U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) said he will host the 2026 Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit on July 14 and 15, at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.
The two-day summit will convene the nation’s leading defense CEOs and investors, as well as senior U.S. military and administration officials, to showcase the state’s defense industrial base, and announce partnerships and investments that are driving innovation across the state.
“Pennsylvania built the Arsenal of Democracy that won the Second World War. Today, under President Trump’s leadership, the Commonwealth is building the Arsenal of Freedom that will secure the 21st century,” McCormick said. “From shipbuilding in Philadelphia to munitions in the Lehigh Valley, robotics and AI in Pittsburgh, and advanced manufacturing across the Commonwealth, no state is more essential to advancing the President’s Peace through Strength vision than Pennsylvania.”
The summit comes one-year after McCormick convened the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. That summit, joined by President Donald Trump, showcased American energy dominance. The first-of-its-kind event delivered more than $92 billion in private-sector commitments to the Commonwealth — the largest single-day investment announcement in Pennsylvania’s history.
Last year’s summit saw the announcement of $90 billion in investments by technology and energy firms for infrastructure projects across the state, including a $25 billion investment by Blackstone in Northeast Pennsylvania, a $6 billion CoreWeave data center in Lancaster, and grid upgrades by companies like Constellation Energy.
McCormick said the defense summit would create great-paying jobs across the Commonwealth and the country, and cement Pennsylvania as a cornerstone of American defense production.