News

2025-02-03

BAE Systems Strengthens Regional Footprint with Advanced Capabilities

Steve Kelly, BAE Systems, Regional Managing Director for Middle East, Türkiye and North Africa, highlights the company’s enduring commitment to the region in an exclusive interview with Nation Shield. At IDEX, BAE Systems is set to showcase the Amphibious Combat Vehicle and cutting-edge turret systems while strengthening partnerships, to enhance local defence capabilities across air, land, sea, cyber, and space.

What’s been the highlight of your time in the role so far?
I have really enjoyed meeting the people in the region, getting to know our customers better and working with my colleagues in the various countries in which we engage. It’s been a real pleasure for me, for someone who’s lived my whole life in the United States except for the last few years, to immerse myself into a completely new culture here, with such a rich and fascinating history. Every day I benefit from learning so much about the people and culture alongside working with my experienced and talented colleagues at BAE Systems from across the region, many of which have operated here for quite some time. Ultimately, the most important and rewarding aspect of my role is just seeing where we can support our customers, I’ve been with the company for a long time, and been in various roles in the company, from engineering, programme management, programme leadership, to business development and it’s always a pleasure for me to see where we can align ourselves most effectively with our customers to achieve the best possible results. I feel very privileged that we have such good business with our customers here in the region. We recognise that they have a wide choice of organisations to do business with and when they place their trust in us, it is a real honour and we’ve been very fortunate to have good business over the years. So, all these things are just real highlights for me to be a part of.

Tell us more about BAE Systems’ presence in the region?
BAE Systems and its legacy businesses have been operating here in the Middle East region for decades, in Saudi Arabia particularly we go back more than 55 years, and here in the UAE we’ve been established for 27 years. We are actively managing opportunities and campaigns in more than 10 countries in the region, as we include Türkiye and North Africa together with the Middle East. We operate in all domains here across the region so from space to air, land, sea, undersea and cyber. We have all these capabilities to offer our customers through our various specialist teams and offices based throughout the region.

What are BAE Systems’ priorities in the UAE/region?
In the UAE, as I mentioned, we have been operating for over 25 years, and we have a very solid foundation of ongoing programmes here. With electronic systems and cyber we do several activities with a wide variety of customers in the UAE. Our priorities for the UAE really are to work through strong local partnerships and we have established good working arrangements, where we’re actively providing services through existing campaigns. We’ve had the Hawk training aircraft programme here for several years, which is still active and supported, and being constantly upgraded. We continue to support the F-16 with avionics sustainment and upgrades, and ground support equipment here in the UAE and have done so for many years. We also operate in new areas, and we recognise that the UAE is a leader in autonomous systems and space, and they are actively adding to their capabilities across this domain. Therefore, we are very excited about the evolving opportunities that we have here to support our customers. Consequently, we are continuously working to see where we can add to our capabilities and where we can work through partners to deliver our best-in-class solutions.

What are BAE Systems’ differentiators?
We’ve made some very interesting acquisitions along with organic internal development, such as the recently launched autonomous underwater system (Herne), which uses the Nautomate autonomous control system, which can also be applied to a range of surface vessels and other systems as well.
So, between acquisitions in the uncrewed systems area alongside organic development we have the full spectrum of capabilities to offer our customers and partners in the region, which I believe is one of the most important aspects of BAE Systems. So where customers have problems, we have the appropriate solutions or part of a solution that can assist them.

When you bring capability to the field one must look at how it is integrated across all these domains. So, we can help the customer work through the integration issues in terms of design, deployment and sustainability, and I think that sets BAE Systems apart from quite a few of our competitors. That is the way we operate, especially here in the region, especially when it comes to partnering with leading companies like EDGE in the UAE. We also seek to help build capacity for our partners and customers as we look to transfer our leading technology and capability to the region.

Could you please share your thoughts on the show (IDEX), and on your strategic partnership with the UAE over the last few years?
We are very excited to bring the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) to the UAE at IDEX, which is now in active service with the U.S. Marine Corps. We are confident that its significant growth potential and flexibility to adapt to mission roles will generate a lot of interest during the show. The ACV has proven capabilities and is optimised for land while also transforming water environments. It is already in full-rate production and adaptable to customer requirements, so we’re extremely excited to have the ACV on the stand for the first time in the UAE.

The vehicle’s capabilities are highly suited for the region. It’s truly amphibious and can be launched and recovered at sea, as well as being fully operable in the surf zone which is a real differentiator for this type of vehicle and offers protection levels that meet current and future threats.

We thank the U.S. Marine Corps for all their support in bringing the ACV here to Abu Dhabi for IDEX.
At the same time, we are looking forward to seeing our friends from across the region and please do stop by at the BAE Systems stand. IDEX is a fantastic show to be to be a part of and is a truly international event. It remains one of the key global shows that BAE Systems is absolutely committed to around the world.

What is BAE Systems displaying at IDEX?
Aside to the ACV, we will feature the Cased Telescoped Ammunition Turret* on the stand, which can be applied to several different platforms, and it is a technology that we’re also certainly considering for the ACV as we can fit a range of different turrets to the ACV along with a number of alternative systems. Whether it’s a gun turret or specialist sensors or any other effectors, the ACV platform is highly versatile depending on the ultimate customer requirements.

In addition, we will also have everything from training systems to counter UAS systems on the stand. Just to mention a couple of the key priorities for many countries in the region. Training capability has certainly become a major priority, particularly here in the UAE as well as other counter measure systems and unmanned air systems in particular. We will have a variety of solutions featured on the stand that will cover all the key domains.

* Cased Telescoped Ammunition CTA 40mm turn. And it’s been a joint development, a joint venture between BAE Systems and Nexter Systems.