Agnes Helou is Breaking Defense's Middle East Bureau Chief, with close to a decade of experience in covering regional defense and strategic topics. She was the managing Editor of Security and Defense Arabia, an Arabic language defense website and magazine, and covered the Middle East and North Africa defense and security topics for Defense News for three years. Her reporting expertise covers the Gulf, North Africa, Middle East and Southern Europe.
Agnes has a master’s degree and is pursuing her PhD in media economics from the Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities & Social Sciences in Lebanon. Her interests include artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, air defense, maritime and border security regional strategic issues.
“The rest is standard procedures. So we can say yes, we have the export license for the engine. We will work with GE folks to get the engines in time, and since it is for the serial production, which is at least two and a half years away, we will have no issue receiving those engines in time to support our serial production for Turkish Airforce,” Mehmet Demiroglu told reporters.
The potential deal comes few days after Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi traded fire, ending a four-year truce.
As NATO and European governments accelerate investment in space-based intelligence, decision advantage will depend on how quickly sovereign and commercial capabilities can be fused into a trusted operational picture.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the strategic command represented a “significant leap” in Egypt’s command and control and operations management systems.
Turkey is "well-positioned to contribute" to NATO on several fronts, one analyst told Breaking Defense, but others noted distinct geopolitical sticking points.
“The programme is aimed at designing and developing interoperability between crewed and uncrewed aircraft,” the companies said.
“The agreement is part of Hanwha Aerospace’s strategy to strengthen its position in the Middle East, where it is pursuing local production, maintenance and technology partnerships as a route to regional customers,” Hanwha said in the statement.
Defending a country the size of the US from threats requires advanced sensing, communications and interception capabilities.
Steel Dome, or Celik Kubbe, is a Turkish layered air defense project akin to the US Golden Dome effort, or Israel's various layered systems.
“We have integrated a new sensor behind the guidance kit, which is activated when it gets closer to the target,” one Thales Belgium official told Breaking Defense.
EDGE Europe will have two sites: a head office in Chaillot in central Paris focusing on government interactions and investments, and a manufacturing site in Bordeaux for design, integration and development of platforms, per the company's statement.
The potential FMS announcement came just days Iran attacked Kuwait’s airport with missiles and drones, killing one person, damaging airport facilities and halting flights.
It’s fuel cells, not batteries, that let Group 2 unmanned VTOLS fulfill many missions of larger Group 3s.
"We more than doubled the [production] number, considering the situation at the moment in the Middle East,” a company executive told Breaking Defense.
Both companies expressed their readiness to transfer technology in line with mandates in Gulf states to localize defense production.
Breaking Defense was on the ground for Turkey's massive combined forces drill Efes 2026, which brought ships, drones, air defense and helicopters together.
Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Egypt, Poland, Vietnam, Portugal and Syria were first-time participants.