Avoiding Technological Lock-In at Army Futures Command: Using Science, Technology, and Society Studies Theories To Plan Future Military Doctrine and Technology

Army Futures Command (AFC) has the implicit mission of ensuring that the Army does not get locked into a technology that might be ineffective in a future of competition and conflict. In this dissertation I develop insights and tools that can help assess and inform AFC’s efforts to understand and avoid undesirable technological lock-in. I started with three historical case studies of the interactions between technology and military strategy. The first examined the German Army’s strategic commitment to using railroads before World War I, forcing them into a military answer to rapidly increased diplomatic tensions in 1914. The second explored how the US Army Air Corps became locked into a doctrine of strategic bombing before World War II, affecting their ability to support ground troops during the Cold War. The third studied why the US Army was able to avoid becoming locked into a tactical nuclear doctrine in the 1950s, despite initial efforts to change Army structure and tactics to accommodate the nuclear battlefield. I identified three factors: 1) rapid changes in the strategic environment; 2) lack of civilian analogues to nuclear weapons; 3) the novelty of tactical nuclear technology, and availability of operational alternatives. The second part of my research sought to identify applicable theories from the fields of science, technology and society studies (STS). I identified five theories (technological systems, co-production, technological lock-in, path dependence, and economic growth theory), each with a brief case study. I sent my initial analysis to eighteen professionals at AFC and used their feedback to determine the utility of these theories for military planning. Finally, I analyzed AFC's current initiatives via semi-structured interviews, gaining insight into AFC's operations to identify three classes of issues that they face: complicated, exterior, and complex. Complicated issues are manageable through organizational methods. Exterior issues require planning to accommodate irreducible uncertainties (such as budgeting processes). Complex issues involved unpredictable interactions among technology and military strategy. I focused on three AFC programs, (artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems) demonstrating how STS theories can offer additional tools to help guide technological and strategic planning for an uncertain future.