Doctoral Dissertation Research: Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Weapons and Procurement Politics

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines how nations make choices about the military weapons that they design and use. Previous research suggests that decisions about weapons technologies are driven mainly by security concerns or financial needs, but such factors cannot explain current patterns of weapons development across nations. This project will instead test the theory that the ways in which those involved in war and weapons development in each nation (i.e. military personnel, scientists, private firms, etc.) conceptualize future warfare shapes the kinds of weapons that they seek to design and procure. This theory will be tested in relation to the development and procurement of aircraft carriers, stealth technology, and autonomous weapons in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and India. Data for testing the theory will come from analyses of military documents in national archives, in-depth interviews with key figures in each nation, and a survey experiment designed to uncover how decisions are made regarding military budgets and weapons procurement. This is a multi-method investigation of how and why nation states decide to create and procure different types of weapons technologies. It focuses on interactions among military personnel, politicians, scientists, private firms, and civil society organizations. The main contention is that these actors' conceptions of future warfare shape their choices about weapons procurement. Thus, each set of actors' identity, belief about the state of future conflict, and receptiveness to and interpretation of the laws and ethics of warfare shape the technical solutions that they will propose to different types of security threats. The extent to which these technological solutions are then transformed into weapons systems is predicted to be determined by the extent to which each set of actors has access to the decision-making process and the extent to which their ideas resonate with those of decision makers. The predicted result of interplay among these factors is that even when faced with similar threats, states end up making different choices regarding weapons procurement. This theory of weapons technology design and procurement will be tested by comparing archival, interview, and experimental data from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and India. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.