A GM Defense Next Generation Tactical Vehicle coupled with a drone launcher made by EDGE Group makes its public debut at IDEX 2025. (Breaking Defense)
IDEX 2025 — American contractor GM Defense and Emirati defense conglomerate EDGE Group have announced a new agreement to explore “light tactical vehicle”-focused projects, in a move that came as the two firms put on display what one such team-up could look like: a GM Defense ride boasting an EDGE drone launcher.
“Under terms of the memorandum of understanding GM Defense, a General Motors subsidiary, would work with NIMR Automotive, an arm of EDGE, on potential opportunities,” GM Defense said in statement Tuesday, adding that it was eyeing customers in the Middle East, Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia, specifically.
“By uniting EDGE’s regional insight, operational excellence, and established infrastructure with GM Defense’s technical expertise and industry leadership, we aim to create a powerful synergy that will drive innovative projects and elevate operational capabilities across key markets,” said Khaled Al Zaabi, the president of Platforms & Systems at EDGE.
GM Defense’s exhibit at IDEX included what it calls its Next Generation Tactical Vehicle (NGTV) but with EDGE’s Hunter SP loitering munition launchers nestled in the back — the first such set-up viewed in a public setting.
In an interview with Breaking Defense, GM Defense President Steve duMont said that the MoU is “not just to bring [the NGTV] to the UAE as a product, but to bring it there as a vehicle to be produced in the region for the region’s needs, using an Emirati and regional supply chain to help us reduce the amount of transportation, bring jobs into the region, bring technology into the region.”
He highlighted that the MoU is the initial step. “We’ve had some really good discussions with UAE senior leadership for the past couple years,” he said. “This signing of the MoU kind of puts a little bit more meat on the bone.” (Last IDEX, in 2023, GM Defense signed an MoU with the Emirati government’s Tawazun Council in an effort to expand the firm’s footprint in the region.)
Today other GM Defense representatives told Breaking Defense they expect the NGTV, which made its solo debut at the Association of the US Army conference in Washington, DC, last year, to be tested in the UAE.
“GM has plans for summer trials for this vehicle, probably won’t be in 2025, but we’re targeting probably a 2026 time frame,” Bradley Watters, vice president of international business development, told Breaking Defense. The NGTV already participated in an exercise earlier this month in Germany, which was “the first time that it had really been in a tactical environment.”
Additional trials in the Gulf will be by the “invite from the UAE [Ministry of Defense] and their general maintenance corps. But there’s a lot of interest coming from the Emirates, as well as others in that region.”
DuMont said the company has “been looking at this vehicle for application in the Middle East region, which is very important region for us, and I think there’s a lot of applications in this vehicle.”
NGTV uses diesel fuel to power a generator which then charges a battery, and “then that battery gives it that silent drive capability,” duMont said. He said this makes the vehicle quiet enough that it has the “ability to sneak up behind soldiers, and the soldiers didn’t even know there was a big truck behind them.”
