“This Is Not What I Signed up for”: Sociotechnical Imaginaries,Expectations,and Disillusionment in a Dutch Military Innovation Hub

Abstract

Many militaries envision a technologically advanced future with a strong innovative capability and therefore invest in so-called innovation hubs focused on experimenting with new modes of operation with drones and (semi-)autonomous vehicles. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between these military visions and soldiers’ lived experiences on the ground. This article presents an ethnographic study of one innovation hub: the Robots and Autonomous Systems unit of the Dutch Army. Examining this unit through an analytical framework of sociotechnical imaginaries and expectations, we first outline how “innovation” and “military” imaginaries are integrated so that technological innovation is presented as necessary, desirable, and inevitable for military futures. Second, we explore soldiers’ experiences of military innovation, identifying friction between the strategic and operational levels. At the strategic level, soldiers experience meaning and purpose in their work whereas, at the operational level, soldiers’ expectations, practices, and experiences do not align with the “innovative military future” imaginary, resulting in disillusionment. With this empirical study, we contribute to a better understanding of how large-scale visions of technological “progress” play out in military practice.

Introduction

In 2020, the Dutch military organization launched the Defense Vision 2035: Fighting for a Safe Future, ¹ a document setting out the vision for a “future-proof” armed forces. The Dutch military aims for a “technologically advanced” armed forces with “a strong innovative capability” to tackle the increase of “worldwide, physical and digital threats” (Ministry of Defense 2020). This Defense Vision is not merely an idea, it is materialized into so-called innovation hubs, small military units focusing on “experimenting” with new modes of operation with technologies such as drones, autonomous, and semi-autonomous vehicles or artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These “innovation hubs” relate to broader developments of militaries worldwide investing in unmanned systems, robotics, and AI, through which warfare becomes more data-driven, automated, and remote (Bousquet 2010; Demmers and Gould 2018; Hoijtink 2022; Suchman 2020; 2022). A lot is written on the changing nature of warfare, promises of military innovation, and military and private business collaborations, particularly in the context of the US military-industrial complex (González 2022). However, often due to difficulty of access to the field, few studies focus on how these developments play out in practice or how they are perceived by individual soldiers in the Dutch military or elsewhere.

In this empirical study, we gained unique access to conduct four months of ethnographic research at one innovation hub run by the Dutch Army: the Robots and Autonomous Systems (RAS) unit, which is an “experimental unit” with a stated aim of gaining tactical knowledge on the military use of “drones, unmanned vehicles and deep learning systems” to “maintain and strengthen…dominance on the battlefield” (HCSS [The Hague Center for Strategic Studies] 2021). As the military organization is the only entity that can legitimately execute the state monopoly on violence, and soldiers can be confronted with high-stress and potentially violent situations, this “experimenting” takes place in a political and moral domain, which is different from visions of innovation in, for instance, private business settings. By studying the RAS unit, we improve understanding of the implications of military innovation visions for the organization and for individual soldiers. We explore two questions: how do visions of military innovation play out in day-to-day activities within the innovation hub, and how do soldiers on the ground experience this?

To address these questions, we develop an integrated framework drawing on the sociology of expectations and the concept of “sociotechnical imaginaries.” Central to this framework are the matter of visions and expectations and their practical materialization and institutionalization. Through this framework, we observe a discrepancy between expectations and experiences, a discrepancy that leads to internal friction between different levels of the military organization and, taking into account the political and moral contexts of military practice, to soldiers questioning the meaning and purpose of their work. Building on an intersection of scholarship in science and technology studies (STS), critical security studies, and military anthropology, this article contributes to this literature with an empirical account of how large-scale visions of “progress,” technological advancement and innovation play out at different levels within the military. Elaborating on the discrepancy between expectations and experiences, this article also contributes to a better understanding of how soldiers perceive meaning and purpose in their work in the changing context of warfare.

We begin by discussing existing literature on visions and promises of military innovation, and the analytical framework of sociotechnical imaginaries and expectations. We then introduce the case of the RAS unit and discuss its core visions, in which technological innovations are presented as necessary, desirable, and inevitable for military futures, describing how there are different sentiments at the strategic and operational levels of the unit. Whereas individuals at the strategic level express feelings of enthusiasm, optimism, and motivation, feelings of frustration, disappointment, and demotivation are dominant among those working at the operational level.

Fantasies and Promises of Military Innovation

Visions and promises of technological innovation for military futures are discussed in literature on military innovation, which mainly focuses on the characteristics of twenty-first-century warfare. As mentioned in the introduction, data technologies, robotics, and unmanned systems enable changing modes of warfare (Bousquet 2010; Demmers and Gould 2018; Hoijtink 2022; Suchman 2020). Above that, these technologies are often presented as promissory solutions for “military problems,” such as the “fog of war,” which refers to the level of uncertainty in military operations. In contemporary warfare, the narratives about the promises of military technologies are created in close collaboration with entrepreneurs or private businesses.

Integrating ideas from STS and critical security studies, Suchman (2020; 2022) studies the idea of “algorithmic warfare,” through which the US Department of Defense promises that algorithmic data gathering and analysis can solve military problems of inaccuracy. Technological developments are presented as capable of dissolving the “fog of war,” which creates “fantasies of accuracy” in contemporary warfare (ibid.). Suchman (2022, 2) states that these fantasies of data-driven command and control include a promise to “delineate and dominate the theater of operations through data.” This promise is based on the idea that through data, “objectivist knowledge” and unambiguous signals can be extracted from contingencies, ambiguities, and noise on the ground. In other words, war is messy, unpredictable, and uncertain, but data will provide a clean, predictable, and almost scientific solution to the fog of war (see also Bousquet 2010).

Cultural anthropologist González (2022, 20) elaborates on visions and promises made in contemporary warfare through the idea of “virtual war,” which concerns the “confluence of long-term trends, tools, and techniques” such as war conducted by robotic systems, the emergence of Silicon Valley as a center for defense research, and the use of large-scale data analysis in warfare. He studies how the US military projects a future in which soldiers form integrated teams with autonomous systems, building on the promise that such systems will be predictable and consistent, keep troops safe, result in fewer civilian casualties, be cost-efficient, allow more to get done with less, and stay ahead of “enemies”. (González 2022, 20) González (2022, 28) concludes that several of these promises are “questionable at best, and sometimes demonstrably false,” and that the apparent “urgency” or “inevitability” of autonomy may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Visions and promises of accuracy and efficiency through technological innovation are omnipresent in militaries’ approaches to contemporary warfare, but these visions often are fantasies or are based on almost mythologized versions of reality.

Elaborating on the growing collaboration between businesses and militaries, González (2022, 67) furthermore stresses that US military leaders' approach became remarkably similar to “Silicon Valley-style” settings where “charismatic CEOs, technology gurus, and sycophantic pundits have relentlessly hyped artificial intelligence.” He describes a “symbiotic relationship” between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley that has led to an approach of entrepreneurialism and experimenting (González 2022, 67). Hoijtink (2022, 4) similarly shows how these dynamics, which she calls the “experimental way of warfare,” also take place in the Dutch military context. She stresses the political implications of experimenting in the military, and states that in this context, conflicts are seen as “an opportunity to experiment” through which wars become “endless and everywhere, not because of the…enemy, but because of the broader experimental infrastructure that is created and that needs to be maintained.” Even “failing” experiments are political, as anthropologist Bickford (2018) emphasizes, because failures create new areas of exploration and exploitation. Studying experimental settings gives us insight into the agendas and future priorities of military organizations. At the same time, we should question the “experimental” character of these settings: are they used as a means to achieve a “safer” and more “accurate” future, or does experimenting become a goal in itself, legitimizing endless conflicts?

Visions, promises, and fantasies are important themes in the study of military innovation, yet few studies document how such abstractions materialize into practice and how individuals experience them. A small number of studies emphasize soldiers’ experiences of working with drones, exploring how some drone operators experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Gusterson 2016), and describing the dilemmas of remote killing in relation to ideas on “moral injury” (e.g., Enemark 2019; Molendijk et al. 2022). Elaborating on the moral aspect of soldiering and innovation, Bickford (2018; 2020) explores how military organizations struggle with the “human frailty” of soldiers, who can mentally and physically break down in combat. He describes how soldiers are imagined to become “kill-proof” through technological enhancement. These studies emphasize soldiers’ experiences and illustrate the importance of studying visions in practice.

As this summary suggests, most studies of military innovation focus on the US context. This study contributes to emerging understandings of how military innovation seeks to materialize visions, imaginaries, and expectations in practice, using data gathered in a facility run by the Dutch Army. Considering the moral and political context in which soldiers operate—potentially confronted with high-stake or violent situations—it is important to gain more insight into the micro-level experiences of large-scale military developments. To analyze how visions materialize into practice, we do not use a specific definition of military innovation. Instead, our focus is on how the military organization and soldiers see this innovation and the role of expectations in relation to everyday practices and experiences. For this reason, we refer to military innovation as the process through which the military organization and soldiers envision and experiment with novel technologies.

Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Expectations

Although imagination is often seen as an individual practice, in which one person dreams, reflects, and fantasizes, it is also a collection of organized social practices, operating at an intersubjective level by “uniting members of a social community in shared perceptions of futures that should or should not be realized” (Jasanoff 2015a, 6). In STS, the concept of “sociotechnical imaginaries” has been developed to analyze technological developments at a macro scale, defining sociotechnical imaginaries as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (Jasanoff 2015b, 4). These imaginaries are not static; they are continuously “co-produced” by involved actors, institutions, and technologies, and this coproducing can be studied by focusing on the origin of the imaginary in “new scientific ideas and technologies” (Jasanoff 2015b, 323), how these are socially embedded, and by exploring the (possible) friction and resistance they produce. Imaginaries are thereby connected to broader ideas and discussions in societies. Moreover, coproducing occurs through the materialization and institutionalization of imaginaries into projects, policies, and persons (Jasanoff 2015a). For instance, an imaginary of information and communications technologies innovation can lead to the purchase of computers, the organization of new logistical processes, and training of employees to work with the newly implemented technologies (Bowman 2015).

Whereas the framework of sociotechnical imaginaries is often applied to study macro-scale societal and political developments, we integrate it with a meso-scale approach of the sociology of expectations to study the organizational context in which military innovation is put in practice. Expectations are the “building blocks” for overarching “umbrella” imaginaries (Van Lente 2021). The framework of the “sociology of expectations” is often used to study how visions, promises, and expectations are turned into practice in organizational and business contexts (Borup et al. 2006; van Lente et al. 2013). For instance, in start-ups, expectations are lived out through the practice of pitching future prospects to bring in investment. Technologies are evaluated based on their promised capabilities, rather than their actual performance (Borup et al. 2006; Brown and Michael 2003). In this context, expectations are considered generative because they can attract actors to the field, mobilize resources, and legitimize investments (Borup et al. 2006; van Lente et al. 2013). Furthermore, expectations are performative as they do not merely reflect reality but rather shape it to a significant extent (van Lente 2021).

Bringing together these literatures on imaginaries and expectations illustrates that the moral dimensions of individual meaning and purpose are typically given little attention in studies on imaginaries. Morality in imaginaries is mainly studied on a macro level, for instance, by focusing on the disruptive impacts of technologies on society at large (Sovacool and Hess 2017; Wehrens et al. 2021). Conceptualizing expectations as the more concrete building blocks of imaginaries, we discuss how soldiers relate expectations to a sense of purpose in their everyday experiences, providing insight into the micro dimensions of morality in imaginaries. The integrated analytical framework proposed in this article examines expectations to gain a better understanding of the origin, materialization and institutionalization, and (possible) friction of imaginaries. We also examine how coproduced imaginaries relate to individual experiences.

Additionally, while Jasanoff and Kim’s (2009) work on sociotechnical imaginaries does not focus specifically on military imaginaries, this concept proves to be useful to study military science policy (e.g., Dennis 2015) or perceptions of threat and preemption (e.g., Masco 2014; Massumi 2015). Such studies consider military imaginaries to be political and performative, as they inform policies that allocate military resources, materializing perceptions of potential futures into military strategies and actions in the present. However, these discussions again focus mainly on large-scale, macro visions of threat. Bickford (2020, 3) relates these visions to the more concrete imagination of soldiers as “supersoldiers” that are “designed” in the present but “represent a kind of ‘armored’ life protected against future threats.” We focus on soldiers’ perceptions and practices of military innovation at the level of practice, zooming in on one Dutch case study: the RAS unit.

RAS Unit

The RAS unit is part of the Army branch of the Dutch armed forces and focuses on “experimentation” with drones, (semi-)autonomous systems, and AI. As mentioned in the introduction, the RAS unit is exemplary of the several “innovation hubs” through which the Dutch military aims to become “technologically advanced” to “stay ahead…lead the way in research and development” and do “more with the same number of people” (Ministry of Defense 2020; 2022a). Since 2016, the military organization has published several vision documents in which “innovation” was prioritized, and from 2018, additional “investment budgets” of 1.5 billion euros per year were made available to the hubs, including funding directed to the RAS unit (Ministry of Defense 2016; 2018a; 2018b; 2020).

In terms of the organizational structure, the RAS unit is part of the Army department of Concept, Development, and Experimentation and its aims are to eventually be integrated in the infantry 13th Light Brigade, although the results of this experimental unit may be implemented across the entire Army. The unit consists of a strategic level where officers, military reservists, and civilian technicians and consultants are involved and an operational level consisting of an infantry platoon tasked with executing RAS “experiments” (HCSS 2022). Over a four-month period, we conducted participant observation and more than twenty in-depth semi-structured interviews with soldiers of different military ranks, external consultants, data scientists, technicians, and policy officers at both levels of the unit. As noted, accessing the typically closed-off setting where military “experimentation” takes place did not take away (and even reinforced) dilemmas that are well-known in ethnographies and studies on secrecy in the field of security studies (Gusterson 2008; De Goede et al. 2019), particularly dilemmas regarding what technical and tactical knowledge can be made public. To tackle these dilemmas, we mainly focused on what the RAS unit and military organization themselves made public and embedded this in a broader context of what we encountered on the ground.

The access and ethnographic research provided us with the opportunity to study everyday practices of “experimenting,” including the failures that are not often publicized. These failures show the priorities and direction of the military organization and are therefore crucial in understanding what contemporary warfare moves toward (Bickford 2018). Our empirical study provides both meso- and micro-scale understandings of the intended direction of the Dutch military organization, and how concrete technologies, budgets, and activities enable such trajectory in practice. The findings are presented in two parts. First, we focus on the visions of military innovation at the strategic level of the RAS unit. Thereafter, we describe everyday practices at both levels of the unit, in which soldiers are expected to experiment and demonstrate tactical maneuvers using newly purchased technologies.

Visions of Military Futures

At the strategic level of the RAS unit, technological innovations are seen as necessary, desirable, and inevitable for the future of the military. According to official communication, such innovations are indispensable to “maintain and strengthen our dominance on the battlefield” (HCSS 2021). In interviews and a public promotion video, representatives of the unit expand on this sentiment, expressing how technological innovation is “a necessary step” to “regain the lead” in conflict. The main goal is “to win” because “second place isn’t an option” (HCSS 2021). Additionally, technological innovation is presented as desirable because the technologies would enable the RAS unit, and eventually the whole military organization, to achieve “three times more combat power with the same amount of people” (HCSS 2021). So-called smart unmanned systems would also “increase the safety of our people” and make military operations more (cost-)efficient (Ministry of Defense 2020).

Moreover, technological innovation is seen as inevitable to be prepared for future conflicts. This relates to broader perceptions of technologies as neutral and objective entities that provide “silver bullet” solutions to complex (often not clearly defined) problems. ² In the military context, these problems concern the “threats” that legitimize the core existence of the organization, which is to defend the Netherlands’ own territory and that of allies (Ministry of Defense 2022b). Relatively new threats, such as cyberattacks in the virtual domain, demand that military organization to adapt, and innovation is seen as a key driver of this adjustment. Innovation is thereby presented as inevitable for the continuing existence and legitimacy of the military organization.

Analyzing these visions of military innovation through the lens of imaginaries and expectations, we argue that they are part of a sociotechnical imaginary of an “innovative military future” which integrates a military imaginary and an innovation imaginary. Central in the military imaginary are “traditional” ideas of military practice such as protecting civilians against threats and defending national or allied territory (Ministry of Defense 2022b). This builds on core military values of courage, commitment, and justice: militaries expect their soldiers to operate in high-stake and extreme circumstances that may justify the need to use force. This relates to Bickford’s (2018; 2020) ideas on militaries imagining and designing soldiers for “specific but unknown threats” defined on the basis of past experiences and predictions of the future. The interaction between military pasts, presents, and “uncertain and unknowable” futures (Massumi 2015; Masco 2014) is the main driver for integrating an innovation imaginary into visions of the future.

The innovation imaginary has roots in business approaches to innovation and builds on promises of efficiency, output, and technological progress (Pfotenhauer and Jasanoff 2017). In the RAS unit, the innovation imaginary is introduced by external consultants, technicians, and data scientists, who collaborate with military commanders to combine ideas of efficiency and progress with promises of a safer and more secure future. In other words, the integrated imaginary of an innovative military future is coproduced by both public and private actors, as Suchman (2022, 2) describes, emerging from the “alliance of military technophiles and commercial entrepreneurs as a means of responding to what they characterize as the new demands of 21st century warfighting.” These alliances lead to investment in a “fantasy of data-driven, comprehensive command and control” where AI is presented as the promissory solution to automating data analysis and reclosing the world (Suchman 2022, 2). In the Netherlands, this coproduced imaginary shows similarities with the “symbiotic relationship” between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley in the US context (González 2022). At the RAS unit, we see business approaches of entrepreneurialism and experimentation being integrated with military practice, where both manufacturers and commanders “relentlessly hype artificial intelligence” (González 2022, 67). After analyzing the dominant visions of military innovation in the RAS unit, the following section explores how these visions are (or attempt to be) materialized and institutionalized in practice.

Practices of Military Innovation

We observed everyday practices at both the strategic level and operational level of the RAS unit. At the strategic level, the following image dominated: meeting rooms filled with (relatively high ranking) soldiers and technological consultants from outside the organization. This group, predominantly consisting of men, had laptops in front of them, while one of the soldiers gave a PowerPoint presentation. On the walls we found large sheets of paper with images of technological devices and planning for the coming months. The visions of military innovation were, however, not only visualized in images and planning sheets, they were also materialized into real vehicles. In the year prior to the fieldwork, soldiers at the strategic level purchased several drones and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), such as the THeMIS UGV from Estonian company Milrem Robotics. This vehicle was originally used by forestry companies and was now converted by both Milrem Robotics and the RAS unit into a military vehicle capable of conducting transport and reconnaissance, while also serving as a weapon platform (Ministry of Defense 2022a).

Even though these technologies did not yet function properly and were barely used, they were often referred to in presentations or meetings. At several demonstrations of the vehicles, high-ranking soldiers at the policy level or people outside the military organization were given the remote controller to feel the weight of the machine in their hands, as a manifestation of the “realness” of innovation. It was not merely a vague idea or vision. It was tangible, they could touch it, and it was even suggested that they could operate the vehicles themselves. Through such materializations, people can have experiences of working with military technologies, instead of only discussing abstract expectations and visions; the technologies did not need to function as intended operationally to performatively embody visions of “progress” and “advancement.” We discuss later how this experiencing leads to confusion and disappointment at the operational level within the RAS unit.

Apart from this materialization, the visions of military innovation were also institutionalized at the strategic level through the purchase of vehicles and drones. Technologies for military operations need to be officially certified by a technical office within the armed forces before they can be implemented, after which their mechanical and software maintenance is planned and organized. In other situations, visions were institutionalized through pitching future plans to high-ranking soldiers and policy officers. The aim of these pitches was to secure the budgets needed to keep the innovation unit evolving. We must note here that in the Dutch military resources are limited due to multiple budget cuts over the past decades. ³ Soldiers are regularly confronted with insufficient supplies of, among other things, boots, clothes, and artillery. It is in this context that budgets for innovation are negotiated, and we see how powerful visions of military innovation can be: despite insufficient supplies, a sizeable budget is assigned to innovation hubs and to the purchase of unmanned vehicles and drones. At the RAS unit, materialization and institutionalization takes place in close collaboration with manufacturers from Milrem Robotics. Representatives of the company regularly visited the military base where the vehicles were maintained and tested. Company representatives were interested in learning about the “results” of exercises, how soldiers experienced working with the vehicles, and whether they desired any technical adjustments or additional functionalities.

Experiences of Experimentation

We were also interested in how soldiers at the RAS unit discuss their experiences of military innovation. At the strategic level of the RAS unit, people described their work as “concept development,” where the main focus was on the process and promises of experimenting. One soldier stated that people at the strategic level “threw in several technologies and said: ‘just see what works.’ That’s their way of innovating…just see whatever comes out…basically anything you do is good.” The “concept” of military operations with technologies, such as drones, robotics, or (semi-)autonomous systems, is thereby more important than the concrete functioning of these technologies. For example, through this “concept,” lens they focus on whether weaponized robots or soldiers should first enter the field during operations. From their perspective, the goal of experimenting is to develop an idea and direction rather than to achieve the concrete outcome of well-functioning (weaponized) robots.

Despite occasional complaints about the ponderous and bureaucratic military organization, at the strategic level, there was a shared sentiment of enthusiasm, optimism, and devotion. One high-ranking soldier expressed his excitement:

Suppose that [this functionality] works as we envision it…then they [soldiers at the operational level] no longer have to go into the field…in a risky area. You just send one of those stupid devices and let it shoot its face. You are not going to do that yourself anymore. That’s a complete mind shift from how they think they should operate to how we think that you can use a robot.

“They” here refers to the soldiers at the operational level, who are trained to conduct boots on the ground tactical maneuvers and imagine the use of robots within this mode of operation. At the strategic level, the enthusiasm about experimenting with robots, drones, and (semi-)autonomous systems was partly brought in by the external actors working at start-ups and think tanks. They brought in buzzwords and business concepts like “short-cycle innovation” and “in-house development of AI,” and emphasized experimentation in “close collaboration and with technical expertise from industry and universities” (HCSS 2022). Furthermore, they expressed excitement about putting their knowledge into practice in the “not yet innovated” military field.

Sentiments of enthusiasm, optimism, and devotion were discernible at the strategic level, but different sentiments arose at the operational level of the RAS unit. As mentioned, this level consists of a platoon specifically selected to experiment with robots and (semi-)autonomous systems, staffed by relatively low-ranked soldiers. The platoon is geographically separated from the offices of soldiers at the strategic level. When reflecting on their initial involvement, these soldiers expressed excitement about being part of an innovation unit. One soldier stated: “That really appeals to me…that I am part of shaping the military of the future.” Another soldier recalled: “if I can be part of the beginning of the [Army of the future], then I am a happy man.”

In the course of our fieldwork, conversations and observations brought to the surface a growing discontent among soldiers at the unit level. Enthusiasm about everyday work started to subside mainly due to unmet promises and expectations. One soldier described how he joined the Army “to fight” and execute “real” operations, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. On these missions “everything was focused on fighting and not dying” and “you would face the enemies.” In interviews, the sentiment about now-concluded operations in Afghanistan and Iraq was almost nostalgic. There was a discrepancy between soldiers’ expectations and their everyday practices and experiences. As one soldier at the operational level stated: “to be honest, since I started here, I barely left my office and that is upsetting me.”

Additionally, many soldiers expressed frustration about the malfunctioning of drones and (semi-)autonomous vehicles. Several soldiers referred to a large, long-prepared exercise in which the necessary technologies broke down at the beginning of the exercise. From one interview:

Interviewer:

In this case, the whole exercise needs to be cancelled?

Respondent:

Eventually, it will be carried out and what we sometimes did was that we said “you are now the [vehicle] and you stand there.” First, what does that do to that boy, because he is now pretending to be a vehicle…so the exercise continues but we call it PM ⁴ …that means “fake”…the more it gets, at some point it doesn’t make sense anymore….

Interviewer:

What is the sentiment in such cases?

Respondent:

It sounds very funny…but of course it is frustrating. You are doing a preparation and there is a lot involved in such an exercise…but then you get to the bottom of the exercise and you think “so it’s all PM”…. That is frustrating.

Expectations about technologies functioning properly could not always be met, which was explained as being in the “nature of experimentation” or an inevitable part of “trial-and-error.” Nevertheless, exercises with these malfunctioning technologies were still planned. Referring to such exercises, one soldier in the operational unit stated: “You are not home for a week. For one week you eat worse, you sleep worse. All of that does something to you.” A commander mentioned:

Those boys in [the] platoon, that’s not an experiment to me. Those are just guys who come here to do their job…the assignment, developing a…method of intervention, that’s experimental. But if those guys get sick, or someone broke their ankle last week, that’s just real.

This shows that these exercises are not merely everyday practices, but touch upon deeper questions of meaning and purpose: is this what I became a soldier for; why would I leave my family for this mission; and what are we even training for?

Pretending and Fakeness

Apart from exercises with the platoon, demonstrations also occurred where tactical maneuvers with prototype technologies were shown to high-ranking soldiers, policy officers, manufacturers, or other people from outside the organization. ⁵ This is a practice that people from both levels of the RAS unit participate in, yet they report different experiences. For people at the strategic level, demonstrations are by definition considered successful because they contribute to improving the “concept” and process of experimenting. ⁶ For soldiers at the operational level, military innovation is approached in a more practice-oriented way, focused on concrete outcomes and tangible results, preferably ready-to-use technologies, or at least visible progress. When respondents at the unit discussed demonstrations in interviews, feelings of disappointment toward the technologies and the military organization were leading topics. Due to malfunctioning technologies, soldiers at the operational level expressed that they felt as if they were not showing the “reality” of experimenting and military innovation. One soldier stated:

On a higher level [of the organization] they see that everything works and that we are already “very far ahead.” That may also be…because we often have to give demonstrations and keep up appearances that the technology functions well.

At the operational level, demonstrations are to a large extent experienced as a “puppet show,” in which soldiers must pretend to be part of a good functioning unit where innovative technologies are successfully integrated. Some respondents described demonstrations using statements like “this is not what I expected” or “signed up for when I joined the military.”

Our interviews documented soldiers at strategic and operational levels describing different experiences of military innovation. Analyzing those differences through the lens of imaginaries and expectations, we consider them part of what Jasanoff (2015b) calls a phase of friction and resistance. At the strategic level, people’s visions of military innovation (as a “concept”), expectations (of experimenting in itself being considered successful regardless of its outcome), and everyday practices (meeting and planning) align with the imaginary of an innovative military future. People at the strategic level move within this imaginary and perceive their work as meaningful and purposeful: the imaginary serves as a goal to work toward and gives them direction.

By contrast, at the operational level, soldiers’ visions of military innovation (concrete, successful experiences, or at least visible progress), expectations (technologies should function reliably and military operations consist of fighting under extreme circumstances), and everyday practices (failing exercises, “fake” demonstrations, pretending) do not align with the imaginary. These lower ranking soldiers do not move within the imaginary of military innovation, and are no longer coproducing it, which causes their work to appear to them meaningless and purposeless: if they are no longer contributing to an innovative military future, what are they—as soldiers in an innovation unit—doing it for? We describe these experiences as “disillusionment,” which shows that friction not only occurs between the two levels of the RAS unit but also that soldiers express an internal struggle resulting from tensions between expectations and lived experiences. This article demonstrates that although imaginaries can give meaning, purpose, and direction to people’s experiences of work, these positive associations can also be reversed.

Disillusionment touches upon deeper questions of meaning and purpose for infantry soldiers: what actually is their role in twenty-first-century warfare? These soldiers joined the military to fight in “real” operations—like Afghanistan and Iraq in earlier decades—and expect to work under extreme circumstances and be confronted with life or death situations. Instead, they only leave the office for “experiments,” where they are pretending to be a robot or stand next to malfunctioning technologies. Paradoxically, these soldiers who want more action help develop technologies that seek to decrease dangerous situations. If the experiments “succeed,” then soldiers will “no longer have to go into the field…in a risky area.” Experimental units such as the RAS unit are developed in response to “the increase of worldwide, physical and digital threats” (Ministry of Defense 2020), but their existence also contributes to the transformation of warfare. The use of drones, (semi-)autonomous vehicles, and AI systems contributes to the remoteness and datafication of warfare, where soldiers are expected to operate from a safe distance or even from behind a computer screen (Gusterson 2016; González 2022). Disillusionment is a consequence of preparing (or attempting to prepare) soldiers for the future of warfare, which shows that large-scale transformations toward “algorithmic” or “virtual” warfare are not merely visions of the future: they change soldiering on the ground, which again contributes to the transformation of warfare.

This article has shown that imagining and designing future soldiers is not a clear-cut or linear process (Bickford 2020). Similar to the integration of novel technologies, this “designing” of soldiers also proves to be subject to trial-and-error “experimentation” processes. Moreover, individual soldiers’ expectations appear to be mostly based on past operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, instead of futures of “virtual” or “hybrid” warfare. Imaginaries of potential future threats may define actions in the present (Massumi 2015; Masco 2014), but this study shows that it is not always clear how to operationalize such abstract visions into concrete practices. In addition, the ability of individuals to fully imagine “yet invisible” future battlefields appears to be limited, which leads to soldiers feeling disoriented, nostalgic, and disillusioned.

Conclusion

Through the case study of an “experimental” RAS unit of the Dutch Army, this study has charted how visions, expectations, and imaginaries rife with political and moral significance play out in practice in military organizations. Through an integrated framework of sociotechnical imaginaries and expectations, we analyzed how visions of military innovation are materialized and institutionalized through technology purchases, exercises, and demonstrations. In interviews and observations, there emerged a clearly discernible imaginary of an innovative military future, which integrated an innovation imaginary and a military imaginary, based on expectations and promises of technological innovation as necessary, desirable, and inevitable for future military practice. Analyzing the visions, practices, and experiences of military innovation at the RAS unit revealed that soldiers at the strategic level experienced meaning, purpose, and direction in their work because they moved within the imaginary—whereas soldiers at the operational level experienced disillusionment.

By providing an empirical account of how large-scale visions of progress, technological advancement and innovation play out on meso and micro levels, this article furthers understanding of how imaginaries turn out in practice, thus advancing scholarship in STS, critical security studies, and military anthropology. Moreover, this article contributes to a better micro-scale understanding of the potentially crucial dimension of morality in imaginaries, showing how friction between expectations and experiences can lead to disorientation and questioning of meaning and purpose. This is particularly relevant in the political and moral context of military practice—and other high-stake security contexts such as police work—because the objectives of organizations that hold a monopoly on sanctioned state violence differ from the commercial interests of private businesses. Military organizations demand their personnel put themselves in extreme and potentially dangerous situations, which gives a deeper moral dimension to experimentation and innovation processes, as well as questions of efficiency, reliability, and accuracy.

While twenty-first-century warfare demands twenty-first-century soldiers, military organizations struggle to determine what these soldiers should look like, and what skills they should acquire. The insecurities of future warfare not only involve external threats, they also produce internal struggles within military organizations. For instance, military trainings are still focused on “fighting and not dying,” to recall one soldier’s phrasing, while in contemporary military operations, this appears less and less relevant, especially considering the fantasies of autonomous and unmanned technologies that seek to move soldiers further away from the frontline. Although most of the RAS unit’s experiments have not yet succeeded, these “failing” experiments reveal the key priority of the Dutch military organization, namely the desire to integrate autonomous systems to solve shortages of people and resources. Taking into account debates on “meaningful human control” and autonomous weapon systems (e.g., Ekelhof 2019), researchers should closely and critically follow these developments.

Technology demonstrations may be experienced as “fake” or “pretending” and can thereby engender disillusionment, so such “puppet show” exercises should not be regarded merely as inconvenient side-effects of innovation or experimentation, but as morally significant events. Moreover, they are political moments in which imaginaries are at play: the “show” of a successful demonstration can convince political leaders to deploy soldiers on missions with the technologies in question. These operations have real consequences for soldiers’ well-being and safety, especially if the unit cannot be well-prepared or if the technology does not work as desired. Soldiers are not only sent abroad, away from their home and families, but they also have to operate with limited training and place trust in unreliable equipment during extreme circumstances.

Further research is needed to understand how individuals experience meaning and purpose in other “innovation” contexts, especially in frontline professions such policing or firefighting. The analytical framework proposed here, which combines sociotechnical imaginaries and expectations, can be useful in such future research. The relation between visions, expectations, and disillusionment could also be further investigated in these contexts to explore a possible link to the concepts of “moral disorientation” and “moral injury” (Molendijk 2021). Having established the generative and performative character of expectations and imaginaries, it is relevant to further investigate how imaginaries are used to legitimize technological innovation in security contexts.