Saudi Arabian Military Industries

Saudi Arabian Military Industries was set up in 2017 as a wholly owned company of the Public Investment Fund, with the explicit job of moving half of Saudi military spending inside the Kingdom by 2030. That target, rather than any single product line, explains how the group is shaped. SAMI has grown mainly by buying existing Saudi industrial assets and by forming joint ventures with foreign primes that come with technology transfer attached, rather than by developing platforms from a blank sheet. It is chaired at board level by the defence minister and headquartered in Riyadh. Headcount went from a few hundred in 2020 to more than three and a half thousand by late 2024, and the group reported revenue of around 900 million dollars for 2022.

The business is organised into five divisions. SAMI Aerospace handles fixed-wing and rotary support and modernisation, airframe and engine maintenance, avionics repair, metal and composite aerostructure manufacture, and unmanned aircraft including surveillance and armed types. SAMI Land covers research, manufacture, assembly, testing and maintenance of wheeled and tracked combat vehicles and artillery. SAMI Sea works on naval platforms, combat systems and underwater vehicles. SAMI Defense Systems covers munitions, missiles and counter-drone equipment. SAMI Advanced Electronics is the largest single piece of the group and produces radar and electro-optical sensors, communications equipment, electronic warfare systems, command and control systems, naval combat systems and armoured vehicle mission systems.

The subsidiary list reflects the acquisition strategy. Advanced Electronics Company, founded in 1988 under the Kingdom's economic offset programme and employing more than three thousand people, came under full SAMI ownership in December 2020 in what was described at the time as the largest military industrial deal ever done in Saudi Arabia. It brings its own support arm, AESSCO. Military Industries Corporation, the older state arms manufacturer, was folded in as well, along with Al-Salam Aerospace Industries, SAMI Composites, SAMI Aerospace Mechanics and a majority holding in the Aircraft Accessories and Components Company.

Alongside those, SAMI runs a set of named joint ventures with foreign partners. SAMI-Navantia Naval Industries supports the Spanish-built corvette programme and local naval work, SAMI-CMI Defence Systems covers turrets and vehicle weapon stations, and SAMI-L3Harris Technologies works on communications and electronics. The group has also announced ventures and agreements involving Thales, Naval Group, Lockheed Martin, Aselsan and Baykar, and has signed cooperation agreements with Boeing, BAE Systems, Airbus, MBDA, Leonardo, Hensoldt, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Paramount over the years.

SAMI is the national strategic partner of the World Defense Show in Riyadh, which is run by the General Authority for Military Industries, and used the 2026 edition to show more than sixty products across its subsidiaries. Public disclosure of specific Saudi-designed systems remains thin compared with older national primes, and much of the group's visible output is still localised production, maintenance and integration of foreign designs rather than indigenous platforms. The stated economic goal is a contribution of around 14 billion riyals to the Saudi economy and roughly forty thousand jobs by 2030.