Program
Program
Please Note: Event agenda is subject to change as Speakers are confirmed
Tuesday, 8 December 2026
|
Start Time |
Event |
|
18:00 |
Optional Welcome Dinner hosted by Optica We invite you to join us for dinner and networking at a L'Orangerie, IXCAMPUS. Meet with other industry leaders in a casual and unique environment the night before the event starts! Address: L'Orangerie, IXCAMPUS, 34 Rue de la Croix de Fer, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. |
Wednesday, 9 December 2026
Day 1 — Technology Day. Lasers, Sensors, Navigation and Optical Links
|
All scheduled events, except Dinner Reception, are at the IXCAMPUS, 34 Rue de la Croix de Fer, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
7:45 – 8:20 |
Registration & Coffee Welcome |
|
|
8:20 – 8:35 |
Welcome Remarks |
|
Session 1: Lasers in Service: Directed Energy from Demonstrator to Deployed Capability
|
The first operational high-energy laser systems for counter-drone and counter-missile roles are entering service, and air defence budgets are being rewritten around cost per engagement. The keynote and panel examine what fielding at scale demands: electrical power and thermal management on real platforms, beam control against swarms, integration with existing fire control, and an industrial base of fibre lasers, optics and coatings that has to grow from prototypes to production runs. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
8:35 – 9:05 |
Keynote speaker |
|
|
9:05 – 9:50 |
Panel Discussion |
|
|
9:50 - 10:30 |
Networking Break |
|
Session 2: Seeing First: Infrared Detectors and ISR Sensors for Drones, Aircraft and Satellites
|
Drones have made electro-optical and infrared sensing the fastest-growing demand in defence optics, from thermal cameras on interceptors to lidar and multispectral payloads on aircraft and proliferated satellites. This session runs the detector chain from material to mission: cooled and uncooled infrared focal planes and their European sources, quantum-enhanced sensing, and the processing that turns measurement into targeting-grade information. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
| 10:30 - 11:00 |
Keynote |
|
|
11:00 – 11:15 |
Primes, agencies and government |
|
| 11:15 - 11:30 |
Photonics and dual-use companies |
|
|
11:45 - 13:00 |
Lunch |
|
Session 3: Operating Without GNSS: Navigation, Timing and Autonomy at Sea, in the Air and on Land
|
Jamming and spoofing of satellite navigation are routine over the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Middle East, and every autonomous platform, from interceptor drones to uncrewed surface vessels, needs positioning, navigation and timing that survive it. This session puts the photonic answers next to the operator's requirement: fibre-optic and optical inertial sensors, FMCW and multi-channel lidar for perception and metrology, optical and cold-atom clocks, and what a navy expects before it puts any of them on a ship. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
13:00 – 13:30 |
Keynote Speaker |
|
| 13:30 - 13:45 |
Primes, agencies and government |
|
|
13:30 – 14:30 |
Photonics and dual-use companies |
|
|
14:30 – 15:10 |
Networking Break |
|
Session 4: Light Between Platforms: Free-Space Optical Links and Secure Space Communications
|
Proliferated constellations for missile warning and data transport, and the forces that depend on them, run on optical links: inter-satellite terminals, ground stations, and air and sea links that resist interception and jamming, with quantum key distribution being tested from orbit. This session brings together the agencies and national institutes that specify and buy those links, the operators of ground-station networks, and the companies building the terminals, adaptive optics and photonic integrated circuits that go into them, with a view on what volume production of terminals will demand. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
15:10 – 15:40 |
Keynote speaker |
|
|
15:40 – 16:25 |
Primes, agencies and government |
|
| 16:25 - 17:10 |
Photonics and dual-use companies |
|
|
17:10 – 17:15 |
Closing words of day 1 |
|
|
18:00 – 19:00 |
Bus transfer to Dinner Reception |
|
|
19:00 – 22:30 |
Dinner Reception at the Francette, floating restaurant at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower (1 Port de Suffren, 75007 Paris, France). |
|
|
22:30 |
Transfer back to hotel |
|
Thursday, 10 December 2026
Day 2 — Industry Day. Sovereign Supply, Strategy and Dual-Use Transition
|
All scheduled events, except Dinner Reception, are at the IXCAMPUS, 34 Rue de la Croix de Fer, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
7:15 - 8:00 |
Welcome Breakfast |
|
|
8:00 – 8:15 |
Welcome remarks |
|
|
8:15 – 8:30 |
Market outlook: where defence photonics money is going |
|
Session 5: Sovereign Supply: Qualifying, Manufacturing and Scaling Photonics for Space and Defence Programmes
|
Rearmament budgets in Europe and the United States are colliding with supply chains built for commercial volumes and peacetime lead times. Trusted-source rules, export controls and the push for allied sourcing of compound semiconductors, optical materials and qualified components are reshaping who can sell to whom. The session covers what a space prime and an in-orbit manufacturer ask of their suppliers, how optics manufacturing in Europe has to change to meet defence and space volumes, independent qualification and test capacity, precision optics and coatings that survive radiation, temperature and vibration, and printed electronics for space. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
8:30 - 9:00 |
Keynote |
|
| 9:00 - 9:30 |
Primes, agencies and government |
|
|
9:30 – 10:00 |
Photonics and dual-use companies |
|
|
10:00 - 10:40 |
Networking Break |
|
| 10:40 - 11:40 |
Photonics and dual-use companies |
|
Session 6: Panel discussion: Industrial Strategy, Sovereign Capability and Getting to TRL 9 Faster
|
European Defence Fund projects, national rearmament programmes and new procurement rules are meant to shorten the path from laboratory to fielded system. The panel asks whether they do: how governments choose trusted suppliers, what qualification really costs a photonics company, and where policy still slows down the technologies shown on Day 1. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
|
11:40 - 12:25 |
Panel discussion |
|
|
12:25 - 13:40 |
Lunch |
|
Session 7: Dual-Use by Design: Moving Photonics Between Commercial, Space and Defence Markets
|
Most of the photonics defence needs, from integrated photonic circuits and fibre sensing to high-power lasers, is developed first for commercial customers, and defence programmes now want it faster than qualification and export controls allow. A contract manufacturer, an industry advisor, a fibre-sensing company, a fibre-processing equipment maker and a research institute explain how they move technology between markets, and the closing keynote asks what multi-domain operations demand of the sensors and links underneath them. |
||
|
Time |
Events & Presenters |
Affiliations & Program Notes |
| 13:40 - 14:10 |
Keynote |
|
| 14:10 - 14:30 |
Primes, agencies and government |
|
|
14:30 - 15:15 |
Photonics and dual-use companies |
|
|
15:15 – 15:45 |
Closing keynote |
|
| 15:45 - 15:55 |
Closing remarks |
|
|
16:00 – 17:00 |
Visit to Exail |
|
