The increase in complexity [of military technology] has significantly raised the entry barriers for the production of advanced weapon systems: countries must now possess an extremely advanced industrial, scientific, and technological base in weapons production before they can copy foreign military technology. On the other hand, the knowledge to design, develop, and produce advanced weapon systems is less likely to diffuse, given its increasingly tacit and organizational nature.
Other contributors to the debate on unipolarity have either pointed to the relative inferiority of Chinese military technology without providing a theoretical explanation, or they have argued that developing the military capabilities to challenge the status quo is, in the long run, a function of political will—an argument that cannot account for the failure of the Soviet Union to cope with U.S. military technology from the late 1970s onward. We argue that in the transition from the second industrial revolution to the information age, the imitation of state-of-the-art military technology has become more difficult, so much so that today rising powers or even peer competitors cannot easily copy foreign weapon systems.
Three developments help account for the increase in the complexity of military technology since the second industrial revolution. First, the number of components in military platforms has risen dramatically: in the 1930s, a combat aircraft consisted of hundreds of components, a figure that surged into the tens of thousands in the 1950s and to 300,000 in the 2010s. As the number of components expands, the number of potential incompatibilities and vulnerabilities increases geometrically. Ensuring the proper functioning and mutual compatibility of all the components and of the whole system thus becomes increasingly difficult.
Second, advancements in electronics, engineering, and material sciences have resulted in the components of major weapon systems becoming dramatically more sophisticated, leading military platforms to become “systems of systems.” The expansion of onboard software functions is reflected in the increase in the number of software code lines from 1,000 in the F-4 Phantom II (1958), to 1.7 million in the F-22 (2006), and to 5.6 million in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter/Lightning II (2015). Even a minor problem in those millions of lines of code could ground the aircraft or prove fatal.
Third, modern weapon systems can now perform in extraordinarily demanding environmental and operational conditions, thanks to improvements in all metrics (e.g., speed, altitude ceiling for aircraft, and collapse depth for submarines). These improvements, however, have increased the likelihood of technical problems.
The increase in complexity has also made imitation more challenging. For imitators to have an advantage vis-à-vis innovators, two conditions are necessary. First, the capabilities required to exploit foreign know-how and experience in the production of weapon systems must be relatively easy to develop or to acquire, so that the imitator can swiftly translate foreign designs and blueprints into a working military platform; that is, there must be relatively low entry barriers. Second, the know-how and experience of the innovating country must diffuse with relative ease and with relative rapidity to would-be imitators. The growth in complexity observed over the past century has made these two conditions increasingly difficult to meet.
Because of the growing complexity of weapons systems, however, innovations have become the product of extensive prototyping, testing, experimentation, and refinement: as a result of this change, knowledge related to a given weapon system has become increasingly less codifiable—it has become tacit. As former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and coauthors have noted, “Tacit knowledge is a route for maintaining a technological edge in military systems: what cannot be written down can hardly be stolen.
As a result of the increase in technological complexity, single individuals can no longer master all the knowledge and activities required for weapon development. Such know-how and experience have become the product of the collective effort of designers, engineers, managers, and specialized workers with different backgrounds. As such, know-how and experience diffuse very slowly, because organizations are far less mobile than people.
Much more in this article.
Other contributors to the debate on unipolarity have either pointed to the relative inferiority of Chinese military technology without providing a theoretical explanation, or they have argued that developing the military capabilities to challenge the status quo is, in the long run, a function of political will—an argument that cannot account for the failure of the Soviet Union to cope with U.S. military technology from the late 1970s onward. We argue that in the transition from the second industrial revolution to the information age, the imitation of state-of-the-art military technology has become more difficult, so much so that today rising powers or even peer competitors cannot easily copy foreign weapon systems.
Three developments help account for the increase in the complexity of military technology since the second industrial revolution. First, the number of components in military platforms has risen dramatically: in the 1930s, a combat aircraft consisted of hundreds of components, a figure that surged into the tens of thousands in the 1950s and to 300,000 in the 2010s. As the number of components expands, the number of potential incompatibilities and vulnerabilities increases geometrically. Ensuring the proper functioning and mutual compatibility of all the components and of the whole system thus becomes increasingly difficult.
Second, advancements in electronics, engineering, and material sciences have resulted in the components of major weapon systems becoming dramatically more sophisticated, leading military platforms to become “systems of systems.” The expansion of onboard software functions is reflected in the increase in the number of software code lines from 1,000 in the F-4 Phantom II (1958), to 1.7 million in the F-22 (2006), and to 5.6 million in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter/Lightning II (2015). Even a minor problem in those millions of lines of code could ground the aircraft or prove fatal.
Third, modern weapon systems can now perform in extraordinarily demanding environmental and operational conditions, thanks to improvements in all metrics (e.g., speed, altitude ceiling for aircraft, and collapse depth for submarines). These improvements, however, have increased the likelihood of technical problems.
The increase in complexity has also made imitation more challenging. For imitators to have an advantage vis-à-vis innovators, two conditions are necessary. First, the capabilities required to exploit foreign know-how and experience in the production of weapon systems must be relatively easy to develop or to acquire, so that the imitator can swiftly translate foreign designs and blueprints into a working military platform; that is, there must be relatively low entry barriers. Second, the know-how and experience of the innovating country must diffuse with relative ease and with relative rapidity to would-be imitators. The growth in complexity observed over the past century has made these two conditions increasingly difficult to meet.
Because of the growing complexity of weapons systems, however, innovations have become the product of extensive prototyping, testing, experimentation, and refinement: as a result of this change, knowledge related to a given weapon system has become increasingly less codifiable—it has become tacit. As former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and coauthors have noted, “Tacit knowledge is a route for maintaining a technological edge in military systems: what cannot be written down can hardly be stolen.
As a result of the increase in technological complexity, single individuals can no longer master all the knowledge and activities required for weapon development. Such know-how and experience have become the product of the collective effort of designers, engineers, managers, and specialized workers with different backgrounds. As such, know-how and experience diffuse very slowly, because organizations are far less mobile than people.
Much more in this article.