Global Aerospace and Defense Market Evolution and Emerging Commercial Success Factors

The global defense market is amid the most significant structural changes since the end of the Cold War. The key catalysts are the experiences of the Ukraine War and the Persian Gulf conflict, the rise of software-defined, autonomous, and attritable systems, and acute munitions scarcity and supply-chain limitations and risk — all set against significant increases in global defense budgets. Together, these forces are rewriting what militaries buy, who they buy it from, and how quickly they expect capability to be successfully fielded. As the largest global buyer of defense products, the U.S. Department of War is responding by pushing both government and industry to accelerate and expand alternative acquisition pathways that reward speed, commercial practices, and demonstrable digital maturity over traditional program-of-record timelines and processes, while a new generation of market entrants is both catalyzing this change and simultaneously exploiting it.

In this discussion, the panel will examine these market changes through three traditional U.S. prime, and an international A&D company — to explore what will increasingly be required to meet customer expectations and to be commercially successful.