William H. McNeill in Pursuit of Power discusses the phenomonen of command technology. He uses the term in a similar manner to command economy and describes it as state based and state funded technological innovation through the military. Rather than the industrial-military complex as described by Eisenhower, to McNeill it would be the technology-military complex. McNeill traces the origins of command technology to the late-19thC British Navy.
Prior to the mid-19thC innovations in armaments came from private industry and followed the restrictions of the free market such as private equity and finding customers. As an example one of the biggest armament companies in the 1800s was Krupps. They had several innovations in the areas of artillery and naval guns. A lot of their success was the innovation in the production process of these guns which improved their capability and length of use. The interesting thing though is that only 25% of Krupps' business was with Germany. Three quarters of their armament sales were to international customers.
McNeill isn't calling the industrial process the 'command' part. It is the technological innovations that are command technology and prior to the 1850s this was handled by private capital rather than state capital. There were state-based factories for armaments; for instance Britain's Woolwich Arsenal. But the state based factories would buy the innovations from inventors and technology companies of the day so they could manufacture these arms.
A good modern day example of the command technology process is the Joint Strike Fighter [JSF] program. The United States government funded two prototypes, one by Lockheed Martin and one by Boeing. They then chose a winner and funded the development process for Lockheed Martin's JSF prototype to become a mass manufactured weapon system. State based investment has bank rolled the whole technological innovation process; not private equity.
In the mid-1800s organisational technology was improving, the industrial revolution was maturing and Britain had adopted a two ocean naval policy. However they were finding that the industrial revolution had brought an escalating pace of technological change. As a result the capital investment required to come up with naval weapon systems and ships was increasing as the systems increased in complexity.
France was mainly concerned with a continental army but wanted to see British seapower upset by new technologies. As a result French scientists came up with the torpedo boat and the submarine. Both disruptive industrial technologies that were very cheap in comparison to the capital intensive battleship. The British response was to fund metallurgical and engineering innovation for quick firing naval guns and a new platform that was faster than the small and cheap torpedo boats which could protect the battleships. We know this today as a Destroyer.
This process of command technology continued in the capital intensive and technologically complex area area of naval systems at a quickening pace of state investment. It produced the Dreadnought which obsoleted every battleship in every navy, including Britains.
HMS Dreadnought. By this stage all countries were nationalising their technology development of armaments and free-market manufacturers like Krupps and Armstrong were unable to sell into foreign markets like they had in the past. Soon Krupps was selling to the German government nearly exclusively.
With WWI and the industrial demands of a war economy all nations adopted both a command technology and command economy platform. This never really left government policy. The Soviets took it to extremes, and despite their successful industrialisation of their economy in peacetime, born out by their success against Germany in WWII, the brutal cost in lives, tyranny and oppression was repugnant.
Differing versions of command technology organisation have existed through history, but since the 1880s and 1890s it has become the dominant form of creating new armaments for organised violence.
