This became clear to me as I attended a recent session of the Industry Forum for Security Cooperation. I gave a short kickoff talk at the dinner before the meetings. Japanese industry participants primarily were executive vice presidents in charge of the defense-related components of large companies in commercial industry. For any of those companies, defense is a small piece of the overall business. This is a completely different structure than in the United States, where defense contractors often are large companies devoted exclusively to producing military systems.
American industry needs some experience in working with Japanese industry.
Two electrical circuits are matched when you can plug them together and a lot of energy transfers across the interface. We can only match that impedance by working together more. We haven't done enough of that. Industry differences represent a barrier that today stops us from turning the budget problem into an opportunity. Through the years the United States and Japan have established some reasonable arrangements.