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Introduction

History is replete with examples of combatants who were vanquished by their opponents through the element of surprise, mostly due to thought biases (despite the best efforts to mitigate them), which will always leave one vulnerable to the possibility. One such example of technology surprise comes from U.S. history—the fall of Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Georgia. The morning of April 10, 1862, the Confederate commander, believing Union mortar batteries on Tybee Island were too far away to be a threat, refused to surrender. After scarcely a day of punishing bombardment by the Union’s new rifled guns, the once-believed impregnable fortress surrendered, resulting in more than 600 confederate casualties and prisoners of war.

It required a careful blend of innovative thinking, technology experimentation, and leadership to thoroughly and quickly rout the Southern forces. The Army’s interest in rifled guns first started in 1859, more than 2 years prior to the fall of Fort Pulaski. However, to turn that piece of kit into such a fearsome capability, it took a talented Union engineer’s vision, his courage to defy conventional wisdom, and the tacit support of his reluctant leadership (General Sherman himself) to defeat the Confederate forces so successfully.

To prevent technology surprise, the U.S. Army must not only be able to imagine future possibilities for the battlefield but also adapt the technologies created in the laboratory into capabilities it did not know it needed until the technologies presented themselves. For example, the recent use of drones, including first-person view (FPV) drones, by Ukrainian forces against Russian tanks and supply lines was a significant surprise to Russia and to the rest of the world—including the United States. That ability to imagine, adapt, and innovate is also the very essence of what it takes to counter surprise if and/or when it eventually occurs. The very same mindset, culture, and creativity allow the Army to do both—prevention and resilience—and along the way perhaps even create its own surprise.

Fast forward more than 160 years, and the fundamental ingredients for achieving surprise (talent, technology, and leadership) remain largely unchanged. However, while new technologies appear at an ever-increasing rate, the agility of the government’s appropriations and acquisition process, known as the Program Plan Budgeting and Execution System (PPBES), has not kept pace. Despite many efforts over the years to streamline acquisition (one notable example was the creation of Mid-Tier Acquisition Authorities), fielding today’s innovative technologies across public and private domains remains an ongoing challenge. The good news is that elected officials recognize the problem and continue efforts to streamline and reform the Army’s acquisition regulations.¹

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¹ The White House, 2025, “White House Announces Revolutionary Federal Procurement Overhaul,” Briefings & Statements, April 16, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/04/white-house-announces-revolutionary-federal-procurement-overhaul.

Until such reform occurs, the Department of the Army operates within a PPBES that is designed to ensure accountability, complete traceability to existing requirements, and provide consistency year after year. Furthermore, during program execution, personnel and business incentives are still largely tied to cost, schedule, and performance. That leaves little room to take advantage of opportunities (i.e., dollars) that are not already strictly spoken for. Innovation does not follow a structured plan with a schedule and a predefined budget, and plans, schedules, and budgets can create barriers to innovation.

Yet even though innovative opportunities are relatively few within the current PPBES system, they are not zero. The Army’s challenge is to posture itself as best it can to take advantage of those fleeting opportunities when they do arise. That starts with ensuring that scientists and engineers have the opportunity to think outside the norms—free of the strict requirements that are necessary to justify so much of today’s S&T. To truly turn a technology into a capability, the S&T enterprise must not simply coordinate its work, but rather collaboratively seek solutions across scientific disciplines and organizations as a matter of course. Finally, those unconventional ideas should receive regular consideration by leadership so that those previously unknown possibilities have the opportunity to inform investment decisions.

The committee found two schools of thought regarding futures scanning. One end of the spectrum suggests that futures scanning can help the Army imagine the doctrine and force structure of the future, which leads to equipping the force, and subsequently, the S&T tail that supports it. The other side in the debate, however, argues that imagining the future is fraught with too many unknowns and uncertainties and is subject to external forces beyond its control. However, it does advocate for future scanning, but with the understanding that no such plan will survive first contact. Instead, by fostering collaborative engagement and a shared understanding among stakeholders, the process of scanning brings about preparedness, readiness, and resiliency in the S&T corps.

Today’s Army has a robust body of thought around horizon scanning, imagining the future, and predicting the types of technologies that could impact the future battlefield. In 2018, Alexander Kott, then Chief Scientist for the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), published a view of ground warfare in 2050.² In it, he predicted (among other things) the rapid expansion of drones on the battlefield. During a data-gathering session for this study, he lamented that his only mistake was that it came to pass even more quickly than he thought. This does not imply that ARL should have made drones a higher priority for its research, but it illustrates that it is indeed possible to foresee some of the mysteries surrounding the future battlespace.

The committee studied a number of models that can be used to predict future possibilities and found they are all useful, but only if those resulting ideas have a “path to the bench.” The Army’s variety of thoughtful programs, such as the Mad Scientists, the Focused Excursions, the Future Studies Program, and others, provide these possibilities today. It is up to leadership to ensure that those ideas receive due consideration as early in the PPBES process as possible.

Insight management consists of both a culture and the tools for implementation. Commercially available software solutions can ensure that ideas do not get left “on the cutting room floor,” but it takes a mindset at all levels to ensure that those ideas are heard and thoughtfully considered. Subject-matter experts cannot remain solely in their narrow, requirements-driven lane, but must also work collaboratively to build individual technologies into capabilities. Leadership’s challenge is to ensure that a strict requirements process does not

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² A. Kott, 2018, Ground Warfare in 2050: How It Might Look, ARL-TN-0901, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Proving Ground, MD, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD1059045.

unnecessarily constrain the creativity needed to prevent surprise, and should prevention not be possible, that they foster the resilience needed to adapt, overcome, and minimize the negative consequences once it arrives.

What is clear to the committee is that, more than at any time in its history, the United States is experiencing technological advancements at an increasing pace, which creates an accelerated set of interactions between technologies, which results in new and unexpected uses. Because these new technological interactions are becoming more frequent and complex, they introduce even more opportunities for surprise. Also, in today’s new “open technology” environment, the U.S. Army cannot innovate fast enough, which supports the need for acquisition reform, for future thinking and building resilience.

The formula that will carry the United States forward is much the same as it was at Fort Pulaski—the Army needs the blend of talent, technology, and leadership that will allow it to prevent, create, and counter technology surprise. It must be underpinned by a systematic process for bringing ideas to the fore, a truly collaborative culture to make the best (or minimize the worst) of technological advances, and regular consideration by leadership that’s willing to be as imaginative as the scientists they lead.

STUDY BACKGROUND AND STATEMENT OF TASK

Statement of Task

The study statement of task is as follows:

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will establish a committee to conduct a consensus study to assess how well the Army’s current approach to developing new technologies, as well as its science and engineering subject matter expertise, is suited to avoid technological surprise.

Getting the right equipment into the soldiers’ hands at the right time requires the research community to provide a steady, forward-thinking stream of technologies to either upgrade, or create those weapons systems for 2035 and beyond. To develop and mature those technologies, the Army needs suitable subject matter expertise to not only invent those new technologies, but also to integrate them into something useful. The Army has two complementary programs that 1) generate useful technologies, and 2) ensure a suitable basis of expertise upon which to create and integrate them. Both must be reviewed together to provide the complete picture if the Army is to prevent technical surprise.

Specifically, the committee will:

1. Review and evaluate how well the current Army’s Essential Research Programs are developing the next generation of capabilities necessary for the Army to avoid technological surprise. This step will consider each research activity and progress, and also incorporate information about investments (government, corporate, venture capital) and other indicators about the rate of maturation of relevant technologies to determine what may be missing to inform and help shape the ongoing maturation of the recent Army S&T enterprise reorganization.
2. Review, evaluate, and if necessary, recommend an augmenting framework to develop additional Army’s subject matter expertise in its science and technology enterprise through 2035, specifically: expansion to any of the Foundational Research Areas or augmentation with new areas. The framework will:

1. 1. Recommend R&D competencies to be included so the collective enterprise has awareness of the broader range of potential developments; and
   2. Outline its methodology so that the Army enterprise can continually monitor commercial developments, technology maturation, capital investments, and engineering development.

Study Background

For the purpose of this study, the committee framed technological surprise as it might apply to the United States in such a way that the Army as an institution would have a substantial role in the ensuing response. This is to say that the committee did not focus on surprise that may be imparted on the United States as a whole or its general population, nor at echelons of the Army where surprise could be reasonably overcome with a tactical response using capability that the Army already possesses. The committee’s work focused on technological surprise that could be forecasted or prepared for in substantial part by the Army’s S&T enterprise.

These definitions also precluded the committee from considering how to inflict surprise, which requires study of specific operational modalities, technology details, and military concepts and doctrine that are beyond the scope of this study. In the future, a more careful study of how to inflict surprise may therefore be warranted.

The committee notes that the often used saying “the best defense is a good offense” has merit as well. This report includes a number of references throughout regarding mitigating surprise (should it occur), inflicting surprise as a way to stay ahead, and of course preventing surprise. Therefore, the context and conceptual flow for this study are rooted in defense, which is principally how to prevent surprise and mitigate its effects should it occur. The good news is that the committee judges that the interactions between technology, talent, and leadership apply equally to all three situations.

The Study Process and Data Gathering

The committee held a series of open data-gathering meetings and closed committee discussions to develop the study from November 2024 to May 2025. It was informed by testimony from experts in related fields and within departments in question, as well as committee and staff research. The committee conducted four major data-gathering sessions, with closed committee discussions following each open session and subsequent online closed planning meetings biweekly. See Appendix D for the dates and speakers who participated in the committee’s data-gathering activities.

The Structure of the Report

This Introduction chapter lays the groundwork for the report by explaining its purpose, goals, scope, methods, and key terms, and outlining how the content is organized. Chapter 2 defines technology surprise, describes its effects, investigates how surprise has been used throughout history, and investigates whether it can be prevented. Chapter 3 dives into futures thinking by first introducing the concept, its tools and methods, describing how the army uses it now, and suggesting ways the Army could use it in the future. Chapter 4 reviews the history of Army ERPs—their alignment with strategic threats and technology gaps—and provides a technology adoption model for S&T funding. Chapter 5 looks into the subject-matter expertise of

the S&T enterprise and how to improve the human capital within the organization. Following the main report, an ERP market analysis is in Appendix B and vignettes are in Appendix C.

Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations

Below is a list of the committee’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations, organized by subject matter.

Finding 2-1: Although the literature has differed on whether technology surprise can be prevented, current scholars agree that technology surprise is unavoidable.

Conclusion 2-1: The risk of technology surprise can be mitigated but not completely prevented.

Futures Thinking and Forecasting

Finding 3-1: No substantive evidence of integration between the Army’s S&T enterprise and its futures development efforts was found.

Recommendation 3-1: As the Army integrates the work of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and Army Futures Command, it should look for opportunities to link the inputs such as suggestions from scientists and operators and outputs such as the dissemination of final reports of the futures-focused programs in a more purposeful way.

Recommendation 3-2: Given the deep technical knowledge and executive-level influence of its senior research scientists, the Army should be empowered to play a stronger role in aligning futures with science and technology.

Recommendation 3-3: The Army should adopt a systems approach to linking results from Exploratory Futures and Operational Capability Assessments, so that emerging science and technology investment opportunities are readily available for consideration by leadership.

Recommendation 3-4: The Army should implement a solution that allows insights to be readily shared, accessed, and tracked by stakeholders so that good ideas are not left “on the cutting room floor.”

The Army Essential Research Programs

Finding 4-1: Army modernization priorities implicitly expect science and technology organizations to work beyond their own boundaries, creating a continuing risk of driving lower-TRL research toward engineering and away from science.

Conclusion 4-1: Based on the vignette analysis, in addition to the other available government, defense department, and private-sector priorities, the ERPs (and the cross-

competency models that are to augment them) are sufficient to address the possible known futures.

Recommendation 4-1: The Army should incorporate scenarios analogous to these into its Horizon 2 and 3 scanning efforts to improve its comprehension of the range of possible outcomes and to inform science and technology investments with new, more creative opportunities.

Recommendation 4-2: The Army should review Essential Research Program project-level data, in light of the enormous amounts of private investment in some of those areas.

Recommendation 4-3: The Army should develop and use a technology adoption model that more precisely accounts for factors such as early investment risk, dual-use potential, and long-term military value.

Subject-Matter Expertise

Conclusion 5-1: No significant gaps were found within the core competencies.

Recommendation 5-1: The Army should recruit and train its science and technology management and workforce with increased emphasis on collaboration across budget activities and technology readiness levels, especially for early-career employees.

Conclusion 5-2: Trained, practiced, and collaborative individuals are a prerequisite for a collaborative and resilient S&T enterprise.