Defense IT Convergence in South Korea

Abstract

In recent decades, the role of Information Technology (IT) has grown across the globe in the area of national defense, yet the value of emerging technologies may sometimes be over-or underestimated. IT technologies are grafted onto national defense systems in order to improve the accuracy of weapon system or support decision making process, which is defined as defense IT convergence. This study analyses the status of defense IT applications and identifies the tendency toward defense IT convergence in emerging technologies. To do this, we investigated 89 systems in South Korea and other countries, classifying systems by military domain category, and identifying their underlying technologies. These underlying technologies were placed on Gartner's hype cycle, indicating the position of the identified defense IT applications on this long-term cycle. Most countries, including South Korea, have a high level of practical use in most proven-technology: complex-event processing, machine-to-machine communication services, and predictive analytics. Interestingly, the results show that South Korea has a risk-avoiding tendency in defense IT policy, which means that the country has fewer technologies in the trigger level of the hype cycle compared to the international average. Also we found that the average number of technologies used in defense IT systems in South Korea is smaller than the international average, which means that South Korea is comparatively weak in integrating multiple technologies into systems.