Tactical Innovation Symposium 2025

Despite altering the format of the Symposium, the Institute’s mission remains the same – to train and enable the uniquely talented leaders on the front lines of innovation to solve Soldier problems from the bottom up. Tactical Innovation is predicated on these hypotheses: (1) Soldiers on the front line are the most intimately familiar with the technical problems associated with fighting and winning wars. (2) Soldiers discover the best ideas to solve their problems but are far removed from the resources required to solve them. (3) Those traditionally tasked with building products for Soldiers do not get enough interactions with their end users, inadvertently hindering the ability to design products that meet evolving user needs. (4) The next war will be won by the nation that can most effectively close this gap: enabling Soldiers to solve technical problems at the edge and empowering user- centric design throughout defense research and development. These hypotheses have been proven true in recent conflicts and therefore further reinforce the value of dedicating talent and resources to innovation labs at operational units. We hope this event and the abstracts within these proceedings will foster new ideas and increase collaboration between operational units, their innovation labs, and their partners in academia and industry. There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to Tactical Innovation, but we believe that providing a platform to share best practices and successful projects is the best way to grow our community and ensure the best solutions reach the hands of our warfighters.