The "Warrior" of 2040: What Trends, Trajectories, and Technological Issues Will Shape Future Service Members?
This publication was released as part of the SMA Project "DOW Future Cyber Workforce Forecasting Study".
Dr. Peter W. Singer presented "The Soldier of 2040: What Trends, Trajectories, and Technoligical Issues Will Shape Future Service Members?" on 4 November 2026 to kick off the newest SMA Speaker Series supporting the DOW Future Cyber Workforce project.
Summary: The warfighter of 2040 will operate in a more complex, technology-driven environment than the warfighter of today where adaptability, human-machine teaming, cognitive resilience, and multi-domiain competency will be essential for success. Preparing for this future will require the military to modernize workforce development practices, integrate emerging technologies, and cultivate the technilca and soft skills necessary to operate effectively under uncertainty through deliberate training of the current and future workforce.
10 Key Takeaways:
1. Our Goal depends on adaptation and adaptability, at both the personal and organizational levels: Success is not simply about acquiring new technology or building defensive perimeters. It is about fostering an ethic and culture of constant adaptation and adaptability. Adaptability is the potential, capacity, or skill to adjust to new conditions. Adaptability is not a trait. It is a warfighting competency that must be built, measured, and relentlessly reinforced. Adaptation is the action, process, or end result of actually making that change. The needs of 2040 will not be defined by any specific weapon system, augmentation, or AI tool. The Soldier AND the military of 2040 must be defined by the capacity — cognitive, physical, and institutional — to continuously evolve faster than the threat.
2. Emerging technologies will have compounding effects. Artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, quantum technologies, biotechnology, and advanced communications will evolve simultaneously, amplifying one another’s effects on warfare. The soldier of 2040 will operate within an ecosystem of converging capabilities — some familiar, many unprecedented — and must be prepared to integrate, adapt, and improvise across this full spectrum of emerging technologies.
3. Adversary learning complex means our foes' capabilities will converge “Despite varying national interests and governing philosophies, these global challengers are increasingly united in their adaptive strategies — creating a threat environment that is simultaneously distributed and deeply interconnected.
4. Human-machine teaming will become essential. Effective human-machine collaboration will become a core competency for warfighters. Soldiers who understand machines — their capabilities, limitations, and failure modes — will outperform those who merely operate them.
5. AI will serve as both an asset and a vulnerability. AI will permeate the warfighting environment, creating new capabilities and vulnerabilities across intelligence, logistics, command and control, strategic communications, and cybersecurity. AI is a force multiplier when properly understood and appropriately applied. It becomes a liability — or an attack surface — when adopted without critical assessment of its limitations, failure modes, and vulnerability to adversarial manipulation.
6. Cognitive resilience will become increasingly important. Warfighters will require deliberate training to strengthen decision-making under stress, navigate incomplete or manipulated information, maintain ethical judgment, and operate effectively in degraded or disconnected environments. These are not soft skills. They are warfighting competencies that must be trained as rigorously as any physical standard.
7. Any future victory will still depend on critical thinkers. “"Warfighters" who become war winners" must be problem-solvers capable of instantaneous, high-stakes decisions — leveraging machine speed while remaining capable of independent action.
8. Military workforce development must evolve. The military will need to adapt its recruitment, training, assessment, and promotion practices to meet the demands of future warfare. This change must not be easy. If the change doesn’t hurt someone’s feelings, it likely isn’t enough change
9. Current training and wargaming have not kept pace with the change. For the 2nd and 3rd generations of digital natives, training approaches built around passive instruction, linear content delivery, and boardgames will fail to develop the adaptive, systems-level thinkers the 2040 operational environment demands…We are using 20th-century tools to develop 21st-century warfighters.
10. Multi-domain competency will be critical. Warfighters must effectively integrate capabilities across physical, digital, cyber, and other operational domains. Our goal should be to develop: A warfighter who can operate across physical, digital, and cognitive domains with equal fluency.
Speaker Session Recording
The video is available upon request via Intelink. Please contact Ms. Mariah Yager at mariah.c.yager.ctr@mail.mil to request access.
Dr. Peter Warren Singer is Strategist at New America, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and Founder & Managing Partner at Useful Fiction LLC, a company specializing in strategic narrative. A New York Times Bestselling author, he has been named by the Smithsonian as one of the nation's 100 leading innovators, by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues, by Foreign Policy to their Top 100 Global Thinkers List, and as an official "Mad Scientist" for the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command. No author, living or dead, has more books on the professional US military reading lists.
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