Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow’s Warfighter: A Symposium Report

On April 29, 2009 the National Research Council held a 1-day symposium titled, ‘Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow’s Warfighter.’ This volume, a report of the symposium, highlights key challenges confronting the scientific and technical intelligence (S & TI) community and explores potential solutions that might enable the S & TI community to overcome those challenges. The symposium captured comments and observations from representatives from combatant commands and supporting governmental organizations, together with those of symposium participants, in order to elucidate concepts and trends, knowledge of which could be used to improve the Department of Defense’s technology warning capability. Topics addressed included issues stemming from globalization of science and technology, challenges to U.S. warfighters that could result from technology surprise, examples of past technological surprise, and the strengths and weaknesses of current S & TI analysis.