The Protocase Companies today announced the inaugural Velocity Summit, a national convening focused on one of the most pressing challenges in U.S. defense: the inability to design, build, and deploy military capability at the speed modern conflict demands. The Summit will take place on November 17, 2026, in Wilmington, North Carolina, bringing together leaders across defense, government, advanced manufacturing, and emerging technology.
Rather than introducing a predefined solution, the Velocity Summit is designed to bring together a critical mass of stakeholders to develop a shared understanding of the problem and begin shaping a coordinated path forward. A central objective of the event is to explore the formation of a sustained, cross-sector working group over time, built in partnership with the right stakeholders across industry, government, and academia.
Across ships, aircraft, munitions, and autonomous systems, the pattern is increasingly clear. Programs extend years beyond schedule, designs struggle to converge, and production systems fail to scale when requirements evolve. The U.S. Navy's Constellation-class frigate program has absorbed billions in cost with no operational ships delivered. Advanced fighter and weapons platforms routinely take more than a decade to field. Munitions stockpiles remain constrained, and efforts to surge production continue to expose brittle supply chains.
These are not isolated breakdowns. They reflect a deeper structural issue. The defense industrial base remains optimized for predictability, while modern conflict increasingly demands adaptability, iteration, and speed. The Velocity Summit is intended to begin closing that gap.
Dr. Doug Milburn, Chairman of The Protocase Companies, stated: “The United States doesn't have a talent problem or a funding problem. It has a systems problem. We are asking industrial models built for certainty to operate in conditions defined by change. That gap is where time is lost.”
The event will function as a working session, bringing together a select group of participants to examine key structural constraints and identify areas of alignment. These include how manufacturing systems can better absorb variation, how acquisition models can surface risk earlier, and how organizations can increase their capacity to learn and adapt in real time.
The Protocase Companies bring a track record of helping translate complex national challenges into coordinated cross-sector dialogue. As a founding contributor to the Canadian Space Launch Conference, Protocase played a role in convening stakeholders across defense, government, academia, and industry to align around sovereign launch capability. In parallel, Protocase has been an active participant within Canada’s defense industrial base, including alignment with the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries and engagement at CANSEC.
The Summit is structured deliberately as a focused working session rather than a traditional conference. Participants will include stakeholders across the U.S. Department of Defense and federal agencies, prime contractors and emerging defense innovators, advanced manufacturing and supply chain leaders, academic and applied research institutions, and policy and regulatory experts. The objective is to identify practical pathways to reduce design-to-production timelines, strengthen domestic manufacturing resilience, and enable more responsive scaling of mission-critical systems.
Insights from the Summit will inform ongoing dialogue among participants, with the goal of determining whether and how a more formalized working group should take shape over time. For more information, visit the event landing page at https://www.protocase.com/events/velocity-summit/.
