Fighter aircraft acquisition in Croatia: failure of policy delivery

Amadeo Watkins

Defense & Security Analysis, 2019, vol. 35, issue 3, 261-282

Abstract: The possibility for Croatia to obtain new fighter aircraft is not new, as this option has been publicly debated for at least a decade. A sudden decision to advance the acquisition of a limited number of fighter aircraft was made in 2017 with an international tendering process concluding in early 2018. Through open source material, this paper will look at this procurement process by examining the relationship between policy and strategic thinking on the one side, and policy delivery on the other, and evaluate why the tendering process failed in achieving envisaged results. The paper concludes that the problems facing the Croatian aircraft acquisition process stem from at least two interrelated factors: firstly, at the operational level, the failure of the procurement was the direct result of mismanaged tendering procedures linked to the wider public administration reform process; and secondly, at the strategic level, inherently complex civil-military relations and related cultural aspects which have not been adequately addressed over the past decades. The result was a failure to deliver on government policy, something which this paper argues will need to be addressed over the medium to long term.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14751798.2019.1640419 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cdanxx:v:35:y:2019:i:3:p:261-282

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CDAN20

DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2019.1640419

Access Statistics for this article

Defense & Security Analysis is currently edited by Martin Edmonds

More articles in Defense & Security Analysis from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().