Background
North America faces a range of threats to our homeland. For decades, the United States and Canada have enjoyed the benefits of dominant military capabilities in all domains and relied on our geography to serve as a barrier to keep our nations beyond the reach of most conventional threats. Our ability to project power forward, along with our technological overmatch, has allowed us to fight forward and focus our energy on conducting operations overseas. However, our competitors have analyzed our ability to operate overseas and have invested in capabilities such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, small unmanned aircraft systems, artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, and delivery platforms to offset our strengths while exploiting our perceived weaknesses. These advancing capabilities embolden competitors and adversaries to challenge us at home, looking to threaten our people, our critical infrastructure, and our power projection capabilities. With the evolving capabilities of our adversaries, the United States and Canada must look to continually modernize, improve, and better integrate our domain awareness (the ability to see and detect potential threats in all domains), information dominance (use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to process data more rapidly for strategic advantage), and risk mitigation (understanding risks and threats coupled with measures to reduce the impact of an attack), including in the approaches to North America.
Homeland Defense Awareness Symposium and Joint Training & Education Academic Workshop
The Homeland Defense Institute (HDI)* is hosting the Homeland Defense Awareness Symposium in conjunction with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) Joint Training & Education Academic Workshop on 18-19 July 2023 in Colorado Springs, CO. This year’s symposium provides an unclassified forum for academic, government, and industry discussions on homeland defense problem sets framed from a “Homeland Defense 24/7” viewpoint of the approach layer to North America. Panels on the Arctic, Mexico, and Caribbean and maritime and research presentations will feature homeland defense subject matter experts and researchers sharing an understanding of the strategic environment and current efforts in these sectors. The workshop is designed to provide a more in-depth understanding of NORAD & USNORTHCOM perspectives and priorities.
*HDI is a formal collaboration between the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and NORAD and USNORTHCOM to conduct joint research and related activities that are beneficial to the parent organizations. HDI capitalizes on USAFA’s world-class research and academic networks to drive innovation on modern homeland defense while connecting USAFA more closely with current strategic and operational challenges to enhance cadet and leader development. HDI works with mission partners, the private sector, industry, and academia to elevate homeland defense education, conduct innovative research, and develop meaningful collaborative partnerships.