EDGE pushes bounds of electronic warfare, jamming drones, securing comms
Abu Dhabi’s EDGE Group is one of the world’s fastest-growing defense contractors, driven by the UAE’s vision of becoming a global leader in the development of military technology.
Since its launch in 2019, when the government consolidated 25 separate companies to form the defense conglomerate, EDGE has introduced more than 200 advanced products, focusing on rapidly integrating emerging technologies like AI and electromagnetic warfare.
Dr. Chaouki Kasmi, EDGE’s President of Technology and Innovation, is the person behind much of the tech development. A 39-year-old dual French-Emirati national, Kasmi is helping to push EDGE’s research agenda beyond the traditional boundaries of defense contractors, positioning the company as a high-speed innovation engine.
“If you want to make something real fast, this is the place to do it,” Kasmi tells The Circuit.
From integrating AI into military platforms to mentoring the next generation of engineers, Kasmi is part of a cohort of technologists turning out products to support the UAE’s defense ambitions.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Your background is in electromagnetic interference and security. What are the latest developments in this field, and what threats is EDGE helping to solve?
It’s well known the electromagnetic spectrum is the most contested space right now. In the Ukrainian-Russian war, electronic warfare is critical. At EDGE, we have border shield technology that combines jammers and sensors to prevent unauthorized drone incursions.
We also develop secure communication systems through a project called KATIM, with the goal of building resilient communication networks. We protect assets – critical infrastructure, military bases, nuclear plants. At the same time, because of the rise in spoofing technologies, we developed resilient secure communications through our company.
Q: What are EDGE Group’s primary goals regarding security, and how does that align with the broader innovation strategy?
One, we are the custodians of innovation for the group. We have a specific team overseeing what we call the technology portfolio of the group – a kind of marketplace for all innovations and products developed by EDGE. You can see the intellectual property, which team developed what, the performance, the interfaces. Based on that, we can quickly react to customer requirements and develop new solutions.
Two, we have permanent workshops with end-users and clients. We understand their challenges, develop solutions with them, validate and mature them iteratively to improve usability, training, and understanding of the technology benefits. This ensures maximum return on investment, meaning enablement for law enforcement and the end user.
Q: As a defense company, how does EDGE Group integrate AI into its platforms, and what measures are you taking to ensure these systems are ethical and secure?
EDGE is an innovation company that happens to operate in the defense industry. We are pushing innovation and the early adoption of technologies. We integrated AI years back, before people got the hype of GPT, into our technology and products.
AI is a topic from the 1950s. That’s a very long time ago. As you can imagine, we have a lot of international regulations and standards imposing on us to carefully integrate AI and add security mechanisms to make sure that if the system goes wrong, we are able to stop it and switch to a more deterministic technology.
We have all those features to prevent this from happening. But if it happens, we have to think of the AI itself, the environment where it runs, and all the added security features to prevent it from going wrong. We also train data carefully to avoid bias, ethical issues, or systems changing behavior based on who or what it sees. That’s very important.
Q: How does EDGE ensure its R&D efforts are commercially viable and operational, particularly in defense solutions?
It’s always the same. We think that AI is a key enabler. If it’s a key enabler, we ask how impactful it will be. If we remove traditional use cases like object detection, object tracking, computer vision, we’ve been doing that for years. Those are not considered strategic R&D.
But take space situational awareness. We released something at IDEX called Teka. We transformed how we gather information, use it, and translate it into actionables. We’ve also been digitizing workflows. Imagine an operator looking at a sensor feed, you see something wrong, you need to validate that and send law enforcement. We digitize the workflow and insert the security gates needed.
We also moved from sequential to parallel processing. If partial information allows another action, we don’t wait for the full process to complete. That shortens the time, improves quality, increases efficiency and reaction time, which is critical for modern threats. That’s how we think about it.
Q: You mentioned your innovation team. Are there Emiratis on the team? What’s the background of your team?
As of today, we have four centers of excellence: Radar, Electronic Warfare, Electro-Optics, and AI/CONOPS. The AI and CONOPS are new and still ramping up. We’re hiring. In the Electro-Optics center, we have 78% UAE nationals, and on a team of 98, more than 70 are nationals. These are top-tier engineers who can design, manufacture, and integrate electronic systems for air and land.
We even have two teams capable of maintaining cutting-edge tech used by the Ministry of Defense – but I can’t give details. In the radar center, it’s about 60% nationals, also capable of top-class design and integration. Two standout products are the Reman radar for border surveillance and the unique X-band radar for air defense. We focus on mentoring and building them to a level where they can lead teams of 10–12. It’s quite successful.
Q: From your perspective, how has EDGE helped make the UAE a leader in defense technology?
The launch of EDGE in 2019 was foundational to transforming Abu Dhabi and the UAE. The key message was, if you want to partner with EDGE and Abu Dhabi, you must bring your intellectual property to the table. That means both your background IP and the foreground IP. That was unheard of in the region in 2019. Other countries just paid for tech, but Abu Dhabi demanded capability transfer.
This bold decision helped EDGE reach the top 25 global defense contractors. We’re ranked around 21st or 22nd. We developed sovereign capabilities and partnered only with companies willing to share IP and commit long-term. Today, we have 200 products, many among the best and most cost-effective in the world. Some are so strategic people don’t believe we developed them, but we did.