Robert Work: Impetus for new “offset strategy” is an urgent concern about “a steady erosion of our technological superiority that we have relied upon for so long in all our defense strategies.”

The time is right to consider the propensity of the A&D industry to innovate and the aimpoints on which its response to the Pentagon’s call should be targeted.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal ran a series of articles that offer a cautionary tale about innovation for the aerospace and defense industries of North America and Europe. Entitled “How Japan Lost Its Electronics Crown,” the stories relate how one-time giants of consumer electronics—Sony, Panasonic and Sharp—stumbled crossing the threshold from analog to digital, and now trail badly in the markets for e-readers, smartphones and next-generation televisions. What happened? Did the upstarts at Apple, Amazon and Samsung simply out-innovate the Japanese at their own game?