Using the Transition Game for The Future Soldier in Switzerland
Description
Recent technological developments, their interaction with each other, and the speed with which they are evolving, have prompted armasuisse Science and Technology to set up a research programme entitled “Technology Foresight”. The programme aims to identify disruptive technologies and assess their impact on the military sphere in general and the Swiss Armed Forces in particular. To this end, it organises three DEFTECH Workshops a year. The theme of the workshop held on 8 May 2019 was “The Future Soldier: Digital and Enhanced?”. During the session, those attending were split up into six groups, each tasked with working on the future of a specific topic in line with a defined process that concluded with a brief presentation lasting a few minutes. This took the form of an adapted version of “Le jeu de la transition”, the Transition Game, developed by the French Think Tank FING (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération).
Objectives and impacts
The Transition Game was used as input to a publication seeks to illustrate some concepts relating to the Swiss soldier of the future in a way that is striking, perhaps even disturbing at times, but definitely novel. The aim is to make it easier to understand possible future scenarios in which technology will certainly play an important role but will not be the only factor. Raising awareness of technological progress among armed forces and planning bodies is considered the first step towards opening up a constructive dialogue on the complex issues they will be confronted with sooner or later.
Design
The Transition Game was adapted to a national defence environment, covering topical areas such as cyber and information warfare, man-machine teaming, and situational awareness and reconnaissance. It guides groups through several steps:
- Think about how different context factors and “internal tensions” shape today’s state (ordering principles, norms, tensions, etc.),
- How future trends, innovations and initiatives transform today’s state, including chances and opportunities, and which actors play a role, and,
- Describe how the story of transition can be told from today’s situation to the implementation of a new solution in a possible future state
The key draw for the methodology was the fact that the user starts with the present, an argument which the authors describe as “obvious at first sight (but it is not)”. This approach allows project leaders to capture the attention of the participants immediately as the situations are the ones they live today and the process should illuminate possible challenges or situations they will or might face tomorrow.
A facilitation tool was also developed in spreadsheet software to help the moderator to take notes of the different discussions, order the outputs according to the importance and provide an automatically generated summary of the workshop to support the storytelling final part.
Impacts
The conference event generated numerous insights, which were synthesised into a report “CH-2050: The Future Soldier”, published by armasuisse Science and Technology, with a foreword by the director of that organisation, as well as other senior figures. The deliverable took the form of a hybrid report and comic book, intended to make the findings of the process as memorable and impactful as possible.
Reflections and evaluation
In depicting some possible real-world scenarios, the intention was to provide food for thought on the big questions that will shape Switzerland’s future. Whatever the reader’s reaction to the futures presented, the important thing is to understand the reasons behind that reaction. Visualising and, hopefully, understanding these concepts allows people to act on them; and hence to strengthen the country’s defences and security.
Further information
Check out the summary of the Transition Game project as well as the project deliverable.
