Lead: At the UMEX/SimTEX opening in Abu Dhabi, the unmanned sector accelerates: EDGE Group announces deals exceeding $200 million, while new local player SIRBAI unveils swarm-control software enabling real-time decision-making.
UMEX & SimTEX: growth across the board The seventh UMEX edition, paired with SimTEX, expanded exhibition space by 34%, signaling a maturing market for autonomous air, land, and sea systems. Official delegations rose 81%, with participants from over 90 countries.
EDGE leads the contract wave EDGE announced R&D for two new variants of its small UAV Scorpio (Scorpio S and Scorpio M) worth 28.88 million AED ($7.8M), plus a logistics gyrocopter for 22 million AED ($6M). The headline: delivery of an undisclosed number of long-range heavy-lift ANAVIA HT-100 UAVs under a 661.19 million AED (~$180M) contract.
Underwater push: mission-critical ROVs Diveco (Ramah International Group) secured a 167.71 million AED (~$45.7M) contract to supply remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for subsea operations.
SIRBAI steps in: autonomous swarms, one operator Making its trade-show debut, Abu Dhabi-based SIRBAI presented swarm software enabling multi-task missions—surveillance, loitering munitions, electronic warfare—controlled by a single operator. The system touts real-time, on-platform decision-making via distributed intelligence.
Localization drive: from imports to homegrown solutions SIRBAI’s capability fills a niche long served by foreign vendors, underscoring the UAE’s vertical localization of supply chains for autonomous and AI-enabled defense systems. In parallel, the growing contract volume shows investment in both end products and ecosystem sovereignty.
