Hampton Roads Alliance urges region to lean into defense, energy and AUKUS opportunities

Doug Smith, chief executive officer of the Hampton Roads Alliance, told the Hampton City Council work session on Oct. 26 that the alliance is steering regional economic-development strategy toward defense, energy and a proposed regional investment playbook to capture Department of Defense and related private-sector investment.

Smith said the region’s concentration of military installations and the submarine industrial base create a unique opportunity. “At the end of the day, we’re a military industrial defense community,” he said, adding that the alliance is prioritizing both defense supply chains and energy-related projects.

The Alliance presentation argued the region has a rare set of assets: 19 military bases, a substantial DOD spending footprint, major port capabilities and research institutions. Smith said the alliance’s recent pivot toward existing-business support and targeted sector work is beginning to show results: the organization reported 13 announcements last year that it described as nearly $1 billion in investment and more than 1,000 jobs, and said the last five years have supported roughly $2.5 billion in investment versus about $500 million in the prior 10 years.

Smith outlined AUKUS — the trilateral Australia–United Kingdom–United States security partnership — as a market driver, noting the alliance is working with Newport News Shipbuilding to identify where regional suppliers can better support submarine work. He described AUKUS as having multiple “pillars,” including the submarine program and a technology pillar focused on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. “Pillar 1 is all about the sub program,” he said. “Less attention has been paid to pillar 2, which I think is just as important. It’s the technology side of things.”

Smith said the alliance now represents 15 localities and roughly 110 investing companies and has increasingly emphasized research and business intelligence to inform targeted recruitment. He also urged local leaders to consider how individual localities fit into a polycentric regional model — for example, research and knowledge work on the peninsula, maritime and defense activity around the harbor, and manufacturing and logistics in Isle of Wight and Suffolk.

Council members asked for clarifications about the regional DOD spending figures and supplier breakdowns; Smith said the alliance commissioned Drexel University to analyze regional DOD spending and that more detailed supplier-level data is available to local economic-development teams. He also discussed the Eastern Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority (EVRIFA) as a financing and site-preparation vehicle the region could use for large industrial and energy projects.

Smith closed by inviting council members to the alliance’s midyear meeting and a rollout of the draft regional investment playbook at Nauticus on the 26th, which the alliance planned as the start of gathering local input on priority projects and the capital stack.

City Manager Mary Bunting and Council members followed with brief discussion about how Hampton fits in the alliance’s three suggested buckets (defense, energy, knowledge/cyber) and noted existing local participation (Mayor Gray serves on the alliance executive board; the city’s economic development director participates on the alliance’s “red team”).