Digital twins are bridging the gap between physical systems and digital intelligence, helping the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) effectively deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools, accelerate modernization, and more efficiently deploy next-generation network capabilities and applications like Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).
Facing adversarial threats, the DoD’s strategic advantage depends on its ability to modernize its network infrastructure, ensuring system resilience, reliability, and readiness to advance national security missions. To efficiently manage and upgrade these complex networks—all while facing data transmission challenges, inter-departmental information silos, and limited joint interoperability under concepts like CJADC2—defense agencies must fully embrace digital twin technology to achieve real-time understanding, coordination, and adaptability.
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object, process, or environment that mirrors its real-world counterpart to predict future behavior. These models, driven by real-time data inputs, can replicate the attributes of a real network, enabling comprehensive insight into an organization’s connectivity. Without this technology, agencies face several potential challenges: network changes can’t be safely tested before deployment, forcing teams to operate directly on live networks, which can trigger unexpected scenarios. Trial and error often creates non-standard configurations on live networks, hindering automation. Furthermore, without an accurate network model, it’s difficult to predict how a failure will cause network congestion or isolation, reducing overall resilience and mission agility.
Consequently, digital twin technology has been a focus for the government. In February 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on the new technology, detailing how agencies can best utilize the approach. In 2024, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a request for information to develop a National Digital Twin Strategy Plan. This technology can help the DoD achieve comprehensive network modernization by lowering operational costs, reducing risks to critical missions, and improving the cybersecurity resilience of the nation’s most sensitive infrastructure. In the face of adversarial threats, there is an urgent need for innovative and forward-thinking solutions, and digital twin technology must be a core driver in the DoD’s network modernization process.
Enhancing Network Performance and Security #
Digital twins offer a smarter, faster way to design, test, deploy, and secure critical defense network systems. Traditional lab networks are often limited in scope and fidelity, unable to replicate the scale and complexity of a live DoD network. In contrast, digital twins can accurately simulate and adapt to various operational scenarios, such as battlefield dynamics, terrain effects, or maritime conditions. This allows for safe simulation and emulation of configuration changes and upgrades without affecting the live network.
Defense agencies can use digital twins to model potential disruptions, conduct vulnerability analysis, design resilient pathways, compare architectural designs, and visualize their networks. For example, the U.S. Air Force recently used digital twins to evaluate commercial network services, resulting in a 100% to 275% improvement in network resilience and a 100% to 400% improvement in performance. By leveraging digital twin technology, the department was able to simulate use cases in emergency, high-traffic scenarios and analyze which areas of network traffic might be isolated or severely restricted in the event of a commercial outage. The Air Force also simulated how and where to add commercial network services to address key resilience and performance issues.
Maritime agencies can simulate the performance of onboard networks on ships, submarines, and other military vessels under different sailing conditions, ensuring that network designs meet performance standards before any physical construction begins. This approach reduces maintenance costs, increases equipment utilization, and optimizes design and capacity planning. Digital twins also provide powerful security benefits, helping organizations strengthen network defenses while minimizing risk to live systems. By enabling threat modeling and attack simulation (such as a ransomware outbreak, denial-of-service attack, or lateral movement within the network), IT teams can proactively identify vulnerabilities and exposures before attackers can exploit them.
The technology can safely validate security policies—including firewalls, access control lists, and segmentation rules—that are critical to Zero Trust architecture. It can also ensure that identity-based access controls function correctly for different users, devices, and workloads within the defense ecosystem. Digital twins provide insights into an agency’s cybersecurity posture, allowing security teams to prioritize mitigation measures based on simulated risk scenarios and stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape.
Driving AI and Network Innovation at Scale #
As new frameworks and specialized chips for running larger, more advanced models make AI increasingly powerful, the DoD is accelerating the responsible adoption of AI at scale to provide advanced decision support.
It’s important to understand that digital twins are not merely a supporting tool but a strategic driver of innovation, playing a crucial role in preparing defense networks and infrastructure for AI integration. As a prerequisite for AI applications, the technology provides AI systems with the detailed, real-time view of the network needed to make accurate predictions and optimizations. The data fidelity provided by digital twins is essential for feeding AI models, especially in the areas of network management, predictive maintenance, and resource allocation.
AI-powered digital twin environments can also simulate the performance of DoD networks across joint platforms—including aircraft, ships, ground vehicles, satellites, and Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure—helping to ensure that every system is interconnected, responsive, and ready for action, no matter its location.
The U.S. Navy is exploring the use of digital twins to test local area networks that use wireless and satellite communication systems to reduce foreign object damage to aircraft engines, highlighting how AI-enhanced digital twin environments can prevent critical mission failures, optimize designs, and enhance readiness.
Digital twins bridge the gap between physical systems and digital intelligence, enabling the DoD to effectively deploy AI, accelerate modernization, and more efficiently deploy next-generation network capabilities, including applications like CJADC2.
The Future of Digital Twins #
For today’s defense sector, where resilient and adaptive networks are crucial for mission execution, digital twins have become a key enabler for the DoD’s next-generation network strategy. The next step is to help government and defense teams adopt this technology to enable modernization without disruption.
Adopting digital twins requires an accurate, end-to-end picture of the entire environment. Strategic industry partnerships can help defense agencies standardize enterprise networks by integrating configuration and discovery data from disparate systems, creating a continuously updated, unified model of the end-to-end environment. As data is aggregated, industry partners can support the implementation of automated cross-domain solutions to ensure that relevant data is stored in systems designed for the appropriate classification level.
The industry must work closely with defense agencies in siloed departments to gain a comprehensive understanding of their operational environments. By evaluating each department’s specific needs, pain points, and how digital twins can address them, the technology allows departments to maintain control over their systems through role-based access control. Even siloed departments can often be persuaded to share the data and system access needed to build an accurate digital twin.
When combined with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Network Development and Operations (NetDevOps), Zero Trust architecture, and defensive cyber operations, digital twins create a unified, comprehensive environment for real-time simulation, monitoring, and protection of sensitive defense systems. Digital twin technology will be central to the DoD’s network modernization process; as AI capabilities continue to expand, the role of digital twins will become even more important, serving as the foundation for data-driven decisions and improved mission success across the defense enterprise.