Edge Group expressed UAE’s ambitions for expansion and hegemony

Owning a substantial military industry and spending billions of dollars on it by the Emirate Edge Group expresses the extend of UAE’s ambition to expansion and hegemony in the Middle East.

From drones to remotely-guided missiles, the UAE, one of the world’s largest arms buyers, is developing the military industry locally.

The UAE was involved in the Yemen war for years. It has aggressively intervened militarily in other countries, such as Libya and African regions, as part of its efforts to gain suspicious influence and expansion.

Two years ago, the Abu Dhabi-based Edge Group was created to lead these efforts and now includes 25 Emirati arms manufacturers.

Edge rose to become one of the world’s 25 largest defence manufacturers last year, with revenues of more than $5 billion, according to the International Peace Research Institute SIPRI in Stockholm.

“We realized that we had to bring our capabilities together under one roof to focus on what we want to manufacture in the country, and now we can do that on a global level as well,” Al-Buraiki told AFP. “We have an emerging group mentality, but with tremendous capabilities,” he continued.

The group employs 13,000 people “from all over the world” but hires more Emiratis, mainly through agreements with universities in wealthy countries abroad.

At the Dubai Airshow, which started on Sunday, the huge Edge pavilion displays a range of products made in the UAE, from guided bombs to cyber security systems.

The wing seeks to attract contracts that are almost exclusively in favour of the UAE armed forces, especially for the maintenance of military aircraft for the Air Force (approximately $4 billion) or the provision of guided munitions ($880 million).

The UAE is among the world’s largest arms importers and is seeking to diversify its economy.

Cooperation with Israel

“We already have 20 products that were manufactured under the ‘Made in the UAE’ initiative, and 13 of them were announced this year,” Al-Buraiki said. “We aspire to work within national capabilities (only), but we do not have a sufficient degree of maturity to dispense with partners yet.”

Thus, the manufacturing group is increasing the number of agreements with the American companies Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon, for example, or the Brazilian Embraer and the European Airbus.

While the partnerships are based on granting Edge production licenses for certain products, the group concludes other, more ambitious contracts. The partner “buys and sells our products” on behalf of the group, according to Al-Buraiki.

The signing of the normalization agreement with Israel last year opened new opportunities for the group to get closer to the military manufacturers in the Jewish state, who were present in large numbers for the first time at the Dubai Air Show.

“We discuss with them and sign contracts. We follow the policy of our government,” Al-Buraiki said.

In this context, the giant Israeli company Elbit Systems in the field of armaments, which designs drones, announced on Sunday the establishment of a subsidiary company in the UAE, with the aim of “transferring technologies to local partners.”

Edge, which has secured nearly two dozen export contracts for services or ammunition, hopes to establish itself internationally.

Currently, EPI, one of its entities specialized in precision engineering for aeronautics, exports more than 60 per cent of its production.

Al-Buraiki considered that “export is important, not only in terms of economics” but also in demonstrating the quality of Emirati weapons. If we have a good product, we should be able to sell it abroad.”