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Military Industrial Networks and Technical Change in the New Strategic Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Philip Gummett  and
Judith Reppy
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Extract

FOR FORTY YEARS THE COLD WAR, WITH ITS PRESUMED threat to Western Europe, has been used to justify the level of military budgets in NATO countries. The United States, Britain and France, in particular, have sustained high levels of military spending throughout this period. Each has sought to maintain capability across a full range of military options, including nuclear forces and the ability to intervene in Third World conflicts. Each has maintained a large, and quite stable, industrial and technological infrastructure in support of these military goals.

With the ending of the cold war, the basis for that stability has been undermined. Defence spending is set to fall. With it will fall overall spending on defence equipment. But the rate of decline, and its distribution across the different sectors of the defence industry, remain to be determined. Upon the outcome turns the future of investment in defence technologies, with further consequences, complex in nature, for national and industrial technological capabilities. To complicate analysis further, these changes arise at a time of considerable concern on both sides of the Atlantic about industrial competitiveness. This concern had already led to upheaval in industrial structures and strategies within both the defence and the civil high technology industries.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1990 , pp. 287 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1990

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References

1 In 1986, government expenditure on defence R&D as a percentage of all government R&D in the USA was 69.4; in the UK, 49.2; in France, 32.4; and in FR Germany, 12.1. See Advisory Council on Science and Technology, Defence R&D: a national resource, London, HMSO, 1989, Table 3.2.

2 Katzenstein, P. (ed.), Between Power and Plenty, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1978 Google Scholar; Wright, M., ‘Policy Community, Policy Network and Comparative Industrial Policies,’ Political Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4, 1988, pp. 593–612 Google Scholar; and Wilks, S. and Wright, M. (eds), Comparative Government-Industry Relations, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987.Google Scholar

3 Reppy, J. and Gummett, P., ‘Economic and technological issues in the NATO alliance’, in Kelleher, C. M. and Mattox, G. A. (eds), Evolving European Defence Policies, Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1987, pp. 17–38 Google Scholar; and Baily, M. N. and Chakrabati, A. K., Innovation and the Productivity Crisis, Washington, D.C., The Brookings Institution, 1988, pp. 34–45.Google Scholar

4 See the figures in footnote 1; and Council for Science and Society, UK Military R&D, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, fig. 2.7.

5 Some broad-based policies, such as an R&D tax credit, were in place in the US. See US Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Using Federal R&D to Promote Commercial Innovation, Washington, D.C.: USGPO, April 1988. See also Dertouzos, M. L. et al., Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1989 Google Scholar; and, for the UK, Edgerton, D. and Hughes, K., ‘The poverty of science: a critical analysis of scientific and industrial policy under Mrs Thatcher’, Public Administration, Vol. 67, Winter 1989, pp. 419–33.Google Scholar

6 D. Vogel, ‘Government-industry relations in the United States: an overview’, pp. 91–116 in Wilks and Wright, op. cit., note 2 above.

7 Edgerton, D., ‘The State, war and technical innovation in Great Britain, 1930–50: the contrasts of military and civil industry’, in Varcoe, I. et al., Deciphering Science and Technology, London, Macmillan, 1990.Google Scholar

8 Dickson, K., ‘The influence of Ministry of Defence funding on semiconductor research and development in the United Kingdom’, Research Policy, Vol. 12, 1983, pp. 113–20.Google Scholar

9 Civil Exploitation of Defence Technology, report to the Electronics Economic Development Council by Maddock, Sir Ieuan, and Observations by the Ministry of Defence, London, National Economic Development Office, 1983.Google Scholar

10 Reppy, J., ‘Technology and trade: does military R&D make a difference?’, pp. 88–105 in Gummett, P. and Reppy, J. (eds), The Relation between Defence and Civil Technologies, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 For an analysis of the European Fighter Aircraft in network terms, see B. Elzen, B. Enserink and W. A. Smit, ‘Military technology—unravelling the Gordian knot’, paper presented to the conference on Policies and Publics for Science and Technology, Science Museum, London, 7–11 April 1990 (mimeo, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands).

12 Adams, Gordon, The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defence Contracting, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Books, 1982 Google Scholar; and Dickson, op. cit., footnote 8 above.

13 Reppy, J., The IRHD Program of the Department of Defense, Occasional Paper No. 6, Peace Studies Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1976 Google Scholar; and Winston, Joan, ‘Defense-Related Independent Research and Development in Industry’, Congressional Research Service, Washington, 10 1985.Google Scholar

14 Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), ‘National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 1988/89’, Washington, D.C., April 1988 (mimeo.), Table 6–11, p. 96.

15 Statement on the Defence Estimates 1990, Vol. 2, London, HMSO, Cm. 1022–II, 1990, Table 2.2.

16 From many sources on this theme, see: Walker, W. and Gummett, P., ‘Britain and the European armaments market’, International Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 3, 1989, pp. 419–42Google Scholar; Taylor, T. and Hayward, K., The UK Defence Industrial Base: Development and Future Policy Options, London, Brassey’s, 1989 Google Scholar; Jackson, J. H., ‘Reshaping the defence industry’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 25 11 1989, pp. 1153–55Google Scholar; Taylor, T., ‘Defence industries in international relations,’ Review of International Studies, Vol. 16, 1990, pp. 59–73 Google Scholar; and Moravcsik, A., ‘The European armaments industry at the cross-roads’, Survival, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1990, pp. 65–85.Google Scholar

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19 Statement on the Defence Estimates 1988, Vol. 1, London, HMSO, Cm. 344–I, 1988, figure 14, p. 53.

20 Monopolies and Mergers Commission, The General Electric Company plc and the Plessey Company plc: A report on the proposed merger, London, HMSO, Cmnd 9867, 1986.

21 For further details of the discussion of Europe in the next few paragraphs, see the sources listed under note 16 above.

22 Greenberg, D., ‘Pentagon’s scientific, industrial roles face cuts’, Science and Government Report, 19, 1 12 1989, pp. 1–3 Google Scholar.

23 Gummett, P. and Walker, W., ‘The industrial and technological consequences of the peace’, Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies Journal, Vol. 135, Spring 1990, pp. 46–52.Google Scholar

24 U. Albrecht, ‘Spin-off a fundamentalist approach’, pp. 38 – 57 in Gummett and Reppy (eds), op. cit., note 10 above.

25 For examples of such arguments, see D. Vogel, ‘Government-industry relations in the United States: an overview’, in Wilks and Wright (eds), op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 99–103.

26 For a general review of the spin-off debate, see Weston, D. and Gummett, P., ‘The economic impact of military R&D: hypotheses, evidence and verification’, Defense Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1987, pp. 63–76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reppy, J., ‘Military R&D and the civilian economy’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 41, 10, 1985, pp. 10–14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Kaldor, M., Sharp, M. and Walker, W., ‘Industrial competitiveness and Britain’s defence commitments’ Lloyd’s Bank Review, No. 162, 10 1986, pp. 31–49.Google Scholar

27 Kaldor, M., The Baroque Arsenal, London, Deutsch, 1982.Google Scholar

28 Recently, a number of analysts have sought to examine the historical record (showing, for example, the influence of the military upon the development of work organisation), or have reviewed the relations between defence and civil technologies (including the conceptually difficult issue of ‘dual-use’ technologies) from a variety of policy perspectives. See, for instance, Smith, M. R. (ed.), Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985 Google Scholar; Mendelsohn, E., Smith, M. R. and Weingart, P. (eds), Science, Technology and the Military, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1988 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gummett and Reppy (eds), op. cit., note 10 above.

29 Advisory Council on Science and Technology, op. cit., note 1, paragraph 3.13.

30 J. Gander, op. cit., note 17 above.

31 ACOST, op. cit. at note 1 above, paragraph 2, p. 5.

32 See speech by Mr William Taft, US Ambassador to NATO, in Bonn, 15 March 1990, entitled ‘Industrial cooperation can expand Atlantic community’. Text available from US Information Service, US Embassy, London. In this respect, an interesting recent development has been the agreement upon collaboration between the European Jessi programme (Joint European Submicron Silicon Initiative) and the US Sematech consortium. See Skapinker, M. and Kehoe, L., ‘A marriage of convenience’, Financial Times, 11 04 1990 Google Scholar.

33 The authors would like to thank Peter Katzenstein, Franklin A. Long, Steve Schofield, William Walker and Roger Williams for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Philip Gummett acknowledges support from the ESRC/Science Policy Support Group’s programme of research into defence science and technology policy.