In the era of digital economy, defense advanced-research management should actively face the trend of digital transformation and build a management system that is compatible with the development of the digital economy. By studying the lessons learned from civil R & D plans as well as the transformation property of digital economy, the main difficulties and requirements faced by the digital transformation of defense advanced research management were summarized and analyzed. A new paradigm for improving defense advanced-research management-digital twin defense advanced-research was put forward, in which digital twin was employed to help the digital transformation of defense advanced-research management. Furthermore, the compositions, features, capabilities, key technologies and construction stages were elaborated explicitly, in order that digital twin defense advanced-research can play a reference and promotion role for innovating the defense advanced-research management.