Abstracts Descriptions

Submissions will open soon!

The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) welcomes your abstract submission for technical presentations and posters at the 2026 Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference.

The NDIA 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 Department of Defense’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 DoD 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 2026 conference are planned to be:

Game Changing 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 are 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.

Allies & Partners

Allies and International Partners will play a pivotal role in developing and delivering future warfighting capabilities.  Partnerships with Allied governments, industry, and universities are giving the US access to emerging technologies and innovations that are not available domestically. Coordination and partnership in the development of new capabilities ranging from communications to logistics and 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.

Data Analytics

This track invites submissions for presentations from government, industry, commercial, and academia on research, products, and services making use of advanced AI software, autonomy, enterprise data, and analytics to deliver advanced defense capabilities, including addressing enterprise data connections and governance, deployment of AI, and software testing, evaluation, and validation, and other defense capabilities. Example technologies and capabilities include contested logistics, cloud, edge, and hybrid platform architecture, scalable AI architecture, and responsible AI.

This track invites describing research, products, and services from government, industry, commercial, and academia.

Digital Engineering

The use and integration of digital models and underlying data to support the development, test and evaluation, and sustainment of a system to reinforce programs and systems for research and engineering operations and acquisition programs. Digital engineering will be critical to support acquisition and sustainment in an environment of increasing global challenges, complexity, dynamic threats, rapidly evolving technologies, supply chain instability, and increasing the life expectancy of current systems in operation.

This track invites submissions from both US and allied partner organizations in government, industry, and academia on activities that are introducing new innovative capabilities to take full advantage of computation, visualization, and collaboration to enable faster, smarter, data-driven decisions throughout the system life cycle.

Energy & Power

The deployment of advanced military capabilities is dependent on having robust and reliable sources of energy and power and the domestic and deployable infrastructure necessary to support the requirements of mission. This track invites submissions from government, industry, and academia on activities that are developing and demonstrating advanced energy and power technologies, including those designed to support military platforms, dismounted warfighters, and critical infrastructure. This can include all aspects of military energy and power capabilities, including generation, storage, transmission, resilience of infrastructure, and efficient use of energy and power.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology and biomanufacturing will create new military capabilities for missions ranging from combat casualty care, combat feeding, manufacturing, sensing, information processing and storage, and warfighter performance monitoring and enhancement. This track invites submissions from government, industry, and academia on activities that are developing and demonstrating advanced biotechnology and biomanufacturing capabilities that can support reducing the costs and improving the effectiveness of military missions.

Advanced Technologies for Acquisition and Financial Management Operations

Advanced technologies in areas including computing, information processing, AI-enabled analytics and business process modeling, and physical asset tracking can reshape the way the Pentagon executes its business operations, ranging from acquisition to financial management. This track invites submissions from government, industry, and academia on activities that are developing and demonstrating new data collection and analytics technologies and services that provide DOW decision makers, especially financial management professionals, with new capabilities to execute their missions.