Many of the high-tech B2B / B2G technologies are dual-use, i.e. they have both civilian and military applications. Radar, for example, is used both to locate storms and to protect a country’s airspace, just as a laser is used both to read CDs and to guide a missile.
These technologies are therefore sometimes used in products for defence markets with their own requirements, and sometimes used in products for civilian markets. It is clear that not all companies, although some sometimes do, use the same technology to design and offer both civil and military products, but the technology behind different products can often be applied in both areas. Not all technologies are dual but this duality is common.
It should be noted that the scope of dual-use technologies has been increased by the growing complexity of military means of communication, coordination and decision-making, as well as by the extension of the notion of “battlefield” with the concepts of “hybrid warfare” and “space warfare”. Dual technologies are now applied, for example, to different types of UAVs and their coordination with more traditional military means, to data and transmission security, and to many space technologies.
This extension of the scope is not without some internal upheaval within companies, particularly American “big tech” companies, whose initial vocation was to work for the civilian world, and whose certain divisions are gradually finding themselves working for the defense world as well.
Even if they are not strictly speaking military in the sense of being used in a theater of operations, many similar technologies can be found in the “governmental” sector more generally and in areas such as critical infrastructure protection, data security, sovereign clouds, the fight against crime or industrial espionage, etc.
The consequences
The same component may be used in a civilian product and in a military product with different performance or quality specifications. These components are often referred to as “hardened” to withstand the more demanding military use. At the same time, a more demanding quality control will ensure that no part is defective.
- A similar phenomenon can be found in ‘certified’ parts intended for aeronautics, which must be free of quality defects and at the same time withstand the stresses, particularly vibrations, associated with parts used in flight.
- Similarly, components intended for space use must be able to withstand the temperature, pressure and radiation stresses associated with flight in orbit, for example.
For a long time, defence products were developed according to strictly military specifications. But due to both the cost of specific developments and the progress made by the civilian world, defence products and solutions are increasingly using elements, products or services from the civilian world.
New competitive landscapes
The main consequence is that the competitive landscape is often disrupted, with:
- Established competitors from the civilian world (especially from the computer and telecommunications worlds) who position themselves on defence markets where they did not previously operate. This movement is frequently encouraged, albeit with different roles, by the innovation agencies of the defence sector (such as DARPA in the USA) or the design/expertise/test/engineering offices (such as the DGA in France) which no longer wish to finance product development in its entirety. They therefore encourage (or even require) suppliers to use civilian components or elements that have sometimes reached a degree of reliability compatible with military requirements (electronics, computing, telecommunications in particular).
- New competitors, start-ups or companies sometimes supported by government agencies, which are positioning themselves in areas previously reserved for traditional companies. One of the most striking examples is Space X, which in 20 years has become a key player in the aerospace sector, competing with NASA and Arianespace in the launcher market.
Conversely, civilian markets benefit from innovations that were initially conceived and funded by the defence community. There are many examples. For example:
- Digital camera technology was originally developed for the first spy satellites.
- Before they could identify agricultural irrigation needs or monitor the condition of a building more efficiently and, above all, less expensively than human inspection, aerial drones were conceived as unmanned vehicles (UAVs) designed, in particular, to monitor battlefields. The UAV adventure continues with maritime or submarine drones or even land-based drones for inspection in dangerous, explosive, chemical or radioactive environments.
- Blood transfusion techniques were initially developed to save lives on the battlefield
- Night vision technologies, which are even installed in modern car cameras to improve safety, were developed for military purposes.
- Weather radar, which can now study data, detect and decipher weather conditions and even predict the weather in a given area, also originated from defence needs.
- Other examples include the microwave oven, duct tape, freeze-drying, the computer, the synthetic rubber tyre, superglue, GPS and many others past, present and future.
We can see that the defence world has always created technological innovations for its own needs, and that many of these innovations, used and adapted by companies, have benefited the civilian world and even our daily lives.
The question of funding
One of the key issues is obviously the funding of such innovations by public ‘agencies’. The American DARPA devotes an annual budget of nearly 3 billion US dollars to financing military innovations with possible spinoffs for civilian use. Elon Musk, for example, has benefited greatly from such funding for his Space X rocket project.
European and French funding exists but is much more modest. This point, associated of course with the “innovation ecosystems” associating the public and private sectors (laboratories, networks, financiers at different stages of development, start-ups), remains a major challenge for the sectors and technologies of the future, particularly green technologies.
It is important that funding and innovation ecosystems, both European and national, exist on a sufficient scale if we want to avoid these sectors of the future being massively colonised and dominated by American or Chinese companies, as has been the case in the past in the IT sector (computer hardware, information technology, data).
