Aerospace Global News Theatre 2 – Wednesday 22nd July 2026

11:00 – 11:50 – AGF Defence Summit

Panel:  AUKUS: Delivering the Next Generation Partnership

Samira Braund, Defence Director, ADS
David Nockels, First Assistant Secretary Defence Trade, Regulation and AUKUS Advanced Capabilities, Department of Defence
Nick Hine, Chief Executive Marine and Chief Growth Officer, Babcock

Nearly five years after the announcement of AUKUS, the partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is evolving from vision to delivery. As strategic competition intensifies, AUKUS is reshaping how trusted allies collaborate to develop, acquire and sustain advanced capabilities at pace.
Bringing together senior leaders from across the three nations, this panel will explore how AUKUS is driving a new model of defence cooperation, one founded on deeper industrial integration, shared innovation and a commitment to strengthening deterrence through collective capability. Discussions will examine progress through AUKUS, the opportunities for industry, and the practical steps required to translate ambition into operational advantage.
From undersea capability and autonomous systems to workforce mobility, technology sharing and supply chain resilience, the session will consider how governments and industry can work together to deliver the this next generation partnership and ensure AUKUS remains a catalyst for security, prosperity and technological leadership across the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

12:00 – 12:50 AGN Session

Panel: Securing the Materials Base of Defence Production

Joanna Bailey, Editor, AGN
Aliya Grig, Co-founder RA88 & CEO Kosmos Foundation, RA88
Adam Healy, Partner, Roland Berger
Rob Mark, Senior Vice President, Forge@Mach

Titanium, rare earths and other strategic inputs are now central to industrial resilience and national capability. This session looks at how dependence on vulnerable material supply chains affects aerospace and defence production, and what governments and industry can do to build a more secure, competitive and dependable materials base.

13:00 – 13:40 AGN Session

Panel: Closing the Aerospace Skills Gap

Paul Oxley, Director General – ADS Skills, ADS Group
David Edwards, Chief Executive, Royal Aeronautical Society

Aerospace growth will be limited by talent unless the sector moves faster on recruitment, training and capability-building. This session explores how employers, educators and policymakers can attract new talent, strengthen digital and engineering skills, and build the workforce needed for advanced manufacturing and next-generation aerospace programmes.

14:15 – 15:00 – AGF Technology Summit

Panel: Building the moon: NASA’s lunar base vision 2028–2036

George Nield, Chair, GSA
Carlos Garcia-Galan, NASA Moon Base Program Executive, NASA
Teodoro Valente, President, Italian Space Agency
Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

NASA’s ambitious plan to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon is moving from concept to construction. This session brings together leading experts to examine the roadmap for building a sustained lunar base, from the first components touching down in 2028 through a fully operational outpost by 2036. Panellists will discuss the critical infrastructure layers that will make permanent lunar habitation possible, modular habitat design and deployment, pressurised and unpressurised crewed rovers for surface exploration, and the landing and launch systems needed to keep crews and cargo moving reliably between Earth and the Moon. The discussion will also address two mission-critical enablers often overlooked in public conversations: power generation and distribution, and the communications and navigation architecture required to keep a lunar base connected and operational. This session is an essential look at humanity’s renewed focus on the Earth’s closest celestial neighbour.

15:15 – 16:15 – AGF Finance Summit

Panel: Sovereign Capital & the Global Space Economy: The Race for Space Finance

Sanjeev Gordhan, General Partner, Type One Ventures
Richard Chenel, Founder & Partner, Chenel Capital Partners
Tejpaul Bhatia, Founder and CEO, Nebex

As sovereign capital increasingly becomes an instrument of geo-financial statecraft, the global space economy is entering a new era shaped by strategic investment, geopolitical alignment, and evolving regulatory influence. This session brings together leaders from government, finance, and industry to explore how the fragmentation of global space capital markets and the emergence of space infrastructure as a regulated asset class will reshape competitive advantage and how capital strategy will determine who leads the next decade of space innovation.