Success-Plan Services
John Breitenbach
In today's rapidly evolving global landscape, the defense sector is experiencing a transformation marked by several critical trends. These developments are not just shaping the strategy and operations of military forces worldwide, but are also influencing the defense industry's innovation trajectory. From autonomous systems to integrated command frameworks, these trends are setting the stage for the next era of military capability.
A significant shift has been the rapid adoption of autonomous and unmanned systems. Historically, military power has centered around manned, high-value platforms, but that is changing quickly. This transition reflects the military’s move away from highly complex systems with long acquisition cycles, toward a rising demand for cost-effective, scalable, and rapidly deployable platforms to outpace emerging adversaries. As a result, the effectiveness of traditional maneuver warfare has decreased. Militaries are now prioritizing autonomous systems capable of operating across diverse conditions with minimal human intervention, ensuring adaptability in contested and denied environments.
What are the top priorities for the defense industry as we enter 2025?
1. Embracing New Capabilities: The Urgent Need for Unmanned Systems
Unmanned systems are becoming essential. The U.S. military's focus is on deploying thousands of these systems, ranging from drones to autonomous naval vessels. This shift aims to counterbalance the effects of massed rocket forces from adversarial nations that have invested heavily in keeping potential threats at a safe distance through extended-range missile systems. The move toward scalable, unmanned capabilities is designed to offset the numerical and range advantages of adversarial forces. The result is a more resilient and adaptable defense posture, capable of countering modern mass threats effectively.
2. Countering New Threats: The Focus on Counter-UxS Technology
The growing number and affordability of drones has created a new kind of threat, making Counter-Unmanned Systems (C-UxS) solutions more important than ever across all domains. Easy access to low-cost, highly capable drones means that state and non-state actors no longer need an exquisite weapon or aircraft to strike at a distance. And these systems are attritable, allowing them to be used as highly accurate substitutes for long-range fires. Counter-UxS solutions are therefore vital for protecting every soldier on the battlefield, every vehicle on the road, every ship, every fixed base and airfield, and even critical infrastructure. And these counter-UxS systems need to be multi-layered, offering protection through a combination of sensors and effectors that cover multiple threat vectors simultaneously.
3. Speeding Integration: Responding to Advanced Threats Faster in a Fragmented Landscape
The need to field new capabilities quickly is critical as adversaries develop increasingly advanced weapons. However, integration challenges – caused by fragmented acquisition processes and diverse stakeholder environments – often slow progress. In the U.S., the shift towards Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs) has enabled faster procurement cycles by funding innovative solutions from non-traditional defense contractors to facilitate prototype testing and rapid field deployment. Going forward, this approach influences defense companies to adapt and offer more integrated solutions, rather than standalone products, at an accelerated pace.
4. Multinational Defense: Strategic Implications and Global Collaboration
As military threats become increasingly transnational, global standards and frameworks are essential for integrating multinational defense technologies. Strong partnerships — between allied nations and industries — are critical to enhancing interoperability and addressing shared security challenges. The need for joint force coordination within and between U.S. forces in particular means that interoperability is no longer simply a "nice-to-have" feature – it is now a floor requirement for defense systems. In fact, the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) now makes this type of interoperability a legal requirement in the U.S. By investing in innovative, standards-based technologies and fostering international collaboration, the defense sector can enhance its ability to safeguard nations and maintain peace in an increasingly complex world.
5. Implementing Zero Trust: Cybersecurity for Modern Defense Systems
Zero Trust is rapidly emerging as a critical requirement in military cybersecurity. Traditionally, Zero Trust has been focused on human users allowing their personal devices to securely access trusted resources over untrusted networks. But when the concept is applied to machines, Zero Trust can also meet broader needs – specifically, the persistent sharing of potentially large amounts of streaming data from highly autonomous and distributed systems. Beyond safeguarding data confidentiality and integrity across security domains, Zero Trust for smart machines is especially important in distributed, multi-vendor environments where seamless interoperability is key.
6. Achieving a Cohesive Operating Picture Across All Domains
With the growing variety and volume of threats, including those in new domains such as cyber and space, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to develop a common operating picture. Existing defense systems must integrate new technologies to sense and counter emerging threats such as overwhelming mass, autonomous systems, hypersonics, electronic, and cyber warfare. A heterogenous network of sensors must share threat data in real time. Tracks need to be correlated across all domains. Weapons must be scheduled and deployed in the most effective way while maintaining magazine depths. Traditional kinetic defenses must work seamlessly with new directed-energy effects. This is the challenge in Guam right now: integrating existing systems such as Aegis, THAAD, and Patriot with new sensors and effectors. The key to making this a reality is a data-centric approach.
RTI Connext: A Strategic Advantage for Modern Defense Systems
The importance of RTI Connext in tackling these military trends lies in its capacity to provide reliable, real-time data connectivity and interoperability for a variety of defense systems across land, sea, air, and space domains. Trusted by the best, RTI Connext gives defense organizations a way to enhance operational effectiveness and maintain a technological edge in 21st-century warfare. As nations face increasingly complex security challenges, the systems that can integrate new capabilities quickly while resiliently responding to threats will be the ones that offer a true strategic advantage. Based on the Data Distribution Service (DDS™) standard, RTI Connext software helps achieve this goal by supporting complex system integration and scalability.
Many of these emerging technologies that the military is working on also have direct uses in the commercial space. History has shown that military technology often informs innovation in commercial systems, as the challenges are similar. For example, lessons learned from military C-UxS systems can be carried over to protect critical civilian infrastructure, including airports, power plants and sea ports. And solving the challenge of command and control of teams of unmanned systems for defense will ultimately benefit commercial robots in applications ranging from disaster response to last-mile delivery.
For defense companies, the trends I’ve mentioned highlight the need to field systems faster. Starting with a data-centric approach and open standards ensures those systems work together with both existing and emerging ones. RTI Connext provides the head start to keep pace with the rapid transformations we are experiencing in defense.
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About the author:
John Breitenbach, Director Aerospace & Defense Markets, RTI
John Breitenbach is Director of Aerospace & Defense Markets for Real-Time Innovations. He has over 30 years of experience designing software for intelligent machines. He’s worked on industrial, medical, consumer and military products - everything from artificial hearts to autonomous vehicles to elevators.