26 - 30 April 2026
National Harbor, Maryland, US

SPIE Defense + Security Technical Conferences

Cutting-edge topics related to sensors, infrared, laser systems, spectral imaging, radar, lidar, and autonomous systems

Featuring mission-critical conference topics

  • Directed Energy Technologies (NEW in 2026)
  • Photonic Integrated Circuits (NEW in 2026)
  • Infrared Imaging Systems
  • Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Security and Defense Applications
  • Autonomous Sensing Systems and Vehicles
  • Multi-domain Operations
  • Multispectral and Hyperspectral Imaging
  • Target Detection and Pattern Recognition

View conferences by track, each highlighting a core technology area


Materials and devices

Conferences that showcase IR materials, image sensors, photon counting, energy harvesting, and quantum technologies. Applications include wearables, cybersecurity, information processing, energy storage, and drones.

Materials and devices technology at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing

Imaging and analytics

Conferences about spectral imaging, computational image processing, metrology, and 3D imaging. Application topics include security and defense, climate monitoring, big data, deep learning, machine vision, target detection, and tracking.

Imaging and analytics technology at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing

Advanced sensing and imaging

Conferences highlighting IR and thermal imaging, fiber optic sensors, lidar, radar, laser radar, x-ray detection and imaging, advanced optics for imaging, and image processing using AI/ML. Applications include novel defense and security systems for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, infrastructure monitoring, energy, autonomous vehicles, and remote sensing.

Advanced sensing and imaging technology at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing

Next-generation sensor systems and applications

Conferences about cutting-edge research focused on emerging technologies for specific applications such as autonomous systems, CBRNE, agriculture and food safety, CPS/IoT, and more.

Next-generation sensor systems at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing

Defense + Security 2026 symposium chairs


Ann Marie Raynal

Sandia National Labs. (United States)

Ravi Ravichandran

BAE Systems (United States)

Defense + Security 2026 symposium co-chairs


David Messinger

Rochester Institute of Technology (United States)

Latasha Solomon

DEVCOM Army Research Lab (United States)

Defense + Security 2026 track chairs


Materials and devices
Next Chair TBA

Imaging and analytics
Miguel Velez-Reyes, The University of Texas at El Paso (United States)

Advanced sensing and imaging
Raja Suresh, Iyengar LLC (United States)

Next-generation sensor systems and applications
Jason A. Guicheteau, DEVCOM Chemical Biological Ctr. (United States)

SPIE Defense + Security registration includes 50 SPIE Digital Library downloads


Access the research you need

Presentations and manuscripts presented at SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing are published in the Proceedings of SPIE in the SPIE Digital Library.