Annex B – Technology reviewfunctionality, could aid the user in making decisions. By sharing information from other
sources, such as group members, it will be possible to increase battlespace awareness.
Section 3 – Social augmentation, communication
and interaction
Social augmentation is designed to deliver improvements to social interaction, including
new forms of communication, enhanced team performance, language acquisition as well
as improving ethical performance. Methods for making communications faster, clearer,
deeper and enabling new forms of communication between individuals, groups and
machines are expected. Drugs, user interfaces, software and wearable equipment will all
play a role in enabling this.
Substances
Drugs may improve an individual’s sense of well-being or enhance emotional resilience.
Drugs could also be used to boost group performance, and more concerning, make them
more susceptible to various forms of control and manipulation. Drugs might help people
learn languages more effectively and quickly.^92 For example, it might be possible to use
drugs to ‘reopen’ the capacity normally found in the very young (the infant critical window)
to learn languages rapidly and perfectly.^93 One area that is relatively unexplored is how
sociability is learnt. Experiments involving mice have demonstrated that there is a critical
period when young mice learn sociability, and that drugs can be used to reopen this
learning period.^94
Human-machine teaming
Human-machine teaming, sometimes called human-autonomy teaming or
manned-unmanned teaming, refers to the ability to use advanced mechanised units
(such as unmanned aerial vehicles or robots) as a part of a team where the machines take
on roles previously performed by people. Communication based on gestures has been
proposed for control of partially autonomous robots in the battlefield. Human-machine
teaming will have the same dependencies as human-human teams, including cooperation,
integration of abilities and knowledge and complementary areas of responsibility.
The foundation of a good team builds on communication (knowing how and when
to communicate), team coordination (shared mental models, mutual performance
monitoring, assistive behaviour and adaptability, and leadership), and cooperation (team
orientation and mutual trust).^95
92 Breitenstein, C., et al., (2004), Neuropsychopharmacology‚ ‘D-amphetamine boosts language learning
independent of its cardiovascular and motor arousing effects’.
93 Hensch, T. K. and Bilimoria, P. M., (2012), Cerebrum: the Dana forum on brain science 2012,
‘Re-opening windows: manipulating critical periods for brain development’.
94 Nardou, R., et al., (2019), Nature, ‘Oxytocin-dependent reopening of a social reward learning critical
period with MDMA’
95 Mosier, K., et al., (2017), NASA Technical Memorandum, ‘Autonomous, context-sensitive, task
management systems and decision support tools I: Human-autonomy teaming fundamentals and state of
t h e a r t ’.