Military trends to watch in 2025

The year ahead will be at least as uncertain, violent and chaotic as 2024. Five key trends to watch in 2025 explained in my latest Lowy article.

I regularly write columns for the Lowy Institute’s, The Interpreter. This month, I decided to look at the macro trends that were most likely to have an impact on global military affairs in the year to come.

The new year has begun with a rush of events. In Europe, governments are posturing for the arrival of the second Donald Trump administration. On his first day in office, Trump signed around 100 executive orders.

In Ukraine, both sides continue their brutal and bitter ground and aerial attacks, seeking to position themselves for any negotiations in 2025. In the Middle East, Syria remains unsettled after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire agreement, while Israel continues its operations against Hezbollah. Iran, drastically weakened over the past year, watches on nervously as the man it allegedly tried to assassinate returns to the White House. In the Pacific, China has unveiled two new stealthy aircraft, launched naval barges suitable for an invasion of Taiwan, and continues its coercion against the Philippines, Taiwan and other neighbours.

These events indicate that the year ahead will be at least as uncertain, violent and chaotic as 2024. However, besides the fighting and posturing of different actors across the globe, key trends will affect the capacity and sustainability of military forces and influence the future of war. Here are five key trends to watch in 2025.

Robotic and algorithmic war

Remotely operated (and increasingly autonomous) systems have been with us since the Second World War. However, there has been an explosion in their use since 2022. In recent strike operations and in the Battle of Lyptsi, Ukraine has used ground and maritime drones that piggy-back aerial drones. Both Ukraine and Russia have introduced fibre optic cable-controlled drones.

The AI landscape has also evolved since 2022, but not at the same pace as drones. Key AI functions that have evolved in the past three years include aiding drone targeting, open-source intelligence, fighting disinformation, supporting command and control, demining, and war crimes investigation.

A key issue to watch in 2025 will be how military institutions translate the lessons of Ukraine to the Pacific and elsewhere. The degree to which military institutions can wean themselves off an exclusive focus on expensive crewed aircraft, ships and ground vehicles, and towards a balance of crewed and uncrewed platforms remains to be seen.

The capacity of military organisations to transform their training, education, structures and doctrine for an environment where drones and algorithms are now partners (and not just tools) also bears watching. A final aspect of this trend will be how much Western nations can shift their reliance from Chinese drones and components and develop indigenous manufacturing capacity.

Nuclear weapons

Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the threat of nuclear weapons throughout the Ukraine conflict to moderate US support for Kyiv. It has worked. President Biden frequently referred to avoiding World War III, and the US strategy to reduce escalation risks has seen military assistance arrive slowly, in quantities too small to be strategically decisive, and with many caveats around operational employment. However, the nuclear posture of the United States and NATO also appears to have deterred Putin from escalating the war beyond Ukraine, notwithstanding his sabotage campaign in Europe.

Developments elsewhere will also be important to monitor. China has begun a massive expansion of its nuclear arsenal and has moved beyond its “minimum deterrence” posture of recent decades. Iran, described as a de facto threshold nuclear-weapons state by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, may decide to race to complete a nuclear weapon before Israel destroys its capacity to do so.

You can read the full article for free here at the Lowy Interpreter.