(placeholder book cover image)
Andy Fawkes and I are now hard at work going through the copyeditor's comments for the Military Metaverse book, which will probably be out in May 2025. The contents look like this:
- Chapter 1 – An Early History of the Military Metaverse
- Chapter 2 – A Recent History of the Military Metaverse
- Chapter 3 – What is the Military Metaverse?
- Chapter 4 – The Metaverse for Capability Acquisition and Support
- Chapter 5 – The Metaverse for Individual Training & Education
- Chapter 6 – The Metaverse for Team and Collective Training
- Chapter 7 – The Metaverse for Analysis and Planning
- Chapter 8 – The Metaverse for Operations
- Chapter 9 – Social Virtual Worlds
- Chapter 10 – An Enterprise Military Metaverse
- Chapter 11 – War in the Metaverse
The Military Metaverse explores the impact that the Metaverse is having today on how the world's militaries procure, maintain, train, plan and fight, and how the Metaverse presents new challenges and opportunities for future conflict.
The military were early adopters of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies and wider simulation systems. Before 2010 they were one of the few sectors that could afford the technology, and millions of military R&D dollars went into developing and understanding these technologies. However, as the democratisation of metaverse technologies has happened over the past decade there is a danger that militaries have been overtaken and caught short, encumbered with expensive legacy systems, sold and maintained by expensive prime contractors, whilst the gaming and consumer market has cheaper and more innovative and agile systems. The book provides a history of the use of metaverse technologies in the military, particularly in the areas of design, maintenance, training, planning and operations. It then examines the current state of the art in these areas and the opportunities that are available from the current generation of consumer-driven approaches. The drivers for, challenges to, and paths towards an enterprise approach to the Military Metaverse are then presented. The book explores the military use of social virtual worlds, of early work done by defence and security organisations in worlds such as Second Life, and how such environments could become important for intelligence as well as influence operations in the future. Finally, the book will consider what war in the Metaverse might look like, both in terms on in-world activities and the impact of cyber-war on the Metaverse itself.
It should be of interest to all militaries across the world, the industries that support them and those in academic and the wider public with an interest in the military and defence.
