The Optica Optics Manufacturing Industry Summit brings together the companies designing, manufacturing, testing and deploying precision optics for the world’s most demanding applications: defense, space, and advanced sensing.

In 2027 the Summit moves to Tucson, one of the deepest optics-and-defense clusters in the country, and puts defense at the center of the program rather than treating it as one industry among several. The agenda follows the optics value chain from design through manufacturing, metrology, and materials, then anchors it in a defense end-user panel where primes, government laboratories, and space agencies state directly what they need from the supply chain, what they can't yet source, and how long qualification really takes.

The timing matters. As the U.S. defense and space sectors push to rebuild domestic precision-optics capacity and reduce single points of failure abroad, the questions of supply chain resilience, trade compliance, and workforce pipeline have moved from side conversation to headline topic. This Summit puts them on the agenda directly, with a dedicated session built around exactly that.