CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE – June 2026

The second quarter of 2026 seems like a whirlwind. ITEA has an annual events calendar planned to fill the year, beginning with the Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS) Joint T&E Conference in February, which ITEA has co-sponsored for 23 years, and culminating with our Annual Symposium in the fall, rebranded now as FORGE 2026. Executing one event may overlap with planning for the next, but rarely do we have multiple simultaneous events in planning and execution. The second federal government shutdown, in January, jumbled our calendar. DEPS chose to reschedule to May instead of taking the chance of no one attending in February. Instantly planning for DEPS and our April Test Instrumentation Workshop (TIW) overlapped. Our ITEA management team is quite small but involved in planning and execution of every event; they became spread thin.

ITEA co-sponsored, through our Southern Cross Chapter, the Systems Engineering Test & Evaluation (SETE) Conference in Sydney, Australia in April. I attended to represent ITEA and participate in a panel discussion. On May 1, I presented a keynote address at the Australian Defence Force Defence T&E Conference (DTEC), also in Sydney. Our colleagues in the Western Europe (United Kingdom) Chapter of ITEA conducted the UK T&E Summit in early June in Portsmouth, UK. Planning for the July All/Multi-Domain Operations Forum is complete thanks to the Rocket City Chapter, and the September Cybersecurity T&E Workshop agenda is set. Preparations for FORGE 2026 have begun. Yet amid all the activities, travel, and events (and entropy), ITEA was successful. Our sponsors, exhibitors, and members were faithful in their support; and for the first half of the year we maintained our commitment to bring T&E practitioners together, provided opportunities for sharing and collaborating, and conducted an array of training courses.

Why do I take the space to tell you this, which you can discover on our website and on LinkedIn? I write it because it’s important to recognize that we aren’t the old ITEA. We are not merely re-branding, like so many other organizations that have reached major milestones (we’re 46 this year). We are modernizing our Mission and Vision, we are broadening our membership and reach, we are expanding ITEA to offer more to members, and we are explicitly taking a forward-looking perspective instead of dwelling on what has already been accomplished. Our new view reflects the growing need to move faster, collaborate more broadly, and connect innovation directly to production-ready capability. The modern environment demands rapid capability delivery, resilient systems, and production-relevant and timely testing. ITEA is evolving, informed by the Test and Evaluation community, so that together we are critical contributors connecting decision makers, technical experts, and innovators to address the most urgent demands. Join us at FORGE 2026 to learn how we are doing this and interact with industry experts to understand their challenges and how they are responding.

Special thanks to Dr. David Stoudt, DEPS Executive Director, Cynnamon Spain, DEPS Director of Meetings and Events, and the entire DEPS planning team for persevering and conducting a successful event, including 8 teams for the STEAM competition generating $3K dollars in scholarships. I commend Tim Grabert and Pete Nikoloff of ITEA and NOVA Systems, responsible for the excellent conferences in Australia and for allowing me to be part of them. As silly as it may seem, it reinforced my appreciation for what our Southern Cross Chapter members endure to participate in events in the U.S. The crazy number of hours flying, layovers, and 14 hours of time difference take their toll. I also thank Cathy O’Carroll and Andy Cunningham for doing another great job with the UK event. It was fun yet bittersweet as we (reluctantly) bid a happy retirement to Cathy, ITEA Board member, Secretary, and prime mover for the UK T&E Summit. It generated £2,500 in scholarships. TIW, returning to Las Vegas after a one-year hiatus in Mojave, CA, was a huge success thanks to the dedication of Kathi Swagerty. Dr. David “Jester” Smith, CEO of Mojave Air and Space Port, led the planners and used his extensive network to enlist new speakers and panelists, complementing the major contribution made by the Test Resource Management Center. Read the Journal to learn more about what you missed, and what you don’t want to miss in the next half of the year.

I’m stepping away from the lectern now, my fingers are tired from preaching. Let’s make a conversation, as my youngest would say to me when he was 3 or 4, wanting to be as grown up as his two siblings. Regardless where you are in your career, you have things to offer and you have things to learn. Your experience is valuable, not just to you in your day job but investing in people around you, helping grow the next generation of test professionals and upskill those in the existing workforce. Technology is changing unimaginably fast and no one assimilates it faster than the young. We all need to become conversant in it even if not practitioners. We have tutors among us but we are not accustomed to soliciting expertise from apparent novices.

That’s one more thing we need to change – our perception of what each team member brings to the effort. We can’t afford to overlook expertise, wherever it resides.

Finally, no one knows better than you what you will need 1, 5, or 10 years from now, so share it with us. If you have a sense of what training or tools will be required to test future systems, and what test technology will need to be in place, tell us. You are our target audience; please let us know if we are on target.