The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
--Oscar Wilde
To prepare for the future is as much an art as a science. This study contributes to the exercise of that art by systematically employing the Alternate Futures process in the creative environment of the Air Force 2025 study. This introduction delineates the specific purpose of the 2025 study and the Alternate Futures process, covers some terms specific to this research, and provides an overview of the analysis that follows.
The objectives of the 2025 study were promulgated by the Air Force chief of staff in a tasking message to the Air University commander in December 1994:
The study team will generate ideas and concepts on the capabilities the United States will require to possess the dominant air and space forces in the future. . . . The final product will be a collection of white papers detailing findings regarding air and space capabilities required for future warfare, new or high-leverage concepts for employing air and space power, and the technologies required to enable the capabilities envisioned.1
The Air University-hosted 2025 study is but one of several long-range planning initiatives currently under way within the Air Force. The problems encountered by most long-range planners are the difficulties of thinking "outside the box" and the pitfalls of simply using projections from today to predict the future. As a result of these problems, the common tendency is to create future operating environments that are similar to those of today. This constrained planning space, as illustrated in Figure 1-1, can lead to "rude surprises" as trends and events vary from the expected.
Figure 1-1. Traditional Long-range Planning Space
In contrast to the traditional approach, the 2025 study included potential nonlinear changes. The key metric for the study was avoiding surprise. The Alternate Futures team achieved this by employing a process specifically designed to create a complete and robust set of planning environments.
These planning environments, or alternate futures, were used by the 2025 participants as a framework for analyzing and evaluating the different systems, concepts of operation, and technologies envisioned throughout the study. The six alternate futures detailed in this paper were also used to stimulate the development of new concepts and technologies. Substantial interchange between the original Alternate Futures team2 and teams responsible for systems development3 greatly enhanced the generation of new ideas.
There are several terms unique to this study which require definition to aid understanding. These terms are Alternate Future, Named World, Driver, Dimensions, Strategic Planning Space, and Plausible History.
Alternate Future: a logical, coherent, detailed, and internally consistent description of a plausible future operating environment.4 To be effective, these futures must contain several characteristics. They must capture key variables for the customer's organization, describe the full range of challenges and opportunities, be internally consistent, be named in a way which evokes the character of the world, and have a plausible history.5 Other terms used in this study synonymous with alternate futures are alternative futures, scenarios, or future worlds.
Since the future contains many possibilities, this study uses multiple futures to capture the full range of challenges important to air and space power. Envisioning alternate futures is a creative planning technique to anticipate future operating environments for a firm, organization, or nation. This is a necessary step in effective long-range planning which seeks to minimize the chances and consequences of strategic surprise.6 The six alternative futures contained herein are future worlds, each containing its own challenges and implications.
Named World: The name of an alternate future "carries a lot of freight"7--it should condense a detailed story into a few words. The name must provide a rich reference point that helps internalize the world's implications. A name like "Red Threat" or "Green Revolution" immediately conjures an image in one's mind of what such a world is like. An alternate future's name becomes a helpful form of lingua franca when planners and decision makers meet, enabling everyone to operate with a common understanding--if for example, someone says, "Project X makes sense in Red Threat, but will not contribute in Green Revolution."
Driver: a factor determined to be an important contributor to change affecting the future.8 Drivers should be beyond the control of the customer, as independent as possible from each other, and relevant to the customer.9
Dimensions: the extreme values of a driver. Each driver is one-dimensional. For example, the American World View ranges from Domestic to Global. Domestic and Global are the extremes, and thus the dimensions, of American World View.10
Strategic Planning Space: a three-dimensional region defined by placing the three drivers on orthogonal axes. This space bounds what the study participants believe to be all the relevant possible outcomes for the year 2025.11
Plausible History: the significant events and milestones which mark how a future world evolved from the present. The history reflects trends and discontinuities that led to the alternate future.
A plausible history combines with the name of an alternate future to make a world believable by tying it to the present through a reasonable evolution of events and trends. Major events and milestones tell a world's story and flesh out the details necessary to understand the challenges facing the alternate future's inhabitants.12
The events shown in the chronology are not a prediction of what will happen, but must be logical in that they could occur and generate further actions and other nonlinear effects. These plausible histories are not specific forecasts of the future because there are so many possibilities, any specific forecast is guaranteed to be wrong. The real test of an alternate future is not whether one forecasts the future precisely but whether the customers change their behavior because they envision the future differently.13
This paper begins with a detailed description of the methodology used in developing the drivers. The methodology (chapter 2) details how the study participants identified the three drivers, created the strategic planning space, selected the worlds of interest, created the plausible histories, and developed the details of the worlds.
This paper then describes, in turn, the six worlds created for the 2025 study. Each of the alternate futures created for the 2025 study provides unique challenges and opportunities. Gulliver's Travails (chapter 3) is a world of rampant nationalism, state and nonstate terrorism, and fluid coalitions. The US is globally engaged to keep this chaos abroad, but America's ability to influence events is dispersed by the vast numbers of different actors. Zaibatsu (chapter 4) is a "company store" world where the sovereignty of the nation-state has been diminished by profit-seeking multinational corporations. Digital Cacophony (chapter 5) is a world of almost unlimited technology. It promises great rewards and delivers unexpected disasters. King Khan (chapter 6) is a world dominated by a foreign superpower. The United States has become the "United Kingdom of the Twenty-first Century." Halfs and Half-Naughts (chapter 7) is a world in turmoil. The accelerating gap between wealthy, technologically advanced societies, and the "have-nots" wreaks havoc on political and social structures. 2015 Crossroads (chapter 8) is an interchange on the road to 2025. It may lead to almost any of the other futures depending on how the United States and others react to a strategic challenge. These chapters provide descriptions of possible futures. These are not descriptions of how the world will be, but how it could be. Within chapters three through eight, the paper specifically addresses the following:
The Plausible History: describes the major events from 1996 to the 2025 worlds.
The Nature of Actors: identifies the major groups or individuals who have the willingness and capability to affect others in the world. Their motives or agendas are discussed.
The Nature of International Politics: addresses the nature of international relations and alliances. The mechanisms of power are described.
The Nature of National Security Strategy: outlines the national security strategy which might be employed by the United States in this world.
Nature of Humanity: discusses the nature of people and their interactions. This section describes the social structures bearing on these relations.
Nature of Technology: details the level and types of technological change.
Nature of the Environment: delineates the degree of environmental degradation and corresponding implications.
Nature of the Defense Budget: notionally assesses the amount of money spent on US national defense. Where necessary, tradeoffs between modernization and readiness are discussed.
Capabilities: outlines the capabilities most needed to accomplish the national military objectives in the world.
Implications: developed deductively, these seek to further illuminate the intrinsic nature of each world, describing aspects not otherwise apparent. In particular, the paper provides insights regarding the application, doctrine, nature, or utility of air and space power in the world.
Summary: reviews each world at a top level, summarizing its unique characteristics and nature.
After describing each of the six worlds, this paper draws some conclusions and recommendations (chapter 9) with respect to these diverse operating environments. Recommendations for further use of the study are also contained in this section.
Appendix A provides a discussion on the future of Air Force long-range planning. The appendix addresses why it is important to conduct long-range planning and what types of questions should be answered with planning. It also presents an architecture for institutionalizing long-range planning. Finally, the appendix compares and contrasts the Air University 2025 alternate futures with the future operating environments generated by the Air Staff's Long-Range Planning Office.
Appendix B provides an overview of some current trends, and compares these linear extrapolations with the realities found in the 2025 alternate futures. In some cases the correlations are nearly one-to-one. In other cases, the trends have diminished, or accelerated in a nonlinear fashion, due to the impact of the drivers. This appendix provides a baseline from which the reader can evaluate the impact of the drivers' interrelations in each world.
Appendix C contains a matrix of many other aspects of the six alternate futures. Additional information about the following subjects is provided in the matrix: world slogan, environment, resources, technology, politics, US economy and DoD budget, education, military, energy, ethnicity, actors, trade, international law, social services, orientation, average life expectancy, favorite sport or recreation, and health care.
Appendix D contains additional information about the future systems, concepts, and technologies potentially available, or useful, in each of the six alternate futures. These tables can be thought of as "toolboxes" for each world. The tables list systems, concepts, and technologies described in other 2025 white papers. These "tools" are arranged according to their expected utility for military forces in general, space power, air power, land power, and sea power. The tables provide a qualitative "first cut" at evaluating whether a certain system, concept, or technology would be useful or available in a particular world. The operational analysis monograph contains the detailed and final evaluation of the systems, concepts, and technologies developed by the study participants.
With this introduction in mind, this monograph will now chart the course the study participants traveled in developing the alternate futures of 2025.
Notes
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