Delivering New Capabilities To Warfighters at Speed, Scale.

• Author: Shyu, Heidi

The rate of technology development is accelerating today, and the Defense Department is adapting to foster emerging technology.

As stated in the recently released National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, accelerated technology advancement and innovation are key elements to achieving department priorities.

The upcoming 2023 National Defense Industrial Association Emerging Technologies Conference is an event where we can focus on and discuss what we're doing and what we need to do to accelerate technology advancement and innovation.

The Aug. 28-30 conference will be a venue for government and industry to discuss how to build the partnerships necessary to rapidly move emerging technologies and capabilities into the hands of our warfighters, from the laboratory to the theater. Fostering more direct dialogue between customers, such as operational users, and industry innovators is a good way to help speed up the innovation process.

We expect that this event will bring together an exciting mix of speakers and attendees, including program executive officers, program managers, warfighters, technology leaders from both the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and their partners in the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

There will also be key industry program leaders, technical experts and business development officers. High level keynote speakers from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, military services, industry and academia will discuss the broader technological competition and the critical need to deliver new capabilities. Panels and breakout rooms that mix industry and government technical and acquisition experts will dig deeper into the details of what industry and the department need from each other to better identify, develop and field emerging technologies.

We will focus on some of the highest priority joint mission areas, with a strong focus on counter-unmanned aerial systems, operational energy and contested logistics. NDIA will be accepting abstracts on technologies within these three tracks that show results, and which can be fielded in the next five years. In addition to these specific mission areas, the conference will also focus on "game-changing" emerging technologies such as microelectronics, artificial intelligence, FutureG technologies and biotechnology.

Additionally, companies and government agencies will be displaying their new technologies and...