In air and missile defense, seconds matter. Distance matters. And in the next fight in the open Indo-Pacific, the side that detects, tracks, and defeats threats better across all Domains with superior integration and innovation will win.
That is why, in August, the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance and the University of Hawaii launched the inaugural cohort of ARTEMIS (Advanced Reconnaissance and Tracking for Environmental Monitoring and Indo-Pacific Security), an 8-month academic executive program designed to tackle the real-world challenges that stand between the rapidly-changing world of today and achieving successful deterrence and defense tomorrow.
This month, ARTEMIS 1 hit a key milestone. On December 4, this world-class cohort of leaders gathered together on the sidelines of the MISSILE-PAC 25 conference in Honolulu, Hawaii to introduce the topics of their capstone projects, the work they will continue refining and completing for presentation in March 2026. These capstones are engineering products and courses of action. They are mission-driven solutions supported by the University of Hawaii’s Advanced Research Center designed to move fast from concept to action.
This year’s ARTEMIS capstone topics take aim at three of the toughest challenges on the board:
1. Developing passive acoustic sensors to detect and track hypersonic missile threats
2. Defending against swarm attacks on satellites in space
3. Developing a data lake in the Pacific.
MDAA’s academic program capstones have a track record that speaks for itself. In past cohorts, capstones have become legislation, courses of action, published research papers, and real capabilities, often within a 1 to 2 year turnaround from completion.
The ARTEMIS program itself was borne of a capstone produced by the University of Southern California (USC) SHIELD Executive Program 2024 cohort. Their capstone focused on a simple truth: true defense and deterrence in the vast Indo-Pacific requires multinational integration in IMD between the U.S. and our Allies. This necessitates a venue in which Allies, partners, and Americans can come together to collaborate on the hardest problems in real time. That capstone recommended building a multilateral, diverse executive program modeled in the spirit of SHIELD.
Within months of that capstone presentation, and following focused collaboration between MDAA and the University of Hawaii, ARTEMIS moved from recommendation to reality. It was built quickly because in this moment, speed and follow-through are not optional.
Now, with capstone topics on the table and the entire cohort working hard to deliver solutions in the new year, ARTEMIS has crossed an important threshold. The hunt is on, and the ARTEMIS 1 cohort is pressing forward on some of the foremost challenges in the realms of space, technological innovation, and deterrence in the Pacific and beyond.
