Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-29
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Nicolas Minvielle, Doctor of Economics, specialist in innovation and defense issues, Audencia
Military foresight does not merely describe the future; it helps to shape it. From this arises a question: what hypotheses currently guide our representations of war, and what do they leave in the shadows?
Contemporary imaginaries of war are saturated with technological images:autonomous drones, robotic swarms, artificial intelligence,hypersonic weapons, permanent cyberconflicts. The conflict of the future is revealed there as a theater of objects, increasingly faster, smarter, more autonomous.
These representations are not false. But they are incomplete—and, in many respects, misleading. By focusing attention on visible innovations, they produce a cognitive substitution effect: technology becomes the apparent locus of transformation, relegating to the background the structural dynamics that nonetheless condition its effectiveness.
This shift in focus is not neutral. It perpetuates a form of technological fetishism where artifacts are seen as causes rather than as expressions of deeper systems. However, wars are not won only by the objects one sees, but by the structures one does not see (logistical, industrial, organizational, social).
We continue to observe the war on its surface, but many things are happening elsewhere.
Which variables matter the most?
Military history has often shown it: conflicts are less determined by an isolated innovation than by the combination of structural factors. Logistics, industrial capacity, social cohesion, force organization, or economic resilience often play a decisive role.
Historian and analyst Stephen Biddle, in a seminal work written in the early 2000s,Military Power, thus demonstrates that military performance depends less on technological sophistication than on the integration of this technology into a“modern combat system”coherent, based on inter-branch coordination, dispersion of units, tactical discipline, and adaptability. For the author, American superiority during theGulf War in 1991is not explained solely by the possession of precision-guided munitions, or other technologies for that matter, but by their integration into a broader doctrinal and organizational framework, combining intelligence, command, logistics, appropriate unit sizing, and air superiority. In other words, technology is effective only when it is absorbed by a system capable of making it operational.
Modern warfare depends, for example, on complex logistics systems, energy networks, globalized supply chains, and industrial capabilities capable of sustaining a prolonged military effort. Often presented as the most advanced combat aircraft in the world, the American F35 depends on a computer system that centralizes all maintenance and operational data (initially the ALIS systemgradually replaced by ODIN). As shown byseveral reports, this dependence creates significant vulnerabilities: transmission of usage and maintenance data to the United States with a potentialloss of sovereigntyinduced for non-American users, dependence on US infrastructures, maintenance difficulties, etc. Thus, a technologically superior platform can become a point of systemic fragility if it is part of an unstable or centralized logistical ecosystem.
Similarly, less visible variables can prove decisive, such asmorale of the troops, the cohesion of societies, the organizational culture of the armed forces, thecapacity for doctrinal adaptationor the link between the armies and the political.
The Ukrainian case seems to be an excellent example: national cohesion, decentralized command, tactical innovation capacity, rapid integration of civilian technologies (commercial drones, communication platforms like Telegram or Starlink). This “distributed adaptability” has allowed Ukraine to compensate for major initial asymmetries inmatter of firepower and resources.
From this perspective, the question is not that technologies are secondary, but simply that they must be understood less as autonomous disruptions and more as multipliers of effects within larger systems. They do not eliminate friction or uncertainty; they merely redefine the terms in which these are expressed. Technological asymmetries did not allow the United States to win the war in Afghanistan, with some critics simply explaining that the Americans did not understand the naturesocial, cultural and political aspect of the conflict. And no technology seemed capable of overcoming this.
Understanding contemporary and future conflicts therefore involves shifting focus: from visible objects to invisible dynamics, from displayed capabilities to deep structures, from spectacular innovations to the learning and adaptation processes that determine their actual effectiveness.
If we take this idea of a multiplier,artificial intelligence, for example, improves targeting or reconnaissance capabilities, but it also transforms less visible aspects: logistical optimization, health management of forces with support for medical triage decision-making, anticipation of environmental or epidemiological risks, medication logistics. Somerecent workin defense thus show that AI can have systemic effects by modifying decision-making processes, command structures, and training methods.
A game of nested anticipations
Even if we looked at the right variables, a fundamental problem would remain:the opponent also thinks. Strategy is not an exact science; it is a game of intertwined anticipations, each actor trying to anticipate the decisions of others. But they must also anticipate what others think they themselves will do. This dynamic produces complex chains of anticipation, where perceptions and representations play a central role.
War then becomes, in part, a collision of anticipated errors. Conflicts can emerge more easily when multiple actors misinterpret their adversaries’ intentions, overestimate their own capabilities, or underestimate the risks of escalation. Strategic surprises may arise or be exacerbated bythese perception gaps.
Scenarios, prospective discourses, and imaginaries of war do not merely describe possible developments: they help shape present behaviors. Actors make their decisions byfunction of anticipated futures, even uncertain. These “fictional expectations” thus structure investments, doctrines, and strategic decisions.
This performativity of visions of the future is now widely documented. Technologists and historians Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-hyun Kim thus introduced in 2015 the notion“of sociotechnical imagination”to designate the way in which collective representations of the future guide public policies and technological trajectories. Applied to the military field, this approach allows us to understand how certain visions of war — notably those focused on autonomy, speed, and algorithmic precision — already structure armament programs and employment doctrines.
Visions of the future are circulating today in military doctrines, think tanks, crisis simulations, but also in popular culture, video games ormedia representationsof the war.And these stories contributeTo structure collective expectations and strategic decisions. The United States has clearly understood how strategic these narratives are.
Researchhighlight the close interconnection of Hollywood, the Pentagon, and the defense industry in the production of war images. These representations are not limited to the cultural sphere: they contribute to the legitimization of strategic choices and to the international dissemination of a technological imaginary of conflict. Their diffusion is such that they also have aimpact on European visions, affecting our ability to consider upcoming conflicts in an original and alternative way.
Do not narrow the future
Military foresight does not aim to predict with accuracy what war will be like in 2040 or 2050. Rather, it consists of avoiding certain forms of strategic surprise and preparing for the conflicts of tomorrow by broadening the range of envisaged futures and identifying dynamics likely to transform tensions into ruptures.
Thinking about the future is a fully strategic act. The scenarios produced today already guide tomorrow’s investments, doctrines, and alliances. In this respect, they contribute to structuring future conflicts as much as they claim to anticipate them. Hence, the central question might not be to know what the future of war will be, but to understand to what extent our current representations contribute, often without our awareness, to reducing its diversity and shaping its forms.
Nicolas Minvielle is a member of the steering committee of the Fabrique de la Cité, he was a facilitator of the Defense Red Team and is a retired Lieutenant Colonel (LCL (R)) with the Future Combat Command of the French Army. He is also co-founder of Making Tomorrow and investor in Command AI
Marie Roussie is a member of the Making Tomorrow Collective and the company Alt-a. She worked within the Defense Ministry’s Red Team, the research field of her thesis. Since then, she has continued the strategic and prospective exploration of military theaters of operations with various actors.
–ref. Drones, robots, AI: is technology enough to prepare for the war of the future?https://theconversation.com/drones-robots-ai-is-technology-enough-to-prepare-for-the-war-of-the-future-278805