Long-term forecasts of military technologies for a 20–30 year horizon: An empirical assessment of accuracy

During the 1990s, while exploring the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on developments in future warfare, a number of authors offered forecasts of military technology appearing by the year 2020. The forecasts covered diverse systems ranging from unmanned systems to guns to missiles to electronic warfare. This paper offers a quantitative assessment of the accuracy of this group of forecasts. The overall accuracy — by several measures —...