Prevailing trend of globalization has changed the mode and style of defense production and associated technology development, especially after the Cold War in major western countries.
A level of sophistication on civilian technologies has advanced to a military applicable level making COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) as conventional measures of major defense item production. Dual-use technology has become a major source of defense production. Under the condition which sophisticated technology dispersed among hi-tech companies, research laboratories, and universities around the globe, even a major defense companies have to make an outreach beyond national border in order to keep their technological edge.
It is true that a strategic trade control is taken as a significant policy measure to prevent proliferation of WMD and related technologies. However, at the same time, a trade control has been increasingly thought as an obstacle to trade promotion, since it put barriers on hi-tech trade, which U.S. and other western countries have comparative advantage. A trade facilitation and defense technology development collaboration have positive effect on security cooperation and defense production under globalized world. While the risk of technology proliferation is perceived as keen strategic issue, how to strike a balance between two conflicting demand become serious political agenda.
Despite these concern, the U.S. and the European countries lean toward liberalization of cross-border technology development collaboration, either through international defense production collaboration and/or market-oriented approach. Historically, the U.S. policy makers were reluctant to increase its technology dependence on external sources, since it affects capability to make independent security policy decision. Although, reflecting the state of globalized defense production in the post-Cold War era, the U.S. moved forward to implement an open-market approach by emphasizing the significance of securing access to defense-capable technologies deemed critical for future defense production, rather than putting emphasis on policy independence.
As a result, the U.S. and European countries have implemented export control and defense trade reforms in late 2000’s to early 2010’s. Japan, also shifted its half-century long policy on a defense trade ban policy and liberalized its defense transfer in 2014 to accommodate these trends to its policy on defense technology developments.
As seen in the case of F-35 production and its logistic system supported by private company, a membership to a joint defense production become one of the facilitating force behind this open-market approach. Relaxing an export control to a limited qualified countries enables this approach. And, the ways in which to put condition to be qualified become major policy measure to accommodate current state of defense technology development with preventing uncontrolled proliferation of defense related technologies.