Fall Meeting returns to St. Louis with focus on "evolving the strategic advantage"

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (Oct 3, 2022) – During the annual National Defense Transportation Association (NDTA) United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) Fall Meeting, a wide variety of military, civilian, and industry leaders in transportation will gather to discuss how to project and sustain a combat credible Joint Force in contested environments at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel. 

From Oct. 17-20, five keynote presentations and two round table discussions will feature senior military, government, and industry executives, addressing a variety of topics related to logistics. 

Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of USTRANSCOM, Navy Vice Adm. (Retired) William A. Brown, president and CEO, NDTA, and John Dietrich, chairman of the board, NDTA, will open the meeting on Monday afternoon, with Van Ovost delivering the first keynote address.

“Engaging our military and civilian counterparts at last year’s Fall Meeting was an exciting way to start off my time at TRANSCOM,” said Van Ovost who had just taken command the previous week. “This year, I look forward to discussing the strategies that I’ve laid out for the transportation enterprise. Preparing for future contingencies requires integration of all joint warfighting domains with the help of our industry partners.”

During her keynote address, Van Ovost will outline TRANSCOM’s successes during the past year and rollout the command’s new strategy. As part of the strategy, she will describe how the transportation enterprise will maintain readiness, recapitalize the mobility fleet, modernize systems, employ new operational concepts, and increase cyber resilience to meet the threat, complexity, and speed of the evolving strategic landscape. 

Brown also expressed excitement over the convention that his team has spent much of the year planning.

“The NDTA-USTRANSCOM Fall Meeting has been instrumental, now for the 10th year, in bringing the military and industry logistics community together to address issues common to the readiness of the Joint Logistics Enterprise,” said Brown. “Through wars, pandemics, natural disasters and support to other nations, the partnership between NDTA and DOD has been critical to igniting logistical capacity and capability like no other country on the planet.”  

Following Van Ovost’s address, Professor Dr. Tai Ming Cheung, the director of UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation will give the second keynote presentation titled “The Rise of the Chinese Techno-Security State: The Convergence Between Economic, Technological, and Military Power and Implications for the U.S.”

The presentation provides an examination of the growing and increasingly advanced bases of economic, technological, and military power of the Chinese state under the leadership of Xi Jinping.
 
In addition to Van Ovost and Cheung, other scheduled keynote speakers include the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Christopher W. Grady; retired Vice Adm. Ron Lloyd, the 35th commander of the Royal Canadian Navy / acting vice chief of defense and current senior enterprise systems advisor, SAP; and Dr. David Simchi-Levi, Ph.D., professor of civil and environmental engineering systems, MIT and director, MIT Data Science Lab. 

The event will also consist of two roundtable discussions and 64 interactive Transportation Academy courses.

Chiderah Okoye, methodologies lead, Mary S. Peake Fellowship, will chair the first of the roundtable discussions entitled “Gaining Strategic Advantage Through Cybersecure Operational Innovation”.

Members on that panel include: Mr. Jason Zander, executive vice president, Strategic Missions & Technologies, Microsoft; Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner, director, Defense Information Systems Agency and commander, Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network; and Air Force Brig. Gen. Michelle Hayworth, director of Command, Control, Communications and Cyber Systems, USTRANSCOM. 

The roundtable examines government and industry response to cybersecurity vulnerabilities and what we need to do from both a government and industry perspective to build readiness and mission assurance.

The second roundtable during the conference will be chaired by Guy Beougher, SES (Ret.), vice president of DOD/Federal Logistics, Supply Chain and Energy, Cypress International, Inc. with the topic “Evolving Energy Needs, Technology and Supporting Infrastructure”.  

Members on that roundtable panel include:  RuthAnne Darling, Director of Operational Energy Innovation, OECIF/OEPF, DoD Research & Engineering Enterprise; Benjamin Richardson, director, Energy Portfolio, Defense Innovation Unit, DoD; Air Force Maj. Nicole Pearl, Innovative Solutions/Disruptive Technologies Strategist, U.S. Air Force Futures; and Sean Thomas, vice president Global Energy Services, Crowley.  

The focus of the roundtable will be thinking about energy requirements to deploy and sustain the force in the context of new energy policy, guidance and evolving technology powering vehicles, trains, ships, and aircraft.  

Admiral Brown encourages the transportation community to participate in this conference. He stated, “We expect the Fall Meeting 2022 will highlight the vision of DOD’s senior leadership, educate on industry trends and issues, and help keep a focus on improving our nation’s industrial base and military preparedness to project power. I can’t wait to see everyone!”

To get up to date information, photos, videos and transcripts from the event, visit TRANSCOM’s NDTA landing page here. Also check out the NDTA-USTRANSCOM Fall Meeting 2022 agenda and more on the NDTA site for the meeting.

USTRANSCOM exists as a warfighting combatant command to project and sustain military power at a time and place of the nation’s choosing. Powered by dedicated men and women, we underwrite the lethality of the Joint Force, we advance American interests around the globe, and we provide our nation's leaders with strategic flexibility to select from multiple options, while creating multiple dilemmas for our adversaries.