The defence industry is treated like that in every country. Part of the reason why a country wants to retain some military industry domestically, is to ensure production capacity during a security crisis (kind of like for agriculture). It's not just "jobs", but "jobs" with that particular skillset.
For instance, Germany is producing the Leopard 2. They may export most of them during peacetime, but should they need to, they could start pumping out those tanks for the Bundeswehr instead. Furthermore, with the skills available domestically, it would take much less time to repurpose VW/BMW/Audi factories to also produce weapons.