The safety mind-set in the ammunition chain of the Dutch Armed Forces

Abstract

The ammunition domain is very fragmented and people within the Ministry of Defence often make the assumption that people from the different branches of the Armed Forces think differently about safety and its priority in making decisions for military operations. So far however it is unknown how the people in the ammunition chain think about safety or what causes differences in their thinking. A literature review was used to gain understanding in safety theories that could be applied to the ammunition chain. The focus was on Normal Accident Theory and High Reliability Theory. Q methodology was then used to identify and explore perspectives about safety of the key-players involved in the ammunition chain. A focus group and interviews with experts have been used to confirm the perspectives that were derived from the Q-study and to further explore their implications. In contrast to what was expected at the start of the research, no (organizational) fragmentation has been found in the mind-set on safety with the participants of the conducted Q-study. The findings seem to imply that the mind-set regarding safety is mainly shaped by the organisational position and roles of the people involved with ammunition. The conducted Q-study found three perspectives. The perspectives 1 and 2 seem to correspond with how High Reliability Organisations (HRO) think about and position themselves regarding safety. In perspective 3, there seems to be no clear lower limit for safety, meaning that the mind-set in this perspective allows for trade-offs on safety if resources become limited. The occurrence of perspective 3 was difficult to understand, therefore an explanation was sought. Combining the theory on NAT and HRO from the literature, the focus group and interviews with experts, a possible explanation for this perspective has been proposed. In this possible explanation the complexity in the governance at the top level of the Ministry of Defence seems to result in the loss of accountability for the ammunition chain. From the point of view of safety, this is a structural problem, implying that after some time accidents with ammunition could return regardless of the safety measures put in place. Two possible solutions were proposed to prevent this from happening.