September 2026 to August 2027 · last updated 29 September 2026
Planning aid, not a source of record. Confirm every date, price and eligibility on the organizer's own site before registering, booking travel, or putting a number in a budget. Every row was checked against organizer sources in August 2026. Most spring 2027 events have not published a 2027 rate card, so prices for those rows are prior-year figures and are labelled as such, and several 2027 dates are placeholders on rows where the organizer has announced nothing. Full notes at the bottom.
USD(R&E) Emil Michael cut the CTA list from fourteen to six on 17 November 2025, on the reasoning that “14 priorities, in truth, means no priorities at all.” Much of the old list was folded in rather than dropped: trusted AI and autonomy, human-machine interfaces and advanced computing now sit under Applied AI; FutureG, space technology and integrated sensing and cyber largely sit under Q-BID.
These tags are our mapping, not an official designation by the organizer or by OUSD(R&E). The test applied was whether a team working a problem statement in that CTA could find relevant end users, program offices or vendors in the room. Most events serve more than one, so the counts do not sum to 161.
Grouped by what a team could realistically drive to rather than by census geography, because for most of these events travel costs more than registration.
| Aspen Security Forum 2027 | 18-20 July 2027 | Napa CA | Inside the window and squarely on topic, but left off the calendar proper because attendance is historically by invitation and the organizer publishes no registration route, no rate and no eligibility terms. Note the venue change: the 2027 forum moves to Napa because of the Aspen airport closure. Worth watching in case a public or student track appears. |
| SmallSat Education Conference | CANCELLED for 2026; next edition Oct 23-24 2027 | Kennedy Space Center FL | The 2026 edition was cancelled outright: Kennedy Space Center gave the facilities to the MAX POWER event and the organizer withdrew, issuing full refunds. It was a $40 student ticket and the cheapest registration on the calendar. The next edition falls just past the window. |
| DoDIIS Worldwide | Unscheduled; recent editions Dec 2023, Dec 2025, Aug 2026 | Varies | Do not plan around this. The month is genuinely unstable, one August edition after two Decembers is not a pattern, and no 2027 edition is announced. It is also vetting-gated with substantial classified programming, so an uncleared undergraduate cannot use it. DIA's own landing page is stale: it carries a current-year title over body content describing the December 2023 Portland edition. |
| USENIX Security '27 | Aug 11-13 2027 | Denver CO | Inside the window by date but excluded on fit. The room is academic security researchers rather than uniformed end users or program-office staff. It does run a student grants program, so it is worth knowing about for a team whose problem is genuinely a research problem. |
| Paris Air Show / SIAE 2027 | June 14-20 2027 | Paris-Le Bourget, France | Inside the window by date, but no published student tier and the travel cost puts it out of reach. Space Tech Expo Europe and Euronaval are the affordable European options on this calendar. |
| MORS Symposium | ~June 2027 | A service academy, rotates | US-citizens-only with clearance-gated sessions. The MORS Emerging Techniques Forum in December is the accessible sibling and is already on the calendar at a $75 student rate. |
| AOC Cyber & Electronic Warfare Convergence | 2027 not announced | Charleston SC, inside NIWC Atlantic | Requires US citizenship plus a TS clearance with SCI indoctrination, and sessions run at TS//SCI inside a government facility. No student can attend under any circumstances. The AOC International Symposium in December is the open alternative and is on the calendar. |
| Reagan National Defense Forum | Early December, annually | Simi Valley CA | Invitation only. A student team cannot register at any price. |
| Precision Strike Annual Review | Spring, annually | Springfield VA area | The Precision Strike Association's flagship review is routinely partly classified. Flagged so it is not re-chased. |
| SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2027 | ~April 2027, unconfirmed | Likely Orlando FL | THE BIGGEST UNRESOLVED LEAD. A free exhibition-only pass and a student rate around $480 would put it in the top three events on this calendar, and the audience is AFRL, NRL and DEVCOM C5ISR and NVESD. But spie.org sits behind bot protection and the 2027 dates could not be confirmed on the organizer's own site. Worth one hour with a real browser at the next refresh. |
| NDIA division conferences, as a category | Various | Various | ndia.org serves a bot-protection interstitial to every automated request, which leaves an entire association's worth of Army, Navy and Marine program-office events unverifiable. Three NDIA rows on this calendar already depend on workarounds through DTIC or standalone event sites. This is the single largest blind spot in the whole document and needs a human browser. |
| TechConnect World / SBIR-STTR Spring Innovation Conference | March 23-25 2027 | Boston MA | INSIDE THE WINDOW AND PROBABLY BELONGS ON THE CALENDAR. Strong DoD SBIR content including DoW SBIR/STTR, Navy, Army CATALYST, DARPA, MDA and SOCOM. It surfaced too late in this refresh to verify pricing and student eligibility, so it is parked here rather than added on thin sourcing. Verify and promote it at the next refresh. Note the same organizer's autumn event, Defense TechConnect, is already on the calendar. |
| AFLCMC Life Cycle Industry Days | ~July 2027 | Dayton OH | Inside the window by date and potentially valuable given the Wright-Patterson program-office population, but no 2027 details were verifiable in this pass. Check at the next refresh. |
| NPS JIFX | Quarterly: Nov, Feb, May, Aug | Camp Roberts CA | Only JIFX 27-1 on 2-5 November 2026 is published. The quarterly rhythm means an August 2027 edition would fall inside the window. Field experimentation rather than a conference, and access runs through NPS, so email early. |
| MODSIM World | ~August, annually | Norfolk or Alexandria VA | Moved out of its old spring slot to August, which now falls inside the window. No 2027 edition announced. Training and simulation remains the thinnest domain on this calendar, so this one is worth re-checking. |
| SISO Simulation Innovation Workshop | 2027 not announced | Orlando FL | No 2027 workshop has been announced. Together with MODSIM and the fact that NTSA lists only I/ITSEC in the entire window, this confirms that training and simulation thinness is real rather than a search artefact. |
| MHSRS abstract cycle | Abstracts roughly Jan-Mar, for an August event | n/a | Not an event, a reminder. MHSRS is now on the calendar for August 2027, but the Young Investigator Competition and general abstract deadlines land in the first quarter and are not published far ahead. A graduate student who wants a podium slot needs to be watching from January. |
Compiled by Common Mission Project as a planning aid for university teams conducting beneficiary discovery on government-sponsored problem statements. Last updated 29 September 2026.