The fall of ASTROS: Organisational barriers to the Brazilian Army’s cruise missile programme

This article develops an analytical framework based on the complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework to assess military innovation, considering it as an antecedent process to operational military capabilities while addressing the need for tools to assess the causal mechanisms underlying military change. The analysis reveals systemic failures across all dimensions in the Brazilian Army’s ASTROS Programme, particularly the intention of integrating the AV-TM 300 cruise missile into structures designed for conventional rocket artillery. Rather than an operational failure with the missile or the programme, the case demonstrates a frustrated pre-deployment innovation, wherein Brazil mobilised organisationally upon a strategically ambitious capability to achieve without developing corresponding institutional conditions to convert it into an effective operational military capability – a finding that has implications for how middle powers adopt strategic military capabilities.