Reluctant middlemen: the imaginary of defense requirements engineering

Abstract

In this paper, we explore how requirements engineers negotiate and reconcile the competing demands entailed in their function as “middlemen” between the political level and the user. Drawing on interviews with requirements engineers and theories from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and critical military studies, the paper examines the socio-technical imaginaries that are used to make sense of and that take part in producing the processes of defense systems development and procurement. We identify a tension between the experiences from real development projects and the established ideals associated with this field of public management. We then go on to trace ways in which this tension is addressed in the imaginary: notably by a separation between the rational and the irrational and by a sense of reluctant agency. The paper, thus, seeks to contribute to the understanding of requirements engineering in the development of military technology and capability, but also, on a more general level, to the understanding of how such practices function at the intersection of state sovereignty, bureaucracy, and industry.