In the distant future, teams of Soldiers equipped with high-powered exoskeletons disembark a series of autonomous personnel carriers outside the enemy’s position. Overhead, a small fleet of drones scans the engagement area, giving each Soldier a real-time view of the battlefield through their heads-up display.
As each team moves into position, they hear a series of explosions on the other side of the enemy base. From over 2,000 meters away, the Army’s high-energy precision fires systems have just disabled the enemy’s anti-access and area-denial capabilities.
At the same time, teams of Soldiers use their exoskeleton suits to leap over the perimeter wall to engage the enemy and secure the compound.
这是未来操作环境的一种情况。陆军期货司令部情报代表马特·桑塔皮特（Matt Santaspirt）说，实际上，几乎不可能预测军队将如何在遥远的未来运作和战斗。
To guide the Army in the right direction, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Mad Scientist team functions like a scout on the battlefield, always looking ahead and evaluating ideas to help build the force, he said.
该团队委员会副主任艾莉森·沃尔（Allison Winer）表示，MADSCI倡议嵌套在陆军期货，培训和学说的命令中，旨在应对陆军近，中期和遥远未来的机遇和挑战。
The goal is to maximize the Army’s limited resources and help Soldiers fight and win in a futuristic operational environment, she added.
“The Army only knows what it knows; and [the Army] always talks to itself,” Santaspirt said. “We want to break out of that echo chamber.”
“We are harnessing the intellect of the nation to describe the art of the possible,” he added. “We know that you can’t predict the future, but we’re trying to say, ‘Here is a range of possibilities.’ [The goal] is to be less wrong than our adversary.”
Santaspirt说，为了实现这一目标，MADSCI团队汇编了来自各种来源的信息，以支持陆军高级领导人的优先事项。
These sources include traditional mediums: academia, industry, think tanks, labs, reports, and white papers; to the more nontraditional platforms: crowdsourcing, social media, science fiction, and cinema, to name a few.
Beyond the collection of materials, the MadSci team often organizes themed conferences, bringing communities together to address key Army topics. For example, the team recently conducted the Mad Scientist Disruption and the Future Operational Environment Conference in Austin, Texas.
During the conference, presenters addressed robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomy, the future of space, planetary habitability, and the legal and ethical dilemmas surrounding how these disruptive technologies will impact the future of warfare, specifically in the land and space domains, according to MadSci officials.
Santaspirt说：“我们进来谈论机器人技术以及如何在严峻的环境中使用它们。
他说：“方法是将专家汇集在一起……这样我们就可以完善这些关键思想，并破坏[陆军]的假设。”
活动结束后一周，团队发布了《疯狂科学家博客》会议上的一些关键收获。Winer说，MADSCI博客和其他社交媒体平台通常被用作众包工具，以帮助对观众进行调查或引起有关关键军队主题的对话。
Some of the conference findings included: a need to set left and right boundaries for artificial intelligence and autonomy, increased crowding of assets in space will cause operational challenges, and fake news coupled with hyper-connectivity is changing the nature of information warfare.
此外,科学fi MadSci团队组织ction writing competitions to help determine possible futures for crucial Army programs, Winer said. For years, science fiction has depicted worlds that are both logically possible, but functionally different than current society.
她说：“科幻小说被用作一种预测，看看可能的未来可能是什么样的。”“除了简单的凉爽之外，它还为军队提供了一种使用讲故事，历史分析和外包来撰写有关可能领域的方式。它是许多企业和行业领导者尝试的有效工具。”
Through their research and continual online engagements, the MadSci team creates a range of possibilities, then later presents their findings to Army senior leaders and key decision makers, Santaspirt said.
“这是一个不同的思维方式,”Santaspirt said. “If [the Army] can get that out there and start meeting the right people, make certain decisions or investments, or get people thinking in a different way … you might see what we’ve discovered — as it comes to light down the road.”
提交以下：Aerospace + defense，，，，AI • machine learning
