Molten Visions, Broken Blades: The Challenge of Forecasting the Character of Future Combat

Antonio Salinas

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Intelligence professionals, military officers, and historians alike have often proven to be poor prophets. Our predictions of future wars are rarely accurate, our expectations of those wars breaking on the anvil of combat. However, we have no choice but to continue trying to imagine and forecast what the future character of war may hold on those battlefields that have yet to bear a name.

In the intellectual pursuit of forecasting the character of future combat, there is a tendency to be influenced by subjective biases stemming from operational experiences and fear. Academics and security practitioners alike craft and shape conceptual molds influenced by experience, observation, and doctrine. This mold is then cast and made ready to pour in the molten steel of ideas, theories, and simulations. There is then a hope that the hardened weapon that emerges will match the reality of future combat. Many envision casting a blade: sharp, sleek, and suited for the wars to come.

However, the furnace of battle seldom conforms to our preconceived molds.

When a war comes, its character is not carefully poured—it is struck. Hammered by terrain, chaos, fear, and friction, it shatters the carefully crafted forms. Instead, the furnaces of war splash the molten metal from our chosen molds, spilling onto the floor of reality in combat. These drops of molten steel then shape themselves into blades of their own choosing. They are not the meticulously crafted blades our molds predicted. Instead, they take on deadly, jagged shapes formed by chance and contact.

Past Attempts at Military Forecasting

The history of the United States’ failed forecasts persists in the remnants of past overly optimistic military thinking. Consider General William Westmoreland’s confident prediction in the late 1960s: