5 Looking into the Future on JAS Gripen Spillovers
5.1 Spillover Areas: A Brief Survey
In a report in 1995 from The Office of Science & Technology Policy from the White House entitled National Critical Technologies Report, a list of “technologies of the future” was presented. From the point of view of this study, two observations of the report are particularly interesting. First, of the 27 future technology areas listed, 17 are used in or developed for the design and production of military aircraft.
Second, and somewhat puzzling, there is no mention of the integration of computer and communications technologies, and the Internet as a future critical technology area and a mover of economic growth. This was more or less the year when the Internet revolution took off quite abruptly. The years just before and just after 1995 the discussions of technology forecasters and economists rather focused on robotics and factory automation (Carlsson 1995) and the so-called productivity paradox formulated by the American economist and “Nobel prize” winner Robert Solow.
How come we have seen so little economic progress in the statistics despite the enormous investments in computer and communications equipment of the past decade (Solow 1987, Berndt and Malone 1995)?
Fortunately for the real economic world, aircraft industry, and the military air-craft industry in particular, had understood the critical industrial potential of C&C technologies early and begun to implement them. Since 1995 digital computing and communications technologies have radically changed the industrial landscape of the global economy and the early pioneer in introducing digital technology has been the military aircraft industry.
In the second half of the 1970s the Swedish Government’s so-called computer and electronics committee (Data och Elektronik Kommitten, DEK) observed that the revolutionary nature of electronics was digitization technology, that Swedish engineering industry was ahead of the rest of the industrial world in incorporating digital devices in mechanical products and that the early use of those technologies in Swedish aircraft industry gave the Swedish engineering industry at large a com-petitive edge (DEK 1980; Eliasson 1980). Saab and Swedish military aircraft industry may even have served as a vehicle to bring advanced US technology to Sweden
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throughout the cold-war period; and this transfer of technology to Sweden through the military industry may explain the exceptional growth performance of Swedish engineering industry during the same period, a growth that was further supported by the internal reallocation of financial resources within the Wallenberg group of firms to engineering firms, also during the same period. This would then also explain the observation of the DEK Government Committee mentioned above.
These were summary observations from the previous chapter.
The fourth generation combat aircraft JAS 39 Gripen development, the concern of this chapter, pioneered a number of product features that have later been incorporated in new generations of aircraft. It was also far more intensive in its use of digital tech-nology, and therefore much more spillover intensive than earlier combat aircraft generations. In fact, Gripen was designed to be the backbone of an early version of a networked defense system. This also means differences in the nature of spillovers.
In the previous chapter, focus was on a number of well-defined spillover cases from Swedish military aircraft development and production. These cases could be presented in great detail because they were dated far back in time, well defined, observed, and their origin well documented.
The JAS 39 Gripen story includes a number of such well-defined cases that are each interesting on their own merits, including the success story of Ericsson digital mobile telephony that partly belongs to this chapter even though it was presented in the previous chapter. The JAS 39 Gripen development, due to its systems complexity and extreme integration of electronics with other industrial technologies, however, also features the evolution of several generic industrial technologies and new product markets that will, if successfully assimilated in Swedish industrial practice, have a decisive influence on its future development, notably the future of Swedish engineering industry. The main reason for the enhanced intensity of generic spillovers is the larger computing and communications technology content of devel-opment work. So even though it is difficult, or close to impossible, because the data needed is missing, to identify and establish the very large and very long-term influences econometrically of generic technology diffusion, it is probably safe to conclude that the Swedish aircraft industry has been, and will continue to serve Swedish engineering industry as a very advanced technical university and, as such, be part of the general industrial infrastructure.
The main technology areas where aircraft industry has provided technological services to manufacturing industry at large is the development of systems integration competences, or the integration of the many technologies needed to develop particular product functionalities, a competence where academic institutions are by their organization inferior. The main beneficiary of such systems competencies from military aircraft industry has been engineering industry that has witnessed a revo-lutionary integration of digital electronics and mechanical technology through software since the 1970s, and notably an industry specialization toward large and complex product systems where Swedish industry has excelled.
I am talking of both design, engineering and manufacturing support from digital information technology and the integration of digital devices in new and increas-ingly complex products. The latter took a great leap forward with the invention
(by Intel) of the microprocessor in 1971. The microprocessor was immediately adopted in the later modifications of the Saab 37 Viggen and put to extensive use in the JAS 39 Gripen aircraft.
Complex high performance products with a long life such as aircraft also pioneered the use, and integration of (see Table 6 on page 51):
– New materials – Hydraulic devices
– Sensors and measurement devices – Digital connections by fiber optics
– Computers to integrate and coordinate functions
It is not possible to trace the origin of all individual applications, but we know that Saab military aircraft was a pioneer user and developer and it is possible to trace some civilian applications (to be reported on) back to their military origin.
The development cost of advanced systems products of today has a software programming content well above 50%, in many cases 90% and above. In response to that a large and partly separate software engineering industry has developed and become a critical technology for engineering industry at large (Sect. 5.3 and 5.4).
Aircraft industry has also been a pioneer in distributing production over special-ized subcontractors. The reason has been the high cost of subsystems and the strict demands on performance which overcame transport costs early. Being an early practitioner, the aircraft industry therefore took advantage of the reduction in global transport costs over the last three or four decades, and above all the dramatic improvements in product functionalities that came with the integration of computing and communications (C&C) technologies that ushered in the Internet age from the mid-1990s.
New C&C technologies made it possible to distribute and integrate production over geographical distances and markets of specialist subcontractors. Distributed and integrated production has therefore become a defined industrial technology that deserves special attention. Globalization is the popular catch word.
With the global distribution and integration of production come specialist competencies in
– Modularization (part of what today is called systems architecture) – Exact definition of modular interfaces
– High-quality measurement – Customization of products – Precision manufacturing – Reliable delivery times – Quality control – Traceability
The further development of complex products into systems that deliver services rather than hardware has already opened up a new market agenda, and especially for products with a long life. Product Life Management (PLM) methods originated in aircraft industry.
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Advanced sensor technology figures importantly in the control of complex systems products such as aircraft. To reduce maintenance costs of aircraft and aircraft engines, sensors are increasingly used to monitor the health of the different functions that make up the whole.
Embedded systems or subsystems modules within which a number of electronic and mechanical functions have been integrated can be made smaller, lighter, and more robust and allow for easy replacement.
In aircraft flying at supersonic speeds and relying more on instruments than actual vision, the man–machine interfaces become critical for pilot performance and hence for aircraft performance. Saab and Ericsson have developed a unique integrated digitized instrumentation for the JAS 39 Gripen the presentation of which can be flexibly changed to suit the particular tasks of the combat situation.
This technology has been partly transferred to the Saab automobile.
Modern weapons technology for military aircraft is using digital image analysis and pattern recognition extensively to guide weapons to targets far beyond human vision, a technology that has found its way into several civilian applications.
A related area of great importance to engineering industry is the capacity of C&C technology to visualize product designs and functionalities using virtual methods to achieve flexible product designs, and perhaps even more importantly the construc-tion of “maintenance-free” products. Maintenance-free aircraft was, in fact, a property forced upon the JAS 39 Gripen designers by the customer FMV and this technology has gradually diffused to engineering industry at large. The change from calendar-based servicing of aircraft and aircraft engines to measured and monitored servicing has radically reduced maintenance costs and idle time of the equipment.
Virtual design is another technology with large future potential productivity effects. It makes it possible to deal with complexity in design and development work, and also to work with subcontractors over large geographical distances. It makes it possible to foresee the wear and tear on products and to attend to mainte-nance problems already at the early design phases. The technology already exists in large parts but data communications capacity in real time is still a limiting factor.
On the military side the use of virtual design is often prevented because of secrecy problems. Encryption will never be completely safe. Since the potential is so large, however, aircraft industry cannot afford to abstain from using this technology.
Military aircraft industry therefore will probably be a leader when it comes to devel-oping encryption technology for uses where large data communication capacity is needed. It is interesting to observe that the Linköping company Sectra (see Case 12) has two product specializations; secure data and voice communications for the military over regular telephone networks and digital medical imaging and commu-nication. We should, in fact, observe already here that secure communications is exactly the technology that is limiting the rate of introduction of e-trade and e-business, i.e., of the possibilities of safe business transactions and payments in particular. “Information security is the enabler for electronic markets” (McKnight and Bailey 1998:19).
An additional generic and future engineering technology spawned by Gripen development is the use of lightweight construction. It was demanded of the JAS 39
Gripen designers that the aircraft be light and fuel efficient and be able to fly longer and faster. Such lightweight structures were needed both for the aircraft fuselage and the engine. Here, the use of composites came in importantly.
Thus, more recent energy and environmental concerns have opened up new agendas for innovative industrial development where the JAS 39 Gripen project has pioneered the use of new materials and lightweight structures and new stress calcu-lation methods in engineering products (see further Sect. 5.5).
We are talking about a broad range of industrial systems technologies that may turn out to be the savior of engineering industry, the back bone of the rich, high-wage industrial economies since the industrial revolution. This technology is so important that it deserves a separate section.
As systems are developed and their integration takes precedence over physical manufacturing, digital computing, and communications (C&C) technologies are becoming even more important. As Saab develops toward a “systems house” that focuses on concepts and development rather than on manufacturing, new opportu-nities open up for partners to pick up advanced subcontracting jobs.
The transition away from specific physical weapons platforms to integrated networked defense systems based on increasingly complex computing and com-munications technologies is already changing both the nature of military hardware development and of civilian spillovers. The JAS 39 Gripen, in fact, was designed as the backbone of the first, even though at the time primitive, networked defense system. I therefore begin with that.