BEIRUT — Turkish shipbuilder ARES Shipyard plans to establish a new company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia dubbed ARES Naval with Saudi local partner Sat-el Arab, ARES CEO Oğuzhan Pehlivanli told Breaking Defense.
“Our goal is to establish two shipyards for ARES Naval in Saudi Arabia: one in Dammam and the other in Jeddah. The final goal is having two shipyards over there related to manufacturing naval platforms and focusing on supporting the end users with maintenance, repair and overhaul,” Pehlivanli told Breaking Defense in a January interview.
He added that ARES will hold most of the shares in the new firm. He said ARES Shipyard will focus especially on “the [new] Saudi Arabia company, and working with the government side, especially [Saudi naval firm] Sofon. Sofon is the main [contractor] responsible for the naval projects and the main requirement from the Saudi Navy and Coast Guard.”
The CEO said that his company’s major concern is “export projects,” saying that beyond the new Saudi partnership, they are in discussions “to establish a stronger presence in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] region.”
“GCC is one of the top export markets for ARES in the future,” he stressed.
Pehlivanli spoke to Breaking Defense on Jan. 19 during the naval expo Dimdex 2026 that took place in Qatar. There, an ARES-made ULAQ unmanned surface vessel was on display at the stand of the Qatari coast guard. Pehlivanli told Breaking Defense that Qatari coast guard operates two intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) ULAQ USVs but with configuration different from the Turkish vessels.
“Turkish configuration is an anti-surface warfare, which has an optional payload for anti-submarine warfare. The size is 12 meters. But the [11-meter] Qatari version is totally different. It’s an ISR intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance vessel which is equipped with an electro-optical director, a remote weapon station,” he said.
Pehlivanli said that the Qatari version of ULAQ can perform missions related to “illegal immigration and survival operations for the refugees, outfitted with automatically detachable life rafts.”
He added that ARES Shipyard is “still discussing with Qatar coast guard for the bigger versions for ULAQ. We are still waiting for the evaluation from the Qatar coast guard command.”
ARES Shipyard will attend World Defense Show next week, where it will exhibit models of its systems and offer coproduction of its systems.
Co-production with Gulf States, Pehlivanli said, is “one of our goals.”
This comes in line with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 which eyes to reach 50 percent defense production localization by 2030, and which mandates foreign firms to have a footprint in the Kingdom, through producing their platforms locally or joining forces with Saudi national firms for coproduction.
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