In 2023, the United States Department of Defense spent a whopping $431.4 billion on contracts for products and services – the majority of a $609.2 billion budget that accounts for 2.2 percent of America’s GDP.  Next month, a new conference is coming to northern Michigan with the goal of helping local companies get a piece of that pie.

Thursday, March 6 will mark the first-ever Northern Michigan Defense Conference, described by organizers as “a dynamic event dedicated to exploring the vast opportunities within the defense and federal contracting sectors.” Presented by the Michigan chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), and hosted by Traverse Connect and local manufacturer Century, LLC, the day-long conference is set to include keynote presentations and panels highlighting “valuable insights into the federal procurement process, emerging opportunities in defense and aerospace, and best practices for doing business with the federal government.”

It was Jim McManus, a local resident and a former Century employee, who put Traverse City on NDIA’s radar. These days, McManus works with ND Defense LLC, a Madison Heights-based manufacturer that “delivers innovative vehicles and life cycle support solutions to the U.S. military and its allies.” McManus is the company’s director of sales and business development for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa markets. He’s also a board member of the NDIA’s Michigan chapter, hence his role in bringing this particular conference north.

Last fall, McManus got word that the executive in charge of the Army Contracting Command branch at the Detroit Arsenal Army Base “wanted to do some community outreach outside of the metro Detroit area.” McManus notes Detroit has historically been a major epicenter of the U.S. defense industry. During World War II, for instance, Detroit’s auto industry pivoted from making cars to making tanks and bomber planes; according to the History Channel, the Detroit Arsenal “built more tanks than all of the Third Reich during the war years.” The tradition lives on today, with the Detroit Arsenal serving as one of six Army Contracting Command locations in the U.S. The base also houses TACOM (Tank-automotive and Armaments Command), which McManus describes a key “spoke” of the U.S. Army.

“Anything that deals with track vehicles, ground vehicles, or watercraft for the Army is contracted out of Detroit,” McManus says.

The push to reach beyond Detroit led NDIA to host a defense conference in Grand Rapids last year. Thanks to West Michigan’s strong foothold in the aerospace industry, that event drew strong attendance, and encouraged the higher-ups at Army Contracting Command to plot another outreach conference in 2025. McManus floated the idea of taking the show to Traverse City. He called Century President Tim Healy, who roped in the team from Traverse Connect, and soon, the inaugural Northern Michigan Defense Conference was on the calendar.

“The goal is to connect northern Michigan companies with the defense industry,” McManus tells The Ticker. “In one jam-packed day, companies will learn how to get involved, how to navigate through the bureaucracy, and what specific opportunities they might want to be involved with. Maybe it’s manufacturing, maybe it’s technology, and maybe it has something to do with the blue economy, but I think a lot of businesses up here have the potential to help answer some of the issues that are currently being faced within the Army.”

“We have a lot of businesses registered [for this conference] that haven’t been to any of our other events before,” notes Katherine DeGood, director of marketing and communications for Traverse Connect. While Traverse Connect hosts similar events, like the Northern Michigan Manufacturing Summit, DeGood says it’s a “good sign” that businesses see the defense conference as “a different kind of opportunity.”

“For us, this event is really about supporting our manufacturing sector and helping them find new opportunities,” DeGood adds. “We want our manufacturers to be able to export their products outside of the region to bigger markets, and we want them to be able to attract skilled manufacturing talent who want to live and work here.”

Century is one northern Michigan company that already does business with the defense sector. Using a liquid molten salt bath hardening line at its facility near Cherry Capital Airport, Century heat-treats numerous components that go into the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. For his part, Healy sees ample opportunities for other northern Michigan manufacturers to get into the game, too.

“It goes right along with the decision by Saab North America to move to Grayling,” Healy says, referencing Saab's fall 2024 announcement that it would open a new munitions facility in northern Michigan. “[Saab] looked at a lot of different places, and what they saw here was a great area that had a lot of expertise across a wide variety of manufacturing, research, engineering, education, and industry. I think the Army is seeing the same thing.”

While 2025 is proving to be an up-in-the-air time for federal spending — under the Trump Administration, Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) has vowed to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget — McManus expects defense will be one of the few areas to hold steady, if not increase. Defense spending has already been on the rise in the U.S. recently, increasing by $50.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, thanks in part to an 8.9 uptick in DoD contracts. Early fiscal resolutions from both the House and Senate budget committees recommend 12-figure increases for defense spending in the next decade.

Beyond extra spending, McManus hopes the new administration’s focus on governmental efficiency will create an easier path for small or mid-sized businesses to compete for federal contracts.

“Right now, one of the reasons the defense industry is hard to get into is that there are a lot of contracting and regulatory processes that inhibit small businesses from getting involved. It's almost easier not to go after those contracts,” McManus says. “When the government wants something, they usually put out a request for information from industry, and that takes 3-4 months. Then they have a meeting and talk about it. And then, 3-5 months after that, they finally put out a request for proposals. And it’s still a long process after that! I’m hoping we’ll see some process changes to streamline things and make the contractor pipeline a bit more accessible to small businesses.”