The Russia-Ukraine war and the Middle East conflict deliver a common message: artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing the paradigm of the battlefield across situational awareness, command and control, and weapons operations, and defense AI is determining the outcome of wars. At the core is the fact that AI is operating in earnest as the "brain" of the battlefield. The Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) system, which the United States has applied in actual combat, allows AI to analyze data the moment a target is detected and automatically connect and execute the optimal response. In real operations, it has reached the level of striking more than 1,000 targets in sequence within 60 seconds. It is not only speed that has changed. Palantir's AI platform immediately presents response scenarios to commanders' queries, transforming the quality of operational decisions. The entire OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) of the battlefield now runs on an AI foundation.
What made this shift possible lies not in the technology itself but in the structure. The United States has built a defense AI ecosystem known as "SHARPE," led by Palantir and Anduril and including Shield AI, HawkEye 360, Rebellion Defense, and Epirus. These companies have an average history of only about 10 years, yet their corporate valuations exceed $1 billion (about 1.469 trillion won). Backed by venture investment, they are rapidly commercializing autonomous flying drones and AI-based tactical support software. The core of their competitiveness is that the military has boldly opened its data to these companies, establishing a defense AI innovation base through the private sector's technological capabilities.
Korea has also steadily accumulated defense AI capabilities. Now, beyond merely adopting AI technology, the nation must transform the entire constitution of national defense onto an AI foundation and secure execution capacity for AI transformation (AX) in defense. To this end, data, technology infrastructure, institutions, and organizations must be innovated in an integrated manner alongside technology development.
The starting point of execution is data. The military faces significant constraints on accumulating and utilizing data due to the special nature of security. To address this, AX hub centers where the military, industry, and academia conduct research and verification in one space are being established. Going further, the "data safe zone," which opens and utilizes data in a secured environment, must be upgraded and developed into a "battlefield-type testbed" that reflects actual operational environments to verify and deploy AI technology.
The driving force behind defense AX is the private sector's defense AI capabilities. The "Defense AX Sprint" program is an initiative in which startups and small and medium-sized enterprises directly tackle defense challenges with their own AI technologies. A virtuous cycle must be created in which participating companies solve defense problems while securing core technologies and growing into specialized defense firms. To this end, institutional transitions that lower the threshold for civil-military cooperation are important, just as the United States has cultivated private companies as defense partners.
The "Defense Experimentation Program," which was expanded this year, also deserves attention. It is a pathway for verifying technology early through rapid failure and learning and swiftly deploying it as military capability. To accelerate this, the program must be transformed into a permanent, combat-oriented testing system that regularizes AI and information operations experiments and rapidly absorbs the private sector's technological achievements. At the same time, defense AX must be advanced by expanding informatization capabilities such as next-generation networks, quantum, and cybersecurity.
The essence of the future battlefield is clear. It is no longer about "who has the stronger weapon" but "who analyzes more quickly and accurately and connects that to action." As AI changes the unit of war execution from minutes to seconds, the expectation is that the public and private sectors, through bold defense AX, will actively prepare for the future security environment and stand tall in the global defense AI market.
