Preventing Technology Surprise: The Army's Leading-Edge Research Programs and the Subject-Matter Expertise That Fuels Them (2026)
Chapter: Appendix A: Statement of Task
Appendix A
Statement of Task
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 technological surprise.
Specifically, the committee will:
- 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.
- 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:
- Recommend R&D competencies to be included so the collective enterprise has awareness of the broader range of potential developments; and
- Outline its methodology so that the Army enterprise can continually monitor commercial developments, technology maturation, capital investments, and engineering development.
