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Paper short abstract

This paper investigates the industrial entanglements of military and civil interests within the European Ariane 6 space program. It examines the effects of military-strategic considerations on the development and manufacture of the Ariane 6 and proposes an STS-reconceptualization of 'dual use'.

Paper long abstract

This research investigates the industrial entanglements of military and civil interests within the European space program, specifically the Ariane 6. Based on expert interviews, conference ethnographies and document analysis of key white papers this research examines the influence of military-strategic considerations in the development and manufacture of the Ariane 6. The focus on the technological relation between the Ariane 6 solid fuel boosters and the M51, the French submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missile, reveals how the solid fuel boosters of the Ariane 6 enable the maintenance and reproduction of France’s solid propulsion industrial base and therefore demonstrates the Ariane 6’s significance for French nuclear deterrence. It furthermore traces the effects of these military-strategic entanglements on particular engineering decisions concerning the propulsive configuration of the Ariane 6. Drawing on the amalgam of empirical material collected in one and a half years of research and building on a tradition of STS scholarship concerned with the relation between technology and the military, this research productively intertwines the theoretical frameworks of Actor-Network-Theory, technopolitics and multiple ontology to conceptualize the industrial entanglement between the civil Ariane 6 and the military M51. The analysis of this industrial dual-use kinship allows for a critical assessment of the current, primarily legalist notion of ‘dual use’ and develops and elaborates an appropriate STS-inspired ‘dual use’ concept.