Buscando al Eslabón Perdido del Desarrollo Tecnológico. Entendiendo el Desarrollo de Simuladores en CITEDEF Vis-À-Vis su Régimen de Producción Industrial

This study addresses the question – a ubiquitous Argentinian query, indeed – about the type of obstacles that successfully marketed technological developments face in order to either be manufactured in small-batches or at a high-volume manufacture scale. The analysis of this article focuses on the CITEDEF portable weapons shooting simulators in demand for Argentinian Security and Defence Forces teaching and training activities. These technological devices, the subject matter of this paper, consist of computing, electronic, and optical devices, as well as weapon machining. Owing to specific (legal, regulatory, and social) user requirements, a variety of versions of these simulators have been produced ad hoc over the years. This paper highlights, on the one hand, the importance of the interaction between public policy design and implementation. On the other hand, this line of enquiry addresses the importance of assessing the industrial dynamics of the simulators as a preliminary step to understand their technological development better.