Consulting firm McAleese & Associates has released a report on key takeaways from the two-day Reagan National Defense Forum that kicked off Friday in California.
Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) CEO Marillyn Hewson; Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) CEO Thomas Kennedy; Leanne Caret, CEO of Boeing’s (NYSE: BA) defense, space and security business; and Harris (NYSE: HRS) CEO Bill Brown; were some of the industry speakers at the event.
Hewson discussed the need for the country to invest in artificial intelligence, hypersonics, directed energy and robotics and mentioned the graduation rates in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines.
Caret touched on foreign military sales deals and the potential benefit of such transactions on the U.S. economy and job creation efforts, Jim McAleese, founder and principal at McAleese & Associates, wrote in the report.
Kennedy cited the need for a multilayered missile defense platform and a space-based sensor layer built to detect and track hypersonic missiles.
He also mentioned the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Groundbreaker project that aims to counter moving hypersonics and the need to implement cyber-destruction and boost-phase intercept technologies.
Brown called for stable defense funding at the forum to support the supply chain and discussed the need for the U.S. government to focus on disaggregation of satellites; AI; quantum science; hypersonics; assured positioning, navigation and timing; and adoption of DevOps in software development, the report noted.
