To attendees, authors and exhibitors of IEEE AUTOTESTCON.

We regret to inform you that this long-standing conference has unfortunately been permanently canceled. IEEE AUTOTESTCON was founded in 1965 by Emerson Electric Company, and held every year since then, except for 1971 when Emerson declined to continue sponsorship and it was picked up by IEEE with volunteers, and 2020 and 2021 when COVID-19 was raging. The purpose was to bring focus to automatic test systems for military systems and equipment, and it was highly successful in meeting that goal, bringing together experts from industry, academia and military/government to explore new technologies and methods of military testing and diagnostics. Exhibits were formally accepted in 1979 after a major power outage at the Town & Country Hotel at AUTOTESTCON 1978 caused by a company bringing a large test system to the conference and powering it in a hospitality suite to demonstrate its capability to the attendees.

The conference continued to expand into the 80’s and 90’s and 2000’s, reaching highs of 2,400 total attendees, which included authors, regular attendees, exhibitor personnel and spouses, 300-plus exhibit booths, golf and tennis tournaments, spouses’ program, and other special events such as a gala evening dinner with entertainment, including “club Ritz” themes, casino nights, nights at Disneyland (Anaheim, CA) and Sea World (Orlando, Fl), and a Philadelphia-style block party. European and other non-US government and military personnel attended, from those countries who purchased US military systems.

In the 2010’s, authors, exhibits and attendees began to dwindle as the industry experienced consolidation, and government spending on ATE systems began to wane, but the conference still met its objectives of furthering the discipline and bringing industry, academia and government together to dialog, even though exhibits were reduced, the technical program was shorter, and special events disappeared.

But the death knell sounded in early 2025, when the new government administration initiated a ban on government and military personnel from attending conferences, other than those few specially focused n their service such as AUSA, AFA and similar. We were informed that government and military personnel could not attend AUTOTESTCON.

Without those attendees, one of the last purposes of the conference could not be fulfilled, that of government/military interaction with the ATE industry. Industry would have little motivation or reason to exhibit since their military customer would not be there. Authors would have less motivation to develop technical papers for the same reason. The IEEE AUTOTESTCON Board realized that without the customer exhibitor and attendee, the conference would no longer be viable.

Therefore, in mid-2025, the difficult decision to cancel AUTOTESTCON was made. The Board considered a hiatus to continue during the current government administration, but felt that a 4-year hiatus would make the conference near impossible to restart. Full notice of the cancellation was withheld until the IEEE could finalize all cancellation termination liabilities, but with that completed, the announcement can be made.

Many thanks to all of the authors, attendees, and exhibitors – and volunteers - who made the conference such a major success during its 57-year run. It was a good run, and it definitely helped nurture and mature the ATE capability in the military environment.