An Assessment of the Science and Technology Predictions in the Army's STAR21 Report

📖 The Scoop

This paper reviews the technology forecast assessments of the Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century (STAR21) study conducted for the Army by the National Research Council in the early 1990s. The review in this paper was requested by the Army Chief Scientist, Dr. Tom Killion. The goal for STAR21 was to assist the Army in improving its ability to incorporate advanced technologies into its weapons, equipment, and doctrine. The objectives were to identify the advanced technologies most likely to be important to ground warfare in the next century, suggest strategies for developing the full potential of these technologies, and project implications for force structure and strategy for the technology changes. This review was done by interviewing the Army's most senior scientists and engineers, who graded the technologies based on what has happened since 1992, when the STAR21 study was published. They considered which of the 104 topics in the technology forecasts were about right, which overestimated or underestimated progress, which were wrong, and what areas were missed entirely. The results were divided about evenly over four of the five categories. There were a very few topics judged to be underestimated; namely, distributed computer processing, computer memories, optoelectronics and photonics, development of biomarkers for medical diagnostics, functional materials, and manufacturing at the nano-scale. There were a few serious misses. The most significant change in technology that was missed was the development of the World Wide Web, which was enabled by the engineering of computer networks (the Internet) and the installation of fiber optic communication links to most parts of the world. Another change that was missed was the extraordinary growth in the number of personal computers connected to the Internet. The overall assessment by the scientists and engineers who were interviewed is that the study earns a grade of about C.

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