Every December, Orlando becomes a global crossroads for training and simulation. I/ITSEC brings together defense, industry, and academia to compare notes on what readiness should look like next, and which technologies are finally mature enough to carry real operational weight. In 2025, the conference theme was “Optimizing Training: Ensuring Operational Dominance,” and the show floor reflected exactly that mood. The conversation was less about possibility and more about deployment.
I/ITSEC 2025 drew close to 16,000 participants and representation from 55 nations, which matters because training problems are rarely unique to one service or one country. Everyone is trying to increase training frequency and realism while dealing with the same constraints: limited assets, limited instructor time, and the rising complexity of modern missions.
What stood out most was not any single demo or application. It was the pattern that connected them. XR is no longer being treated as a special event or cool technology. It is being shaped into something that can live inside everyday training systems, with the ergonomics, workflow, and reliability that implies.
Pilot training still commands attention at I/ITSEC, and for good reason. The physicality of the cockpit, the expectation of visual acquity, and the cost of live flight hours make simulation a natural fit. But what felt different in 2025 was how much of the XR conversation had moved beyond pilots.
The strongest momentum was in roles that sit adjacent to aircraft and vehicles, and often determine whether missions succeed in the first place. Driver training and driver gunner coordination. Hoist operations. Boom lift and ground handling. Deck operations. Maintenance tasks that must be done correctly, quickly, and repeatedly. Joint fires and tactical coordination. Medical training. Counter drone procedures. Communication scenarios where the goal is judgement, not marksmanship.
XR is increasingly being used where training needs repetition and pressure, but live rehearsal is costly, risky, or simply impractical.
Walking the exhibition hall, you could roughly sense four “modes” emerging, each with its own requirements.
The first is cockpit and station based training, where the operator is seated or largely fixed in place. Visual stability, instrument readability, and physical controls dominate the experience.
The second is stationary but embodied training, where people stand, turn, kneel, and interact with equipment, such as gunners, hoist operators, or weapon handling trainers.
The third is semi mobile training where users take a few steps, work in teams, and rely on constant communication. Joint fires, sand table style planning, flight line operations, and drone tasks showed up here again and again.
The fourth is fully mobile training, which includes close quarters team movement, ground combat mission rehearsal, and some law enforcement scenarios.
These modes matter because they create very different constraints. If multiple users are in the same space, tracking and safety become central. If the task is about communication and timing, graphical fidelity is less important than believable interaction and reliable voice workflows. If the task depends on precise distance judgement, depth perception and clarity become non-negotiable.
One of the most consistent themes in conversations with integrators was deployment practicality. Many systems were designed to be transported, set up quickly, and run without specialist support. That push toward portability is not just a convenience feature. It is an acknowledgement that readiness cannot depend only on fixed facilities and scheduled training windows.
This aligns with what I/ITSEC itself highlights as a broad trend: immersive 3D environments and integrated training technologies that can be adopted across a wider set of users and contexts, not just flagship sites.
You could see this in the preference for smaller footprints, ruggedized cases, and instructor workflows that assume minimal friction. It is also why accessories are becoming more visible in the ecosystem, from upgraded head straps to more robust tracking options and purpose built storage solutions. When XR becomes something you deploy often, the small details become the difference between a system people use and a system people avoid.
It was also striking how the idea of realism has matured. In many booths, realism did not mean a visual spectacle. It meant the ability to practice what actually causes failure in real operations.
In joint fires training, that often means observation, target identification, and coordination under time pressure. It means managing tools, comms, and situational awareness simultaneously, and doing it in a way that transfers to live settings. When JTAC and JFO style tasks appeared, they were rarely presented as a single-person experience. They were presented as team training, because that is how the job exists in reality.
In vehicle training, realism often meant terrain behavior, convoy discipline, threat response, and the ability to replay and debrief decisions. In maintenance, realism meant procedural accuracy, tool familiarity, and the ability to add stress factors while still capturing performance data. In medical training, realism often meant decision making under stress and correct sequencing, supported by tactile cues and physiological response models.
Across these areas, after-action review has become a defining capability. The common expectation is that XR training should not only run the scenario but also capture enough meaningful data to support learning and progression. And XR technology has some advantages on this front, for example around eye-tracking data and performance analytics that can be instantly gathered.
Another recurring theme was the desire to train in the same constraints people operate in. Headsets, helmets, gloves, oxygen masks, protective equipment, and sometimes restricted visibility are not edge cases for defense training. They are the baseline.
This has clear design implications. Headsets need to accommodate varied head shapes and gear interfaces. Systems need to support tasks that require kneeling, looking down, or operating close to the body without losing tracking. In some cases, mixed reality becomes valuable not because of a “wow” factor, but because it allows a user to read, write, and operate real equipment while still being immersed in the scenario.
When you combine this with the move toward portability, you get a strong signal about where XR is heading. It is moving away from controlled lab conditions and toward training that can happen in real facilities, with real constraints, and with fewer compromises.
I also noticed how often biometrics, human factors and cognitive load came up, sometimes directly in demos and sometimes in side conversations about what training systems will need next. The underlying idea is simple. If training is about readiness, then we need better ways to understand performance and strain, not just whether someone completed a checklist.
The industry is clearly experimenting with how to capture that data in a useful way, and how to present it without overwhelming instructors. This is still evolving, but it is increasingly part of what people expect modern training technology to enable.
From my perspective, the most important story of I/ITSEC 2025 was not that XR is everywhere. It is how the ecosystem around XR is evolving.
The questions people asked were practical. How fast can this deploy? How does it integrate with existing workflows? What does it take to keep it running? Can trainees use it without heavy technical support? Does it work with the gear they actually wear? Can it scale to team training? What data does it capture for debrief?
That is a good sign. It means XR is no longer being evaluated as a novelty. It is now being treated as core infrastructure.
Beyond an overwhelming sense of appreciation for our customers and partners, I left I/ITSEC feeling that military training is now fully in the next phase in the adoption curve- where immersive technology is undergoing widespread incorporation into program requirements, curriculum and large-scaled deployments.
Exciting times ahead.
- Tristan
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