Chairman´s welcome

The overarching theme of this year\´s conference is Trusted Communications ... Awareness to Action. Topics to be addressed will include the spectrum of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) technologies and capabilities that address communications challenges related to national defense, homeland security, disaster response and interoperability. The lineup of MILCOM 2012 keynote speakers is outstanding, to include Lieutenant General Lawrence, General Peter Chiarelli, Captain and Astronaut Mark Kelly, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis. The cornerstone of MILCOM, the technical program, will include 21 state-of-the-art tutorials and 69 technical sessions featuring 366 technical papers, both classified and unclassified. An added benefit of the technical program this year is the availability of CEU credits from CompTIA and the Florida Institute of Technology. Also, groups of regional high school and college students will visit MILCOM as part of the STEM educational outreach program. Please make special note of the series of plenary panel discussions scheduled each morning and afternoon - all of which will provide the rare opportunity for interactive discussion among government policymakers, technical experts, industry leaders and academic researchers. For example, one panel will explore the use of advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to support agile development and fielding of network-enabled systems and systems of systems. Another will examine how we define what our "Enterprise" is today, and how to share and extend that concept to include our customers, their customers and our mutual trading partners.