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24 Mar 2025
The fifth iteration of the Singapore Defence Technology Summit (SDTS) saw some 1,100 participants from 37 countries come together to discuss pressing topics in the defence technology landscape and forge partnerships in an era of uncertainty.
Held from 18 to 20 March 2025, this year’s summit was themed ‘Navigating an Uncertain Tomorrow – Technology and Partnerships’ and brought together leaders from government, industry, academia and think-tanks from across the globe.
Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen delivered the welcome remarks for the event’s opening. He highlighted the importance of balancing defence innovations with safeguards.
He said: “This difficult tension with new discoveries – new technology on one hand improving our lives while on the other potentially causing harm – is a recurrent theme in the progress of mankind.”
At the Opening Address, Deputy Prime Minister Mr Heng Swee Keat underscored the importance of continuous adapting, innovating and forging of partnerships.
“Across geopolitics, global security and technology, we are witnessing fundamental shifts that challenge long-held assumptions and demand new approaches to defence and stability,” he said.
Some 40 notable speakers shared their insights through the various segments including Government and Tech Leader Remarks, Fireside Chats, Tech Talks and five plenary sessions.
The discussions were focused on various topics such as evolving threats, geopolitics and nature of conflicts and their impact on defence technology, driving innovation to meet evolving defence challenges, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in defence and security, disruption by digital and emerging technology as well as defence technology strategies for innovation and resilience.
Apart from facilitating conversations on the most pressing issues facing the defence landscape, SDTS also serves as a global platform to foster collaborations with leading players to build up DSTA’s strengths in emerging tech domains such as autonomy, AI and robotics.
On the sidelines of SDTS, DSTA established joint collaborations with government institutions, innovative companies and leading commercial tech players, tapping on the best expertise around the world to co-create novel, cost-effective solutions for the Singapore Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) and the Singapore Armed Forces. These include with Oracle, Shield AI, Anduril Industries and Mistral AI.
DSTA is embarking on a pilot collaboration with Oracle on their Cloud Isolated Region to accelerate innovation and deployment of AI for SAF missions in a secured environment.
Ministry of Defence, DSTA and DSO National Laboratories will partner France’s Mistral AI to co-develop Generative AI models to augment the SAF’s sensemaking and decision support capabilities, such as mission planning.
DSTA and the RSAF will collaborate with Anduril Industries to explore advancements in mission-autonomy for manned-unmanned teaming concepts, enhancing situational awareness for the RSAF.
RSAF and DSTA will partner Shield AI to co-develop AI for autonomous flight operations, improving the RSAF’s warfighting capabilities.
Given much synergy in exchanging insights with foreign militaries and defence organisations with deep insights in the battlefield, DSTA also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with armasuisse (Switzerland’s Federal Office for Defence Procurement) on behalf of MINDEF, as well as co-chaired an annual bilateral meeting with the German Federal Ministry of Defence.
DSTA CE Mr Ng Chad-Son signing the MoU on behalf of MINDEF with Dr Urs Loher, National Armaments Director of armasuisse. The MoU deepens collaboration in robotics, air systems and defence innovation.
DSTA CE and VADM Carsten Stawitzki at the German Armament Dialogue held on the sidelines of the summit.
Apart from forging partnerships and strengthening international ties, SDTS provided an opportunity to engage and inspire future defence technology experts. Close to 120 students were invited to attend specially curated talks with speakers at the summit – Co-Founder of Cohere Mr Ivan Zhang as well as Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Resaro Singapore Ms April Chin.
As the summit concluded, participants reflected on their takeaways.
Dr Christopher Kirchhoff, Author of Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War, from USA, said: “There's been a lot of really interesting conversation about AI, autonomy, and their intersection.” He also shared that the summit was “very, intellectually provocative.”
Reflecting on the event, Mr Waleid Al Mesmari, President of Space and Cyber Technologies at EDGE Group, United Arab Emirates, highlighted that there is an “evolving threat landscape” and it is necessary to innovate on the way capabilities are developed and even more so to partner different players, from large enterprises to start-ups.
General Sir Jim Hockenhull, Commander, UK Strategic Command, had a great experience at the summit. He shared: “It's a real opportunity to engage with influential individuals with thoughtful partners and a whole range of different people and sharing ideas, playing with new concepts, I think it has been absolutely fascinating.”
Ms April Chin gleaned many insights from the summit and added that DSTA’s “ability to convene everyone here over the last three days has been a very, very rich, exchange of insights.”
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