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 develop a shared understanding of the problem and begin shaping a coordinated path forward. A central objective is to explore the formation of a sustained, cross-sector working group over time, built in partnership with stakeholders across industry, government, and academia.
According to the announcement, the U.S. defense industrial base remains optimized for predictability, while modern conflict increasingly demands adaptability, iteration, and speed. Programs such as the Navy's Constellation-class frigate have absorbed billions in cost with no operational ships delivered, and advanced fighter and weapons platforms routinely take more than a decade to field. Munitions stockpiles remain constrained, and efforts to surge production expose brittle supply chains.
“The United States doesn’t have a talent problem or a funding problem. It has a systems problem,” said Dr. Doug Milburn, Chairman of The Protocase Companies. “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, examining key structural constraints such as 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. Insights from the Summit will inform ongoing dialogue among participants, with the goal of determining whether a formalized working group should take shape.
The Protocase Companies bring a track record of convening stakeholders around complex challenges. As a founding contributor to the Canadian Space Launch Conference, Protocase helped align stakeholders around sovereign launch capability. The company has also been active within Canada’s defense industrial base, engaging with the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries and at CANSEC on procurement modernization and supply chain resilience.
Participants in the Velocity Summit will include stakeholders from the U.S. Department of Defense, prime contractors, emerging defense innovators, advanced manufacturing leaders, academic institutions, and policy 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.
For more information, visit the event landing page at https://www.protocase.com/events/velocity-summit/.
