5W's Defense & Aerospace AI Visibility Index 2026 tested 28,400 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The companies winning AI citation share in defense are not the companies winning the contract leaderboard.
Navy Recruiting Command rebuilt its brand after the 2022 miss and hit its 40,600-sailor target a year early. Inside the Forged by the Sea rebuild, eligibility reforms, recruiter enablement, and the Gen Z playbook the rest of the U.S. military is now copying.
Defense communications priorities for prime contractors, defense-tech challengers, and public affairs — military recruiting, congressional communications, veteran outreach, and the operating playbooks of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and General Dynamics.
Ukraine is the first country to fight a major war in the age of social media, AI engines, satellites, smartphones, and real-time global narrative competition — and built one of the most sophisticated communications operations in modern history. The Ukraine Influence Index ranks the 25 institutions winning the AI engine citation stack.