An F-35A Lightning II takes off during a demonstration practice Jan. 8, 2020, at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The team is now assigned to Air Combat Command at the 388th Fighter Wing. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alexander Cook)
This Is A Classified Event
Please Mark Your Calendars! The Air Force intends to sponsor the Strategic Development Planning & Experimentation (SDPE) Strategy Interchange Meetings, as a four-day event, slated for the week of 20-23 April 2020. The venue will be the General Jacob E. Smart Conference Center, Joint Base Andrews, MD. Directions will be provided in subsequent updates, with additional instructions. This announcement is intended to inform you of the event and enable you to sign up for attending. The technical agenda is a work in progress and will be shared as soon as practical.
In May 2016, the Air Force stood up the SDPE office as a key component focused on future Air Force multi-domain capabilities. In its deliberate planning, the SDPE leadership is deeply engaged in a campaign across DoD and industry. The strategy-focused dialogue planned for this April follows SDPE’s presentations at DaytonDefense’s Wright Dialogue with Industry 16-18 July 2019 in Dayton OH, the 33rd Annual Briefing for Industry held by the Professional Aerospace Contractors Association, 12-15 August 2019 in Albuquerque NM, and the Air Force Association Symposium held in September 2019 at National Harbor MD.
This event in April is intended to inform industry of the Air Force strategic direction, priorities, and challenges in many technical areas relevant to current and future Air Force Capabilities, technology roadmaps, future acquisition funding streams, and allow the opportunity to seek industry feedback on potential solutions to these challenges and priorities.
This event is classified at the Collateral Secret level and is open to U.S. Defense companies only. In order to participate, interested parties must be either a DoD employee or DoD contractor with a valid DD Form 2345, Military Critical Technical Data Agreement.
Information regarding the event agenda should be made available during the coming weeks. An e-mail invitation with additional direction, information, and guidance will only be sent out to the list of interested participants.
If you are interested in attending this event, please complete the RSVP NLT 3 April 2020 via this E-invite
We encourage you to register early, as this event has capacity limitations and seats fill up fast! Please send any questions to this inbox.
** Please note: You should receive an e-mail confirmation within one week. In the event that you do not receive an e-mail confirmation from the AF IR&D team, please follow-up and send another e-mail as soon as possible.
To participate in the 2020 SDPE SIM, please download this document:
All subsequent updates will be posted only to this Defense Innovation Marketplace website. The SDPE team will also include key documents deemed to be of significant importance to this dialogue with industry. Government data distribution statements may vary; some documents may be limited to U.S. Government Agencies and/or Department of Defense (DoD) employees/contractors. Partnering with defense-experienced companies is strongly suggested for firms that do not fall within these categories.
The government is not obligated to enter into a contract with industry as result of collaborations from our dialogue. Data exchanges as a result of these dialogue activities follow restrictions of No Foreign Nationals (NOFORN) and International Traffic Arms Regulations (ITAR).
Some information we intend to share may be classified or unclassified and can only be released as Distribution C, D, or E material (see distribution statements). Please recognize dates, topics, and locations listed are subject to change. Refer other requests for these documents and data using the our email.
An F-35A Lightning II with the F-35 Demo Team soars over Hill Air Force Base during a demonstration practice Jan. 8, 2020, at Hill AFB, Utah. The team is now assigned to Air Combat Command at the 388th Fighter Wing. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alexander Cook)
Session Overview
The April event will be structured to provide industry with additional information about ongoing Capability Development Activities and SDPE Experimentation Campaigns, as well as proposed experimentation pathfinders and watch-list efforts.
This event will also offer opportunities to discuss future restructuring of industry-government partnerships, processes, and relationships of mutual benefit for both industry and government. The event agenda will likely include a series of briefings, panel discussions, and opportunities for industry to sign up for individual face-to-face sessions with government subject matter experts and senior officials of the specific topic areas. Specific information will be provided to registrants as it becomes available.
Target Audience
This event in April, 2020 is intended to inform industry large, medium and small businesses, academia, and national laboratories of the Air Force strategic direction, priorities, and challenges in many technical areas relevant to current and future Air Force Capabilities, technology roadmaps, and future acquisition funding streams. This event includes presentations and discussions which could impact future investments, Industry Corporate Investment Strategies, Internal Research & Development (IR&D) Technology Roadmaps, and new or revised approaches to collaborating and partnering with industry. For this reason, it is highly encouraged that industry participants be innovative, strategic thinkers, technical experts, or senior planners who have wide insight into their corporate technology portfolios and processes, can offer technical solutions, and who are familiar with both long-term and short term strategic planning.
Topic Areas
Tentatively, this SDPE Strategy Interchange Meeting may include the following topic areas of significant interest. The event ops tempo is expected to provide a mix of status updates, comprehensive briefs, panel discussions, and sessions for dialogues with industry. Topic considerations are:
- Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) Keynote
- Air Force Capability Development Update
- AFWIC Cross-Functional Team (CFT) Updates
- Joint All-Domain Command & Control
- Space
- Generating Combat Power
- Logistics Under Attack
- SDPE Experimentation Campaigns & Other Efforts (Pathfinders and Watch-List Items)
- Counter-Cruise Missile
- Attritable Autonomous Aircraft
- Electronic Warfare
- Palletized Munitions
- Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Update
- Blue Horizons Program
- Transformational Capability Office
- Vanguards
Face-to-Face Sessions
Companies are encouraged to sign up for face-to-face interactions with teams of government subject matter experts (SMEs) on specific areas of interest. The intent of these face-to-face sessions are to allow industry the opportunity to speak directly with the government SMEs at a Collateral Secret Level about the government’s areas of interest. Projected topic areas for the face-to-face sessions will be published as soon as they are finalized; stay tuned.
The projected duration of these face-to-face sessions may be approximately 30 minutes per session; the session timing will be shared soon as well. When the one-on-one topics are shared, and your company is interested in participating in a face-to-face session, please identify the top 3 topics listed above that your company is most interested in, and submit, along with your notification of interest. This will allow the government the ability to schedule SME teams and allocate the total number of face-to-face sessions to ensure these sessions are beneficial to both industry and government. Updates about these sessions and the sign-up process will be provided as available.