Northeast Indiana Defense Summit looks toward future of national security

Northeast Indiana plays a prominent role in U.S. defense, and the state’s education system contributes to the brainpower behind that effort, said Mark Lewis, president and CEO of the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI), during his keynote address Nov. 12 at the fourth annual Northeast Indiana Defense Summit.

“Make no mistake, we are in a defense technology race with our competitors,” Lewis said, “and it is a race that we dare not lose.”

Lewis said he believes all of the state’s educational system is here to support national security. Citing Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College, he said, “Together we are greater than the sum of our parts. We bring STEM and a skilled workforce to the defense industrial base.

“We are not just ivory tower academicians,” Lewis said. “We are committed to taking innovation out of the lab and into the hands of our war fighters.”

Purdue was a dominant presence at the summit. Appearing with Lewis were Joe Jewell, the John Bogdanoff Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and nominee for assistant secretary of defense for science and technology; Chad Pittman, president and CEO of the Purdue Research Foundation; and Dan DeLaurentis, the university’s executive vice president for research.

Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., hosted the two-day forum in Fort Wayne, including a day at Purdue’s Fort Wayne campus, which brought together policymakers, defense and industry leaders, and economic development officials.

Lewis commended Banks and Rep. Mark Messmer, R-Ind., as “a congressional delegation that gets it” for their efforts on advancing national security. Banks sits on several key defense committees, namely the Senate Armed Services Committee, and several subcommittees. Messmer is on the House Armed Services Committee and co-chairs the Congressional Hypersonics Caucus.

Federal officials present included Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, who told attendees that Indiana plays an important role in rebuilding America’s naval strength.

“This state pairs a deep bench of skilled trade and engineers with central logistics,” Phelan said, “turning precision machining and process reliability into a competitive advantage.

“America’s Navy doesn’t start at sea,” he said. “It starts here where you make things, where capacity, speed and repeatable quality convert requirements into deterrence.”

Defense has fueled growth in this region for the past few years. According to the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, the Department of War has awarded nearly $2.5 billion in contracts to businesses in this part of the state since 2020 including major defense employers like L3Harris Technologies Inc., BAE Systems, Raytheon and Ultra Electronics.

Northeast Indiana now has more than 95,000 skilled manufacturing workers and 4,500 engineers, as well as six of the nation’s top 15 engineering schools. And the Fort Wayne International Airport is a designated foreign-trade zone, meaning it can support commercial and cargo operations for the defense sector by connecting directly to other Midwest engineering and production hubs.

The event featured panels that addressed pressing defense topics, among them hypersonics, or aircraft and objects that travel at more than five times the speed of sound. Lewis, a renowned hypersonics expert, noted that the state has a major role to play in bringing down the costs of such vehicles.

“Mostly it’s the manufacturing and technology, and we’re perfectly positioned to do that,” he said, citing PARI’s Hypersonics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center at Purdue and extensive efforts at Notre Dame, among other examples.

“Purdue is planting its flag and saying, ‘We know this is important. We need to do consistent funding. We need to show leadership for the nation to make sure that our war fighters have this capability,’” Lewis said.