Guardian Skies Summit

DETECT - IDENTIFY - TRACK - DEFEAT

Full-Scale Demonstration Exercise

MDA is proud to co-host the Guardian Skies Summit, in partnership with DRONERESPONDERS.

September 23rd, 2026: Camp Grayling 

$250–750 million in federal counter-UAS funding is expected to be released to SLTT agencies this fall through the DHS CUAS grant programs. All states and territories will have access, with a large share dedicated to mitigation systems.  Most agencies making these purchases have never seen the technology operate in a real environment, yet are making rapid, high-dollar decisions with limited data.

Guardian Skies is a demonstration event at Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center, co-located with the National All-Domain Warfighting Center. This is the nation’s largest National Guard training installation and a federally designated drone test site.

• Counter-UAS vendors will be provided dedicated demonstration windows to operate their systems against live drone threats in a controlled, real-world environment. Federal airspace and spectrum approvals to conduct mitigation exercises included RF disruption, kinetics, and GPS denial

• Live red-air threat simulations will include multiple drone profiles and coordinated multi-threat scenarios. This provides vendors with a realistic target set and gives stakeholders a true performance benchmark.

Confirmed Vendors:

• DroneShield (Flagship Sponsor)

• Airspace Link

• AirSight

• Axon

• D-Fend Solutions

• Echodyne

• Dronetag

• Hidden Level

• Hoverfly

• Robin Radar

• Sentrycs

Attendees will be vetted and must fall into one of the following categories. Event staff reserves the right to approve and deny all attendees:

• State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement

• Corrections, Prisons, etc

• National Guard

• Federal Partners

• Commercial Security, including Critical Infrastructure, Venue Security, etc.

  
  

**NorthSky Consortium Members, along with invited Northern Michigan small-business and startup founders, are invited to the event. Please secure the referral code from your NorthSky Consortium leads (Traverse Connect, 20Fathoms or NMC). **

Event Schedule:

Wednesday, September 23rd

08:00 Opening Keynote and Remarks

09:30 Vendor Presentations

11:30 Lunch (Provided on site)

12:30 Panel Discussion

13:00 Live Detection Flight Block 1

14:30 Afternoon Break

14:45 Panel Discussion

15:45 Live Detection Flight Block 2

16:45 Debrief

17:00 Event Concludes for Day

*Evening Social in Grayling, details to follow.

Thursday, September 24th

08:00 Opening Remarks

08:30 Panel Discussion

09:30 Live Mitigation Blocks

12:00 Lunch (Provided on site)

12:30 Live Mitigation Blocks

14:30 Closing Remarks

15:00 Event Concludes

The event will be held at the Michigan Army National Guard’s Camp Grayling. Power will be provided on site. Each vendor will be given space under an outdoor tent and a location to deploy kit. Grayling, Michigan, has several hotel options. The closest international airport is in Traverse City, Michigan. Additional airport options include Pellston, Lansing, Grand Rapids or Detroit (Listed in order of distance from venue). 

Attendee Registration: Attendees, click here to register.

Looking for the vendor information packet? Email info@midroneassoc.com. Ready to register as a vendor? Vendors, click here to register.