Andrew James

Manchester University Business School

Monday, February 16, 2015  |  12:15 pm  |  University Union, Eastwoods Room, 2.102

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“Emerging technologies” are the subject of considerable interest to academics and practitioners not only in the field of military capability and international security but also in the fields of economics and business. Emerging technologies are said to have the potential to change “the rules of the game” whether that “game” is the balance of military power between security actors or the balance of competitive advantage in a market between incumbent companies and new entrants.

Consequently, visions of the military future almost always have a strong technological element. This paper examines the nature of emerging technologies, their implications for military capability and the challenges that they pose to the acquisition system. The paper emphasizes that their emergent nature means that emerging technologies are characterised by considerable uncertainty: will their apparent technological promise be fulfilled? How long will it take to develop them to a sufficient state of maturity that they have practical application (and how much will that cost?) How might they be most effectively utilised (if at all)? At its core, the paper stresses that it is a potentially long and uncertain journey from the emergence of a new technology to its use in a fielded weapons system. Such issues are important because new technologies have the potential to change the environment in which militaries operate and a radical new technology can change the balance of power or create new forms of insecurity. New technologies can change military doctrine and the way that war fighting is conducted. New technologies can make existing defense systems obsolete or provide new and more effective military capability. By and large, attention has tended to focus on new-to-the-world technologies yet novel combinations of existing and mature technologies can also have profound military implications.

At the heart of the paper is a consideration of the link between emerging technologies and military capabilities and the importance of institutional factors and the acquisition system in determining the speed of adoption of emerging technologies. It is argued that technological and economic change means that this is an increasingly important issue. Defence is playing a declining role as a sponsor of advanced technologies and will become a follower rather than a leader in many (most) areas of technology. Consequently, most emerging technologies will arise from scientific, technological and innovative activity taking place in civilian sectors, small firms and universities world-wide. In the future, the defence innovation process will need to place more emphasis on the timely identification and effective exploitation of emerging technological knowledge wherever it resides. The future of defence technology policy is likely to be in building absorptive capacity and agility by (i) developing effective search mechanisms to identify potentially important emerging technologies and their sources, (ii) building effective partnerships with (potentially) nontraditional suppliers of such technological capabilities, and(iii) finding means for the agile exploitation of those emerging technologies to military advantage.

Andrew James is a Senior Lecturer in Science and Technology Policy and Management and a member of the Manchester Institute of Innovation and Research at MBS. His research and teaching interests focus on corporate technology strategy, innovation management and science and technology policy, as well as business strategy. He has engaged in research and consultancy with companies from a diverse range of sectors including chemicals, industrial electronics and pharmaceuticals but his particular focus is on the industrial and technological dynamics of the defence, security and aerospace sectors.

In the defence and security field, he has held a number of international advisory positions including membership of the European Union Institute for Security Studies Independent Expert Working Group on the European Commission’s Green Paper on Defence Procurement and he was External Expert on defence matters and Rapporteur to the European Union Research Advisory. In May 2000, he was invited to brief the US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Industrial Affairs on the health of the US defence industrial base and the prospects for transatlantic defence industrial integration. Andrew has been an invited speaker on defence, security and counter terrorism science and technology policy and corporate strategy issues at conferences organised by, amongst others, the Royal United Services Institute, NATO, the Atlantic Council of the United States, the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik/American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, L’Ecole de l’Air, Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique, the Italian Istituto Affari Internationale and the Australian Defence Force Academy. In 2004, he directed a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Science and Technology Policies for the Anti-Terrorism Era and, in 2005, he organised a European Commission PRIME-funded workshop on Defence R&D in the Innovation System.