Proposing a Model for Selecting Innovative and Emerging Defence Technologies in the Defence Research Centres

The creation and development of technology play a significant role as the main source of competitive advantage in any organization. In the most commonly accepted model, the process of technology management is referred to five structured stages including identification, selection, acquisition, exploitation and protection. The stage of identifying and choosing the appropriate technology among alternatives is challenging due to the vast increase in the number of technologies and their complexity. Technology selection means choosing a technology from a set of technologies that support similar tasks. In the defence sector, the rapid changes in technologies in today's world have had tremendous effects, and this makes present and future battles more complicated. The defence research centres have identified several emerging technologies or technological solutions to solve these challenges in different fields. But the important issue for researchers and managers of research centres is that among these technological solutions, which emerging technology should be chosen? What are the selection criteria for these innovative and emerging defence technologies? Therefore, a structural analysis of the criteria and factors involved in the selection process of emerging technology is necessary. Considering the key role of research centres in the creation and development of innovative and emerging defence technologies the necessity of their role in the defence value chain and the governance of modern research in the defence sector, as well as the importance of choosing effective and efficient technologies, this article aims to provide a model for choosing innovative technology and emerging in line with their creation or development in defence research centres. The use of this model in these centres can lead to the evaluation and selection of emerging defence technology in a purposeful, appropriate and accurate manner.

Design/methodology/approach: 

This research has been done using a qualitative-quantitative mixed method, based on the opinions of experts in focus groups and the fuzzy hierarchical analysis technique. In this research, the theoretical literature related to the subject has been reviewed and the desired criteria and factors have been identified. Then, the existing criteria for the localization of technology selection criteria have been provided to a focus group consisting of seven managers, faculty members, and experienced researchers involved in the defence research projects and a new and native classification of the selection criteria has been proposed for emerging defence technology. Next, the weighting and determination of the importance coefficient of the technology selection criteria has been done with the participation of 15 experts using the FAHP method. Finally, to validate the proposed model, a case study has been conducted to select technology in the electrical and electronics research centre, whose experts consisted of five researchers and faculty members.

In this research, the criteria for selecting innovative and emerging technologies suitable for the defence ecosystem were categorized in the form of five criteria, and the results of the research indicated that the technology effectiveness criterion is the most important with an importance factor of 32%, and technological competence, feasibility and development capability, risk, and economic and commercial are respectively the next priorities in the selection of innovative and emerging technologies in defence research projects. To validate the proposed model and in line with the selection of defence technology in the field of electricity and electronics in a defence research centre, the proposed model was used in a practical environment, and based on the calculations, High Power Microwaves (HPM) technology as an innovative and emerging technology was selected among the three technological solutions to solve the technological need and challenge.

Research limitations/implications: 

The limitations and problems of interview data collection and access to the statistical population were due to protection and security restrictions since it was very difficult and time-consuming to involve defence managers and researchers in various fields. Also, in terms of the generalizability of the research results to the specific society, it should be noted that the focus of the current research was on managers and defence researchers in the research centres (supply and technology developers) and the end customers (executive staff of the armed forces) of technological and technological products. The proposed model focused on determining the criteria for selecting emerging technology in defence centres and their importance factor and has not addressed the stages of technology selection. However, in the case study, the authors tried to show how to use this model. Therefore, the issue of technology selection steps, examining the relationships and the intensity of the criteria of innovative and emerging defence technologies can also be considered as a future research subject.

Originality/value: 

From the pattern and criteria of technology selection proposed in this research, it can be inferred that in the selection of novel and emerging defence technology, one should pay attention to quantitative and qualitative criteria with different importance coefficients, and this selection is a multi-criteria and multilateral decision-making. There are technical and technological, socio-political, financial and economic factors in achieving the national and industrial goals of the defence sector. The model proposed focuses more on the specific criteria of defence research centres and the degree of importance and prioritization of emerging technology selection criteria in these centres rather than the creation of the emerging technology process. By addressing the validation of the model in a real environment, the authors attempted to show how to use the proposed model in practice.