The Honolulu Defense Forum (HDF) is an annual event hosted by the Pacific Forum International, a private, non-profit, non-partisan foreign policy research institute based in Honolulu, Hawaii. This effort has included participation with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and industry to create a regular forum for U.S. and allied representatives across the defense industry, critical & emerging technologies, and economic security sectors, along with our closest regional allies and like-minded partners.

HDF focuses on leveraging geography, private-public partnerships, and alliances to strengthen resilience and enhance deterrence, and builds on previous themes of developing shared narratives, enhancing capabilities, and improving integration. The aim is to find ways to accelerate joint and combined capability development, enhance combat-credible conventional and strategic capabilities, and ensure force resilience as both a deterrent to threats and as a key enabler to the regional security in the Indo-Pacific using all elements of national power. This is especially important as the United States and its allies and partners face significant operational challenges that need to be addressed in the region.

HDF will focus on “Operationalizing Solutions: Integrating Capabilities to Prevail.” This objective is to accelerate the transition from planning to execution, particularly ahead of a critical 2027 military modernization goal set by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the narrowing of a window for when the threat of a Chinese move on Taiwan could materialize. Admiral Paparo in his remarks at HDF 2025 stated that “the barriers between our government and the industry need to come down. We have to take risks” and “We have to act now.”

The themes of HDF 2026 will center on:

• developing asymmetric capabilities with disproportionate deterrent effects;
• implementing networked deterrence architectures with concrete command structures;
• hardening critical systems against multi-domain threats;
• achieving decision advantage through responsible AI deployment;
• forging technology partnerships spanning Silicon Valley to Asia and Europe; and
• securing critical supply chains and coordinating economic statecraft.

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Dates

January 2026

Contact 

Ms Kimberly Lehn

Senior Director, Honolulu Defense Forum

kim@pacforum.org

Ms Chrissy Fisher

Program Manager

Chrissy@pacforum.org

Ms Shanna Khayat

Communications & Outreach Manager

Shanna@pacforum.org

Location

Waikiki, Hawai'i