CARLISLE, Pennsylvania — Hundreds of defense companies traveled to the Army War College outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for the Defense and Innovation Summit on Tuesday looking to learn more about new opportunities to partner with one another and the Department of War to benefit the military.
Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) hosted the summit, and his staff set up meetings for the roughly 250 companies that requested it in a “speed dating” setup to give the organization leaders the chance to get to know one another and see if there were opportunities for collaboration, a staffer for the senator told the Washington Examiner.
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“If you get the right people in the room, it’s extremely effective because a lot of times you’ll go to these conferences as a participant, and you know it’s a boondoggle unless you have one good meeting,” the staffer said. “This is by no way, shape, or form a boondoggle, but we’re also trying to make stuff happen for Pennsylvania, and so now you’ve got the great substance of the agenda, and they can walk away with a business card and a meaningful in the calendar next step that actually catalyzes business for Pennsylvania.”
Nearly all of the companies that asked to be included in the meetings got seven meetings, each of which lasted about 20 minutes.
Approximately 500 companies were in attendance, roughly 70%-80% of which have business in Pennsylvania, and most of the companies included in the event that don’t currently do business in the Keystone State have expressed interest in doing so.
“So the goal was to catalyze business, and we’re setting up four types of meetings: buyer-supplier, company-investor, organization-researcher — like all the R1 universities are here — and then organization-workforce developer. Those are the four types of meetings,” the staffer said.
Pennsylvania plays a critical role in the defense industrial base, accounting for nearly 9,000 companies that employ more than 190,000 people and have more than $250 billion in Pentagon contracts over the last two decades. There were traditional defense contractors, newer contractors looking to break into the space, and Pennsylvania university representatives in attendance. The primary fields involved manufacturing, critical minerals, robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, space, and more.
Many of the companies participating in the summit had booths set up to demonstrate their platform and engage with other businesses.
The Department of War, under the Trump administration, is looking to supercharge the defense industrial base that has shrunk since the 1990s, coinciding with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Back in 1993, then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry hosted representatives from major defense companies at the Pentagon for a meeting, which has been nicknamed the “Last Supper,” where they informed those representatives that the Clinton administration intended to decrease defense spending.
Now, amid a global AI race, the administration is looking to expand the defense industrial base with newer and smaller companies, including those that may not have traditionally done defense, like tech.
Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war for research and engineering, told attendees the department is “definitely in a mode of we have to have a wartime footing given the conflicts in the world.”
The Pentagon’s defense request for fiscal 2027 calls for roughly $1.15 trillion in defense spending, while the administration also wants Congress to pass both a reconciliation package for roughly $350 billion more and an $80 billion supplemental that is supposed to cover the costs of the Iran war. If they pass, the $1.5 trillion defense budget would be the largest in the country’s history, though it would still be a lower percentage of the U.S.’s gross domestic product than defense spending levels during the Cold War, Vietnam War, Korean War, and World War II.
The United States has expended thousands of munitions in the war in Iran — and they may dip further into those stocks — that will take years to replace, even as the department is working with the companies that manufacture them to expand their production. President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act in June to boost munition production and speed, even as White House and Pentagon officials maintain there is no impact.
“China, Iran, Russia, North Korea — they all share one objective: a weakened United States,” McCormick said in his opening remarks. “They’re actively working together toward that end. And meanwhile, we’ve got big changes: AI, autonomous systems, precision weapons. They’re transforming. We see it on television every day. They’re transforming warfare in ways that were unimaginable when I served in the 82nd Airborne Division 35 years ago in Operation Desert Storm. And yet, our defense industry, our defense establishment, has grown lethargic, and our definition of national security too narrow.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the important role the attendees play in innovating, testing, and manufacturing cutting-edge technology for the warfighters. He emphasized how the transformation in technology has dramatically reduced the amount of time for a leader to make crucial battlefield decisions.
“They had days and weeks. We’re now down to simply seconds,” Caine said.
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“We’ve got defense CEOs, tech pioneers, capital allocators, investors, military officers. And the way I think about this is the three amigos of America’s defense: funders, founders, and fighters. And you got to have all three to drive America’s combat capability,” he said. “Your joint force is entering an era in which real-time data, autonomous systems, human-to-machine teaming is not an option, it’s a requirement. And that’s why events like this here in Pennsylvania, the partnerships forged tonight between the joint force, entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, and like I said, founders, funders, and fighters, is so important.”
President Donald Trump is set to speak on the second day of the summit, as are Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Air Force Secretary Troy Meink.
