From the Physical World to the Simulated World: Why Digital Twins Are a Strategic Technology for Critical Systems
Digital twins are becoming increasingly central dynamic environments for managing complex systems. XD360 has taken on this challenge within the Mashfrog ecosystem.
The market points to a clear direction: digital twins are becoming an increasingly strategic technology for highly complex sectors. This is the case, among many others, in the ASD sector: Aerospace, Security & Defense. According to the Digital Twin in Aerospace and Defense Market Report 2026, this market is expected to grow from $3.07 billion in 2026 to $6.97 billion in 2030, with an estimated annual growth rate of 22.8%.
This evolution is driven by areas such as predictive maintenance, design and development, simulation and testing, asset management, and new applications across civil, military, and space domains, where the cost of failure, the difficulty of physical testing and the need for mission readiness make digital environments especially valuable. It is no longer just about creating digital replicas of physical objects or assets, but about building dynamic, interoperable, data-driven environments capable of supporting design, simulation, monitoring, and operational decision-making.
Beyond the Digital Replica
For a long time, the concept of a digital twin was associated with the idea of a “digital copy” of the physical world. Today, that definition is no longer enough. A digital twin is not simply a virtual representation of an asset, process, or system: it is an intelligent environment that integrates data, models, and simulations to understand its behavior over time.
Its value increases when the system being observed is complex, distributed, or difficult to test directly in the real world. In these cases, a digital twin makes it possible to simulate scenarios, assess alternatives, anticipate anomalies, optimize performance, and support maintenance, training, and validation activities. It does not eliminate risk, but makes it possible to identify it earlier, measure it more accurately, and manage it with greater awareness.
Aerospace, Security & Defense: Where Simulation Becomes Strategic
Among the most complex and strategic sectors are those related to Aerospace, Security & Defense. Here, digital twins respond to particularly demanding needs: integrating heterogeneous data sources, simulating variable operating conditions, testing complex configurations, improving predictive maintenance, and supporting training and decision-making activities.
“Digital twins are becoming a strategic capability for complex and mission-critical ecosystems - explains Fabio Dellutri, Sales & Account Director at Mashfrog Group - because they connect design, simulation and operations within a single decision-making environment. This is especially relevant not only for defense applications, but also for the space domain, where validating scenarios, anticipating anomalies and optimizing system behavior before deployment can create a significant advantage in terms of resilience, time-to-mission and risk reduction”.
In these contexts, the purpose of a digital twin is not only to represent a system, but to build a simulated environment in which to analyze its behavior, verify its response, and prepare decisions before action takes place in the physical world. The NATO Science & Technology Organization itself emphasizes the importance of modeling, simulation, development, execution, and maintenance of digital twins for complex platforms and systems.
This is the key point: the more critical a system is, the more strategic it becomes to observe and test it in a reliable digital environment. Simulation helps reduce uncertainty, accelerate learning, improve predictive capabilities, and enable more resilient operating models.
XD360: Digital Expertise for Highly Complex Scenarios
This is the context for the work of XD360, a purpose-built solution for Aerospace, Security & Defense. XD360 was created to bring advanced digital expertise to environments where reliability, data integration, domain knowledge, and design capabilities are decisive factors.
XD360’s value lies in its ability to apply digital technologies and architectures to highly complex scenarios: radar systems, command-and-control rooms, and operational scenario simulation. All of this contributes to the development of advanced digital environments and solutions capable of connecting models, data, and decision-making processes. It is an approach that XD360 has recently put into practice through three distinct projects based on digital twin technologies, applied to highly complex systems in the security and defense sectors.
The Value of Digital Replicability
For Mashfrog Group, XD360’s work strengthens its positioning along a technological trajectory that is set to become increasingly central: digital twins as a lever to manage complexity, reduce risk, and generate value in strategic sectors.
In a market moving toward the convergence of the physical and digital worlds, digital twins represent a way to make systems more understandable, resilient, and governable. For Mashfrog, investing in these capabilities means contributing to the development of solutions that can transform complexity into knowledge, foresight, and value, especially in highly complex sectors.