Andy Love, traveled to Japan in January for meetings with various bodies, including SJAC and JADI. The primary focus was on the UK-Japan Defence Industry Dialogue (DID). A range of topics was discussed, but there were two primary subjects:
Innovation: There was positive discussion on how we cooperate more effectively. In the short term, this will likely involve Japanese companies participating in UK Government Open Innovation challenges; but we jointly aspire to more focused and mutually beneficial collaboration in the longer term.
Industrial collaboration: There was good debate about how bilateral frameworks could be established on a large scale projects, such as a warship or fighter aircraft. Workshops will be convened during Farnborough International 2018 and Japan Aerospace 18. Please contact andy.love@ukdsc.org if you are interested in more details and/or participating.