Description
As the war in Ukraine is ongoing, so is the depletion of Western weapons and ammunition stockpiles, with an urgent need to revamp industrial capacities to re-supply and further develop European armies. This raises the question of how effectively European nations can steer their defence industrial economies towards heightened output while preserving the benefits of industry consolidation and competition. Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has seen significant changes in its defence industrial landscapes with a high degree of consolidation and, with this, a loss in national capacities in know-how, research, development, and production. European nations have struggled to manage this consolidation in a way that enhances economies within the defence sector on the one hand but preservers vital national capabilities on the other. Whether capabilities, technologies or entire domains should be procured nationally, within military-political alliances or internationally has occupied the big European military powers – the UK, France, and Germany – multiple times over this timeframe. The proposed paper investigates the various initiatives to innovate defence industrial strategies over this timeframe from a military innovation perspective. It seeks to establish how stakeholders in such a strategy – political, bureaucratic, and industrial – were considered in its making and how this affected defence industrial strategies' effectiveness. This builds on a recent academic debate on the moderators of success in military innovation, contributing a perspective that concentrates on stakeholder management as a core determinant of innovation effectiveness.
