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Reluctant innovators? : inter-organizational conflict and the U.S.A.’s route to becoming a drone power

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DeVoreMarc_Small_Wars_and_Insurgencies_Reluctant_Innovators_The_United_States_as_a_Drone_Power.pdf (368.6Kb)
Date
05/06/2020
Author
DeVore, Marc
Keywords
Drones
Military innovation
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Unmanned combat air vehicle
Central intelligence agency
Inter-service competition
Inter-organizational competiton
Predator
JZ International relations
T-NDAS
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Abstract
Few innovations have marked the late-20th and early-21st centuries more than unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones. Drones’ current preeminence leads many to assume that their development was teleologically determined by technological advances. The empirical record, however, belies such assumptions and is filled with vicissitudes. The Air Force’s and Naval aviation’s pilot-dominated hierarchies never prioritized drones over manned aircraft of their own accord. Politicians, meanwhile, lacked the expertise to judge what technologies could achieve and therefore could not compel the military to embrace drones. It was, thus, competition from other organizations – the CIA, the Navy’s surface warfare community and the Army –that obliged reluctant aviators to embrace drones. My study’s key original finding is that inter-agency competition impels militaries to embrace technologies that they would otherwise reject. Warfare’s evolution means that non-military bodies – intelligence agencies, interior ministries and paramilitary forces – develop capabilities that rival those of traditional military services in specific domains and these organizations can prove more agile at adopting certain new technologies because of their flatter organizational structures.
Citation
DeVore , M 2020 , ' Reluctant innovators? inter-organizational conflict and the U.S.A.’s route to becoming a drone power ' , Small Wars and Insurgencies , vol. 31 , no. 4 , pp. 701-729 . https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2020.1743482
Publication
Small Wars and Insurgencies
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2020.1743482
ISSN
0959-2318
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2020.1743482
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/24478

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