Internationalized defence acquisition - conditions for defence materiel cooperation between companies

This report was made on behalf of the Swedish Ministry of Defence. Since the mid 1990s international defence materiel collaboration has represented an increasingly large share of the Swedish defence procurement. This is a development that is likely to continue. As a framework for future decisions concerning international defence materiel collaboration, an analysis is needed regarding how such collaboration between defence companies actually is implemented. The specific purpose of the report is therefore: Ti identify factors that influence the accomplishment of international defence materiel collaboration between companies. The report is based on eight case studies of international defence materiel collaboration: Iris-T, Loint Strike Fighter, Meteor, MidCas, Neuron, NRF-90, Taurus and Viking. Our main conclusions are that international collaboration between companies has a greater probability of a successful outcome if: companies view the collaboration as being strategic, companies have experience of previous collaboration, and one single company has the lead in the collaboration. Factors that shape the conditions, but that do not have a direct influence on operations, are for example: the product´s degree of innovation, the number of participating companies and the number of participating states. Based of these results we recommend decision makers in the concerned Swedish ministries and authorities to analyze before engaging in international defence materiel collaboration: the concerned companies´ incentives for collaborating, if companies have shared strategic goals for the collaboration, if the companies are on a similar level of technology, and to demand that one single company has the lead in the collaboration.