 2035, and you might come up with Hollywood-style visions of soldiers in powered exoskeletons battling robots with laser rifles. A new three-year-long study commissioned by the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, however, suggests the dominant technologies may come from much closer to home.
Roke Manor Research is carrying out the study on technology for land warfare in the 2030-2040 timescale with a two-pronged approached: a wide-ranging survey of current developments, and an open call for submissions from anyone who wants their research to be considered.
Roke is looking at 12 technology areas including 3D printing, advanced materials, big data, human augmentation, robotics, power and navigation. The first phase will last 18 months, but it already seems that the most obvious technologies are not necessarily the winners.
For a start, those Terminator-style androids may not show up. When it comes to moving around, humans are jacks-of-all-trades: we can open doors, climb stairs, scale a wall or jump over a ditch without thinking about it. These are all tasks that robots have to be specifically designed and programmed to achieve, calling for different characteristics. "In this time frame, technology may not develop as quickly as people would hope with robots," says Jonathan Farrington, technical lead on the Science and Technology Watch program.
While humanoids are being pushed forward in Darpa's Robotic Challenge, Farrington suspects that in the 2030's robots will still be limited to niche tasks rather than standing in for human soldiers.
3D printing has been promoted as the answer to all of the Army's logistics problems. Instead of having to stock thousands of different parts, the supply depot simply has a 3D printer that makes everything as it is needed. In practice though, Farrington says the study is looking closely at what types of things the printers are good at, and where more traditional solutions work better. "If you need ten bags of nails, you have to ask whether it's better to send one 3D printer or ten bags of nails," says Farrington.
Similarly, there has been media excitement over exotic new materials like graphene for ultra-lightweight body armour. Here, the question is how easily the technology can be moved out of the laboratory and into a high-volume manufacturing setting. In the advanced materials field, Roke Manor is not just looking at the new materials themselves, but at the developments needed to make them efficiently in bulk at an affordable price.
In the field of small electronics, the military will get many of their advances by leveraging the civil sector. "These days, the Ministry of Defence is not going to be able to invest as much as manufacturers such as Samsung on producing handheld devices," says Farrington.
In the past, the military enjoyed a clear lead in electronics, and soldiers were issued with gadgets like satnav, thermal imagers and head-up displays long before they reached the consumer market. The explosive growth in the smartphone market changed all that, and Samsung now spends over £6 billion a year on R&D on a narrow range of devices, whereas the MoD has to spread out half a billion to cover everything from attack submarines to spy satellites.
Farrington says the military now increasingly takes advantage of COTS -- "Commercial Off-The-Shelf" -- technology. Smartphone apps have already replaced dedicated computers for translation, stores management, training and even calculating wind correction for sniper shots. The US Army has had its own apps store for years, and military smartphone growth is set to continue.
But there are gaps in what the market supplies. The military needs to make smartphones more rugged and secure for their purposes. And there is the question of power supply. Recharging in the field currently means solar chargers, which Farrington calls "Christmas present technology": not quite convenient or effective enough for routine use. One area of interest is technology that, with seedcorn investment from the Ministry of Defence, could keep devices charged 24/7 on the battlefield.
Perhaps the biggest advances will not come in the form of hardware, and Farrington highlights Big Data as an area with potential for revolutionary advances. "When we talk about technology, people typically expect hardware developments to outstrip software and algorithm developments, but sometimes the reverse is true."
He points to the success of Amazon's automated marketing process for upselling and cross-selling, and how Tesco's Clubcard database has given them a decisive advantage in spotting and reacting to consumer trends.
In military terms, big data could mean being able to collect information from a wide swathe of sources: satellite pictures, ground sensors, intelligence reports and information from troops on the ground, as well as online data, and identifying patterns before they are apparent. This might mean seeing where there are tensions in an area before they erupt into open conflict, or anticipating an enemy offensive and acting first. Big data could pick out emerging trends in improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, or identify and disrupt the IED assembly lines before they get started.
Big data could also operate down at an individual level, with personal sensors to detect when a soldier is getting too fatigued to perform effectively and issue an alert. Farrington says the market survey will give an idea of what sorts of development may be possible.
Futurology is always a difficult business, and predicting which developments will dominate in 20 years is almost impossible. Twenty years ago virtual reality and artificial intelligence were on the verge of the big time, and neither has quite delivered yet. But without any attempt to see what is happening, potentially nasty surprises are guaranteed. Unless we make some attempt to look at possible future opportunities and threats, we will miss them. For instance, if we don't look into the potential of graphene, we risk being outclassed by opponents who are suddenly invulnerable and using it in new armour.
Farrington says that Roke's invitation for submissions has already produced some interesting ideas, though to maintain commercial confidentiality they will only be shared with the Ministry of Defence. Anyone who has an innovative technology that may have defence applications can submit it. The best ideas will be put forward to the MoD every three months, offering a fast track to government funding.
The British Army is often portrayed in the media as having great soldiers let down but poor equipment. The new study suggests a desire not just to stay at the cutting edge of technology, but anticipating where it will be in 20 years' time.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
