UAE invests in drones, robots as unmanned warfare takes off

Large, black drones with the orange logo of EDGE, the UAE's arms consortium, were on display at this week's Unmanned Systems Exhibition (UMEX), along with remote-controlled machineguns and other "smart" weapons. The exhibition comes at a time of growing unmanned attacks around the region, including the January 17 drone-and-missile assault by Yemen rebels that killed three oil workers in Abu Dhabi, the first in a series of similar incidents. "Autonomous systems are becoming ever more prevalent around the world," Miles Chambers, EDGE's director of international business development, told AFP. "We are really heavily investing in developing our autonomous capability... as well as in electronic warfare and in our smart munitions. These are our three pillars." EDGE, an Abu Dhabi-based defence consortium that groups 25 Emirati firms, was formed three years ago but reached an estimated $4.8 billion in arms sales in 2020 -- nearly all of them to the UAE government.