About this Event
Advancing Rapid Defense Innovation Symposium (ARDIS)
The 2026 Advancing Rapid Defense Innovation Symposium (ARDIS) will expand to a two-day event designed to focus on innovation as an operational necessity. ARDIS 2026 will examine how the character of war is changing in real time, and what those changes mean for defense technology, acquisition, integration, testing, and production.
The program is built around hard lessons now visible across current conflicts: low-cost mass can challenge exquisite systems, drone warfare has changed the economics of air defense, software and data fusion increasingly determine combat tempo, and resilient industrial capacity is now inseparable from battlefield advantage.
Organized as a forum for government, industry, startups, academia, and operators, ARDIS 2026 will focus on the pathways required to turn battlefield problems into fielded capability.
The symposium will emphasize layered counter-UAS defense, autonomous systems, AI-enabled decision support, electronic warfare, contested logistics, cyber resilience, and the industrial base reforms needed to produce relevant systems at combat pace. That framing is consistent with the Department’s strategy for countering unmanned systems, updated counter-drone guidance for U.S. installations, recent experimentation linking industry with warfighters, the Acquisition Transformation Strategy, and the 2026 National Defense Strategy’s call to rebuild the defense industrial base at speed and scale.
Rather than simply spotlighting emerging technologies, ARDIS 2026 will ask a more urgent set of questions: Which capabilities are proving survivable in contested environments? Which systems can be scaled affordably? What kind of software, architecture, supply chain, and contracting model is required to win adaptation cycles faster than adversaries? Over two days, the event will connect operational lessons to practical defense innovation pathways relevant to warfare centers, defense primes, nontraditional firms, venture-backed startups, and the broader national security industrial base.
The symposium is proudly produced in partnership with Naval Air Weapons Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) and US Navy Tech Grid, and presented by Saalex Corporation.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Kerr McGee Center, 100 West California Avenue, Ridgecrest, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 391.33
