Edge and Anduril in joint venture to build 'AI-powered' drones at new UAE production centre

Abu Dhabi's Edge and US defence tech company Anduril will enter into a joint venture to design, develop and produce autonomous air vehicles in a new manufacturing centre in the UAE.

The joint venture will develop products starting with “Omen”, a drone system with both defence and commercial uses, the companies said.

The first 50 of these are booked for a UAE customer, creating a guaranteed production base that anchors the new plant and expands local supply chains, Edge said.

Edge will invest $200 million in the project, building on Anduril’s prior cumulative investment of $850 million in the technology. The companies plan to take the aircraft from the development phase to full-rate production by the end of 2028.

Hamad Al Marar, managing director and chief executive of Edge, sees a “beautiful alignment” with Anduril, with the partners adding value to each other's capabilities.

“We both think alike,” Mr Al Marar told The National. "It's a company that will add to us and we will add to it. The US market is important to us and the UAE market is also important to them. It's one of those partnerships that we saw that we are forging a win-win on every level.”

The partnership brings together “two of the most disruptive defence companies globally” with a shared ambition to co-develop the initial platform of Omen, said Troy Lambeth, Edge's senior vice president. We see a long skyline of expanding that relationship together in a number of exciting areas over time."

The move builds on the long-standing defence and security partnership between the UAE and the US. The Gulf nation is focused on developing its local defence manufacturing sector to boost domestic procurement by its armed forces.

The UAE has been focusing on growing its industrial sector, with advanced manufacturing and cutting-edge technologies, as it seeks to diversify its economy from oil.

The Edge-Anduril partnership is an extension of the UAE-US defence alliance that is “grounded in shared security and commercial interest”, said Shane Arnott, senior vice president of programmes and engineering at Anduril.

“Both parties are committed to investing ahead of need. This joint venture gives us the basis for trusted production in the Middle East, as well as allowing us to build some of those systems that get developed as part of this partnership in the United States for our US customers.”

Anduril is founded by Palmer Luckey, a US tech billionaire who also founded Oculus VR that was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $2.3 billion.

The joint venture, called the Edge–Anduril Production Alliance, will combine Edge's Middle East presence with Anduril's artificial intelligence-driven development and large-scale production, the companies said.

Activities proposed for the partnership may require US and UAE government approval, Edge said. The partners will “work closely” with US and UAE authorities to ensure full compliance with laws and regulations, they added.

Omen is a midsize, tail-sitter drone that will be three metres in height. Disaster response to tsunamis or wildfires, for example, is among its potential commercial uses, Mr Arnott said.

The drone can carry mobile phone towers, ensuring that "people's mobile phones can still work, communications can be restored and therefore responses can be co-ordinated", he added.

"We are actually very optimistic for capabilities like that for this system and it's one of the reasons why we're designing this to be dual use from the get-go, that we separate the vehicle from the mission system."

Training Emirati workforce

The US company will set up Anduril UAE, a 50,000 square-feet engineering centre in the UAE, Mr Arnott said. It will have a virtual simulation centre to help them work with regional customers on their requirements.

Headcount at Anduril UAE will be 25 to 50 employees for the Omen project, which will increase with new projects, he said. The UAE production plant is Anduril's first base outside of the US, Australia and UK.

The joint venture will focus on "building human capital in the UAE", which will involve rotations of Emirati workers to the US and of Americans to the UAE during the development phase, Mr Arnott said.