Sub base to host National Defense Industrial Associations 2026 Undersea Warfare Fall Conference
Sub base to host National Defense Industrial Association's 2026 Undersea Warfare Fall Conference
The Day
By Alison Cross
September 20, 2026
More than 1,000 top government officials and military contractors from the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom will converge at the Naval Submarine Base this week for the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2026 Undersea Warfare Fall Conference.
The event, which is classified at the secret level and closed to the press, is scheduled to run from Monday to Wednesday and feature presentations from Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle and other top-ranking naval officials.
In a meeting with local leaders on Wednesday, Capt. Craig Litty, the commanding officer of the base, said the conference provides an opportunity to meet with industrial partners, host flag officers and advocate for infrastructure upgrades.
“Most importantly, it's another opportunity for the CNO to be here,” Litty said. “I'll spend a day with him talking about infrastructure investment into the base to continue to keep us in a war-fighting posture.”
The sub base has hosted the annual fall conference for more than 20 years. The 2026 event will include technical presentations and intelligence briefings on aviation and combat systems, undersea sensors and vehicles, mine warfare and C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence systems).
In a welcome message published in the event's public agenda, conference Chairman Dan Christianson of Electric Boat said that the event offers insight into “the challenges and capability gaps the Navy faces across the undersea domain.”
“Our theme this year: ‘From the Seabed to Space: Providing Our Nation Persistent Undersea Domain Awareness, Access, and Lethality’ underscores the importance of readiness for future conflict, sustaining the Navy’s long-term competitive advantage, strengthening our role in the joint warfighting ecosystem, and advancing combined lethality with our allies and partners,” Christianson said.
While the National Defense Industrial Association has traditionally restricted the event to U.S. participants, the 2026 fall conference marks the second year that registration has been open to officials and industry partners from Australia and the U.K.
In 2021, both countries entered into a trilateral security partnership with the U.S. that aims to strengthen the Australian submarine force in the Pacific and advance the countries’ joint development of new technologies.
“In support of our expanding AUKUS partnership, we are pleased to welcome speakers and attendees from Australia and the United Kingdom,” Christianson said in the message.
Wednesday’s schedule includes more than 80 technical sessions.
Sample topics include “Scaling Undersea Lethality,” “AI-Driven Harbor Security,” “Human Survivability During Underwater Explosions,” “Cooperative Coordination of Intelligent Autonomous System Swarms,” “Enhancing Identification of Acoustic Anomalies with Unsupervised Machine Learning,” “AI Dominance at the Tactical Edge,” and “Comparing Submariner Mental Health and Career Outcomes with the General Navy Population.”
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