The Future War Conference — We have the technology.

The first defense conference for strictly fictional products. Every exhibit on the floor is a product that does not exist — built entirely from ingredients that do. Every exhibitor — prime, startup, lab, or lone grad student — presents from a declared year in the future, with a bill of materials that resolves to real parts, real papers, real TRLs, and a year that lives in a public ledger until it is graded. Useful fiction, with receipts. FICINT you can walk through.

First edition · exhibits set 2028–2040 · graded annually

Become a founding partner How to exhibit Manifesto ↓ PDF

Initial cohort: the useful-fiction community, war college futures programs, autonomy & defense primes' concept teams, underwriters, the writers who got here first — and anyone with a serious sheet. No affiliation required.

A crowded defense trade-show floor. In the foreground, a gray autonomous aircraft concept mockup on a white plinth, with a spec sheet on a stand bearing a large red stamp. Attendees in suits and uniforms fill the aisles. — Floor photography, first edition — the conference in this photograph does not exist **Every ingredient of it does**

A soldier in full kit stands in a demo area with two quadcopter drones held above his shoulders on visible carbon rods rising from his back frame, simulating an autonomous escort formation. A technician kneels adjusting his rig while officers inspect and an attendee photographs the red-stamped spec placard. — The new unit of hybrid warfare: man-mounted drones **Air and infantry, together as one**

§1 — Declared fiction

Every arms show already exhibits fiction. This is the first one that declares it.

Walk any major defense expo and a share of the floor is renders, full-scale mockups, and brochures for systems with no funded program behind them — undeclared fiction parked beside flying hardware, borrowing credibility from the booth next door and repaying it in doubt. The buyer can't tell concept from product, so everything gets discounted, and the honest exhibitors subsidize the vapor.

Here, fiction is the admission criterion. Nobody can fake existence at a show where existence is disqualifying. And the stigma inverts: at the mixed shows, exhibiting a concept signals you lack product; on a floor that is fictional by rule, speculation is a safe harbor — which is exactly the condition under which people show you their ambitious ideas instead of their fundable ones.

Defense has ready-to-wear shows on every continent, and no couture week. This is the couture week — with a bill of materials.

A crowded defense expo hall. On the left, a weathered fighter jet that has clearly flown; on the right, a flawless futuristic mockup on a mirror plinth backed by a cinematic render. Attendees photograph both with equal enthusiasm. — A floor elsewhere — one of these aircraft has flown; the booth won't tell you which **Nothing here is declared**

A salesman in a suit gestures at a pristine full-scale concept aircraft mockup while two air force officers listen. Behind them, a genuine weathered fighter sits at the neighboring booth. — Fiction, sold with a straight face **Undeclared**

§2 — The premise

Creativity is the hard part. The parts list is technically the easy part.

Defense industrialized imagination decades ago. Independent R&D is reimbursed as allowable overhead by regulation; the services award contracts where the conceptual design is the entire deliverable; the primes staff standing concept shops whose most valuable product has always been the idea. The creative work is real, funded, and professional.

It is also captive. One buyer shapes every concept toward what source selection will score — four conceptual-design contracts return four loyal wingmen, not four futures. The best work disappears into classified programs: unpublished, unpriced, ungraded, uncontested by anyone without a clearance. The industrial base has concept factories. It has no concept exchange — no venue with open provenance, public grading, and selection pressure from an audience rather than a customer.

They industrialized the creative part. Nobody built the exchange.

Overhead view of a worn wooden desk. On the left, a typed manuscript page with pencil edits and a coffee ring; on the right, a technical drawing of a soldier's exoskeleton with a red stamp. A few typed lines cross the desk and resolve into the drawing's dimension lines. — The pipeline, complete — words become dimension lines become steel **The parts list is the easy part**

§3 — The Rule of Ingredients

Three clauses separate this from vaporware, science fiction, and every concept-car keynote ever given.

§3.1 — NONEXISTENCE

The product must not exist.

No prototypes, no MVPs, no "early access." If it ships, it exhibits somewhere else. The floor is reserved for the adjacent possible — the things one integration effort away.

§3.2 — PROVENANCE

Every subsystem must exist.

Each exhibit files a provenance sheet: the design decomposed to subsystems, each at TRL 6 or better, each traceable to a citable paper, a fielded system, or an orderable part number. The footnote is the genre's credibility engine. The bill of materials is the footnote, in atoms.

§3.3 — THE YEAR

The year is a forecast, and forecasts get graded.

"Set in 2031" is not set dressing — it is a staked claim that the product could exist by 2031. Every edition opens with the Retrospective Hall, where prior years' claims are scored in public.

§4 — How to exhibit

No badge required. A prime's concept shop and a grad student file the same sheet.

The primes already have captive concept teams; the marginal value of this floor is everyone who doesn't — the researcher, the student, the retired chief with the one idea he's carried for twenty years. The precedent is DEF CON: hobbyists presenting beside the NSA, and the floor becoming the industry's recruiting event by accident. Four steps stand between anyone and a booth.

STEP 1 — EDITORIAL REVIEW

Does the fiction hold?

The bar is not polish, and it is not affiliation. It is seriousness of the fiction: a coherent answer to what world this exists in, and why that world buys it. Curation is the difference between couture week and a poster session.

STEP 2 — THE PROVENANCE SHEET

The equalizer.

One page, public, auditable — and the same rubric for everyone. A sophomore's sheet and a prime's sheet get graded identically, and the sophomore can win. §3 applies in full; the sheet is where affiliation stops mattering.

STEP 3 — THE COMMITMENT CLAUSE

If someone serious wants it, you deliver — at your declared tier.

Every exhibit is a firm offer, not an art piece: an option someone in the room can exercise. The tier states what exercising it delivers. This clause is what separates a floor from a gallery.

BUILD — you have the shop; a serious buyer gets the product.
LICENSE — you have the design; a serious buyer gets the rights.
JOIN — you have the idea; funded, you go build it with them.

STEP 4 — PROFIT

Several currencies.

Letters of intent and licenses are the obvious ones. The sleeper is the JOIN tier: it makes the floor a talent market, where a booth is a résumé with a bill of materials. And the compounding one is calibration — claim 2031, be right, and the badge becomes career capital nobody can issue themselves.

A small trade-show booth staffed by two young exhibitors. A 3D-printed drone model sits on the table beside a red-stamped spec sheet, while a uniformed officer listens and a man in a suit photographs the sheet with his phone. — Open floor — a small team, a filed sheet, and the room leaning in **The sheet is the equalizer**

§5 — Sample exhibit

What a booth files before it builds anything.

A worked example. The product below does not exist. Every row of it does. Tap a subsystem for its basis. A sheet like this could be filed by a prime's concept shop or a four-person team; the floor doesn't ask which.

LONGWATCH — autonomous search-and-rescue picket, self-refueling, 90-day station

SET IN 2031

COMMITMENT: BUILD

Subsystem	Readiness	Status
Long-endurance maritime airframe (solar-hybrid)	TRL 8	EXISTS
BASIS: fielded HAPS/MALE platforms, multiple vendors; 60+ day continuous-flight demonstrations on record. Marinization is engineering, not research.
Autonomous aerial refueling / energy transfer	TRL 7	EXISTS
BASIS: autonomous probe-and-drogue and boom contact demonstrated operationally (carrier-based tanking program, 2020s); drone-to-drone transfer demonstrated at small scale.
Maritime distress detection (EO/IR + RF fusion)	TRL 9	EXISTS
BASIS: 406 MHz EPIRB/PLB constellation processing is decades old; shipboard-class EO/IR person-in-water detection models published and fielded in coast guard trials.
On-station autonomy under comms denial (SHADOW-default behavior stack)	TRL 6	EXISTS
BASIS: local-autonomy fallback with conservative defaults demonstrated in multiple swarm programs; the hard part is doctrine, not code — which is why it's on this floor.
LONGWATCH — the integrated product	TRL —	DOES NOT EXIST
CLAIM: integrable by 2031. This row is the exhibit. This row is what gets graded.

Provenance sheet format v0.1 — one page, public, auditable · resolution criteria filed with the claim, not at grading Grading: Retrospective Hall, 2031 edition

↑ every row: tap for basis. The last row is always the product, and the last row is always red.

§6 — The Ledger

The year on the badge is a Brier score waiting to happen.

Every claim filed on the floor enters the Ledger — a standing public registry, with resolution criteria written at filing, not at grading. Between editions the claims stay live: underwriters requote premiums, forecasters post odds, letters of intent accrue against the row. Each edition opens in the Retrospective Hall, where every expired claim is settled in public — exists, slipped, or vindicated — and exhibitors carry the calibration record on the badge. The conference is the settlement day; the Ledger runs all year. The costume party becomes a market the moment the forecast has a price.

Class of 2028 (illustrative)	Claimed	Verdict
Cross-party in-flight abort protocol	2028	EXISTS
Attrition-linked insurance notes, drone fleets	2028	EXISTS
Uncrewed tanker-to-tanker logistics loop	2028	SLIPPED → 2030
Single-operator 200-drone control station	2028	EXISTS
Treaty annex distributed as signed config	2028	DOES NOT EXIST

Sandbagging costs points. Scoring rewards the nearest defensible year, not the safest distant one — a claim set in 2040 earns almost nothing for coming true.

Resolution is pre-registered. A Resolution Council — forecasting professionals plus domain referees — grades each claim against the criteria filed with it, not against the vibe in the room. No claim ages without a written test for what "exists" means.

Demand clears early. Attendees file letters of intent conditional on existence — each one a row in the Ledger against the exhibit it prices. The floor doubles as a bookbuild for the adjacent possible: the missing market where buyers signal before anyone spends the NRE.

The honest oracle has a booth. An underwriter quotes premiums on exhibits, in-world. A priced policy on a fictional product is the most credible review in the building.

A crowd of attendees in suits and uniforms faces a wall-sized board covered in a grid of claim cards, most tagged green, some amber, a few red. A presenter on stage points at a red-tagged card. — Retrospective Hall — the Class of 2028, settled in public **The year was a forecast**

§7 — The floors

Three floors. One rulebook.

Floor A — Open

The Commercial Floor

Dual-use and civil exhibits: logistics, SAR, sensing, resilience. Public provenance sheets, press welcome, students free — and student booths beside prime booths, graded by the same rubric. Where the genre recruits its next generation.

Floor B — Cleared

The Annex

The buildable-but-unbuilt that should not be published with a recipe attached. Access-controlled, allied-audience sessions run with partner institutions. The provenance discipline is identical; the audience is not.

Floor C — Warnings

The Red Pavilion

Exhibits argued against: products whose ingredients exist and whose exhibitors make the case that they should stay unassembled. Useful fiction's original job — exposing futures in order to prevent them — given a booth, a bill of materials, and a straight face. Red sheets cite capability classes, never integration recipes; anything recipe-shaped belongs in the Annex. We have the technology. That is the warning.

A darker red-lit pavilion on the conference floor. A shrouded object sits on a black plinth behind a thin red rope while a presenter addresses a silent semicircle of attendees in suits and uniforms. A placard beside it is printed in dense red ink. — Floor C — an exhibit argued against: ingredients cited, recipe withheld **The shroud stays on**

§8 — Edition Zero

The proceedings ship before the conference does.

The first artifact is not a floor. It is a catalog: Catalog №0, a mail-order catalog of products that do not exist — every listing backed by a one-page provenance sheet, every year a claim opened in the Ledger, every order form a letter of intent conditional on existence. Twenty-four exhibits, print and web, launched at a one-day invitational — listings solicited from primes' concept teams and unaffiliated builders alike, under the same four steps as the floor.

Catalog №0 · First printing

Goods from the adjacent possible

Deliveries 2028 – 2040 · prices on request

Nothing in this catalog exists. Every part in it does. Each listing decomposes to orderable subsystems, cited to TRL, dated as a public claim.

☐ Order form enclosed — letter of intent, conditional on existence, entered to the Ledger

Paper beats venues. A catalog ships for the cost of a print run, not a convention center. Edition Zero proves the format — provenance sheets, graded years, conditional demand — before anyone rents a hall or sells a booth.

It is a book-shaped object. The genre's authors work in print. A catalog is a FICINT anthology wearing a Sears jacket: every listing is a story with part numbers, and the whole volume is the demand instrument. The 1893 Sears catalog built an empire publishing want before inventory; this one publishes want before existence.

Every page is a press hook. A product that does not exist — priced, sourced, and dated in public — is a headline per listing. The catalog recruits the first floor's exhibitors by showing them their booth in print.

§9 — Founding cohort

Built with the people who invented the genre, not around them.

The useful-fiction / FICINT communityThe rulebook is yours — rules of the real, applied to hardware. The conference is the genre's trade-show form factor, and it doesn't happen without its authors in the room.
War college & futures programsRetrospective Hall as a standing calibration exercise; student exhibits as coursework with a public grade.
Primes' concept teams & autonomy startupsA venue where the concept deck is the product, the demand signal arrives before the NRE, and the forecast builds reputation instead of burning it.
Students, independents, unaffiliated buildersThe floor's whole point: the concepts the org charts can't produce. Editorial review is the only gate, the sheet is the equalizer, and the JOIN tier means an idea is enough inventory to exhibit.
Underwriters & forecastersThe scoring layer needs professionals: proper scoring rules, priced premiums, resolution criteria written before the claims age.
Writers, worldbuilders, production designersDiegetic prototypes are a craft. The booths are stories with part numbers, and somebody has to make them land.
Publishers & pressCatalog №0 is a book-shaped object with a news hook per listing: a product that doesn't exist, priced, sourced, and dated in public.

§10 — This document practices what it files

Provenance sheet: The Future War Conference.

Ingredient	Origin	Status
Useful fiction / FICINT — rules of the real	Singer & Cole, 2015 — a novel where every imagined system carries an endnote to a real one; adopted across US, UK, AUS, FR defense communities	EXISTS
Diegetic prototypes	Kirby, 2010 — artifacts that persuade by existing inside a story	EXISTS
Technology Readiness Levels	NASA, 1970s; now the lingua franca of every acquisition office	EXISTS
Industrialized concept work	IRAD reimbursement by regulation; conceptual designs awarded as contract deliverables	EXISTS
Open floor — amateurs beside agencies	DEF CON, 1993 — hobbyists presenting beside the NSA	EXISTS
Proper scoring rules & calibration	Brier, 1950; forecasting-tournament practice, 2010s–	EXISTS
Conditional demand aggregation (LOI bookbuild)	Standard capital-markets mechanics, repointed at products that don't exist yet	EXISTS
Mail-order catalog as demand instrument	Sears, Roebuck & Co., 1893 — publishing want before inventory	EXISTS
The Future War Conference	—	DOES NOT EXIST

We have the technology. The integration is the exhibit. Claimed: Catalog №0 within 6 months of founding cohort · first floor within 18

Close view from behind of a soldier's back frame: a carbon mast splits into two arms holding two perched quadcopter drones above the shoulders, with quick-release clamps at each perch and two wound fiber-optic spools mounted at the waist, thin fiber lines running up the mast to each drone. — A closer view — the perch, the release, the twin fiber spools at the waist **Mechanical · power · data · release · fiber**

§11 — The last row is red on purpose

Help us grade this claim.

We have the technology. What doesn't exist is the room. Seeking founding partners across the useful-fiction community, futures programs, the autonomy industry, publishing, and the forecasting world — co-designers of the rulebook, the Ledger, and Catalog №0 — and the catalog's first exhibitors, affiliation optional. The conference is currently a provenance sheet. That's the point.

Get in touch — founding cohort

dehnbostele@gmail.com · manifesto (PDF) · concept spec & rulebook draft available on request