Abstract
Purpose: Recent trends have shown that the usage of big data analysis is becoming the core of identifying promising future technologies and emerging technologies. Accordingly, applying these trends by analyzing defense related data in such sources as journals, articles, and news will provide crucial clues in predicting and identifying core future technologies that can be used to develop creative and unprecedented future weapon systems that could change the warfare. Methods: To identify technology fields that are closely related to the 4th industrial revolution and recent technology development trends, environmental analysis, text mining, and military applicability survey have been included in the process. After the identification of core technologies that are militarily applicable, future weapon systems based on these technologies as well as their operation concepts are suggested. Results: Through the study, 73 important trends, from which 11 mega trends are derived, are identified. These mega trends can be expressed by 13 promising technology fields. From these technology fields, 248 promising future technologies are identified. Afterwards, further assessment is performed, which leads to the selection of 63 core technologies from the pool. These are named as "future defense technologies" which then become the bases for 40 future weapons systems that the military can use. Conclusion: Predicting future technologies using text mining analysis have been attempted by various organizations across the globe, especially in the fields related to the 4th industrial revolution. However, the application of it in the field of defense industry is unprecedented. Therefore, this study is meaningful in that it not only enables the military personnel to see promising future technologies that can be utilized for future weapon system development, but helps one to predict the future defense technologies using the method introduced in the paper.