Futures Seminar: The United States Army in 2025 and Beyond. A Compendium of U.S. Army War College Student Papers. Volume 1.

摘要

Academic Year 2014 (AY14) marks the inaugural year for the Futures Seminar an elective course offered to resident students during the Term II elective period (Feb-Mar 2014) at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC). Created through a shared vision between the USAWC and the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), the Futures Seminar is loosely modeled on the Army After Next Project (AANP), conducted at the USAWC in the late 1990s. Through the AANP, the USAWC hoped to leverage research and writing on strategic trends, the security environment, technology and other factors which would impact the Army in 10 to 25 years. The first and only edition of the AANP Compendium, published in April 1998, featured seven strategy research papers (SPRs) written by USAWC students. The topics ranged from the future of infantry maneuver to data interoperability for a system of systems; from the intelligence information grid to strategic logistics; from unmanned aerial vehicles to revolutionary technologies. The AANP had hit the mark. The Futures Seminar took a slightly different approach to student involvement in examining the Army of the future. Rather than publishing a collection of student SRPs (the capstone research paper which every Army War College student completes), the Futures Seminar was structured as a standard 10-class elective course. The seminar challenged students to examine a topic relevant to the development and implementation of Army initiatives in 2025 and beyond. Through lecture, speakers, discussion and research, students developed an understanding of challenges facing the Army in 2025+ and formulated recommendations and strategies to address one singular question: What kind of Army will we need in 2025 and beyond? At the end of the course students briefed their findings and recommendations, and prepared an 8-12 page paper which summarized their thoughts. This compendium contains those papers.