Russia, explained.
Ukrainian servicemen operate a reconnaissance drone in the area of Pokrovsk, Ukraine on 14 January 2025. (Wolfgang Schwan/Getty)
The year ahead will be at least as uncertain, violent and chaotic as 2024. Here are five key trends to watch in 2025.
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Military trends to watch in 2025Military trends to watch in 2025
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.
Ukraine has used ground and maritime drones that piggy-back aerial drones.
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.
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.
Putin has used the threat of nuclear weapons throughout the Ukraine conflict to moderate US support for Kyiv. It has worked.
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.
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.
Military spending debates will loom in 2025, largely because of threats made by Donald Trump regarding allies and partners not spending enough on their own defence. In some cases, his remarks have already sparked increases in spending. The combination of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s remarks about NATO in his first term are the principal drivers for an increase in NATO spending in the past decade.
Trump has already forecast that he will continue to pressure allies to spend more on defence, describing a target of 5% of GDP for NATO members. A decade ago, only 3 of 31 NATO members spent 2% of GDP; now, all but eight meet or exceed this baseline. NATO is already reviewing whether the 2% baseline should be increased. And given that Australian defence spending only just meets 2%, and an increasing proportion of the budget is being absorbed by submarines, Australia will not be immune from US pressure to increase spending.
The past three years have seen an expanding range of studies about remediating Western defence-industrial capacity to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine and prepare for future conflicts. But mobilising national capacity requires a holistic approach embracing the most effective use of people, information, infrastructure, allies and industry. All nations must possess, at a minimum, a plan for the expansion of their military, intelligence and manufacturing in case war comes.
Members of NATO have slowly stepped up their defence industrial capacity, and the Australian Defence Force has undertaken mobilisation studies in the past few years. But much more needs to be done and it will be an important trend to watch in the coming year.
There is a growing debate about the magnitude of the threat posed by the alignment of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. These nations share a desire to overturn the post-Second World War global order and return the world to a darker era in international affairs. These nations are conducting joint training activities, such as China-Russia joint bomber patrols and naval exercises, fighting together (North Korean troops aiding Russia's Ukraine campaign), and have formed a learning community to gain a better understanding of how Western nations fight, make political and strategic decisions, and support each other.
The trends identified in this article are not the only ones that might influence the behaviour and strategies of this alignment of authoritarians, but they are likely to be those which have the most influence in 2025.
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