Innovations & technologies

Forecasting Military Technology 2020-2040

Revolutionary change is defined as a type and pace of progress that renders obsolete old weapons, tactics and operational approaches while making new ones possible.

In reviewing the last 20 years (2000-2020), Hanlon believes only computers and robotics had revolutionary change. This would include drones.

Seven categories of military technology had high change—chemical sensors, biological sensors, radio communications, laser communications, radio-frequency weapons, nonlethal weapons, and biological weapons.

* Technological change of relevance to military innovation may be faster and more consequential in the next 20 years than it has proven to be over the last 20.
* Ongoing, rapid pace of computer innovation may make the next two decades more revolutionary than the last two.
* Robotics and in cybersecurity changes and impact will intensify. They may be more fully exploited by modern military organizations.
* artificial intelligence (AI) will have more impact
* Multiple countries (most notably China, but also Russia) are having the resources to compete with Western nations in military innovation.
* Directed energy systems, hypersonic missiles, and certain types of advanced materials, could play important supplemental roles in making the next two decades a true period of military revolution, or at least of very fast and ongoing rapid transformation.