Future War, Strategy and Technology is a new kind of dialogue in which the priority is deep immersion in the issues built around working groups. It will proceed down five distinct but linked tracks: strategy and future force; technology, innovation, capability requirement and capability-development; policy; ethical and legal; training and education. Eight working groups will meet for a minimum of six hours to consider the implications of emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT) for military strategy.
The dialogue is a means to the end of a major report that will assist decision-makers and policymakers to better understand the security and defence investment choices all democracies are facing given the changing character of war. The report will contain policy and operational outcomes on how to pursue robust interoperability across the liberal democracies at the high end of conflict.
The event will bring together 80 high-level officials, military officers, and experts from across the NATO community, including key Asian allies Australia and Japan. It has been designed in collaboration with NATO’s Science and Technology Organization to complement and support NATO Science & Technology Trends 2023-2043. The discussions will also contribute to thinking on how to implement national defence strategies such as the UK’s July 2023 Defence Command Paper.
What are future requirements? What impact will EDT have on national, Allied, EU and Partner forces and missions, and in what combination? What force concepts and doctrine will be needed? What political, military and defence-industrial processes will be needed to enable them and at what scale? How must military innovation evolve to enable commanders and operators to test EDT? For NATO, how will such developments impact the relationship between Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT)? How best to educate political leaders to help make informed choices on policy and technology? Those are core questions the Future War, Strategy and Technology Conference will seek to answer.
Expert reflections from the conference
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