The Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering’s designation of six Critical Technology Areas [JG1] (CTAs; viz.- Applied Artificial Intelligence, Biomanufacturing, Contested Logistics Technologies, Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance, Scaled Directed Energy, and Scaled Hypersonics) constitutes a fundamental conceptualization of how power will be projected, contested, and sustained across the conflict spectrum. Without doubt, each of these CTAs afford tremendous capability to influence the pace, breadth, and effectiveness of military operations. However, I posit that their tactical potency and true strategic value lies not in just their individual applications, but in their convergent integration across domains, operating environments, and the continuum from competition to armed conflict.
Individual Technology Trajectories and Military Utility
Each CTA addresses specific operational gaps that have become increasingly evident as near-peer competitors develop capabilities designed to exploit vulnerabilities in United States’ (U.S.) global power projection.
Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables accelerated decision cycles, enhanced pattern recognition across vast data streams, and is a core driver of autonomous systems that can operate in communications-denied environments. The algorithmic warfare revolution is already upon us, and AI is evolving from being merely a force multiplier to an essential component in how military situations are sensed, how military decisions are made, and how military operations are executed.
Biomanufacturing affords ability to produce pharmaceuticals, vaccines, biologics, and food on-demand in austere or expeditionary environments, all of which can significantly alter force capability and sustainment calculations. Further, advances in synthetic biology, gene editing, and directed evolution enable the production of novel materials, fuels, and capabilities to modify human and animal biologies in ways that afford asymmetric advantages, burdens and threat(s). The dual-use nature of these technologies as applicable to both defensive medical countermeasures and offensive biological capabilities demands reassessment of extant governance frameworks so as to remain aligned with the speed and breadth of these developments and their potential uses.
Contested Logistics Technologies acknowledge the reality that U.S. military power has historically depended on uncontested logistics networks spanning global distances. Technologies enabling distributed manufacturing, reduced logistical footprints, and survivable supply chains in anti-access/area denial environments will prove to be decisive in peer conflict. The integration of additive manufacturing, advanced energy storage, and AI-optimized supply networks will determine whether and to what extent joint forces can sustain operations when traditional logistics nodes and networks become untenable.
Scaled Directed Energy systems advance the scientific and technical momentum generated by decades of promising research and iterative developments. High-energy lasers and high-powered rapidly pulsed microwaves provide fieldable, cost-effective defensive capabilities against drones, missiles, and other vehicular systems, enable non-kinetic engagement of sensors and electronics, and can be used to disrupt biological systems. The ability to generate precision energy output affords the ability to evoke calibrated effects responses across the spectrum of force.
Scaled Hypersonics compress response timelines to seconds and minutes rather than hours, thereby threatening adversary resources before they can be protected or relocated, and complicating the defensive calculus in terms of velocity and maneuverability. These systems enable capabilities to restore time-urgent strike factors that have been heretofore neutralized by increasingly sophisticated defenses.
Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance Technologies are at the cutting edge of what is likely to be revolutionary change in sensing, communications, and computational scale(s) and speed. Quantum sensing enables detection capabilities that can penetrate stealth technologies and identify very narrow electromagnetic, gravitational, and/or biological signatures. Quantum communications afford (at least theoretically) unbreakable encryption; and quantum computing is poised to render current cryptographic systems obsolete. In short, the side that first achieves operational quantum capabilities will be first to gain decisive intelligence and operational security advantages.
Convergent Integration: The Synergy of Effects
These six CTAs become strategically transformative when their convergent application (i.e.- the intentional integration of multiple technologies to generate effects that exceed the simple sum of their individual capabilities) are considered. This convergence operates synergistically across three critical dimensions: technical integration, operational integration across domains, and integration across the competition-conflict continuum. At the technical level, AI serves as primary integrating layer that enables other CTAs to function synergistically. Machine learning algorithms can optimize directed energy targeting solutions, quantum sensors feed data to AI decision systems, biomanufacturing production is optimized through AI-enabled synthetic biology, hypersonic targeting is refined through AI pattern recognition; and contested logistics systems employ AI to dynamically reroute supplies based upon real-time threat assessment. This is not future speculation; such integrations are currently being prototyped.
Consider for example a scenario illustrating the operational integration and utility of this convergent capability: Quantum sensors detect minute changes in electromagnetic signatures that indicate adversary strategic forces preparation. AI systems rapidly assimilate this quantum-derived intelligence with traditional ISR to identify high-value targets and assess optimal engagement windows. Hypersonic strike systems are tasked with AI calculating deployment solutions and trajectories that maximize desired end results. Concomitantly, directed energy systems protect critical forward nodes from adversarial counterstrikes, and contested logistics technologies enable rapid repositioning of forces while diminishing the vulnerability of supply convoys. Simultaneously, biomanufacturing capabilities enable production of medical countermeasures against potential (biological, chemical, radiological and/or conventional) retaliation. This is not just force multiplication, rather it is convergent warfare; the simultaneous, integrated employment of reciprocally effective technology domains to generate situations, contingencies, exigencies and dilemmas across the operational competition-conflict continuum that adversaries cannot resolve.
Engaging the Competition-Conflict Continuum: Non-Kinetic and Kinetic Integration
The distinction between kinetic and non-kinetic effects becomes increasingly blurred as these technologies mature. In overt military operations, convergent CTA employment enables more precise, calibrated effects with reduced collateral damage and enhanced force protection. The transparency of these capabilities also provides deterrent value, given that adversaries understand the depth and ramifications of our technological overmatch. But I posit that the true strategic fortitude emerges in clandestine and covert applications, whereby attribution becomes ambiguous and thresholds for response remain undefined.
For instance, quantum communications enable secure command and control of clandestine and covert operations, while quantum sensing provides intelligence collection capabilities that are difficult to detect or counter. AI-enabled deepfakes and synthetic media cloud distinctions between information operations and deception, creating plausible deniability for activities that would traditionally constitute overt action. Biomanufacturing enables production of agents and materials without the supply chain signatures that traditionally facilitate attribution. Directed energy systems can disrupt adversary capabilities without obvious physical evidence of attack, particularly when employed against electronics and sensors, and/or at sub-lethal levels against biological targets.
Maintaining the Warfighting Ethos
These CTAs will change the character of warfare, not merely through the provision of ever more capable weapons, but through new modes of engagement that challenge traditional distinctions between peace and war, espionage and attack, and influence and coercion. This expansion of options below the threshold of armed conflict allows tactical nimbleness and is strategically significant but can be fraught with ethico-legal issues. Thus, the U.S. must develop operational guidelines that sustain our warfighting ethos, conform to regnant legal frameworks, and (given that such CTAs push the boundaries of what was previously achievable) revisit and revise extant ethical frameworks and/or establish others anew to meet and authentically address challenges posed and problems that arise. Indeed, with great capability comes great power, and with great power comes great responsibility. Hence, it will be crucial to maintain both force readiness and democratic accountability as technological capabilities enable increasing leverage and hegemony upon the ever more competitive global stage.
Next Week, Part 2: Implications and Recommendations for Warfighters and Warfighting
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States government, Department of War or the National Defense University.
Dr. James Giordano is director of the Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.