CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE – MARCH 2026

At the beginning of 2026 I was convinced it was déjà vu all over again, at least in the U.S. We began with a shutdown, most government organizations did not have a budget, and ITEA was closing in on the dates for our February Directed Energy T&E Joint Conference, an event we have co-sponsored with the Directed Energy Professional Society for 24 years. We chose to move the Conference to 18 – 21 May rather than cancel it, a budget was passed, and the shutdown was abbreviated. In the following two months, planning for the T&E Joint Conference has gone well, the AI in T&E Forum was a huge success, we are seeing relaxed federal travel policy, and government organizations are trying to figure out how to meet mid-fiscal year budget obligation goals. I will not claim optimism but I am encouraged.

We have a new Board member who was elected at the beginning of this year, Mr. Rick Bailer, President of the George Washington Chapter of ITEA. Rick is a retired career Army officer and industry T&E leader. We welcome Rick’s experience and vision for ITEA and appreciate the many ways he contributes.

We say farewell to a friend, colleague, long time ITEA member, and it’s 4^th and 12^th President, the only person to serve two terms, Mr. John V. Bolino. John’s brave fight with cancer ended on January 20^th. Please read A Life of Discipline, Integrity, and Service to Defense Test & Evaluation: A Historical and Personal Reflection submitted by Mr. Ed Greer in cooperation with friends and colleagues within the T&E community.

The year is off to a busy start as mentioned above. We would like to recognize Booz Allen for providing the Helix, Center for Innovation, as the venue for the AI in T&E Forum where Dr. Amy E. Henninger provided the Keynote to our standing room only event. The ITEA Southern Cross Chapter is co-sponsoring the Systems Engineering Test and Evaluation Conference in Sydney, Australia 27 – 30 April; The Test Instrumentation Workshop is back in Las Vegas 28 – 30 April; we return to Portsmouth, UK 9 – 10 June for the UK T&E Summit; the All/Multi-Domain Operations Forum is coming to Huntsville, AL 14 – 16 July; Keyport, WA is the site of our Cybersecurity T&E Workshop 15 – 16 September; and we culminate the year with FORGE 2026! More Than a Symposium — A Movement! FORGE represents a new chapter for the Test and Evaluation community. It reflects the growing need to move faster, collaborate more broadly, and connect innovation directly to operational capability. Don’t miss FORGE 2026—where the future of T&E takes shape – in Scottsdale, AZ the week of November 2-6. Stay tuned for the Call for Papers, speakers, and registration details. I think I experienced jet lag just writing that. You will find event details here: https://itea.org/calendar/. Please join us at one or more event to network, take training courses, present your work, learn what is being done elsewhere, and invest in your career.

We talk about the rapid pace of technology and the challenges it presents to T&E in terms of systems to be tested and in keeping test technology current. We’re familiar with hypersonic vehicles, unmanned and autonomous systems, and cyber threats that challenge us daily. But there are other challenges that go beyond technology to challenging our test environments. Hypersonics certainly does that but think about space. It seems like no time ago that the U.S could not ferry people or material to the space station and we had to rideshare on Russian Soyuz rockets. In fact, that was our reality from the Space Shuttle decommissioning in 2011 to 2020, with the first crewed SpaceX launch of the Demo-2 mission. During that interval there were serious concerns about when the U.S would return to space with our own launch capability. Look at today; in 2025 there were 181 launches in the U.S. alone, 329 worldwide. Tens of thousands of satellites are planned for LEO, NEO, and elsewhere with a host of missions including communications, sensors, defensive and offensive capabilities, in-space data centers, in-space high performance computing, and more. Are we ready for test support to these missions and to Golden Dome or Italy’s Michelangelo Dome (part of European air and missile defense), deployment of commercial space stations, or testing the ground infrastructure to support accelerated launches and air/space deconfliction? How do we safely test inclusion of electric and hybrid aviation and autonomy for advanced air mobility, drones of all flavors, lunar data centers, AI/ML and large language models in space? Do we know the test environments we will need; do we have high fidelity simulations that we trust, can we accurately estimate all the data we will generate and acquire on the way to milestone decisions? ITEA needs to be leading to the answers to these questions. Look for opportunities to get testers, developers, and technologists together to discuss requirements, explore capabilities, identify environments and instrumentation, and create solutions.

It’s that time of year to recognize excellence in testing. Look at our recent call for annual awards nominations: https://itea.org/awards-program/. Nominate a deserving colleague and help them gain recognition for their contributions to the T&E profession. Also, look for an upcoming call for nominations for membership upgrade. You can self-nominate for Senior Member or nominate a colleague for Associate Fellow or Fellow. Once the call is issued, you can access the requirements and forms here: https://itea.org/membership/.

ITEA grows when we add individual and corporate members. We also grow as members improve themselves, contribute their experience to the T&E body of knowledge, and mentor younger professionals. Be part of ITEA’s growth.