so the only thing left to do is to define available means and regional cooperation. a lot can be said of both.

i would suggest looking at strategic leadership literature. it deals with leadership at the industry level, in turn rendering it very strategic.

the broad scope may be defined (available means etc), but it may be possible to still add a lot of flesh to the bone. what are the specific strategies around available means, how is available means defined and measured? what is done to further expand it and increase the efficiency thereof?

what is the vision for the defense industry?

It is unclear which country you have in mind. If  country X wants to develop a defence industry, it must have  a military capacity that would  become buyers of whatever is developed. But before that it must have a good supply of STEM ( science, technology, engineering  and mathematics/medicine ) graduates of extremely  high quality comparable to western countries like USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, China, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, all known for defence industry.  Defence research is very expensive and  huge amount of funds should be available. Country  X must have a need for the output or it will be wasting resources toying with defence products and not actually realizing them. My comments are based on my experiences in innovation and technology. An economist may well have another view, but not very far removed from mine, I venture to suggest.

To close,  any strategy will have to take into account the factors I have identified, and much more...

1st: Define what you need most

First of all you need to do SWOT analysis of your region and the world. This will give you the idea what to look for and refrain from.

2nd: Give people something to fight for

In case of war, your countryman will fight on your side. If there is no democracy, justice or freedom then there will be no values other than family (and sometimes land and religion) to fight for. People will take their families and flee.

3rd: Create allies

Only a few countries develop weapons to attack others the rest are trying to protect their homeland from them by purchasing the weapons that produced by them (what a paradox). So creating allies with neighboring countries will help to focusing on real threats. The joint defense agreements with them are better.

4th: Transform into learning community

Learn from failures more than successes. Turn your schools into institutions teach how to think, reason and deduct results from given data/results etc. Trying to have children memorize what can be easily found on internet is not education but wasting human resources and future of the country.

5th: Acquiring technology, know-how

Try to get the training, technology and weapons defined at the first step. This can be accomplished in several ways like making agreements with manufacturers, establishing joint ventures, establishing manufacturing sites in your own country or sending technology spies.

But in order to improve or develop acquired technology, or start from scratch you have to have proper resources such as leaders, scientists, schools, tools etc.

The list goes on… But the most important thing is that the defense strategy starts in mind and heart.

One way of enhancing the local defence industy is by using offsets/industrial cooperation program schemes. Offsets are a mix of different methods through which countries are trying to reroute a part of procurement funds paid to foreign contractors back into their economy.

Through offsets a country could, among others, manage to:

·Enhance the technological level of the local defence industry, by modernizing the production methods and processes;

·Transfer technology to the domestic industry;

·To grow the job market, by creating new opportunities for employees with the defence industry;

·To create market opportunities for the export of local goods and services;

·To increase the nationalization of the local defence procurements and decrease dependence on external markets;

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your answers.

Best regards

Engage researchers e.g. research centres and universities and apply economies of scope.