Preventing Technology Surprise: The Army's Leading-Edge Research Programs and the Subject-Matter Expertise That Fuels Them (2026)
Chapter: 2 Technology Surprise
2
Technology Surprise
UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY SURPRISE
Today’s world of technology is dynamic and changing rapidly. In this environment, surprise is not an aberration but rather a recurring feature in life, in scientific communities, and even in national defense. Even understanding this, the possibility of surprise is ever-present. Why? Surprise, which is inherent to the human condition, is fundamentally a mismatch between what is expected and what is experienced. Expectations are largely informed by institutional norms, assumptions, and experience. The disruptive potential of surprise is always present, if for no other reason than an organization’s desire for predictability. Organizations, such as the U.S. Army and its science and technology (S&T) enterprise, are designed to operate in predictable ways, to execute processes, to follow procedures, and to fulfill functional roles. Work units are typically organized around current projects with processes that strive to be repeatable and where projects and budgets are planned, usually several years in advance. The more entrenched an organization is in maintaining predictability, the more disruptive surprise can be.
Surprise, by definition, is unexpected and will provoke reactions. The initial stage, in which people notice and respond to a surprise, may be short-lived but can still have a profound impact. As attention is drawn to the stimulus, organizations and individuals slow or may freeze as an initial response. The standard functions and processes of the organization are disrupted. The second stage of surprise is one of sense-making and recalibration. Organizations grapple with the event, collect information, process it, and decide how to proceed.
Understanding the structure and dynamics of surprise allows an enterprise like Army S&T to prepare and learn to be resilient and adaptive. By understanding that organizational norms drive the expectations that underpin surprise, organizations can seek to systematically expand expectations by exploring possible futures. By accepting the possibility that surprise is always possible, organizations can actively monitor for signs and signals of significant technological advancements, which, like a smoke alarm, give the organization time to react before the full force of the shock is felt. This implies that the goal of preventing technology surprise is much more than simply accurately foretelling the future; it is the commitment to being flexible and adaptive, to minimize shock and maintain mission effectiveness.
EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY SURPRISE
Army doctrine recognizes surprise as an offensive resource that commanders exploit to provide an advantage. It often “delays enemy reactions, overloads and confuses the enemy command and control systems, induces psychological shock and reduces the coherence of an
enemy force’s defense.” When used effectively, it can be a “combat multiplier.”1,2 Mark Cancian, a senior advisor in defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, goes so far as to say that it can cause panic.3
At the level of concern for Army plans, programs, and budgets, the target of a technological surprise may concede military advantage in the form of one or more “ilities.”4 For instance, a new weapon (e.g., autonomous-based) could increase survivability of the force by allowing the fight to be by a non-human proxy; a weapon subcomponent (e.g., a warhead) may increase lethality. A new vehicle engine design may improve fuel economy and thereby improve mobility or agility. Or a new logistical framework for maintaining an armored fleet could improve maintainability.
The target of a surprise, as a whole, is placed at a disadvantage due to a technological capability held by an adversary. The technology basis of the surprise will challenge traditional notions of strategy and tactics, either in peace or in war. Development and deployment efforts for competing technologies or countermeasures would also be pressured and risk being rushed. The likelihood of mistakes and errors can be heightened, and failures could appear more dramatic.
TYPES OF TECHNOLOGY SURPRISE
Even within the context of warfare, surprise can appear in many forms.5 Technology surprise is a particularly important form of surprise—not only for the intrinsic value of a technological capability but also because of its ability to enable other forms of surprise; novel technology on its own can open the door, in turn, to specialized forms of strategic, doctrinal, or political surprise.
James Canton, a futurist at the Institute for Global Futures, noted to the committee that surprise can occur as a result of failure to anticipate or predict a threat, risk, or opportunity. It can result in a disruptive change that creates adversarial superiority or a game-changing re-alignment of power that can create disadvantages. He stated that to prevent such matters from occurring, leaders must adopt risk-tolerant thinking, use more actionable forecasting methodology, and invest where adversaries invest, but also invest in the “impossible.”6
The committee often found itself in discussions about the different forms of surprise and analyzed how surprise can harm U.S. national security. For the sake of precision, the committee thought it helpful to adopt an inclusive definition from a 2009 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine symposium report, which listed four main types of technology
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1 A combat multiplier is a supporting and subsidiary means that significantly increases the relative combat strength (power) of a force while actual force ratios remain constant. (FM 101-5-1 MCRP 5-2A, 1-31)
2 U.S. Army, n.d., FM 3-90: Tactics, Section 5-25, https://www.nuui.com/Sections/Military/Field_Manuals/FM3-90/ch5.htm, accessed June 10, 2025.
3 M.F. Cancian, 2018, Avoiding Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts, Center for Strategic and International Studies, https://www.csis.org/analysis/avoiding-coping-surprise-great-power-conflicts.
4 In the Department of War, the “ilities” are the operational and support requirements a program must address (e.g., availability, lethality, mobility, agility, maintainability, vulnerability, reliability, and logistics supportability).
5 G.G. Heilmeier, 1978, “Guarding Against Technological Surprise,” Strategic Studies 2(2):80–86, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45181287.
6 J. Canton. 2025. “Strategic Surprise and Future Readiness: Meeting Emerging Challenges” presentation to the committee. January 9. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
surprises, as provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Warning Office. The committee believes that S&T investments are particularly suited to address Types 1 and 3.7,8
- Type 1: A major technological breakthrough in science and engineering. This type is considered rare and is usually the appearance of an unanticipated new discovery or capability.
The Development of Stealth Aircraft in the Late Cold War—During the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed increasingly sophisticated air defense systems underpinned by advanced radar systems. In response, the U.S. Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began a highly classified program in the 1970s, to develop a new generation of aircraft that could avoid detection by Soviet radar to negate their air defense advantage.9 The success of the program led to the development of the world’s first stealth aircraft, the F-117 Nighthawk, which would go on to play a decisive role in the 1991 Gulf War.
- Type 2: A revelation of secret advancements by a second party that may have an unanticipated impact. This is usually a result of surreptitious activity, where the technology is not necessarily new, but its production was unexpected.
Breaking Enigma with an Analog Computer—The development of radio communications enabled theaterwide orchestration of military forces, but radio signals were easily intercepted. Therefore, both Axis and Allied nations developed advanced cryptography devices. However, the seemingly unbreakable German cryptography device, known as the Enigma Machine, was decoded by the British, assisted by the use of one of earliest analog computers, referred to as the Bombe. Judicious application of the intelligence derived from decoded Enigma communications (in order to keep it secret from the Germans) gave the Allies the strategic upper hand in the war. In fact, the British would not declassify the existence of the Bombe and its role until the mid-1970s.
- Type 3: Temporal surprise occurs when a group achieves more rapid development or progress in a specific technology than anticipated.
British Radar Technology and the Battle of Britain—While both Germany and Britain possessed radar systems during the war, Britain had developed more advanced systems with greater range and accuracy, whereas the German systems
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7 National Research Council, 2009, Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow’s Warfighter: A Symposium Report, National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/12735.
8 The committee included these definitions and examples of surprise from a 2009 National Academies’ report because the examples and their effects have been well studied and can be discussed without revealing any sensitivities. Since the release of the 2009 report, surprise has continued to remain a high priority factor in national defense.
9 Ironically, the development of stealth aircraft was based on pioneering work in electromagnetic detection by a Soviet physicist, Pyotr Ufimtsev.
were limited and unreliable. This proved critical to British victory in the Battle of Britain as their more advanced radar systems enabled the Royal Air Force to maximize the effectiveness of its limited air assets and minimize losses to German air raids.
- Type 4: Innovative technology applications involve using creativity to apply available resources in new ways, rather than requiring technical expertise. This is primarily through reappropriation.
German Tanks and Panzer Divisions in the Invasion of France/Blitzkrieg—While the Germans would later be known for their advanced and superior heavy tanks, none of these existed in 1940 during the invasion of France.10 The German advantage derived from Blitzkrieg tactics—organizing tanks into Panzer Divisions, combining arms formations centered around tanks supported by mechanized infantry (and supporting air power), and concentrating them at vulnerable points in the French line—which enabled exploitable breakouts and envelopment of French and British forces.
One additional type of surprise involves inflicting surprise as a means to mitigate surprise, which has precedent. In one example, during World War II, the Germans were surprised by the British use of metallic chaff as a countermeasure to fool their radar.11 The Germans were not surprised by the weapon itself; indeed, they were well aware of the mechanism and the science, and they had even tested a similar weapon. But surprise came after they deliberately killed the program out of fear that the British might become aware and develop another countermeasure, only to have the British press forward anyway and develop the weapon to use against them. Michael Handel, a professor of naval strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, writes that this “ostrich-like irrational policy cost the Germans … their defensive battle over the Reich.” He goes on to draw from this lesson to write,
Important weapons that can be developed will in fact be developed by more than one side simultaneously, given the universal logic of science. It is therefore more prudent to be a step ahead and assume that the enemy knows as much as oneself rather than to delay research, testing, and production for fear that the system will favor the adversary.12
THE TRIAD OF ENGINEERING, SCIENCE, AND INNOVATION
Engineering, science, and innovation must work together to prevent (or achieve) surprise. Because an organization’s strength lies in its people, the committee believes that true innovation is not solely about standing up a special office to rapidly adopt commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) capabilities for Army use, but rather to build and facilitate the vision and ingenuity of its people.
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10 The Tiger I was first fielded in 1942, the Panther in 1943, and the Tiger II in 1944.
11 M.I. Handel, 1987, “Technological Surprise in War,” Intelligence and National Security 2(1):1–53, https://doi.org/10.1080/02684528708431875.
12 Ibid.
However, even the brightest and most creative talent needs a solid technological foundation upon which it can thrive, which is why science and engineering play such an important role.
Engineering seeks practical solutions to real-world problems, often involving the design and construction of products or systems. Science, on the other hand, focuses on understanding how the natural world works through observation, experimentation, and the development of theories. Engineering innovations are generally rapid and may require cleverness and resourcefulness that recognizes the value of combining different concepts and ideas. But science progresses toward a vision that is not immediately addressable with the tools or knowledge at hand. Both can serve an important role in driving the search for new innovations of all types and can promote serendipity in unpredictable ways.13
What can be confusing, moreover, is that science and engineering can interact in a variety of ways. An example of this is seen in the history of night vision systems and infrared detectors. In the late 1940s, scientific research sought materials that could be used to detect the infrared (IR) part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The research progress over the years has since moved back and forth between science and engineering. In other words, infrared capabilities were not something that could easily be created with a reasonable degree of immediacy, and it took the combination of both science and engineering to get those capabilities to where they are today.
The first practical application IR technology, during World War II—the lead sulfide (PbS) IR detector—was driven by the German military need for missile navigation systems to be able to distinguish between the target and countermeasures.14 These relatively primitive “engineered” devices, however, were designed to detect temperatures at a distance and were not suited for constructing images. It took the innovation of the transistor by Shockley and Bardeen in 1947, which is an engineered structure based on scientific understanding of electron behaviors, and the decades of science and engineering development thereafter, until practical, commercially available, IR charge-coupled devices (CCDs) could produce the images seen readily today.15
Revolutionary technologies can also come from the accumulation and combination of many evolutionary developments when they are combined with a new vision. For instance, in Ukraine, modifying drone technologies by strapping or welding small arms or ordnance has proven to be an important capability using COTS technologies.16 Yet, this adaptation, which disrupted the battlefield, still required the development of materials, controls, communications systems, and other underpinning capabilities that were developed through separate threads of investigation long before the crucial moment of need.17
The Army has enjoyed a long period of asymmetric advantage owing to a confluence of factors, likely the most important of which has been a relatively strong U.S. economy that enabled long-term investments in defense-directed research since the period after World War I.18 During this period, the United States traditionally inflicted surprise on others.
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13 M. Ridley, 2020, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, Harper Collins.
14 A. Pastor, 2020, “Infrared Guidance Systems: A Review of Two Man-Portable Defense Applications,” OSF Preprints, September 2, https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/c6gxf.
15 Nokia Bell Labs, n.d., “1956 Nobel Prize in Physics,” Nokia.com, https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/awards/1956-nobel-prize-physics.
16 Speaker discussion from Tim Mak, Journalist, to Committee on Preventing Technology Surprise, May 7, 2025.
17 J.P. Rogers, ed., 2024, De Gruyter Handbook of Drone Warfare, Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
18 W.T. Moye, 1997, The Genealogy of ARL, ARL-P 360-2, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA383226.pdf.
THE U.S. ARMY’S ROLE
Public and Private Partnership
The concept of Security, Development and Operations (SECDEVOPS) is one that Department of War acquisition professionals try to model, with ideals such as “fail fast, fail often,” and “spiral development” being immediately recognizable. The desire to leverage the tremendous, rapid technology developments in the commercial sector and get the most advanced capabilities into the soldier’s hands quickly has increasingly moved the Army toward the role of “buyer,” rather than “developer,” of innovations.
While the move is reasonable for many of the products the Army uses, this innovation delivery approach is incomplete. A fundamental flaw in the reliance on COTS is that many critical defense innovations are developed in a monopsony.19,20 Thus, the traditional free market forces that promote vibrant innovation markets rarely exist in defense system or platform supply chains. The mobilizations during World War II, the Korean War, and the COVID-19 pandemic represent exceptional situations where the needed products were reasonably well matched to the production facilities that already existed.21 In the future, this close alignment between Army needs and commercially viable technologies cannot be assumed without risk.
Evidence that technology development should be done solely in government or industry is mixed. Walter Isaacson, a distinguished fellow at the Aspen Institute, writes that government funding and teams “built the original computers … and networks” but that private entrepreneurial companies were more innovative due to their reliance on profits and investors.22
However, the industry-led model is known empirically to be unsustainable. Of all the industry laboratories that ushered in the digital age, none exist today in their original forms. Bell Laboratories, the gold standard in this argument, is believed to owe its success to a unique set of circumstances that are likely irreproducible today. Due to its singular focus on the next generation of communications technologies, and as the research and technology arm of AT&T, it was supported by the monopoly that AT&T had over the industry. Thus, it was able to build a fee to cover the research and development (R&D) happening within its laboratories. Indeed, once the multitude of factors caused the monopoly to break up, AT&T “could not fully exploit the technology Bell Labs developed.” Notwithstanding the monopolistic system in which it existed, the success of Bell Laboratories’ S&T enterprise came down to the “combination of stable funding and long-term thinking.”23
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19 A monopsony is a market structure where a single buyer dominates the market for a specific product or service, giving them significant power to influence the price and quantity of the good or service.
20 S. Sankar, 2024, “18 Theses on Technology and the Future of Humanity,” October 31, https://www.18theses.com.
21 U.S. Department of War, 2020, “During WWII, Industries Transitioned from Peacetime to Wartime Production,” Defense.gov, last updated March 27, https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2128446/during-wwii-industries-transitioned-from-peacetime-to-wartime-production.
22 W. Isaacson, 2014, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Simon & Schuster, pp. 482–483.
23 I. Georgescu, 2022, “Bringing Back the Golden Days of Bell Labs,” Nature Reviews Physics 4:76–78, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00426-6.
Actions to Ensure a Thriving Ecosystem
Setting Plans and Expectations
In Chapter 4, the Army’s attempt at setting plans and expectations for its S&T enterprise via the Essential Research Programs (ERPs) is discussed. The ERPs are an attempt to evolve the enterprise from a collection of core competencies into a technology-driven organization. The committee found that the ERPs loosely connect to the Army’s vision of future warfighting concepts and the technologies they require. These connections at the planning stages should be strengthened by increasing engagement of the S&T workforce with formal processes already used by the Army and other services. The challenges run both ways—improving the technological rigor in the models used by military leaders and improving S&T strategy through more formalized integration of military concepts.
For technologies that are not amenable to a COTS framework, the Army should take a long-term strategic view that appropriately balances risk and reward. The underestimation of a technology’s potential is one avenue by which technology surprise could happen, as a missed innovation is more likely than a failed innovation to harm national security. The ERPs (or appropriate equivalents) have the opportunity to not only provide clearly articulated demand signals to the Army’s S&T enterprise but also to mobilize other partners, such as Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), and XTech programs, and stakeholders as well. Although the role for the Army in innovation markets is not a specific focus of this study, it is part of a more complete systems approach that the Army could work into a holistic strategy. That holistic strategy should also be mindful of Amara’s Law, which states that “people tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but to underestimate it in the long run.”24 Examples are the Internet, autonomous technologies, genomic medicine, and the Global Positioning System.25
Integrating Innovations into Doctrine
There is significant value in improving the S&T rigor in Army modeling, including futures, weaponeering, force structure, forecasting, and force-on-force models. This type of modeling endeavor will critically depend on a systematic means of identifying, quantifying, and integrating both technological innovations and novel military concepts into appropriate modeling frameworks. Although limited tools exist, the committee found no evidence of a regular connection to, or integration with, emergent S&T ideas. Systematic and repeatable processes are needed to transform emergent S&T possibilities into military and warfighting concepts for use in the Army’s modeling efforts.
CAN TECHNOLOGY SURPRISE BE PREVENTED?
The views on preventability have evolved over time. In 1987, Handel wrote, “Unlike strategic surprise, which has almost never been successfully prevented or avoided, technological
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24 IEEE Computer Society, n.d., “Amara’s Law and the Tech Future,” IEEE Computer Society Tech News, https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/trends/amaras-law-and-tech-future, accessed June 10, 2025.
25 Ibid.
surprise can be averted.”26 More recently, Cancian casts the question in the form of a debate between the “orthodox” and “revisionist” schools of thought.27 The orthodox school espouses the idea that no one can predict the future perfectly, humans are fallible, and while preventative measures can be used to mitigate surprise, some surprise is unavoidable. The revisionist school, on the other hand, believes that prediction and prevention can come from better processes, information, intelligence, and decision making. Handel falls into the latter camp and cites evidence that “good intelligence work can prevent technological surprise.”28 Along the same lines, Cancian cites the 9/11 Commission report as an example of the revisionist school, which noted the failure to “connect the dots,” implying that a better process of collecting and analyzing the data and acting on the information could have predicted and prevented the attacks.29
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.
With the advent of the Internet and the volume of information (and misinformation) that is now freely and instantaneously available, the number of “dots” that must be analyzed for connections appears to be growing intractable, if it is not already. When added to the proclivities that both individuals and organizations have for repeatability and predictability, the committee finds the chances of complete success to be unrealistic. The committee generally references “preventing technology surprise” throughout this report because that is the aspiration, even if not always successful, and takes comfort in the fact the approach to mitigating surprise is exactly the same as preventing surprise.
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26 M.I. Handel, 1987, “Technological Surprise in War,” Intelligence and National Security 2(1):1–53, https://doi.org/10.1080/02684528708431875.
27 M.F. Cancian, 2018, “Avoiding Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, https://www.csis.org/analysis/coping-surprise-great-power-conflicts.
28 M.I. Handel, 1987, “Technological Surprise in War,” Intelligence and National Security 2(1):1–53, https://doi.org/10.1080/02684528708431875.
29 M.F. Cancian, 2018, “Avoiding Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, https://www.csis.org/analysis/coping-surprise-great-power-conflicts.
