War games offer insight into future military technologies

The U.S. military is conducting war games that envision future advancements in technology that would be available in 2025 and offer participants an opportunity to plan reactions and anticipate results and implications for opposing forces and civilian populations, reports Wired's Danger Room blog.

The second of four planned war games, dubbed the NextTech Workshop and hosted by the Australian consulting firm Noetic, was held in mid-August at the Army's Carlisle Barracks in southern Pennsylvania, the story said. The first war game session, which was held in June in Washington, D.C., focused on the five technologies: drones, software, directed energy, biological enhancement and 3-D printing.

The second workshop in Carlisle approached the technology from a U.S. military standpoint, the story said. The remaining workshops will consider the enemy’s use of the same technologies, as well as the legal and ethical implications.

Participants include mid-level civilian government officials, researchers, scientists and engineers and also mid-career officers from the U.S. and Australian militaries, the story said. Those attending are instructed to consider “second- and third-order effects” — in other words, the unforeseen and possibly devastating consequences of unleashing a new technology on vulnerable human societies.