The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) welcomes your abstract submission for technical presentations and posters at the 2024 Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference.
This year's theme is “Delivering Global Innovation to the Warfighter at Speed and Scale.”
The Emerging Technologies Conference will provide a unique forum for exploration of the new emerging technologies that will shape national security for the next century. The conference programming will focus on several of DoD’s highest priority joint mission areas and highlight emerging technologies that are shaping the future of national defense, by gathering government, industry, and commercial experts to demonstrate and display the most innovative new technologies and discuss their defense implications. The conference will provide an opportunity for defense procurement officials to discuss their acquisition and contracting opportunities; discuss initiatives that will deliver new capabilities to operational forces rapidly and effectively; and for one-on-one engagements between industry and government.
Breakout sessions will discuss how emerging technologies including those highlighted in DOD’s critical technology areas are being used to address some of the highest priority mission challenges facing the Department of Defense today. Speakers from government, industry and academia will discuss how to create and deploy new capabilities at speed; address high priority joint warfighting challenges; and set the technical roadmap for investments in future technologies and capabilities.
The mission focus areas for the 2024 conference are planned to be:
Counter UAS – UAS have proven to be a decisive capability in the Middle East and Ukraine and will likely shape conflicts in the Pacific and throughout the globe, disrupting operational plans and acting as a weapon of terror. Companies and universities are developing innovative technologies and systems that can counter these highly effective asymmetric threats using kinetic, cyber, and other capabilities. For example, advances in sensing, AI, autonomy, and other fields will drive new counter UAS systems and capabilities.
This track invites submissions on counter UAS technologies that show promise to create decisive advantage for warfighters or allow current systems to better leverage emerging technologies, especially technologies and systems that will be ready for production and deployment within the next five years.
Contested Logistics – Future military operations will likely be conducted over vast geographic areas and require the delivery of equipment, personnel, data, food, and fuel through multiple domains and in the face of kinetic and cyber-attacks and disruption. Emerging technologies from fields such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and autonomy are being used to create new robust and reliable logistics capabilities for future operations.
This track invites submissions on logistics technologies or systems that show promise to improve the ability to improve the planning and execution of logistics missions in contested environments or allow current systems to better leverage emerging or commercial technologies, especially technologies and systems that will be ready for production and deployment within the next five years.
CJADC2 – Current and future exercises, operations and warfighting in multi-domain, fast-paced, and contested environments involving multitudes of adversary targets and friendly shooters will require rapid decision-making, resilient networks and data flows as well as exceptional battle management tools to successfully execute within these complex scenarios. Combined-Joint All Domain Command and Control capabilities are foundational to advancing this concept for decision superiority over any adversary. Emerging technologies must be integrated into the CJADC2 concept to achieve speed, scale, and common situational awareness up and down the chain of command.
This track invites submissions from both US and allied partner organizations in government, industry, and academia on activities that are performing operational activities, prototyping, experimentation and technical work to advance the CJADC2 concept. These range the Air Force’s AMBS program, to the Navy’s Project Overmatch, to the results of the Army’s latest Project Convergence Capstone 4 as well as CJDAD2 architectures, data layers and battle management applications. Also included is the use of advance networking, cloud services, and AI/ML employment.
Allies & Partners – The National Defense Strategy, National Defense Industrial Strategy, and National Defense Science and Technology Strategy all highlight the role of Allies and International Partners in developing and delivering future warfighting capabilities. Partnerships with Allied governments, industry, and universities are giving the US access to emerging technologies and innovations not available domestically. Coordination and partnership in the development of new capabilities ranging from communications to logistics to munitions also creates more robust and capable coalition forces.
This track invites submissions from both US and allied partner organizations in government, industry, and academia on activities that are introducing new innovative capabilities for coalition forces, demonstrate new ways to partner US and Allied research and development efforts, or better integrate allied supply chains to meet future coalition needs.
Game Changing Emerging Technologies – Emerging technologies will shape the future of all national security activities in the future. Innovation ranging from basic research to prototyping, and coming from university, defense industry, commercial, and Allied sources is being harnessed to build the force of the future.
This track invites submissions from both US and allied partner organizations in government, industry, and academia on activities that are performing technical work to deliver new products, systems, and services to support future warfighting needs. These range from basic research to prototyping activities across the full spectrum of future conflict. The track also will include discussions of the innovative activities of key government, industry, and partner nation programs and initiatives that are supporting efforts to develop and deliver emerging technologies at speed and scale.