Deloitte at Farnborough International Airshow 2026

Agentic AI represents a fundamental shift in defense capability. The transition is no longer from analogue to digital. It is from systems that inform to systems that can plan, coordinate, and act.

This panel explores how defense organizations move rapidly from isolated AI experimentation to operationally trusted capability without compromising governance, safety, assurance, or mission effectiveness.

The discussion centers on four strategic questions: 

• Where agentic AI creates genuine operational advantage 
• How trust, assurance, and accountability are embedded from the outset 
• Where humans must remain in the decision loop 
• What digital foundations are required to scale beyond pilots

The session is designed as a practical leadership discussion focused on delivery, operational reality, and adoption at pace.

Satellites underpin our daily lives and provide critical military capabilities across Allied nations. Ensuring the cyber security of these critical assets is now a focus for government agencies and satellite operators alike. Deloitte’s Silent Shield on-orbit cyber defence solution provides real-time insight to protect constellations and enable industry information sharing.

Aerospace and defense leaders are rethinking how new aircraft programs are designed, built, and scaled amid rising demands for speed, cost discipline, sustainability, and mission readiness. This discussion will explore how clean-sheet aircraft programs can benefit from stronger ecosystem partnerships, digital engineering, connected data, and emerging technologies such as AI and cloud. Leaders will share perspectives on what it takes to stand up a modern aircraft manufacturing enterprise — from early design decisions through production and operations. Attendees will hear practical perspectives on collaboration across the aerospace value chain, integrating engineering and technology across organizations, and applying new delivery models to accelerate innovation.

Defense is entering a new era of capital and innovation. From venture funding and private equity to IPOs and dual-use technologies, this discussion will examine how shifting investment dynamics are driving faster deal cycles, higher valuations and new expectations for growth, operational performance, and strategic advantage.

Defense is often tasked with delivering the national growth agenda at the same time as focusing on the delivery of improved military capability. While these outcomes can appear to be in tension, they can be complementary, strengthening and supporting each other. Given the complexity inherent in defense supply chains, there is a growing need for effective relationships between defense and industry. This combined with increased clarity in the definition of planning assumptions can support effective decision-making concerning force structure and readiness, enabling effective investment, and improved delivery of defense outcomes.

Aerospace and defense (A&D) programs increasingly depend on collaboration across primes, suppliers, and allied nations, yet the data at the heart of that collaboration is highly sensitive and tightly regulated. Sovereign cloud and modern design-collaboration tools propose a way through sharing the digital thread without surrendering control of it. This panel will examine what sovereignty means in practice, the case beyond compliance, and where it helps A&D leaders to win work, onboard collaborators faster, and strengthen resilience.

People, skills, and workforce capability are becoming central to the future resilience and growth of Defense and the industrial aerospace sector worldwide. This executive panel will bring together senior leaders from government, defense, and industry to explore forward-looking strategies for developing talent, strengthening workforce capability, and enabling long-term operational readiness in an increasingly dynamic global environment.