Great Power Competition in Defence Technology – What Can the Asia-pacific Offer for the Gulf?

Recently, advanced weapon systems such as 3000-ton-class submarines and 4.5-generation fighters are being localized, and exports of various weapon systems are increasing significantly. Our defense science and technology level was ranked ninth in the world, and weapon system exports were ranked ninth in the world in 2020. On the other hand, cyber attacks targeting advanced weapon systems are also on the rise, so the need to protect the technologies of defense companies while protecting the technologies of weapon systems for export is growing. The Defense Industry Technology Protection Act, enacted in 2015, defines defense technology as a technology that needs protection among defense science and technology, and compels defense companies to build a defense technology protection system. However, the focus is only on the defence industry’s technology protection system, and there is no system for protecting the weapon system technology, which is being exported, and the related research is insignificant. In this paper, we studied a weapon system anti-tampering process that can be applied to the defense weapon system R&D procedure as a way to protect the defense technology of the weapon systems. The proposed method linked the anti-tampering process to the technical review meeting for each stage of systems engineering procedure. Also we defined the anti-tampering secuity grade so that the target level to be implemented, and the process of determining the anti-tampering technology based on the identification of the defense technology and the risk assessment, and also the identification procedure for applicable anti-tampering technologies.

Our understanding of the relationship between military and civil technology is bedevilled by lack of evidence and apologetic argument. In this paper I suggest there are good historical reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs. The dominant view of technology in the West is strongly influenced by liberal thinking. Although liberal thought has changed in many ways since the nineteenth century it has failed to accommodate the increased importance of military technology and its place in the economy. The nineteenth century liberal position was that military technology was corrupt; by the Second World War the view that all technology was economically progressive became dominant. It is in this context, I argue, that the idea of spin-off acquired its importance. After the Second World War it was argued that the military had pioneered the best means for developing modern technology, which could and should now be applied to the civil sector, but this did not affect the underlying view of technology. I contrast these views with recent historical work on military technology in its relationship to the civil economy, which show how military technology has been shaped by the institutions which created it. The understanding that all technology is shaped by social, economic and political factors is a necessary first step to unravelling the relationship between civil and military technology, both in history and today.

The defense industry and its further development and strengthening are of great importance for the European Union and its member states, as thereby the EU Common Security and Defense Policy is also strengthened. In the Western Balkan region, the Republic of Serbia leads in the export of arms and military equipment. Therefore, the general interest of the Republic of Serbia is to harmonize its regulations governing the trade in military technology and equipment with the EU regulations, including the Council of Europe's Common Position 2008/944/CFSP.

The purpose of this research is to discuss R&D synergy policies of government, epistemic community, and private sector in accelerating the independence of the Indonesian defense industry. This research is a qualitative research, the type of research uses a comprehensive analytical study and analytical normative approach. The government is aware of the importance of building national research capacity in defense technology. That awareness must be followed up with concrete policies, measurable results, and strategic cooperation with other national components. Human resources or researchers, academics, and innovators who are members of various research institutions are basically a "pool of knowledge" that studies and understands various aspects of the technology, managerial, and social-political industry of the defense, so that it is in an irreplaceable position as the driving force of the ideals of independence in the defense industry. Increasing the capability and mastery of defense industry technology must be done through research and development (R&D) and engineering activities. R&D activities are also an absolute requirement for defense independence and the ability to respond to the development of defense and security technology.

Chengdu-Chongqing area has a strong foundation of the national defense science, technology and industry and the implementation of the regional development strategy of Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle has injected continuous impetus into the military-civilian coordinated development of the defense science, technology and industry in the circle. In order to promote the military-civilian coordinated development of the defense science, technology and industry, Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle has established a series of mechanisms to coordinate the resources and elements of the defense science and technology in Chengdu-Chongqing, realize the integration of defense science and technology, and promote the military-civilian coordinated development of the defense science and technology and industry. The practice has proved that the mechanism has remarkable effects but there are some problems which need to be carefully summarized and analyzed to further optimize the military-civilian collaborative development mechanism of the defense science, technology and industry in the economic circle.

This paper examines defense industrialization in three leading arms-producing states in Asia – India, Japan, and South Korea – and how their experiences compare to China's recent defense industrial developments. It argues that despite decades of considerable effort and investments in pursuit of a techno-nationalist self-arming strategy, these countries have experienced only modest success when it comes to achieving such self-reliance. Most regional defense industrial bases lack the necessary design skills and technological expertise in order to truly innovate, and at best these countries act as ‘late innovators’ when it comes to armaments production. The experiences of these countries have lessons for China as it attempts to move into the first tier of arms-producing states. China has over the past 15 years made significant progress in modernizing its defense technological and industrial base. At the same time, China faces the same long-term challenges that currently confront other regional arms industries – that is, making techno-nationalism work at the later stages of innovation. This is particularly critical as China's defense industry strives to move from a basically platform-centric to an increasingly network-centric technological–industrial process.

This article presents the first comprehensive collation of available information on China's provision of security force assistance (SFA) to African countries over the last two decades. While China is engaged in donating arms, military equipment, and training abroad, knowledge of the nature of its SFA programmes has been at best fragmented and partial. In this article, we fill this gap by outlining China's stated rationale for providing SFA, the level of funding, which states received it, and what they received. We contextualize our analysis in light of current debates over China's rise and great power competition, as well as its broader engagement in African security. Based on our original data, we argue that in providing SFA to most African states, China aims to strengthen long-term relations and protect its economic interests. While we find no evidence that China is attempting to supplant the US and other providers’ role in Africa, we point to some unintended consequences.

Due to self-imposed restrictions on joint defense equipment production and technology cooperation, Japan has long been an isolated player in the global defense industry. However, as it is facing the most severe security environment to date and dwindling domestic defense industrial bases, Japan has begun a fundamental reinforcement of its defense capabilities through three lines of effort: strengthening its own capabilities; deepening the Japan-US alliance; and enhancing international cooperation, especially in its defense industrial relationship with Europe. This article focuses on two key areas of Japan-Europe cooperation: institutionalization of industrial security and cutting-edge technology projects. This article discusses why Japan’s defense technology cooperation with Europe matters and argues that Japan’s objective is not only to strengthen its defense capabilities as deterrence but also to position itself as a trusted partner and an internationally competitive player by building credibility in industrial security.

Recently, in the defense sector, there has been much interest in acquiring weapon systems that incorporate new technologies of the 4th industrial revolution, such as artificially intelligence. This study is about the technological convergence and diffusion of patents related to AI and military technology. We extracted domestic defense AI patents including both military and AI technologies applied from 2015 to 2023, then their cited patents extracted. The analysis shows that the Defense research institute and some defense industry companies are playing a key role, but Defense AI patent applications in the civilian fields was more than that in the military fields. In addition, the convergence of AI and military technology was expanding both scope and field. The significance of this study is that it confirmed the convergence and diffusion of defense AI technology and temporal changes, and also suggested the direction of defense R&D for the spin-on of new civilian technologies.

Indonesia must be able to develop defense technology capacity, which depends on the ability to strengthen the national defense industries. The role of a technology audit is crucial for the advancement of the Indonesia defense industry to provide a holistic assessment of product quality of the domestic defense industry. It is important to understand that technology audits play a role in all areas from the start to the end of the life cycle of defense equipment, especially the main weapon system. However, Indonesia still does not have the specific tools of auditing technology to develop defense technology in line with the characteristics of the country’s defense system. On the other hand, technology audits process is expected to bring out the transparency and benchmarks as technological advances comparison owned by the Indonesia defense industry to be in the Global Supply Chain Through the result of the Defense Technology Audit, the stakeholders will get systematic maps of the defense industry’s capabilities, development and production capacity according to the availability of resources and objectives to be achieved. This research aims to support and accelerate the process of developing defense technology towards the self-reliant of the national defense industry through innovation in the field of technology audits. Furthermore, the innovations presented in this paper provide ideas and designs to form the basis of conceptual design to produce technology audit instruments for defense products. The research will describe various aspects that influence the defense technology audit process which will develop based on secondary data, such as prevailing policies and supporting literature elaborate with the tools of Technology Readiness Level and Manufacturing Readiness Level.

The article reveals the main capabilities, the availability and the condition of the existing samples of weapons, and the military equipment of the foreign production in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They are supplied by the NATO member countries There is an effectiveness of their use as a part of combat units and the units of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which carry out combat tasks to repel the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The reasoned conclusions are also provided regarding the relevance of the study of the general structure, the order of preparation for using, maintenance and troubleshooting in the course of use during the combat work of crew foreign-made machines. The given quantitative and qualitative state of the existing domestic samples of the armored weapons and equipment are in comparison of the quantitative and qualitative state of the supplied machines. In addition, in the course of the analysis, samples of the equipment planned to arrive in Ukraine in the future are taken into account. The authors present a study of the set of probabilities of winning in elementary duels based on a comparison of the tactical and technical characteristics of the available weapons of both sides, which are available, as well as the probable frequency of use of the Armament and military equipment samples as intended. Some problematic issues faced by unit commanders after receiving and during the direct use of samples of the weapons and military equipment are given, as well as ways to solve them. Against the situation background, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are in relations to the supply of the necessary amount of armament and military equipment of the appropriate nomenclature from the state-owned enterprises of Ukrainian Defense Industries. The authors of the article also provide proposals that, according to experts in the Defense Industries, will increase the capabilities and improve the efficiency of the armament and the military equipment park of Ukraine in the coming years. Keywords: the state of the armament and military equipment, foreign-made technology, development prospects, increasing the efficiency of use, the possibilities of the armament and military equipment.

Procurement and the chain of supply: A general framework

The national defence industry concentrates on military, electronic, information and space technologies. In the near future, Ukraine's defence industry may become one of the most knowledge-intensive industrial sectors of the economy. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to assess the capacity of Ukrainian defence enterprises to produce weapons and military equipment to ensure national security. The research aims not only to assess the problems of the defence industry under martial law but also to ensure the effective development of the defence industry sectors by identifying priority areas of funding.It was found that the current state of the Ukrainian defence industry does not meet the current realities of the time, especially in the context of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The provision of equipment and weapons to military units is at a low level. It is found that the renewal of modern models of weapons and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, before the full-scale invasion, was less than 1%, which in turn did not allow to compensate for the rate of ageing of existing weapons. The authors suggest ways to support the development of Ukraine's defence industry, in particular, through the creation of a Defence Industry Development Fund.The authors propose to create a Defence Industry Development Fund using public and private sources of funding not prohibited by the legislative framework of Ukraine, which will expand the capabilities of defence industry enterprises to produce weapons and military equipment. The creation of a system of multi-level continuous education in the defence industry and long-term conditions for the sustainable development of the defence industry's human resources will allow to engage in capacity building and reach a new level of support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine through the implementation of NATO standards.

In order to protect the advancement of defense technology that has a tremendous effect on both the national security and the economy, the Republic of Korea established the Defense Technology Security Act in 2015. As the new enactment brought changes to the landscape of the defense industry and defense industrial security, a new examination of the concept of the defense industrial security now became necessary. Even after taking in a consideration of the undisclosed nature of defense industrial security research, and the fact that only the limited number of firms participates in the subject matter, scientific researches related to the topic have not been active. However, with the new enactment of the Defense Technology Security Act, it is necessary to expand the scope of security and to redefine the concept of defense industrial security. In this paper, we analyzed the research works on related technology protection policies and our environment of the defense industry in order to conceptualize defense industrial security. It is expected that the established concepts could provide a systematic way to protect the confidential and defense technology.

The defense industry has played a major impact in enhancing global economy. S-curve 11th is the target industry which promotes Eastern Economic Corridor (ECC) in Thailand. The state-of-the-art in defense technology is increasing all the time including Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) which can be used for the media production in defense technology. UAS pilots for media production in defense technology are different from other UAS pilots. They require hard and soft skills such as management, decision, planning and knowledge for controller and cinematography including ability to choose and operate the right equipment for filming aerial movies properly and creative talent to film movies. The UAS knowledge and controller can be learned from a remoted pilot license course but the soft skills can be partly developed from experiences. The purpose of this study is to lay guideline for using the UAS media production in defense technology with the expectation of providing specific views and multiple domains in research area. It is a combination of engineering, science, art and management. The content in this article is based on experiences from UAS operation.