International Naval Technology Transfer: Lessons Learned from the Spanish and Chilean Shipbuilding Experience

Abstract

In 2007 the Spanish shipbuilder Navantia won the contract to rebuild the Australian navy with high-end destroyers and amphibious ships. The same year, the Chilean shipyard ASMAR won the contract to build an advanced Icelandic Coast Guard Vessel. Both shipyards just a few years before had been importing design and construction technologies from abroad; now in a rapid evolution of capability, they had become net technology exporters. A similar process had occurred at the turn of the 20th century, when United States and Japan rapidly built up their own shipbuilding capabilities using knowledge primarily derived from British shipbuilders, who at the time were known as naval architects to the world. This paper uses the examples of Spain and Chile to demonstrate how modern naval shipbuilders can rapidly evolve from net importers of technology to net exporters with the assistance of foreign technology transfer, and lays out the systematic way this process may occur. It then derives lessons for other navies (including the U.S. Navy) as they rebuild their fleets to meet new global missions in the face of dwindling resources.