WILMINGTON, NC – 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 shape a coordinated path forward. A central objective is to explore the formation of a sustained, cross-sector working group built in partnership with stakeholders across industry, government, and academia.
The urgency is underscored by systemic failures across major defense programs. The U.S. Navy’s Constellation-class frigate program has absorbed billions in cost with no operational ships delivered. Advanced fighter and weapons platforms routinely take more than a decade to field, while munitions stockpiles remain constrained and supply chains brittle. These are not isolated breakdowns but reflect a deeper structural issue: the defense industrial base remains optimized for predictability, while modern conflict demands adaptability, iteration, and speed.
“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 Velocity Summit will function as a working session, examining key structural constraints such as how manufacturing systems can absorb variation, how acquisition models can surface risk earlier, and how organizations can increase their capacity to learn and adapt in real time. A longer-term ambition is to help create the conditions for a standing working group or coalition, developed collaboratively with stakeholders engaged through the Summit and subsequent discussions.
The Protocase Companies bring a track record of convening cross-sector dialogue that leads to action. As a founding contributor to the Canadian Space Launch Conference, Protocase helped frame sovereign launch capability as a national priority. The company has also been active within Canada’s defense industrial base, engaging with senior leaders on procurement modernization and supply chain resilience through events like CANSEC. These experiences reflect a consistent role: bringing stakeholders together, contributing practical manufacturing perspectives, and supporting early alignment around complex challenges.
The Velocity Summit is structured as a focused working session rather than a traditional conference. Participants 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. Insights from the Summit will inform ongoing dialogue, with the goal of determining whether a more formalized working group should take shape over time.
For more information, visit the event landing page. The Protocase Companies—comprising Protocase, ProtoSpace Mfg, and 45Drives—operate at the intersection of advanced manufacturing, aerospace and defense, and open-source infrastructure, enabling rapid hardware iteration and production aligned with modern mission requirements.
