Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have rapidly developed as emblematic dual-use technologies in which civilian and military sectors interact and jointly shape innovation trajectories. Recent intensifications of economic security policies and geopolitical tensions suggest that both knowledge flows and international technology diffusion in the UAV domain are being reconfigured. Building on our previous analysis presented at Defense and Aerospace Unmanned Systems 2026 (DAUS 2026), this study examines the relationship between national research structures and the international diffusion of attack-type UAVs. In particular, it pays attention to heterogeneity within attack-type UAV diffusion, including differences between armed UAVs and one-way loitering munitions, by combining bibliometric analysis of approximately 180000 Scopus-indexed UAV-related publications (2001–2025) with the CNAS Drone Proliferation Dataset.
The analysis identifies a marked increase in Civil-to-Military (C2M) knowledge flows since the late 2010s, indicating the growing importance of civilian-led technological inputs in military UAV development. This shift corresponds with a structural transformation in global diffusion. Mean-shift analysis detects a first major breakpoint in 2012, when the combined supplier share of China and Turkey rose from near zero to a regime average of 0.52, followed by a second breakpoint in 2018, when the average annual number of adoption events increased from 2.7 to 24.8.
These findings suggest a staged transformation in which changes in supplier-side institutional and industrial structures preceded the subsequent expansion of international UAV adoption. Importantly, the results suggest a sequential transformation in which supply-side structural changes precede and condition subsequent diffusion expansion. Recent geopolitical shocks appear to have accelerated this process by shifting diffusion from unarmed baseline systems toward attack-capable platforms, including the rapid expansion of non-traditional suppliers such as Iran in the loitering munition segment. Overall, the study identifies a systematic alignment between (non-causal) changes in national research structures and patterns of technology diffusion, highlighting the growing role of military organizations as absorptive users of civilian-led innovation under contemporary economic security conditions.
Keywords: UAV diffusion, Dual-use technology, Economic security, Bibliometric analysis, Civil–military knowledge flow.
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