Managing Mega technological projects : The case of the defence industry and Network Centric Warfare projects

Sammanfattning: This thesis project consists of acomparative work on three different militarymegaprojects regarding Network CentricWarfare, in three different countries: theUnited States, France and Sweden. The aim ofthe comparison is to find similarities anddifferences with respect to why, and if, theprojects failed, or are failing, and if they failed - to what extent. The objectives of the militarymegaprojects were ambitious and a great dealof the involved technology was not yetdeveloped at the time and the technicalrequirements were incongruous. For thecomparative study a narrative case studymethodology has been employed, structuringand analysing the different militarymegaprojects.The result is three different descriptions of themilitary megaprojects reproducing the internaland external dynamics of two of the threeprojects. One project, the French one, has beenreproduced up to its present stage because it isplanned to continue to the 2030s. The result ofthe comparison between the militarymegaprojects has shown that such vast projectscan be managed like normal vast developmentprojects. On the other hand, these kinds of vastprojects are comprehensively complex. Suchprojects do also involve ideas leading to projectdevelopments of already known and unknownobstacles before and during the mega projectnot possible to manage and results in projectand development failure