With global conflict raging and international tensions running high, the defense industry is under intense pressure. There are several defense and security trends 2025 that organizations need to watch to make sure their teams, strategies, and machinery are ready to spring into action.
Newer technologies like AI are advancing and primed to drive efficiency in the sector. Deloitte found that 81% of aerospace and defense survey respondents already use AI and machine learning or plan to start.
In 2025, defense and security organizations will focus on using intelligent solutions to maintain mission readiness across air, sea, land, and cyberspace.
According to the Global Peace Index 2024, which was released in April, there are 56 active conflicts—the most since the end of World War II.
“The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security,” Nan Tian, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, said in a news release about the study.
Defense organizations saw the promise of artificial intelligence early on and have found many uses for it. Expect this defense and security trend to accelerate in 2025 as generative AI and cloud computing capabilities advance.
AI will enable data-driven decisions, analyze complex intelligence, optimize logistics and supply chains, and more. But to accomplish all of this, defense and security leaders will need to get a grasp on how their data is collected and managed. Only clean and timely data can create accurate and efficient AI outputs.
As militaries rush to modernize operations by augmenting human expertise with AI technologies, there are seven key use cases. In a recent paper published in the International Journal of Intelligent Systems, the authors found that the use cases produced these outcomes:
For all the benefits AI can bring to the defense and security industry, small errors can be catastrophic if the technology malfunctions or adversaries thwart security measures and gain access to their enemy’s systems. This could lead to the wrong targets being attacked by drones or expose top secret training modules. Security and testing must be top of mind when implementing these solutions.
Another concern is that there’s no official governance in place for AI use in the military. So as AI usage increases in 2025, so will calls for the establishment of global standards by international bodies or through the creation of AI-focused oversight groups to encourage responsible use of AI. This may impact AI use cases in defense and security in the near future.
Modern warfare requires defense organizations to communicate, fight, and operate across many locations at once in distributed, communications limited, or completely disconnected environments. Decentralized command and control has emerged as a defense and security strategy. It helps teams communicate and collaborate with joint and allied partners and make decisions in lock step from afar, thanks to a strong technology backbone.
But the decentralized strategy is also useful during peacetimes. Having hardware-agnostic solutions that are cloud based makes data needed for decision making and maintenance accessible from any relevant location; it’s not tied to a physical hub, which could hold up time-sensitive efforts.
Pairing this data with strong communication has been key to battalion cohesion, execution of operational exercises, and avoiding duplication of efforts. Leaders need access to real-time data to make the best decisions whether they’re on the battlefield or providing remote operations. They can gain an advantage over adversaries when they have standardized, integrated, and interoperable systems supporting them.
Timely access to secure data has allowed military leaders to look at operations across different countries, agencies, and supply and distribution trends to make the best decisions. There may be periods of disconnection depending on location, so leaders need access to predictive tools that will allow them to operate independently yet cohesively.
This enables brigades to be more flexible and scalable, furthering their mission faster and maintaining a robust and cohesive command and control process.
Succeeding in modern warfare means collecting, securing, storing, sharing, analyzing, and acting on an increasing amount of data. Coming from sensors, drones, or satellites, it helps make better decisions and feeds into AI models.
The trends toward data-centricity has the potential to improve decision making and interoperability for defense and security organizations. Data unification is a departure from network-centric models that walled off access. Instead, organizations that become data-centric will ensure secure access to all relevant data for all pertinent parties.
Successful military organizations will get everyone involved in data in 2025 and use it for real-time, informed decision making at all levels in the chain of command. When information is accessible and actionable across the organization, military organizations are able to gain a technical and operational advantage over adversaries.
Beyond the systems needed to accomplish this, there also needs to be strong training and recruitment programs in place to make sure every corner of a military organization has the necessary tech skills to make use of data germane to their roles.
War is fought on an increasing number of fronts. First there was land and sea, then air and space. Now we have the fifth domain: cyberspace, and the security implications are much more far-reaching since these attacks can come silently and from anywhere.
Military operations must become immune to increasingly stealth attacks that come from both state and non-state actors.
They can work toward this by improving network security, modernizing encryption technologies, and heightening defense tactics on both military and civilian targets, including civilian infrastructure, power, and economic systems.
Governments are starting to understand the importance of cybersecurity, as $64.1 billion is already earmarked for information technology/cyberspace activities in the U.S. Department of Defense’s fiscal 2025 budget.
No matter how high you build your walls, someone with enough skill, determination, and resources can get in. Find out what measures you need to take now to protect your data.
Whether it’s learning a new battlefield technique or figuring out how to perform routine maintenance on a new machine, training and R&D are costly. One of the key cost reduction defense and security trends for 2025 will be around digital twin usage.
The defense and security industry will be a significant part of this growth and some efforts are already under way to find the best use this technology.
Digital twins create a digital version of something in the physical world and put it into a virtual environment so that users can learn all of the functionalities, features, and behaviors remotely. This also can help with manufacturing new hardware by providing advanced modeling to test different configurations and build the right machines faster.
Digital twins are an effective training and manufacturing technique that makes it possible to gain technical expertise and build essential tools faster and cheaper, while compiling data along the way to course correct when needed.
Historically, it’s been hard to connect far flung data sources to get all of the information needed to create an accurate and effective simulation. But Model One is a first-of-its-kind digital twin model that brings all necessary components— such as regulations, manufacturing details, and logistics—together into a secure, single automated thread.
In 2025, expect to see expanded use cases for digital twins, as militaries and adjacent companies use them to test battlefield scenarios, weapons systems performance, and equipment wear-and-tear. Ultimately, digital twins will offer better analysis of performance and outcomes without the cost and complexity of live exercises.
As defense and security organizations gear up in 2025, their focus is on strengthening their data backbone. When all team members have access to data and the training needed to use it effectively, the entire organization benefits to achieve its core mission.
The defense and security trends for 2025 show that organizations’ investments into data analytics and AI are paying off with better agility and cohesion. But as these technologies evolve, militaries and their partners can’t get let up on their innovation efforts. Sustained effort and optimization will separate the leaders from the laggards.
