National Fire Control Announces 2017 Symposium Details

The National Fire Control (NFCS) Advisory Committee has announced the details of its 2017 Symposium which will take place February 6-9, 2017 at the Army’s Shades of Green Hotel, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The NFCS, heralded as the premiere forum for discussing the entire kill chain, brings together the Nation’s fire control community in a restricted setting to address the needs of the full kill chain, translate those needs into emerging technology requirements, and identify the crucial challenges in fulfilling those requirements. The NFCS discusses science and technology (S&T) priorities, drives technology towards maximizing return on investment, and reports real progress on current investments.

Initially launched in 1992 by the Air Force, and subsequently supported by the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, the NFCS - now an industry sponsored event - has been held annually for the last 25 years (with the exception of a two-year hiatus). The event has been successful in engaging the multi-services, industry, and academia in synergistic relationships and joint discussions. With continued reduction in budgets, the government has an increasing reliability on cooperative research efforts. The size and focus of the NFCS promotes a greater number of productive contacts and collaborative relationships, and provides an overview of a larger number of external research efforts while providing U.S. researchers with a deeper understanding of the state-of-the-art and the warfighter’s perspective. The net result is the potential reduction in duplication of work completed by academia, industry, and the services, as well as the promotion of scientific advances resulting from joint efforts that could save DoD valuable time and financial resources while defining innovative solutions to technology challenges.

Each year the technical advisorship rotates amongst the services with the Air Force taking lead for the 2017 event. The symposium theme, “Addressing the Broad Challenges,” will cover topics such as advanced technologies; combat identification; cyber warfare; directed energy; electromagnetic maneuver and electronic warfare; integrated defense; sensor and data fusion; modeling and simulation; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; unmanned and undersea warfare; rapid transition of new technology to the warfighter; and many more topics. Along with concurrent technical sessions offered throughout the week, attendees can attend, for no additional cost, special topics and workshops offered on Monday, a senior level Plenary Session and “Fireside Chat” that provides a top level perspective and interactive Q&A on Tuesday, and peppered throughout the week, a technical poster session, an exhibit show, and many networking and collaboration functions. Typical attendance for NFCS over its 25-year history is 300 - 400 people.  Additional sponsors, poster presentations, and exhibits will be accepted until full or January 2017, whichever comes first.