The presentation shows how future analysis can be used to shape the conceptual planning of armed forces. Strategic future analysis is not an exact science but makes use of scientific instruments and insights to offer consultancy for political and administrative decision-makers. As far as current insights of previous analyses are concerned, the presentation presents several emerging challenges in the security environment, that will change the future face of war.
Against the background of these developments in the world constraints on organized violence are lost. This trend is in contrasts the last epochs where, according to Clausewitz, war was regarded as the continuation of state politics by other means. The core element of symmetric warfare is therefore the conscious political limitation of the conflict. Conversely, war in the next thirty years will lose these constraints.