OVERVIEW: CLASP is a working-level meeting for engineers and technical personnel from science and technology development, system integration, and program management to exchange information on topics related to armor, survivability, lethality, ballistics, and much more. It is an ideal opportunity for technology developers to get direct feedback from platform systems engineers. As such, most of the discussions will be technical. This also provides an opportunity for leading industry and academic research teams to meet with their government counterparts and discuss current programs and issues of interest to the survivability community.
BACKGROUND: CLASP began in the mid-80s, originally assembled to coordinate light armor activities between the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. During the past ~40 years, CLASP has provided a venue for working-level discussions and expanded to sharing information between government services, industry, and academia in virtually all areas of survivability. Although the name CLASP highlights light armor discussions due to its origin, it is much more today.
MEETING FORMAT: The meeting will be primarily comprised of technical presentations, up to the SECRET level, each ∼20 min long, with an additional 10 min allotted for questions and answers.
Industry participants are required to brief the technical aspects of an ongoing survivability effort. This is required to ensure that all participants are contributing to the meeting, the gathering remains a reasonable size, and marketing briefs are eliminated. To industry participants: be advised that if there are fellow industry participants in the audience who you would rather not have in the room during your presentation, you may request that they leave for the duration of your presentation. You, the presenter, are solely responsible for any need-to-know restrictions and authorizations required for your presentation.