The Military Metaverse

 


Official pre-orders from Routledge: 10th April 2025. Pre-order now from AmazonUK and AmazonUS

Publishing on: 1st May 2025

Preview on Google Books


Overview

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 academia and the wider public with an interest in the military and defence.


Contents

Introduction  

1. An Early History of the Military Metaverse  

2. The Military Metaverse after Snow Crash  

3. Military Metaverse Building Blocks  

4. The Military Metaverse for Capability Acquisition and Support  

5. The Metaverse for Individual Training & Education  

6. The Metaverse for Team & Collective Training  

7. The Metaverse for Analysis and Planning  

8. The Military Metaverse for Operations  

9. Social Virtual Worlds  

10. Convergence: An Enterprise Military Metaverse  

11. War in the Metaverse  

Bibliography  

Glossary

Index



Chapter abstracts are given below. Where we have additional content to support the book this is either linked to directly from the summary, or a a link is provided to an additional content page on this site.


1. An Early History of the Military Metaverse  

The first two chapters provide a history of the use of metaverse technologies in the military, particularly in the areas of design, maintenance, training, planning and operations. The first chapter starts in Roman and Medieval times with early physical training simulations, then looks at wargaming as it developed during the 1800s, and then into the 1900s and the early mechanical and then electrical mechanical aircraft simulators. Developments are tracked through to the use of cameras and small-scale terrain models, to the arrival of SIMNET and widespread computer simulation in the 1980s.
 
2. The Military Metaverse after Snow Crash  

The second chapter picks up on the history of simulation after the release of Snowcrash in 1992. Through the 90s and 00s both the CAD and training markets were dominated by large and expensive systems, but by 2010 domestic and gaming technology was beginning to offer competition, seen both in activities such as the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds (FCVW) and in the repurposing of consumer computer games for military training. The increasing number of “enterprise” solutions is examined, and the growing use of military standards such as HLA and DIS, heavily influenced by NATO. As headset-based VR, the growing power of consumer game engines such as Unity and Unreal, and the re-emergence of the metaverse and consumer virtual worlds challenges has once again challenged the dominance of military specific and enterprise solutions. The chapter places the current state-of-the art in the broader context, before the book moves on to look at the latest technology and specific use cases.


3. Military Metaverse Building Blocks  

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part looks at the technical building blocks of a metaverse, including the infrastructure, the simulation ecosystem, interfaces, the user experience, AI and standards. The second part looks at the human factors issues of the metaverse, particularly the metaversal calculus of immersion, agency, embodiment, presence and flow, and how this affects the user experience. The difference between allocentric and egocentric experiences is then considered, before presenting the generic benefits of metaversal spaces, many of which flow from these differences.


4. The Military Metaverse for Capability Acquisition and Support  

This chapter looks at the typical life-cycle activities for a defence project, and the associated Defence Lines of Development, and the challenges faced by Defence capability acquisition. It then examines how ideas from the industrial metaverse (the use of metaversal technologies and spaces by industry) and Industry 5.0 might assist with related Defence activities, particularly through approaches such as “simulate before build” and the digital twin. 


5. The Metaverse for Individual Training & Education  

This chapter starts by presenting the military segmentation of training into individual and team/collective training. Chapter 5 then focusses on the individual level with Chapter 6 examining the team/collective level. The generic needs and audience of military training are summarised, as are the challenges to military training – principally the unpredictability of the task. Three new approaches to training are then considered, Ubiquitous learning, Responsive learning and Immersive learning, all of which can be enhanced through the metaverse. The challenges and issues of XR learning are then presented. The role of the metaverse in supporting the learning design lifecycle is also considered. Finally, four scenarios for the future of military learning are presented.


6. The Metaverse for Team & Collective Training  

The chapter considers the scope of team, collective and joint/coalition training, and examines the operational imperatives for such training. The LVCA model is then used to consider the impact and opportunities for the metaverse in team and collective training, and the importance of LVCA integration. The chapter then considers the importance of distributed training, and again the potential to enable this through the metaverse. The issues of simulation fidelity and then discussed before finally presenting three future scenarios for team and collective training.


7. The Metaverse for Analysis and Planning  

The last few decades have seen a constant tension between the operational analysis and wargaming approaches to military planning and analysis. This chapter explores how newer metaverse technologies such as agent-based modelling and immersive visual analytics, and the differences between subjective and objective perspectives can bring (sometimes literally) new dimensions to the planning and analysis of military operations. From the storming of Bin Laden’s hideout to modern digital twins there is significant overlap between training and mission rehearsal needs, and between military and civilian data sets – all of which can begin to come together within an integrated metaverse and can help inform future military planning and analysis.


8. The Military Metaverse for Operations  

This chapter looks at how metaverse technologies are being applied to live operations. Those used to help improve situational awareness (particularly for mounted and dismounted soldiers and fighter pilots) are considered first. More static systems designed to support the planning and management of operations are then examined, along with the need to maintain up to date data on a global scale. The chapter also considers the role of the metaverse in After Action Reviews. Finally, the chapter summarises some of the future applications of metaversal technology in this area.


9. Social Virtual Worlds  

This chapter considers both how social virtual worlds have developed as early manifestations of the metaverse concept, and how the military and other actors have already made use of them to support training, recruitment and operations. The chapter will look at early work done by defence and security organisations in worlds such as Second Life, and the how virtual social worlds could become important for intelligence and influence operations in the future. Whilst some of their use cases are directly informed by areas considered previously (e.g. training and analysis), some of the more interesting contexts are where the world itself is an operating environment, exemplified by the use of virtual worlds for extremist recruitment, terrorist communication, and virtual recces. The potential of social virtual worlds as space for protest and for the information and influence wars of the future to play out is also examined.



10. Convergence: An Enterprise Military Metaverse  

This chapter considers what an enterprise-level Military Metaverse might be like and the operational and organizational imperatives for it. How an enterprise Military Metaverse could be used by different users is then presented, reflecting the areas considered in earlier chapters. The challenges to an enterprise approach are then discussed, and potential pathways to its development examined. Finally, the potential design principles for an enterprise Military Metaverse, and its governance, are considered. 


11. War in the Metaverse 

This final chapter considers what a war in the Metaverse, not just enabled by the Metaverse, might look like. As part of various state and non-state actors grey-zone and operations-other-than-war activities there is a good argument that the war in the metaverse has already started as it becomes a place for influence (and even recruiting) operations. If a physical war starts then should a virtual war start on any digital twin of the combat area – and is this a war of tanks and planes or of warlocks and neuromancers – and to what extent will the existence of the Metaverse impact the fighting of the physical war? The chapter considers a pyramid of vulnerabilities, from physical infrastructure and communications, to cyber attacks and the metaverse itself. How war in the Metaverse might manifest in three future scenarios is considered: where the metaverse is optional, where it is significant and where it is vital – to everything that people and the military do.


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