What do experts envision as the largest technology-based challenges the U.S. Joint Force could confront by 2040? The authors develop and implement a three-stage approach to elicit and evaluate ideas from experts on technology challenges that are "radically altering." Twenty challenges were identified and evaluated by experts. These evaluations allowed the authors to classify those challenges into three clusters to help inform how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) could prioritize science and technology (S&T) investments.
A Structured Elicitation Approach to Identify Technology-Based Challenges
With Application to Inform Force Planning for Technological Surprise
Download
Download eBook for Free
| Format | File Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PDF file | 0.7 MB | Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10 or higher for the best experience. |
Purchase
Purchase Print Copy
| Format | List Price | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add to Cart | Paperback94 pages | $21.00 | $16.80 20% Web Discount |
Research Questions
- What technology-initiated challenges do experts believe will be "radically altering" or game-changing for the U.S. Joint Force by 2040?
- How can experts' ideas about technology-initiated challenges be elicited in a transparent and reliable manner?
- What criteria do experts believe are most important to consider when informing DoD S&T investments in response to technology-initiated challenges?
This report describes an approach developed to elicit from experts ideas for technology-based challenges that the U.S. Joint Force could confront in the year 2040, as well as results from employing this approach with internal RAND Corporation experts. The approach begins with conducting and qualitatively analyzing a set of exploratory interviews with experts, which in turn informs an open-ended survey to nominate challenges and a close-ended survey to evaluate those challenges.
Applying this approach with RAND experts generated 20 challenges. Evaluation of those challenges produced three general clusters: a top cluster with nine challenges that experts believed need urgent science and technology (S&T) investments, should be a major national defense priority, might have impacts with severe consequences, and overall were higher risk to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the United States; a middle cluster with seven challenges that experts believed might have impacts with severe consequences but did not significantly need urgent S&T investment or need to be a major defense national priority; and a bottom cluster with four challenges that experts did not believe had significance across the dimensions the authors measured.
Key Findings
- A structured expert elicitation approach permits the transparent and reliable identification of themes and criteria for evaluating potential technology-based challenges to the Joint Force.
- RAND experts nominated a total of 40 technology-initiated challenges, which were consolidated into 20 challenges for evaluation. These challenges varied in terms of technologies, adversaries, and external factors, with potentially greater representation from challenges with technologies involving autonomy, machine learning or analysis of "big data," the space domain, and a China adversary.
- Experts derived several broad criteria for evaluating whether a challenge would be radically altering for DoD: barriers to DoD identification and prevention, other barriers (e.g., feasibility of technology development or adaptation), mitigation difficulty, impact on operations, impact on national security, urgency of investment, and national defense priority.
- Experts' evaluation of the 20 challenges highlighted three clusters. The top cluster contains nine challenges that experts believed need urgent S&T investments, should be a major national defense priority, might have impacts with severe consequences, and overall were higher risk to DoD and the United States. The middle cluster contains seven challenges that experts believed might have impacts with severe consequences but that did not significantly need urgent S&T investment or need to be a major defense national priority. The bottom cluster contains four challenges that experts did not believe had significance across the dimensions the authors measured.
Recommendation
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
Exploratory Interviews
Chapter Three
Challenge Nominations
Chapter Four
Challenge Evaluation
Chapter Five
Discussion
Appendix A
Exploratory Interview Materials
Appendix B
Challenge Nomination and Evaluation Materials
Appendix C
Selected Nominated Challenges
Appendix D
Descriptive Statistics of Challenge Evaluation Results
Research conducted by
This research was sponsored by the Strategic Intelligence and Analysis Cell within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD[R&E]) and conducted by the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD).
This report is part of the RAND Corporation Research report series. RAND reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.