Title:
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Military production and innovation : the Spanish case.
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In the eighties the Spanish Government launched an
ambitious policy aimed at restructuring the militaryindustrial
base. Central to it was a remarkable defence R&D
effort. Government sources often argue for the military
industry as an engine for the modernization of the Spanish
industrial base.
The object of this dissertation is to reach conclusions
on the potential role of Spanish military production as a
technological engine for the Spanish economy. This is done
through an analysis of the structure of the Spanish military-related
industry and its linkages with the rest of the
economy. Up till the present most research on the role of
military production has adopted too narrow a view focusing
mainly on arms producers. This work presents an alternative
way of conceptually focusing research of this nature. It
expands the ambit of the study to examine all firms involved
in military production from components to systems producers,
no matter the degree of their involvement. In this way, we
find that the strongest linkages with the rest of the
industrial and research activities appear in the more "mature"
sectors of the economy (mainly in the metal sector) and among
producers of components and sub-systems. Consequently, more
channels for technological diffusion from military to civilian
production are found in these sectors. Yet, these areas have
been found to be overlooked by and large by the present
defence industrial policy which targets systems assemblers and
the electronics, aerospace and software producers as the main
recipients of research contracts and incentives.
These results further question the conventional usage of
implicitly treating defence production and technology as
homogenous entities. Through our broad conceptual approach we
obtain new insights into the linkages between military-rel~ted
and civilian activities. The study reveals that the potent1al
effects of military research and production on the rest of the
economy depend on the specific sect~rs and,stages,of
production targeted by the defence 1ndustr1al policy.
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