An Appraisal of Institutional Forums for International Armaments Cooperation
Abstract
The U.S. Army participates in hundreds of institutional forums dealing with aspects of international armaments cooperation, including bilateral forums with Germany and France; forums under the Senior National Representatives (Army); the American-British-Canadian-Australian (ABCA) Armies Standardization Program and Quadripartite Working Groups (QWGs); other multilateral forums such as NATO Army Armaments Group panels and the Military Agency for Standardization and its Working Parties; and the international technology research and development (R and D) forums of the Defense Research Group and The Technical Cooperation Program. With few exceptions such forums focus on information exchange and standardization of operational concepts, procedures, and materiel, not on generating cooperative R and D agreements. In some cases, for example, available ABCA forum records indicate that neither the work priorities nor the actual activities of the QWGs address cooperative R&D, even though it falls within their charters. In other cases, particularly in some of the NATO forums, it is evident that many projects in the past were started without serious commitments by participating countries to cooperative R and D. Although the U.S. Army has taken many steps in recent years to foster cooperative R and D and production of defense materiel, the hundreds of institutional forums have produced only limited tangible results to that end. ... Bilateral and multilateral institutional forums, International armaments cooperation, Cooperative R and D, Information exchange, Standardization, American-British- Canadian-Australian Armies Standardization Program, NATO Army Armaments Group, Defense research group, NATO Forums.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 22, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA265157
Entities
People
- Frans Nauta
Organizations
- LMI