EDGE Group’s $7B deal with Indonesia marks largest int’l foray yet, as CEO pushes expansion

DUBAI AIRSHOW — Emirati defense giant EDGE Group was an unmistakable presence here at the Dubai Airshow, where the conglomerate unveiled several new systems on the show floor and announced more than a dozen new deals or cooperation agreements, including several with international partners half a world away from the UAE.

The moves are part of what EDGE CEO Hamad Al Marar told Breaking Defense was a focus on an international market where he hopes export sales will one day cover just about all of EDGE’s expenses.

“I want to make sure [in the future] that EDGE Group relies on exports to be self-sufficient, to [diversify] the clientele, and to keep this advancement happening,” Al Marar told Breaking Defense in an interview on Thursday.

Right now, he said, exports account for “a little bit over 50 percent of our sales,” adding that EDGE has a presence in over 100 countries. The firm has racked up a backlog worth $21 billion, Al Marar said.

Among the swath of signings at the airshow, EDGE announced new or expanding partnerships with companies hailing from Vietnam to South Korea to Spain and Italy. But perhaps the most eye-catching deal was one with a serious valuation attached to it: A cooperation agreement with Indonesia’s Republikorp that includes a “comprehensive modernisation programme for the Indonesian Armed Forces,” total financing and procurements of which are estimated to be worth $7 billion.

The announcement of that deal on Wednesday called it the “largest international programme to date” for EDGE.

“When it comes to armament strategy, [Indonesia] comprises of many islands, and therefore the solutions they might ask for would be always with a multiplier. It is a program that will take many years to fulfill,” Al Marar told Breaking Defense.

As part of the deal, EDGE defense hardware is to be localized in Indonesia, including the SKYKNIGHT air defense missile system, infantry fighting vehicles, unmanned boats, cyber defense software, as well as ammunition.

Al Marar added that Indonesia’s requirement has been in “study for the last three [to] four years.”

He said the localization element “is not imposed on us fully, but we always tend to try and create local work packages, employment opportunities, capacity growth in any country we go to.”

Al Marar told Breaking defense that the last supply batch of this deal “would be in eight years. So it is quite a program.”

Among the international customers of interest is one of the largest: the US. Al Marar told Breaking Defense that EDGE is “definitely” looking to penetrate that market.

A few days before the Dubai Airshow, EDGE Group and American defense startup Anduril entered a joint venture to coproduce drones, including a mid-size drone called Omen, which was on display on the show’s floor.

Al Marar described the team-up with Anduril as a “genuine partnership that would bring benefits” to both parties.

“From a technology perspective, it would add so much value, given that it’s also American tech. The UAE would bring so much value because we [have] also started on a clean slate, and we had to be innovative to go and have a product ready fast, to become efficient and to have cost effective solutions to the market,” he told Breaking Defense.

He added that both firms will “come together on joint development that will help create an export base also … for Anduril for the rest of the [international] markets. As you may know, the US is a very large market, and all the orders are really huge, and you would need the capacity elsewhere to serve other markets.”

Regarding other markets, Al Marar said that EDGE is heavily engaged in talks with North African nations, “specifically Egypt and Morocco, and we have been conducting efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa actively. So we do see that Africa is the market.”

Tech On The Show Floor And, Later, In Space

At the airshow EDGE made a splash on the show floor with a large presentation area and several unveilings. In the autonomous systems domain, other than the Omen, EDGE unveiled its medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV dubbed JERNAS-M as well as the VORTEX-E counter-drone interceptor.  

The firm also displayed smart weapons, including long-range cruise missile WSM-1, DARKWING air- or ground-launched munition and THUNDER-ER smart munition.

On the software side of things, EDGE unveiled ZENITH, which the company describes as the “UAE’s soverieign space operations and data orchestration platform unifying access to multi-sensor imagery and data from national, commercial, and allied constellations.”

“ZENITH can be integrated either on prem[ises] or on cloud, [a] solution that can be offered to the clients, and most importantly, what we need is what we already have done is to integrate with the different imagery satellite providers,” Waleid Al Mesmari, EDGE Group’s president of space and cyber technologies cluster, told Breaking Defense

As part of its space endeavors, EDGE Group’s subsidiary FADA is expecting to launch the first satellite of its Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Satellite, otherwise known as SIRB, constellation by 2028.

“SIRB is about launching SAR satellite constellation that can observe the Earth and provide different applications either for border protection [and security], mining and other civil applications,” Al Mesmari said.

He told Breaking Defense that as of now the partners of the program have been selected: Singapore’s ST Engineering, Italy’s Metasensing and three UAE entities — TII (Technology Innovation Institute), Space 42, and NSSTC (National Space Science and Technology Center), led by the national space agency.

The constellation is expected to be comprised of three satellites that will be launched in two phases.

“The first phase [consists] of [launching the first] satellite that can enable us to transfer the knowledge and upskill our Emirati engineers to understand how to develop, design, and produce SAR satellites [and] will be concluded by 2028, with the first satellite [launch],” Al Mesmari told Breaking Defense.

He added that afterwards comes the second phase of working on the second and third satellite of the constellation.

“Within the first quarter of next year, our local engineers will travel to our partners in Italy, to get and understand and participate in the design and the development phase of the SAR payload, enabling them to come back with the right knowledge to sustain this capability in the future,” he added.