Live demonstrations along the Riverwalk, an expanded outdoor program, and a session track built around autonomy and interoperability put unmanned systems at the operational center of this year’s show.
The conference programming at SOF Week 2026 places unmanned systems and the autonomy stack near the front of the schedule rather than relegating them to a side track. Among the technology-focused sessions and demonstrations confirmed for the May 18–21 program are unmanned systems autonomy and interoperability, artificial intelligence infrastructure, visual information support, and resilient logistics in degraded and contested environments. The acquisition keynote from USSOCOM Acquisition Executive Melissa A. Johnson is the marker to watch for any signal on how SOF AT&L intends to translate that programmatic language into contract action over the back half of the fiscal year.
The live demonstration program is where most of that translates into hardware. SOF Week’s live industry demonstrations are scheduled to run along the Tampa Riverwalk behind the convention center, with a lineup that includes maritime systems, robotics, next-generation sensors, communications, and autonomous surface and unmanned systems. Companies on the demonstration schedule include Kraken, STR8 Industries, Havoc AI, AEVEX, GreyCliff Industries, Seakeeper, Wing Group, Splash Industries, Seasats, Albacore, and Ocean Power Technologies. The maritime concentration is consistent with USSOCOM’s ongoing investment in unmanned surface vessels for forward presence, ISR, and contested-environment access, and with the broader operational lessons coming out of the Black Sea and Red Sea over the last twenty-four months.
Among confirmed exhibitor activity in the unmanned and autonomy space, AEVEX is one of the more concrete examples of what the show floor will look like this year. The company is exhibiting at Booth 1933 on Level 3 of the Tampa Convention Center, with daily morning demonstrations of its Mako Lite unmanned surface vehicle in the harbor outside the convention center, and is showing launched effects, autonomous systems, advanced positioning, navigation and timing, and mission-tailored unmanned solutions. The ForgeX additive manufacturing display at the convention center entrance is positioned around deployable production and sustainment concepts intended to support production and sustainment closer to deployed operations — the affordable-mass framing translated into a logistics argument.
The autonomy stack is also visible on the software side. Latent AI is co-located with hardware partner One Stop Systems at the JW Marriott, Level 2, Booth 5006, with an additional meeting presence in Meeting Pod 2 at the Tampa Convention Center, Level 1, showing autonomous UAS work built on edge AI compute. The pairing of model optimization software with ruggedized forward-deployable compute is the kind of integration story SOF acquisition has been asking commercial vendors to bring forward, and it tracks closely with the autonomy-and-interoperability programming on the conference agenda.
Counter-UAS runs through both the exhibition and the demonstration program. SOF Week is positioned to address next-generation SOF capabilities including unmanned systems, AI/ML integration, advanced communications, precision strike systems, mobility platforms, counter-UAS technologies, and wearable systems. The proliferation of small UAS in irregular warfare and the cost-exchange problem that proliferation creates have moved C-UAS from a niche acquisition line to a foundational requirement, and the floor at Tampa will reflect that.
For attendees scoping the unmanned and autonomy portion of the week against a finite schedule, three anchors orient the visit. The Wednesday capability demonstration on the waterfront concentrates the integrated operational picture into a single hour. The Riverwalk demonstration program runs across the exhibit days and is where individual platforms can actually be seen working. The Outpost at Peter O. Knight Airport runs Tuesday through Thursday with live aerial operations, ground-based demonstrations, and aircraft displays, accessed by shuttles running approximately every twenty minutes from the main campus. The exhibition halls, organized by functional area, fill in the rest.
