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By the Seat of Their Pants: Military Technological Adaptation in War

Kollars, Nina Ann
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1341314153

Abstract Details

2012, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
Fighting the war we are in is about bridging the gap between theory and practice. It is about adaptation. Adaptation is a particular kind of innovation, though we tend not to think of it that way. The literature on military innovation is focused nearly entirely on top-down processes. It posits a uni-directional model of innovation that begins above and terminates below. While this represents one potential pattern of innovation it is a decidedly lop-sided one. Innovation has two dimensions a vertical and a horizontal one. In a period of war the major route of innovation is the horizon—the battlefield. The primary innovator is the user of technology and tactics—the boots on the ground. This project traces the path of field level technological adaptations through two theaters of war and onto the modern battlefield. It demonstrates that major military innovation is possible from the field level upward but also that adaptation processes are an innovations all on their own that do not necessarily need support from above. The project suggests that there are three primary causal dimensions in field-level adaptation (horizontal and vertical linkages and machine design). These dimensions interact to produce outcomes that affect the creation and diffusion of new technologies. The causal dimensions were derived from a process of moving back and forth between data and theory—between insights generated by a random selection of soldiers and theories of user-innovation and open source/open design. This project explores these dimensions and their interactions through several cases studies that exhibit variation in terms of horizontal and vertical linkages. The final empirical chapter takes machine design as its central point of investigation and argues that the U.S. military is formally adopting user-centered technologies as a potential third path of technological development.
Dr. Randall Schweller (Committee Chair)
Dr. S.M. Amadae (Committee Member)
Dr. Theodore Hopf (Committee Member)
Political Science
Adaptation; innovation; open-source technology; military; gun truck; user-innovation; user-centered design

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kollars, N. A. (2012). By the Seat of Their Pants: Military Technological Adaptation in War [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1341314153

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kollars, Nina. By the Seat of Their Pants: Military Technological Adaptation in War. 2012. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1341314153.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kollars, Nina. "By the Seat of Their Pants: Military Technological Adaptation in War." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1341314153

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1341314153
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© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.