The HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit will be held from October 29 to November 2 at Paradise Point Resort, San Diego. Developed by the HALO Corporation, which provides training and operational services related to counter-terrorism, kidnap & ransom, disaster response, and other “crisis” issues. The corporation employs former Special Operations and National Security/Intelligence personnel, and in fact the keynote speaker for the summit will be General Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and CIA.

The summit is described by HALO Corporation as “a groundbreaking, multi-jurisdictional counterterrorism event that will educate and train the entire range of national security stakeholders, from government agencies and elite military special operations units to law enforcement and emergency responders.” It consists of five days of educational seminars from subject matter experts, live action demonstrations by Strategic Operations, which provides “hyper-realistic” scenario-based training for US Military units and law enforcement agencies, and “immersive tactical training scenarios.” The entire resort has been taken over for the summit, and as it’s on an island, maritime security demonstrations will be easily undertaken. In addition, there will be UAV demonstrations as well.

Educational seminars might be boring at other conventions and summits, but with titles like “Domestic Counter-Insurgency Ops,” “Foreign Weapons Identification,” “Low Light Tactical Operations,” “Cartel Threats to the US,” “Close Quarters Combat,” and so on, it’s not likely that anyone is going to fall asleep during a lecture. If they do, they might find themselves to be an unwilling volunteer for the “Tactical Interrogation, Debriefing, and Elicitation” course, which will most likely keep the participant awake from that point on.

Registration for the summit is currently open, with “early bird” pricing of $1100 for government, law enforcement, military, and EMS personnel and $1300 for private sector personnel available until July 20.