DRB-HICOM Defence Technologies Sdn Bhd (DEFTECH)

DRB-HICOM Defence Technologies, known across the region as DEFTECH, was incorporated in October 1996 to give Malaysia a builder of military vehicles instead of an importer of them. It is a wholly owned unit of DRB-HICOM Berhad, the automotive and services group behind Proton, with its head office in Shah Alam and its main plant at Pekan in Pahang. Land vehicles anchor the business. The company designs and assembles armoured platforms, soft-skin logistics trucks, specialised commercial vehicles and buses, and the range it has put into Malaysian Army service is wide for a country of that size.

The AV8 Gempita is the vehicle everyone knows. It is an 8x8 wheeled platform developed with Turkey's FNSS from the PARS design and built at Pekan under a letter of offer and acceptance signed in 2011, and Malaysia ordered 257 of them in twelve configurations covering armoured personnel carrier, infantry fighting vehicle, tank destroyer, signals intelligence and armoured recovery roles. Alongside it sit the tracked ACV-300 Adnan, licence built in 267 examples, the lighter AV4 Lipanbara 4x4, and the HICOM Handalan truck family, delivered in more than 2,600 units to the Malaysian Ministry of Defence and in smaller batches to Brunei and Australia. Turret, weapon, sensor and communications fits are integrated in house, which is where the systems integration side of the company earns its keep.

Maintenance, repair and overhaul of land vehicles runs as its own line. Defence Services Sdn Bhd operates a facility at Nilai in Negeri Sembilan that carries out third and fourth line maintenance on armoured vehicles across the Malaysian Armed Forces fleet. That capability was bought rather than grown. Defence Services was founded in 1987 and came into the group in 2001, and it gives the group a second revenue stream that does not depend on winning fresh vehicle orders, which matters in a market that places large armoured contracts perhaps once a decade.

Two smaller units take the group past ground platforms. DEFTECH Aviation in Melaka started in 1990 as Malaysia's first composite light aircraft manufacturer and now repairs composite and metal aircraft structures for commercial and military operators, working on types including the Airbus A320, the Boeing 737 and several helicopter families. DEFTECH Unmanned Systems, formed in 2007, develops Malaysian unmanned aircraft and sells surveillance, monitoring and inspection flying for pipelines, power lines and transmission towers. Its Aludra EE tactical UAV finished development in 2024 after two years of trials, carrying a 10 kg payload to a range of 100 km with ten hours of endurance behind a 25 hp two-cylinder piston engine, and the company has asked the Royal Malaysian Air Force to run user trials. Between the four lines DEFTECH is the nearest thing Malaysia has to a full land systems prime, with an aerospace and unmanned tail attached.