Dissertation by Mark Erbel
(The thesis can be accessed here: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/contractors-and-defe... more (The thesis can be accessed here: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/contractors-and-defence-policymaking(4465590e-ea7e-4b22-8b65-bab5a65f8a2b).html)
The outsourcing of military responsibilities to private contractors is most comprehensively encapsulated not in armed security contracting, which dominates the literature, but in the supply of the armed forces. Military logistics, broadly conceived, stretches back the furthest in history and involves among the largest manpower and sums of money expended by defence enterprises. Drawing on the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) since the end of the Second World War, this dissertation develops a holistic understanding of why states outsource military capability, the politics and processes which produce the decisions (not) to acquire military services from the market, and the longer-term impact and trajectory of defence services acquisition as a result of the way states use private contractors in their defence enterprises. Most fundamental to understanding why states outsource military capability is an appreciation of the dominant ideas and norms that guide policy-makers and constrain decision-making. In defence these are, in particular, a state’s defence strategy and posture, strategic culture, and political economy. These factors strongly determine the type, size, and shape of the armed forces, the weapon systems and services required for their supply, and the sources of these products and services. Together with the formal and informal political structures of the state, these factors also heavily determine who participates in the defence policy process. In the case of the USA and the UK, the general tendencies to espouse global defence postures, draw on private enterprise for the supply of goods and services, and rely on highly sophisticated, hi-tech weaponry in the conduct of war clashed with a lack of resources which were – under these influences – sought to be overcome by relying on private providers. The policy processes are similarly biased towards business ideas, solutions, and providers while exhibiting a remarkable lack of veto-points and veto-players. “More of the same”, i.e. the increasingly routineised use of private contractors in the generating of military capability, is therefore the unsurprising outcome of the past decades which witnessed the growing reliance on private service providers in the defence enterprise. Outsourcing is not only “here to stay”, as authors often conclude; the USA and the UK are formally and doctrinally integrating their military and contractor workforces into joint logistics forces that will support and supply their armies for decades to come, and concomitantly transferring knowledge and assets out of the military and into the private sector for the long term. Being improbable from within, change in the USA and the UK would only come about as a result of strategic, economic, or ideational “shocks” to this otherwise very stable ecosystem. Put in more general terms, changes in the fundamental structural forces of defence strategy, economics, and technology, as well as in the formal and informal structures of the policy process are most likely to yield significant change in the way states draw (or do not draw) on private contractors in the running of their defence enterprises.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Publications by Mark Erbel
Routledge Handbook of Defence Studies, 2018
This chapter discusses the role of PMCs in defence, focusing on non-armed services. It defines mi... more This chapter discusses the role of PMCs in defence, focusing on non-armed services. It defines military logistics and the companies providing services in this sector. It then introduces key debates on the increasing use of PMCs, and illustrates key examples of military outsourcing. Finally, it looks into why and how PMCs will likely continue to be used in the future to support military operations.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
(Article available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2017.1294970) This article reappraises th... more (Article available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2017.1294970) This article reappraises the two most-studied country cases of military outsourcing: the USA and the UK. It argues that the contemporary wave of military contracting stretches back to the beginning of the cold war and not only to the demobilisation of armies in the 1990s or the neoliberal reforms introduced since the 1980s. It traces the political, technological and ideational developments that laid the groundwork for these reforms and practices since the early cold war and account for its endurance today. Importantly, it argues that a persistent gap between strategic objectives and resources, i.e. the challenge to reconcile ends and means, is an underlying driver of military contracting in both countries. Contemporary contracting is thus most closely tied to military support functions in support of wider foreign and defence political objectives. Security services in either state may not have been outsourced so swiftly, if at all, without decades of experience in outsourcing military logistics functions and the resultant vehicles, processes and familiarities with public-private partnerships. The article thus provides a wider and deeper understanding of the drivers of contractualisation, thereby improving our understanding of both its historical trajectory and the determinants of its present and potential futures.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
(Article available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2015.1104669).
This article argues tha... more (Article available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2015.1104669).
This article argues that logistics constrains strategic opportunity while itself being heavily circumscribed by strategic and operational planning. With the academic literature all but ignoring the centrality of logistics to strategy and war, this article argues for a reappraisal of the critical role of military logistics, and posits that the study and conduct of war and strategy are incomplete at best or false at worst when ignoring this crucial component of the art of war. The article conceptualises the logistics-strategy nexus in a novel way, explores its contemporary manifestation in an age of uncertainty, and applies it to a detailed case study of UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Routledge Research Companion to Security Outsourcing, Jun 2016
This chapter provides a policy-based reading of the drivers, processes, and long-term ramificatio... more This chapter provides a policy-based reading of the drivers, processes, and long-term ramifications of the outsourcing of military support services that has thus far been all but absent from the literature. Military support services represent the vast majority of contracts let by the military, so that the findings arrived at here are seen to be representative for the broader issue of military contractorisation. Focusing on the USA and the UK, the chapter 1) identifies the structural, contextual factors that frame defence services acquisition, 2) maps the defence services acquisition “policy network”, and 3) identifies a systemic bias towards contractorisation. Based on these findings, the chapter 4) concludes with an outlook over the future of military contractorisation within the political context identified earlier.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Routledge Handbook of Private Security Studies, Oct 27, 2015
Military contractors have become an indispensable part of war, supplying military forces with a c... more Military contractors have become an indispensable part of war, supplying military forces with a comprehensive range of capabilities. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, military contractors are no longer an optional source of supply but a key component of military force structure today. In the West in particular militaries cannot operate without them without risking prohibitively high financial and strategic costs. This chapter first examines the evolving considerations and rationales behind the drive to contract out military logistics. It then discusses the national and international implications for the future use of military contractors in supplying war, especially expeditionary operations.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
H-Diplo | ISSF Forum, Mar 2015
(PDF shared as per Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States, see https://creativecomm... more (PDF shared as per Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/).
I here review a special issue of International Journal, Vol. 69, no. 4 (December 2014), on "Contemporary Military Contracting and the Future: Teeth, Tails, and Concerns".
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
(PDF shared as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Lic... more (PDF shared as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
As with the US led Coalition war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented number of private contractors being utilised in support of military operations in the country. In the case of the United States government for example, over half of its personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq are contract employees, while the same figure in the UK stands at 30 per cent and is set to increase in the coming years. This level of contractor involvement in the ‘War on Terror’ is not inconsequential. Indeed, their contribution to military operations is so large they are now able to influence NATO’s counter-insurgency operations and thus its overall strategy for fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Importantly, such involvement can be both beneficial and/or detrimental. This article first sets out to explore how NATO came to rely on so many contractors in Afghanistan and the risks this involves for the ‘War on Terror’.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
e-ir, Aug 2011
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Presentations by Mark Erbel
Interested in broader questions about the constitution of the state, esp. the public/private dist... more Interested in broader questions about the constitution of the state, esp. the public/private distinction and the relationship between state and capital, this paper addresses the role of the private military sector in U.S. global power projection and maintenance. To this end, it examines, in particular, why and to what extent defence contractors have become integral to U.S. power production and projection. Where much of the existing literature focuses on the highest levels of politics to understand the place of private enterprise in U.S. foreign policy, this paper additionally accommodates the lower rungs of policy implementation. Similarly, while much of the literature points in rather generic ways to macro-level factors such as the “military-industrial complex”, global trade, and interventionism as evidence for the nexus between state and corporate interests, this paper additionally focuses on the micro-level, day-to-day business of producing, projecting, and sustaining U.S. global power beyond active theatres of war, the use of force, or generic market interests. This enables us to trace in detail the systematic, long-term intertwinement of public and private interests and actors across the hierarchy and duration of the policy process, and to ultimately uncover a symbiotic system which increasingly blends public policy and private enterprise. The paper argues that private defence contractors serve to increase the state’s capacity to realise foreign, security, and defence-political objectives which the state would be unable to credibly pursue, let alone achieve, on its own. It makes this case by focusing on and tracing activities on the “periphery” of U.S. hegemony, as it is there that U.S. power projection capabilities are more challenged and the perceived need to establish U.S. leadership more pressing. The paper’s findings – a structural interdependence between state and capital on the macro-level and the increasing erosion of the separation between “public” and “private” on the micro-level – raise questions about the constitution of the contemporary U.S. state, which the author will develop further as this paper develops over the coming months.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper examines three mechanisms which help sustain U.S. “empire”: the training of foreign ar... more This paper examines three mechanisms which help sustain U.S. “empire”: the training of foreign armed forces, the sale of defence equipment and services to partners and allies, and the partnering with other countries in military operations. It approaches the topic from the under-utilised dimension of the policy process, and maps the range of elite and other actors involved in these processes (especially defence officials and contractors). It also shows how these practices are derived from U.S. policy and embedded in national law, and how they are then implemented by the full hierarchy of the diplomatic and (increasingly and predominantly) defence enterprises. The paper identifies a stable, symbiotic system in which private enterprise is a fundamental driving logic of the U.S.’s imperial grand strategy of global openness, and in which there therefore exists a "bias towards business" when it comes to the statutory appropriation of government programmes, their political design, and their eventual implementation. The intertwinement of public and private interests and actors (and maybe more so the normalcy thereof) illustrate how the day-to-day sustainment of U.S. empire (or “hegemony” or “global leadership”) is both the deliberate pursuit of a core national interest for some, while it is also merely an ostensibly unpolitical, perhaps unconscious business endeavour for others.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
One of the most relevant developments in defence acquisition in the past decades occurred in the ... more One of the most relevant developments in defence acquisition in the past decades occurred in the services domain, epitomised by the rapid expansion of military support services contracting by the US, UK, and other militaries. The academic literature in this domain however almost exclusively focuses on the use of armed contractors, putting the – numerically and acquisition-wise – much more sizeable and relevant support industry in second place. Elsewhere, meanwhile, defence contracting is still mostly associated with individual large weapon systems.
This paper counters both trends. It seeks to develop a more holistic understanding of defence services acquisition by approaching the topic from the policy angle. It places defence services acquisition – whose costs in the USA now exceed those of equipment procurement – within a wider theoretical framework that helps us understand why the USA and the UK turned to industry, how contractors are used by both states, and how this affects the longer-term future of defence services acquisition. It will find that we are in for “more of the same” since the relationship between military and industry is one of both mutual dependency and symbiosis, while potential veto-players are absent from the process, effectively limiting options for future policy to those that include more use of and closer integration with industry.
This paper thereby improves our understanding both of the bigger picture of defence services acquisition by providing theoretical and contextual frameworks within which to study the subject matter, as well as our empirical understanding of the trajectory of defence services acquisition in the USA and the UK. In particular, it alerts us to the relevance of states’ global defence postures, political-economic structures, and their approaches to the military-technological sophistication of their armed forces in heavily circumscribing their defence acquisition policies and practices.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper will address a significant gap in the debate about military contractorisation: the pol... more This paper will address a significant gap in the debate about military contractorisation: the politics of outsourcing the delivery of military services, and the place of contractors and contractorisation in the policy-making process. It will provide the frame for a discussion that is becoming increasingly pressing given the trajectory military contractorisation is on: growing military-contractor integration, and government’s dependence on private contractors for service delivery. It will proceed in three steps. First, it will identify three key drivers of contractorisation that directly affect the policy process. Secondly, it will map the “defence services acquisition policy network” and identify its structural “bias towards business.” Thirdly, it will deduce pressing policy issues from the preceding analyses which have thus far received little attention.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper explores whether and how power is being redistributed in the defence political process... more This paper explores whether and how power is being redistributed in the defence political process as a result of contractorisation. It begins with a brief critical appraisal of the state of research. It then outlines a conceptual approach, based on advocacy coalitions, for addressing the issue of power in defence policy-making. Next, it analyses some pilot empirical research on the outsourcing of support services and the role of technology therein in order to preliminarily establish the degree to which contractors are empowered in the defence political process. The analysis indicates that at least the more alarmist conclusions are rather off the mark, as contractors do not (yet?) occupy the central positions and thus determine policy and strategy as is often implied. The paper concludes with a critical evaluation of its findings and evidence, and with an outlook on future research. Even with exploratory evidence and thus preliminary findings, the paper contributes valuably to the current state of research by arguing for a shift in focus beyond armed private security contractors, and by proposing a conceptual approach which was so far disregarded in studies on military outsourcing and defence policy-making.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Mark Erbel
Routledge Handbook of Private Security Studies, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
H -Diplo/ISSF, Mar 13, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This chapter provides a policy-based reading of the drivers, processes, and long-term ramificatio... more This chapter provides a policy-based reading of the drivers, processes, and long-term ramifications of the outsourcing of military support services that has thus far been all but absent from the literature. Military support services represent the vast majority of contracts let by the military, so that the findings arrived at here are seen to be representative for the broader issue of military contractorisation. Focusing on the USA and the UK, the chapter will 1) identify the structural, contextual factors that frame defence services acquisition, 2) map the defence services acquisition “policy network”, and 3) identify a systemic bias towards contractorisation. Based on these findings, the chapter will 4) conclude with an outlook over the future of military contractorisation within the political context identified earlier.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This chapter discusses the role of PMCs in defence, focusing on non-armed services. It defines mi... more This chapter discusses the role of PMCs in defence, focusing on non-armed services. It defines military logistics and the companies providing services in this sector. It then introduces key debates on the increasing use of PMCs, and illustrates key examples of military outsourcing. Finally, it looks into why and how PMCs will likely continue to be used in the future to support military operations.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Defence Studies, 2017
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This chapter sets out to explain why governments are privatizing military logistics, and what imp... more This chapter sets out to explain why governments are privatizing military logistics, and what implications such a trend has for the supply of war into the future. It takes a broad approach, examining a variety of drivers behind military outsourcing and the problems that outsourcing creates politically and for military commanders who are responsible for utilizing force. Our main objective is to show that logistics outsourcing is possibly the most representative and important (yet neglected) aspect of the wider phenomenon of military outsourcing. It most comprehensively encapsulates the drivers of contracting in general, involves the largest number of the contractor workforce and expenditure, and is exemplary of the future of military outsourcing. Moreover, not only is it highly relevant to foreign and defence policy, but governments have also become heavily dependent on logistics contractors for the long term whereas they could – political will provided – always replace private secur...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Dissertation by Mark Erbel
The outsourcing of military responsibilities to private contractors is most comprehensively encapsulated not in armed security contracting, which dominates the literature, but in the supply of the armed forces. Military logistics, broadly conceived, stretches back the furthest in history and involves among the largest manpower and sums of money expended by defence enterprises. Drawing on the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) since the end of the Second World War, this dissertation develops a holistic understanding of why states outsource military capability, the politics and processes which produce the decisions (not) to acquire military services from the market, and the longer-term impact and trajectory of defence services acquisition as a result of the way states use private contractors in their defence enterprises. Most fundamental to understanding why states outsource military capability is an appreciation of the dominant ideas and norms that guide policy-makers and constrain decision-making. In defence these are, in particular, a state’s defence strategy and posture, strategic culture, and political economy. These factors strongly determine the type, size, and shape of the armed forces, the weapon systems and services required for their supply, and the sources of these products and services. Together with the formal and informal political structures of the state, these factors also heavily determine who participates in the defence policy process. In the case of the USA and the UK, the general tendencies to espouse global defence postures, draw on private enterprise for the supply of goods and services, and rely on highly sophisticated, hi-tech weaponry in the conduct of war clashed with a lack of resources which were – under these influences – sought to be overcome by relying on private providers. The policy processes are similarly biased towards business ideas, solutions, and providers while exhibiting a remarkable lack of veto-points and veto-players. “More of the same”, i.e. the increasingly routineised use of private contractors in the generating of military capability, is therefore the unsurprising outcome of the past decades which witnessed the growing reliance on private service providers in the defence enterprise. Outsourcing is not only “here to stay”, as authors often conclude; the USA and the UK are formally and doctrinally integrating their military and contractor workforces into joint logistics forces that will support and supply their armies for decades to come, and concomitantly transferring knowledge and assets out of the military and into the private sector for the long term. Being improbable from within, change in the USA and the UK would only come about as a result of strategic, economic, or ideational “shocks” to this otherwise very stable ecosystem. Put in more general terms, changes in the fundamental structural forces of defence strategy, economics, and technology, as well as in the formal and informal structures of the policy process are most likely to yield significant change in the way states draw (or do not draw) on private contractors in the running of their defence enterprises.
Publications by Mark Erbel
This article argues that logistics constrains strategic opportunity while itself being heavily circumscribed by strategic and operational planning. With the academic literature all but ignoring the centrality of logistics to strategy and war, this article argues for a reappraisal of the critical role of military logistics, and posits that the study and conduct of war and strategy are incomplete at best or false at worst when ignoring this crucial component of the art of war. The article conceptualises the logistics-strategy nexus in a novel way, explores its contemporary manifestation in an age of uncertainty, and applies it to a detailed case study of UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
I here review a special issue of International Journal, Vol. 69, no. 4 (December 2014), on "Contemporary Military Contracting and the Future: Teeth, Tails, and Concerns".
As with the US led Coalition war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented number of private contractors being utilised in support of military operations in the country. In the case of the United States government for example, over half of its personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq are contract employees, while the same figure in the UK stands at 30 per cent and is set to increase in the coming years. This level of contractor involvement in the ‘War on Terror’ is not inconsequential. Indeed, their contribution to military operations is so large they are now able to influence NATO’s counter-insurgency operations and thus its overall strategy for fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Importantly, such involvement can be both beneficial and/or detrimental. This article first sets out to explore how NATO came to rely on so many contractors in Afghanistan and the risks this involves for the ‘War on Terror’.
Conference Presentations by Mark Erbel
This paper counters both trends. It seeks to develop a more holistic understanding of defence services acquisition by approaching the topic from the policy angle. It places defence services acquisition – whose costs in the USA now exceed those of equipment procurement – within a wider theoretical framework that helps us understand why the USA and the UK turned to industry, how contractors are used by both states, and how this affects the longer-term future of defence services acquisition. It will find that we are in for “more of the same” since the relationship between military and industry is one of both mutual dependency and symbiosis, while potential veto-players are absent from the process, effectively limiting options for future policy to those that include more use of and closer integration with industry.
This paper thereby improves our understanding both of the bigger picture of defence services acquisition by providing theoretical and contextual frameworks within which to study the subject matter, as well as our empirical understanding of the trajectory of defence services acquisition in the USA and the UK. In particular, it alerts us to the relevance of states’ global defence postures, political-economic structures, and their approaches to the military-technological sophistication of their armed forces in heavily circumscribing their defence acquisition policies and practices.
Papers by Mark Erbel
The outsourcing of military responsibilities to private contractors is most comprehensively encapsulated not in armed security contracting, which dominates the literature, but in the supply of the armed forces. Military logistics, broadly conceived, stretches back the furthest in history and involves among the largest manpower and sums of money expended by defence enterprises. Drawing on the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) since the end of the Second World War, this dissertation develops a holistic understanding of why states outsource military capability, the politics and processes which produce the decisions (not) to acquire military services from the market, and the longer-term impact and trajectory of defence services acquisition as a result of the way states use private contractors in their defence enterprises. Most fundamental to understanding why states outsource military capability is an appreciation of the dominant ideas and norms that guide policy-makers and constrain decision-making. In defence these are, in particular, a state’s defence strategy and posture, strategic culture, and political economy. These factors strongly determine the type, size, and shape of the armed forces, the weapon systems and services required for their supply, and the sources of these products and services. Together with the formal and informal political structures of the state, these factors also heavily determine who participates in the defence policy process. In the case of the USA and the UK, the general tendencies to espouse global defence postures, draw on private enterprise for the supply of goods and services, and rely on highly sophisticated, hi-tech weaponry in the conduct of war clashed with a lack of resources which were – under these influences – sought to be overcome by relying on private providers. The policy processes are similarly biased towards business ideas, solutions, and providers while exhibiting a remarkable lack of veto-points and veto-players. “More of the same”, i.e. the increasingly routineised use of private contractors in the generating of military capability, is therefore the unsurprising outcome of the past decades which witnessed the growing reliance on private service providers in the defence enterprise. Outsourcing is not only “here to stay”, as authors often conclude; the USA and the UK are formally and doctrinally integrating their military and contractor workforces into joint logistics forces that will support and supply their armies for decades to come, and concomitantly transferring knowledge and assets out of the military and into the private sector for the long term. Being improbable from within, change in the USA and the UK would only come about as a result of strategic, economic, or ideational “shocks” to this otherwise very stable ecosystem. Put in more general terms, changes in the fundamental structural forces of defence strategy, economics, and technology, as well as in the formal and informal structures of the policy process are most likely to yield significant change in the way states draw (or do not draw) on private contractors in the running of their defence enterprises.
This article argues that logistics constrains strategic opportunity while itself being heavily circumscribed by strategic and operational planning. With the academic literature all but ignoring the centrality of logistics to strategy and war, this article argues for a reappraisal of the critical role of military logistics, and posits that the study and conduct of war and strategy are incomplete at best or false at worst when ignoring this crucial component of the art of war. The article conceptualises the logistics-strategy nexus in a novel way, explores its contemporary manifestation in an age of uncertainty, and applies it to a detailed case study of UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
I here review a special issue of International Journal, Vol. 69, no. 4 (December 2014), on "Contemporary Military Contracting and the Future: Teeth, Tails, and Concerns".
As with the US led Coalition war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented number of private contractors being utilised in support of military operations in the country. In the case of the United States government for example, over half of its personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq are contract employees, while the same figure in the UK stands at 30 per cent and is set to increase in the coming years. This level of contractor involvement in the ‘War on Terror’ is not inconsequential. Indeed, their contribution to military operations is so large they are now able to influence NATO’s counter-insurgency operations and thus its overall strategy for fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Importantly, such involvement can be both beneficial and/or detrimental. This article first sets out to explore how NATO came to rely on so many contractors in Afghanistan and the risks this involves for the ‘War on Terror’.
This paper counters both trends. It seeks to develop a more holistic understanding of defence services acquisition by approaching the topic from the policy angle. It places defence services acquisition – whose costs in the USA now exceed those of equipment procurement – within a wider theoretical framework that helps us understand why the USA and the UK turned to industry, how contractors are used by both states, and how this affects the longer-term future of defence services acquisition. It will find that we are in for “more of the same” since the relationship between military and industry is one of both mutual dependency and symbiosis, while potential veto-players are absent from the process, effectively limiting options for future policy to those that include more use of and closer integration with industry.
This paper thereby improves our understanding both of the bigger picture of defence services acquisition by providing theoretical and contextual frameworks within which to study the subject matter, as well as our empirical understanding of the trajectory of defence services acquisition in the USA and the UK. In particular, it alerts us to the relevance of states’ global defence postures, political-economic structures, and their approaches to the military-technological sophistication of their armed forces in heavily circumscribing their defence acquisition policies and practices.