EDGE Group

EDGE was created in November 2019 by folding more than twenty-five existing Emirati defence and technology companies, drawn from Emirates Defence Industries Company, Emirates Advanced Investments Group and Tawazun Holding, into a single Abu Dhabi government-owned group. The consolidation was blunt about its purpose, which was to stop the UAE buying almost everything it needed from abroad and to build an exporter in the process. Six years on the group counts more than thirty-five entities, roughly nineteen thousand staff against 2,600 at launch, around 170 manufacturing and research sites, revenue of about 5.06 billion dollars in 2025 and an order backlog above 20 billion dollars. Close to seventy percent of booked orders are exported.

The businesses are grouped into five clusters. Platforms and Systems is the heavy industrial half and holds ADASI for unmanned air, land and sea systems, Abu Dhabi Ship Building for naval construction and repair, NIMR for armoured wheeled vehicles, AL JASOOR for the Rabdan family, AL TAIF for sustainment, EPI, POWERTECH, the Swiss rotary-wing drone maker ANAVIA and the Estonian ground robotics firm Milrem Robotics. Named products from this side include the AJBAN MK2 patrol vehicle, the HAFEET MK2 blast-protected platform, the Rabdan 8x8 infantry fighting vehicle, the GARMOOSHA and QX-series rotary drones, the REACH-S surveillance aircraft, the ANAVIA HT-100 unmanned helicopter, a 51-metre offshore patrol vessel and the BR71 MKII corvette.

Missiles and Weapons covers HALCON, AL TARIQ, LAHAB, CARACAL, Caracal Light Ammunition, CONDOR and the Brazilian firm SIATT. HALCON builds precision guided weapons including the Desert Sting glide munitions, the Thunder guidance kit range and the SHADOW loitering munitions. AL TARIQ produces guidance kits for aerial bombs, LAHAB makes medium and large calibre munitions, and CARACAL is the group's small arms and ammunition arm. Space and Cyber Technologies holds BEACON RED for offensive and defensive cyber work, ORYXLABS, the secure communications specialist KATIM with products such as the Gateway 9011 encryptor, and FADA, launched in 2024 to build satellites. Technologies and Industrialisation gathers EDGE Technologies, EDGE BRIDGE, EDGE Platform Integration and EDGE Strategic Engineering, and functions as the group's research and industrial-capability arm. A Homeland Security cluster runs ETIMAD, Al Fahad Security Systems and related service businesses. SIGN4L, the electronic warfare and signals intelligence entity, supplies jamming, ELINT and counter-drone systems such as NAVCONTROL-G.

EDGE has grown as much by deal as by development. It has taken stakes in Milrem Robotics, ANAVIA, Poland's Flaris and the Brazilian firms Condor and SIATT, agreed a naval joint venture with Fincantieri called MAESTRAL, formed a majority-held venture with Leonardo, signed agreements with Indra Sistemas, Safran and Anduril, and partnered with Space42 on satellite communications manufacturing. In June 2026 it launched EDGE Europe with a Paris headquarters and an engineering and production site at Bordeaux-Merignac. It also runs the X-Range, a test area of roughly 350 square kilometres on a remote island where missile firings, drone trials and electronic warfare exercises can be run without going to Europe or Turkey.