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CISB Executive Innovation Management CourseA Triple Helix concept conducted by

Linköping University ● Swedish Armed Forces ● Swedish Industry

A summary of

Scenario Prospecting and Technology Forecasting

Col Mats OlofssonFormer Dep Head of Plans and Policy

Former Chief Scientist

Swedish Armed Forces

Open Seminar –

“Technology forecasting for strategic planning in Defence”

CISB Executive Innovation Management Course

Agenda

• Introduction

• Scenarios – why and how?

• Methods

• Technology foresight and forecast

• Disruptive Technologies

• Reflections

--------------------------------

After the seminar I offer – for those who want to stay – a

presentation of future technologies, using some more films

showing examples of existing technologies that however are

not yet commonly implemented as capabilities.

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Introduction

To be prepared and better understand the future challenges, an

organization needs to be flexible and work with scenarios and

forecasts.

The actions can be based on assumed changes due to political,

environmental, technological or other circumstances.

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Strategic flexibility

Of major importance is the ability to be flexible, in order to be able to

adopt new situations without being left behind, i.e. to have a strategic

response capability, as defined by Bettis and Hitt (1995). Two major

characteristics were argued as very important:

Robustness (or strategic robustness) defined as ‘the potential for

success under varying future circumstances or scenarios’.

Responsiveness (or strategic responsiveness) defined as the ability “to

rapidly 1) sense change in environment; 2) conceptualize a response to

that change; and 3) reconfigure resources to execute the response”.

The view on Strategic flexibility should be linked to understanding of the

OODA-loop.

These arguments are valid for nations, armed forces as well as companies.

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The OODA loop

The OODA loop was first created by US pilot John Boyd as a way to be

superior in dog-fights with Korean fighter pilots during the Korean war.

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Armed Forces

directional documents

10 years

”Beyond and beside”

current plans

”Beyond and beside”

current political

directives

”Now”

Long Term Planning – aim and role

The aim is to identify changes or trends, both externally and within the Armed Forces, leading to

a potential need to change the strategic directives to the Armed Forces, and in what ways this

should be done.

The role is to identify “crossroads” and study different alternatives and plausible development of

the future, beyond and beside defence policy decisions and current plans.

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Scenarios


Global “Political” Outlook

Concepts

Concept sketches

Military-strategic trends Character of future conflicts Operational

environments

Concept Shaping

A developed concept is built from assumptions about the international security policy, strategic

and operational ideas, central factors like critical capabilities, units and materiel systems,

decisions taken in “cross-roads” questions, other strategic decisions and cost calculations

(economy).

Concepts are sometimes called idea cards. Concepts are chosen based on the intelligence

analysis performed/collected, with the aim to visualize identified problems and challenges.

7


NATO Best Practice Long Term Defence Planning

From ”Handbook on Long Term Defence Planning”, NATO RTO-TR-069, 2003.

1.

2.

3.

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9


+ 20 years

Now

Structures

Concepts+ 10 years

Shaping of Structures

Structures are (in this context) outlined as sketches. They are used later in the process to

visualize alternative ways to structure the Armed Forces, often in a 10-year perspective.

The suggested structures are shaped based on concepts that have been developed, as well as

on legacy. Further selection is based on the need to illustrate identified problems and challenges.

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Technology Foresight/Forecast

Technology Foresight work is used in different ways

depending on the purpose

• Nations – to adapt and to gain (international) strength

• Armed Forces – as a tool in strategic planning

• Companies – to keep and increase business power

and position itself in the most competitive way

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Technology Foresight/Forecast

What does Technology Foresight mean?

Ben Martin (SPRU, 1995) describes research foresight as:

“The process involved in systematically attempting to look into the longer-

term future of science, technology, the economy and society with the aim

of identifying the areas of strategic research and the emerging generic

technologies likely to yield the greatest economic and social benefits.”

When you do Technology Forecasting, you aim to describe the future

more precise, i.e. which technologies will be available.

In the military environment, the expression Technology Forecast is more

commonly used.

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Technology Forecast – Military Appl.

In order to perform a good Long Term Planning and Scenario

Projection, a military organization needs to foresee trends.

Since the major platforms (tanks, ships, submarines, fighters) are

enormous investments with expected life-times of 20-50 years, a

sudden technology change can make them obsolete too early.

The methods used are varying, some being the same as previously

shown for nations and companies, some more specific. Examples:

• Produce a long term perspective plan, based on intelligent assumptions

about trends that will affect the materiel needs and acquisition process.

• Use interviews or questionnaires to survey the expectations of many

experienced persons in the senior management and/or other experts,

sometimes based on a few pre-defined scenarios.

• Use the results to extract the most interesting ideas and match them to

economic constrains (always present in the Armed Forces).

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To predict the future…

"There are known knowns; there are things we

know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is

to say we know there are some things we do not

know.

But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones

we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld


• Evolutionary – stepwise development

• Revolutionary – dramatic steps in the development

• Disruptive – technologies that completely change

the conditions within an area

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Effects from new technologies


Strategy for Dual-use

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Military

S&T

Military

Application

Civil

Application

Military

Re-application


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(Gartner, Aug 2015)


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DARPA Strategic Research Areas

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• Rethink Complex Military Systems: make weapons systems more

modular and easily upgraded and improved; assure superiority in

the air, maritime, ground, space and cyber domains; improve

position, navigation and timing without GPS

• Master the Information Explosion: novel approaches to deriving

insights from massive datasets, with powerful big-data tools,

automated cyber defense capabilities and methods to create

fundamentally more secure systems

• Harness Biology as Technology: leverage recent breakthroughs in

neuroscience, immunology, genetics and related fields

• Expand the Technological Frontier: achieve new capabilities by

applying deep mathematics; inventing new chemistries, processes

and materials; and harnessing quantum physics


Strategic Security Policy Requirements

and the impact of Technologies

What?

What?

What?

Ambitions

(Foreign & National

Security Policy aims)

Which?T

ran

sfo

rma

tion

Po

licy

& p

roce

sse

s ro

ad

ma

ps

What?

How?

How?

How?

Future World

prospects

Threat

appreciation

Scenario’s

Objective

Force or Security

capabilities

Legacy Force

capabilities

Technology

developments

From Rademaker, TNO

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Disruptive Technologies

Any technology intensive industry, as well as a military organization, is

highly affected by rapid transitions, often described as disruptive.

A Disruptive Technology stands for a technological development which

changes the conduct of operations (including the rules of engagement)

significantly within short time and thus alters the long-term goals for

concepts, strategy and planning.

Looking for disruptive technologies that could change the ”art of war” is

a key to good long term planning processes in any Army, Navy or Air

Force. Efficient Technology Intelligence activities are crucial.

Consequently, understanding the same signals is a key to “grow or

disappear” for defence industry actors around the world.

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What is a Disruptive Technology?

Graph from Wikipedia

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Examples of Disruptive Technologies

General

• The light bulb

• Laser technology

• Electronic calculators

• Global positioning (GPS etc.)

With military implications

• The machine gun

• Aeroplanes

• Radar

• Laser

These are just examples,

from one view of what DT

means – you could add

and subtract in the list.

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Disruptive Technologies Forecast

To understand and evaluate the impact of DT to your military

capabilities you need a structured approach.

NATO has introduced a method (from the US Air Force) called

DTAG = Disruptive Technologies Assessment Games.

Sweden, Finland (NATO Partners), Norway and Denmark (NATO

members) have developed the method further to suit their common

needs.

DTAG aims at finding technologies that will influence the early

(conceptual) phase in the LCM (ref. ISO 15288).

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Foreseen results

• List of Technologies

• Maturity

• Timeline

• List of Ideas of Systems

• Maturity

• Timeline

• List of possible disruptive technologies

• Usefulness for tasks

• Ranking

• The total is input for Defence planning

What?

What?

What?

Ambitions

(Foreign Security

Policy aims)

Which?

Tra

nsfo

rmatio

n P

olic

y

& p

rocesses ro

adm

aps

What?

How?

How?

How?

Future World

prospects

Threat

appreciation

Scenario’s

Objective

Force

capabilities

Legacy Force

capabilities

Technology

developments

From Rademaker, TNO26


Reflections

• It is necessary to understand the impact of technology, to

development of and sudden changes to the needed

military capabilities

• There is a trend towards very advanced new weapons in

parallel with a trend towards simple but efficient new

weapons

Compare for example

– High Power Laser weapons

– Precision Missiles

with

– Quadrocopters

– IED with more advanced trigging mechanisms

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Another look into the future

A combination of new strategies, new ways to perform

warfare and the possibilities offered by technology

development, may result in new threats.

Through automation, remote precision control etc. this

film shows a scaring but not impossible future scenario

(actually already announced by a Russian company),

here we can call it

“THE BluE ConTainErs”

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See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbUU_9bOcnM


This presentation aimed to give some

insights in scenario thinking and technology

forecasting for a nation’s Armed Forces and

give some examples of methods and the

reasons for performing such activities.

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Thank you for listening!

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