Military-industrial complex vs innovation ? An institutional perspective

The war in Ukraine has been demonstrating that Russian military forces are less powerful than one could expect. Despite being equipped with very advanced systems, not only Putin's expected Blitzkrieg was a failure; in addition, Ukrainian forces have been able to counter and even challenge their adversaries with less advanced but quite able capabilities like Bayraktar TB2 drones. However, this situation takes place after a major modernisation process of Russian armed forces over the past decade and an impressive display of military power in Syria. Beyond the instance of Russia, this situation raises many question on the ability of the defence technological and industrial base (DTIB) to deliver appropriate capabilities. Indeed, major arms-producing countries use to invest massively in defence research and development. Even though resulting technological progress has true military value, conflicts over the past two decades have underlined that the legacy DTIB does not cover the while spectrum of required or possible military capabilities. It is therefore useful to revisit the scientific literature on the military-industrial complex, dating mainly from the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, what can explain the gap between what capabilities armed forces may expect and what industry is delivering in major arms-producing countries? Does this inertia result from the influence of a "military-industrial complex" that is more able to defend vested interests rather than fulfil capability needs of armed forces? The proposed paper will explore this question by focusing on innovation stakes. Indeed, reforms of defence procurement and industrial strategy are aimed at delivering the best value for money, but innovation is also a structuring stake with much longer objectives. In the field of innovation, such reforms seem to have particularly under delivered. This is therefore a good means to question whether causes come from market dynamics or institutional issues. We could wonder whether such tension between potential innovation and procurement process results from a lock-in effect in the armament market. It is therefore relevant to revisit the literature on military-industrial complex and wonder if the way arms-producing countries have built their defence technological and industrial base is contradictory to their desire to nurture innovations in the field of military capabilities.