Modern defense operations are defined by speed, complexity, and risk, but most defense leaders no longer have the luxury of trial-and-error field testing. Every decision must be precise and executed without hesitation. Mistakes cost lives and compromise missions.
Digital twin technology is crucial for meeting these goals and avoiding mistakes. By pairing physical assets with virtual replicas and AI, leaders can simulate, test, and optimize systems in real time.
The result is:
The bottom line is a force that is more combat-ready than ever before.
Digital twin technology is not just a tool for engineers either. It’s reshaping the battlefield itself, ensuring that weapons systems, aircraft, networks, and training environments are backed by a data-driven foundation, which is critical for mission readiness.
While traditional modeling and simulation have long been used in defense, digital twins mark a significant evolution. Building one-off models is no longer required; digital twins create a living (continuously updated) system replica. Every sensor reading, maintenance action, and operational parameter feeds into the twin, creating an ongoing loop of intelligence.
This approach is already delivering results in a few of the military’s high-profile programs.
Weapon Systems Modernization: The F-35 Program
The F-35 fighter jet program leverages digital engineering and digital twins to streamline system upgrades and cut sustainment costs. Engineers can validate design changes virtually, which significantly accelerates design changes, production, and deployment. Digital twin technology also enables field commanders to simulate specific battlefield conditions and adjust strategy as necessary.
Army Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA)
The Army’s FLRAA program uses digital twins for agile verification and virtualization. According to the DoD’s Digital Twin Agile Verification report, this process enables engineers to rapidly evaluate system performance under extreme battlefield conditions, significantly reducing development and integration time.
Network Modernization and Cyber Resilience
In today’s battlespace, communications networks are as critical as weapons platforms. Digital twins are being applied to network modernization, testing cyber resilience against simulated threats before vulnerabilities can be exploited.
Defense Training and Simulation
Digital twins are not just limited to machines. They are also changing the way that warfighters train. For example, data-driven training with digital twins prepares soldiers for the complex tactical and operational challenges that they may encounter in the field using hyper-realistic environments.
The DoD invests heavily in research and development (R&D), spending more than $92 billion annually. According to the Congressional Research Service, that’s about half of the federal government’s total R&D spending budget. Maximizing ROI requires tools that accelerate development and ensure that every dollar produces lasting capability. Digital twin technology does exactly that across the entire defense lifecycle.
Reducing Development Time
Even working on accelerated timelines, the traditional acquisition and development process can be interminably slow. It’s not uncommon to take years (or even decades) to get from concept to deployment. With the pace of innovation and emerging threats, though, it can be too costly to wait.
With digital twins, prototypes can be virtually tested before the physical build begins. Design and testing cycles run in parallel, which can dramatically compress timelines. This means warfighters can get new capabilities without waiting years to begin production or deployment.
Enhancing System Reliability
Once deployed, defense systems operate under some of the harshest conditions imaginable. Digital twins provide a constant feedback loop, analyzing data from the field to predict wear, detect anomalies, and optimize maintenance schedules. These predictive analytics help prevent mission failures.
Improving Mission Outcomes
By incorporating real-world variables, such as terrain, weather, and adversary capabilities, digital twins enable planners to test scenarios rapidly, even on the battlefield. The ability to model outcomes before committing forces improves decision-making and reduces risk.
According to McKinsey, digital twins can improve operational efficiency by 20% to 30%, which can mean the difference between mission success and failure.
Integrating digital twin technology into defense requires a structured workflow that encompasses the entire lifecycle of systems and missions. While each system is customized, here are the four most common phases that make up the digital twin workflow.
Phase 1: Design and Engineering
Digital twins are embedded at the earliest stages of R&D, ensuring that design choices are validated against real-world performance expectations. Sumaria Labs provides environments in which virtual prototypes are built to evolve alongside their physical counterparts, arming the defense sector with the digital tools that they need for mission success.
Phase 2: Testing and Validation
Before any prototypes are built, digital twins can stress-test designs in their simulated environments. Extreme conditions, including heat, altitude, electromagnetic interference, and more, can be replicated virtually, exposing weaknesses that might not otherwise show up until actual deployment. This can influence production design and reduce rework, thus saving time and money.
Phase 3: Field Deployment
Once operational, digital twins remain active. Real-time monitoring enables commanders to see how systems perform under live conditions. Anomalies detected virtually can trigger immediate adjustments, giving leaders a powerful decision-support tool that provides a battlefield edge.
Phase 4: Sustainment and Modernization
Defense platforms often remain in service for decades. Digital twin technology extends this lifecycle by enabling continuous updates and upgrades without grounding the fleet. This approach reduces sustainment costs and ensures readiness against evolving threats.
The versatility of digital twins makes them a preferred solution across a wide array of defense applications.
Tracking the Battlespace
On the modern battlefield, you need information as much as firepower. Digital twins have a critical role here, helping to visualize and track the movement of hostile units, aircraft, and artillery in real time. Commanders use these insights to sharpen situational awareness and speed up response times.
Just as importantly, this allows for predicting enemy movements and preparing responses before they occur. Digital twins can run endless scenarios and estimate outcomes.
Simulating Weapons Performance
Every weapon system has limits, and digital twins enable those limits to be tested without live-fire costs. DoD is using digital twins to simulate weapons performance under battlefield conditions, reducing the risk of failure when lives are at stake.
Optimizing Combat Casualty Care Training
The battlefield requires medical readiness. Digital twins are helping combat casualty care training. Virtual patients are developed across different real-world scenarios to test capabilities. They are equipped with realistic physiological responses, so medics can develop core competencies in treatment and practice interventions before ever setting foot on the battlefield.
Implementing digital twins can be challenging. You need a partner that understands the defense landscape and has the technical expertise to develop precise, detailed models for mission success. Here are a few of the most common obstacles and how you can overcome them.
Data Integration
Defense platforms produce enormous volumes of data, which is highly valuable but unfortunately, often stuck in siloed or incompatible systems. A reliable solution requires a unified approach that incorporates all the data into a common framework, so there are no more data siloes. Without interoperability, the accuracy of the twin suffers, limiting its usefulness for decision-making.
Cybersecurity Risks
As digital twins depend on live data feeds, they are attractive targets for cyber adversaries. A compromised twin could feed false data into mission planning, obscure vulnerabilities in real systems, or provide valuable data for adversaries.
Protecting the integrity of digital twin environments requires:
Cultural and Organizational Shifts
Adoption requires more than just building digital twins. There’s also a cultural aspect that must be addressed. Shifting from the traditional acquisition and sustainment process to data-driven workflows requires buy-in from engineers, program managers, and operators. Training, change management, and leadership support are crucial.
Cost and Infrastructure
Developing a digital twin ecosystem requires upfront investments in sensors, high-performance computing, and secure data networks. While lifecycle costs are reduced through improved efficiency and reliability, leaders must carefully manage initial resource allocation and infrastructure buildout. However, by anticipating and addressing these barriers, the full potential of digital twins can be unlocked.
Defense leaders face a stark reality: Adversaries are investing in advanced technologies, and the speed of innovation is accelerating. Digital twin technology offers the DoD the edge for faster development, stronger reliability, and superior mission outcomes.
By creating continuously updated, AI-powered virtual replicas of critical systems, the military can test, adapt, and deploy capabilities with unprecedented speed and precision. For program leaders, the message is clear: Digital twin technology is no longer optional but the backbone of modern military readiness.
Digital twins and AI bring real-time foresight and control into defense manufacturing. Whether building new systems or sustaining legacy platforms, these technologies empower DoD leaders to reduce cost, mitigate risk, and ensure production resilience at scale. Contact us for help with the strategic integration of advanced technologies and methods to streamline and optimize the development, maintenance, and operation of systems and infrastructures.