Aerospace & Defense: AI spending set to triple by 2029, but data skills aren't keeping pace

According to forecasts from the International Data Corporation (IDC), cited in the 2026 edition of Deloitte's "Aerospace and Defense Industry Outlook," AI spending in the US aerospace and defense sector is expected to reach $5.8 billion by 2029 — a 3.5x increase from 2025 levels (roughly $1.66 billion on that basis). The same report notes that 36% of tasks in industrial products manufacturing could benefit from augmentation with agentic AI, per a separate Deloitte study ("From vision to value").

But the supply of skilled talent is growing far more slowly. Per Deloitte's analysis of Lightcast US job postings for the sector (NAICS code 3364), the share of postings mentioning data analysis is projected to rise from 9% in 2025 to roughly 14% by 2028 (+56% relative growth), and the share mentioning data science specifically from 3% to 5% (+67% relative growth) over the same period — fast in relative terms, but starting from a very narrow base.

The pacing gap is stark: sector AI spending grows roughly 3.5x by 2029, while the data-science share of job postings moves only from 3 to 5 percentage points over a comparable horizon (2025-2028). For primes investing in engines, autonomous systems, or predictive maintenance, the medium-term bottleneck is unlikely to be budget or tooling availability — it will be the ability to hire and train people who can deploy those tools effectively.

This echoes supply-chain strain already documented in the sector, with production pressure expected to persist at least through 2027 (the Pentagon having requested a quadrupling of missile production, per Newsweek, September 2025). AI-driven automation is often framed as a response to that capacity strain — but it is surfacing a new one, on skilled human capital.