Militainment for Future Warfare

Chief of Air Staff's Reading List 2011, 2011

This is the written version of my presentation at a panel on "Science Fiction and Futurism-Philosophy and Ethics for a Global Era". The panel was part of the Australian Defence College's Profession of Arms seminar, "Science Fiction as a Lens into Future War", held in Canberra on 3 October 2019. This written version contains considerably more detail than could be presented in the limited time available for the panel.

Critical Military Studies, 2020

This paper introduces the topic of military wargaming into current critical debates in International Relations (IR) on games and gaming, which to date have focused on civilian, recreational forms. Identifying a renaissance which began in the US in 2014, the core argument developed is that wargaming utilises key elements of critical/postpositivist theory in its interventions into the 'human training dimension' with the aim of impacting upon the inner domain of players in promotion of military ends. Drawing on Eyal Weizman's work, the paper makes two key claims: 1) Wargaming poses a profound methodological and epistemological challenge to the quantitatively-oriented Operations Research (OR) community which has dominated DoD analysis for nearly a century. 2) By decoupling critical/postpositivist traditions from their intended ends, using them instead to impact upon players, wargaming militarises them. The paper begins by locating the origins of the wargaming renaissance in the Defense Innovation Initiative and associated Third Offset Strategy. It then shows how US military gaming intervenes at the level of the human training dimension by cultivating specific forms of critical thinking, multiple futures planning, and reflexive decision-making using distinctively critical/ postpositivist insights. From there it sets out three key challenges posed by wargaming to OR which trouble the latter's claims to prediction, objectivity, and rationalism, before concluding that a new form of 'post-quantitative defence analysis' is emergent which militarises the tools of critical/postpositivist approaches.

The Army's vision of a future multi-domain battlefield makes many assumptions about the cognitive demands and capabilities of current and future soldiers. These assumptions, among others, include that soldiers of the current millennial generation are inherently more tech-savvy than their predecessors because of extensive, lifelong exposure to technological devices such as personal computers, virtual gaming, and cell phones. Thus, they should be able to better leverage new technologies to increase their performance in executing military missions. There is also an assumption that sequentially adding technologies into military skills training only after soldiers are trained in fundamentals will be adequate. Our research suggests otherwise. The purpose of this study was to test a set of hypotheses and assumptions that younger cadets and soldiers possess a higher aptitude and familiarity with digital technologies that could be used to increase combat performance. Our research was conducted over the summer of 2017; it entailed a randomized control trial of West Point cadets participating in urban-raid lane training utilizing new technologies such as virtual reality (VR) goggles. The results of our research showed a sample of millennial soldiers with limited experience and proficiency in military tasks were too cognitively overloaded to accept new and unfamiliar technologies while under the stress of military requirements—despite the clear advantage these technologies held for completing their mission. Our results provide preliminary evidence that cadets generally default to analog technologies—namely, a notepad, pen, or paper—under duress or in the heat of battle, even one simulated. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that the need to train and develop spatial-projection skills are even more important than implementing new technology earlier in the training cycle.

This paper explores the collaboration between the Pentagon and the entertainment industries at the site of the popular interactive format, the war-themed video game. The commercial media industry is heavily invested in the research and development of digital technologies used to create simulations, graphics, and virtual worlds, which are also essential to the networked protocols of military training and weapons systems. In addition, video games such as America's Army have been developed by the United States Armed Forces as recruitment tools.

Digital War, 2021

Armed forces are now in a race to exploit the technologies associated with Artificial Intelligence. Viewed as force mul- tipliers, these technologies have the potential to speed up decision making and roboticise warfighting. At the same time, however, these systems disintermediate military roles and functions, creating shifts in the relationships of power in military organizations as different entities vie to shape and control how innovations are implemented. In this article we argue that new innovation processes are sites of emerging forms of public–private interaction and practices. On the one hand this is driving entrepreneurialism into government bureaucracy even as it forges new bonds between defence and industry. On the other, as technologies replace soldiers, a new martial culture is emerging, one that reframes the warrior geek as an elite innovation corps of prototype warrior. We seek to map these relationships and explore the implications for civil-military relations in the twenty-first century.

The RUSI Journal

International Review of the Red Cross, 2015

To what extent do the ways in which we anticipate threats, analyze their possible consequences and determine ways to mitigate them explain the causes of warfare in the future? This article – though never attempting to predict – poses plausible causes of future wars that may stem from transformative change over the next two decades. In asking the question “Are we ready?” to deal with such wars, the answer is framed in terms of the interrelationship between the prospect of profound change, emerging tensions, unprecedented violence and organizational capacities to deal with complexity and uncertainty. To be prepared to deal with the prospect of future wars, relevant organizations have to be more anticipatory and adaptive, while at the same time looking for new ways to engage the wider international community. The article concludes with a set of recommendations intended to meet such organizational challenges – with the aspiration that the question “Are we ready?” can be answered more af...

MA Thesis, Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht, NL, 2005

Stories about killer robots, machine-augmented heroes, laser weapons and battles in space -outer or cyber -have always been good for filling cinema seats, but now they have started to liven up sober academic journals and government white papers.