Macron Walks Four EDGE Plants After UAE-France Defence Papers

On October 20, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and French President Emmanuel Macron walked four EDGE Group plants at Tawazun Industrial Park. They were shown missiles, drones, engines and machined aerostructures, then watched two defence papers change hands.

The second paper is the one that recasts the relationship. Tawazun Council for Defence Enablement and France’s Delegate-General for Armaments signed implementing arrangements on the defence industry, a shop-floor deal sitting under the partnership the two defence ministers exchanged the same day.

The Second Signature Is the Industrial One

The presidential court named both documents. Mohamed bin Mubarak Al Mazrouei, minister of state for defence affairs, and Catherine Vautrin, France’s minister of the armed forces and veterans affairs, exchanged the Strategic Defence Partnership Framework. Dr Nasser Humaid Al Nuaimi, secretary general of Tawazun Council for Defence Enablement, and Patrick Pailloux, delegate-general for armaments, then exchanged the agreement on implementing arrangements regarding the defence industry.

THE TWO DEFENCE PAPERS

• The framework: Al Mazrouei and Vautrin exchanged the Strategic Defence Partnership Framework in front of the two presidents.
• The industrial paper: Al Nuaimi and Pailloux exchanged implementing arrangements on the defence industry, putting Tawazun across the table from France’s procurement chief.

Pailloux runs the Direction générale de l’armement, the body that buys and shapes French weapons. Al Nuaimi’s council is the UAE’s defence-industry gatekeeper, the same office that has spent years pulling foreign makers into Abu Dhabi and pushing local firms out. When those two names sit on one paper, the visit is no longer only a presidential tour of a customer’s hangar.

Visit briefings also described an intergovernmental deal on the Dassault Rafale F5 standard inside the French and Emirati Rafale programmes, with technical and financial terms for industrial work on future combat aircraft, and a separate push for autonomy that would cut reliance on third countries. The French defence ministry signed a further deal on force interoperability, industrial resilience, and work on artificial intelligence and space. The presidential court, in its own notice, listed only the framework and the Tawazun-DGA industrial paper.

Faisal Al Bannai, adviser to Sheikh Mohamed for strategic research and advanced technology and EDGE’s first chief executive, was with Macron at the park. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed, deputy chairman of the Presidential Court for Special Affairs, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad, adviser to the UAE president, joined the walk-through with ministers and senior officials.

UAE and French Presidents visit Tawazun Industrial Park in Abu Dhabi, tour EDGE Group entities and view products from advanced manufacturing facilities#WamNewshttps://t.co/zIUvThWVXW

— WAM English (@WAMNEWS_ENG) October 20, 2026

Four Plants, One Vertical Stack

The stops were not a random sample of the park. ADASI (Abu Dhabi Autonomous Systems Investments), EPI, HALCON and POWERTECH sit in one chain: unmanned platforms, the machined parts that go into them, the engines that push them, and the guided weapons they drop.

THE PLANTS ON THE TOUR

ADASI has been in unmanned systems since 2007 and now sits inside EDGE’s platforms cluster. EPI, formed the same year, cuts metal for defence, oil and gas, and civil aerospace; it already machines vertical fin rib assemblies for Boeing 787 airliners at the park, so the French visitors were not walking a greenfield shed. HALCON has been in EDGE’s missiles and weapons cluster since 2017 and sells drop-launched precision kits. POWERTECH, opened in 2025 as EDGE’s engine house, builds piston engines and expendable turbojets and has already booked its P145i engine into ADASI airframes.

That is a vertical stack a buyer could not have walked in 2019, when EDGE was folded together. It is also the argument Abu Dhabi wanted Macron to see before the papers were signed: France is no longer only selling jets into the Gulf, it is being asked to plug into a park that already makes seekers, airframes, engines and aerostructures, and that already hosts other foreign lines.

What the 2021 Rafale Order Left Unfinished

The industrial paper lands on a purchase that was, by design, a French export success rather than a shared factory plan. On December 3, 2021, Dassault Aviation and Tawazun signed a contract for 80 Rafale F4 for the Emirates, with Eric Trappier, Dassault’s chairman and chief executive, and Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani, then Tawazun’s chief executive, putting their names on the jets in front of Macron and Sheikh Mohamed, who was then crown prince.

The aircraft bill was €14 billion. Trappier called it a French success after the Mirage 5 and Mirage 2000, a line that ran more than 45 years. The Emirates Air Force was set as the first operator of the F4 standard outside France. That deal bought aeroplanes, weapons and a political lock. It did not buy Abu Dhabi a seat inside the next French combat-aircraft black box.

THE DATES BEHIND THE VISIT

1. November 5, 2019: Sheikh Mohamed, then crown prince, opens EDGE in Abu Dhabi, folding more than 25 entities into one group.
2. December 3, 2021: Tawazun and Dassault sign the 80-jet Rafale F4 order, with Macron present.
3. June 16, 2026: EDGE and Safran Electronics & Defense announce a joint-venture term sheet in Paris for next-generation weapons.
4. October 20, 2026: The two presidents tour the four EDGE plants and watch Tawazun and the DGA exchange industrial arrangements.

Co-development talks on the later Rafale F5 standard stalled in 2025 over how much of the jet’s inner sensors France would share. Dassault has said there is no foreign co-development on F5. The October 20 intergovernmental text, as described in visit briefings, is cooperation on the F5 standard inside both countries’ Rafale programmes, not a claim that Abu Dhabi is now building the aircraft. The Tawazun-DGA paper is the more honest measure of what actually moved: process, plants and offsets, not a shared cockpit.

Safran and EDGE Already Drew Two Joint Ventures

Four months before Macron reached the park, EDGE and Safran had already written the industrial sequel in Paris. At Eurosatory on June 16, they announced a term sheet for joint ventures in the UAE and France, with an extended-range precision weapon based on Safran’s Hammer family at the centre, plus a supersonic air-to-ground weapon and a next-generation air-launched system for unmanned aircraft. Sub-systems, anti-tank kits and munitions sit in the same frame.

EDGE and Safran have built a partnership on genuinely complementary strengths, and this term sheet takes it to a new level. Together, we have the expertise, the industrial presence and the ambition to develop missile capabilities that will set a new standard for the market. With EDGE Europe now established and our presence in France in place, the conditions to deliver on that ambition have never been stronger.

Hamad Al Marar, Managing Director and CEO, EDGE Group

Alexandre Ziegler, head of Safran Electronics & Defense’s defence unit, said the firms were entering a new phase more than 30 years after Safran’s first work in the UAE, aimed at sovereignty and operational impact, and built on Hammer demand. EDGE now lists more than 35 subsidiaries. The June term sheet is why the October tour reads as inspection of a partner, not a sales call: the missile work was already drawn, and EDGE already had a European legal home.

Tawazun had been in that Paris hall too. In June the council used Eurosatory to argue that France and Europe remain among the leading centres for defence industry, and that Tawazun’s partnerships at Eurosatory in Paris were a route into those value chains. The October paper with Pailloux is that pitch with a presidential witness. Tawazun is not choosing only Paris. In May it signed a chiplet design and assembly plan with Lockheed Martin, EDGE and Khalifa University, with HALCON named to put the chips into targeting and guidance. The council is running more than one suitor through the same park.

Qasr Al Watan Adds Energy, Cloud and Robotics

The defence papers were not the day’s only ink. Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, sat with Macron at the UAE-France Business Dialogue at Qasr Al Watan. He told the room the friendship ran more than five decades, and that shifts in the world economy made secure energy supplies, resilient supply chains, and deeper work on AI and advanced technology the test of the partnership, including the Campus AI project the two countries are building in France with MGX.

Three memorandums went to AMI Labs, the Paris AI firm. Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence signed on research and the exchange of scientific staff. G42 signed a framework on cloud infrastructure and AI models. Analog signed to look at putting AI models into robotics and physical machines. ADNOC Gas and Schneider Electric signed a memorandum to assess kit that could lift the efficiency of energy systems. ADNOC Refining and Technip Energies signed two contracts, one on a refining-capacity project and one on sustainable aviation fuel. That is six commercial deals around the same visit, in energy and computing, while the presidents walked a weapons park.

Sheikh Mohamed, in his own account of the October 19 talks, said the two men had discussed historical and strategic bonds, regional developments, and “opportunities to promote peace and stability in the region and worldwide.” The French embassy in the UAE, closing the Abu Dhabi leg, called France a reliable partner “grounded in a relationship of trust.” The Elysee Palace said the visit reflected a shared commitment to industrial and technological cooperation and joint projects. None of those lines named HALCON or POWERTECH. The plants did that work in person.

The Gulf Tour Also Fills French Diesel Tanks

Macron opened a three-day Gulf itinerary in Kuwait on October 19, held talks in Abu Dhabi that evening, and spent October 20 on the park, the palace dialogue and the defence papers before flying to Bahrain, with Qatar listed as the last stop. The French presidency said the UAE had committed about 100,000 tonnes of diesel a month, with another 100,000 tonnes a month from Bahrain.

THE DIESEL MACRON TOOK HOME

• UAE volume: About 100,000 tonnes of diesel a month, the French presidency said.
• Bahrain volume: A further 100,000 tonnes a month, to be locked on the Manama stop.
• Gulf total with Saudi Arabia: 295,000 tonnes a month, just over 10 percent of French consumption.

Those fuel figures travelled farther than the factory tour. French politics this month has been about pump prices and street unrest, and the Gulf trip was sold at home as a hunt for extra diesel after the energy shock around the Strait of Hormuz. The Tawazun walk and the Pailloux-Al Nuaimi paper sat underneath that headline, which is why they are easy to miss and why they matter for anyone who still thinks the UAE only buys French jets.

Sheikh Mohamed later saw Macron off at the airport, with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed and Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad again in the farewell party. The French president left with a diesel commitment, a sheaf of energy and AI memorandums, a Rafale-standard cooperation text described in visit briefings, and an industrial implementation deal that puts Tawazun and the DGA in the same frame as the two presidents. The four plants he walked are the part of that bundle that cannot be unread as a customer visit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which EDGE Companies Did Macron Visit at Tawazun?

He visited ADASI, EPI, HALCON and POWERTECH. ADASI’s line includes the JENIAH unmanned combat air vehicle, the SHADOW family of guided strike munitions and countermeasure drones, and the GARMOOSHA rotary-wing surveillance aircraft. HALCON’s public hiring drive, called The 400, aims to take on 400 Emirati engineers over 10 years as it expands local design of guided systems.

What Is Tawazun Industrial Park?

It is Abu Dhabi’s guarded defence and aerospace manufacturing estate, the main production base for EDGE and a site Tawazun uses to host foreign lines. In May 2025 Raytheon opened a 21,500-square-foot hall there to assemble the Coyote counter-drone interceptor, with EPI already cutting prototype parts, so the park is a shared floor for Emirati and imported weapons work, not only a national showcase.

What Did the 2021 Rafale Purchase Cover?

Beside the 80 F4 aircraft, the same December 3, 2021 package added more than €2 billion in weapons and €1 billion for 12 Airbus H225M Caracal helicopters, more than €17 billion in all, and set the UAE as the first air force outside France to fly the F4 standard after decades on Mirage 5 and Mirage 2000-9 jets.

When Was EDGE Group Formed?

Sheikh Mohamed opened EDGE on November 5, 2019, folding more than 25 units from Emirates Defence Industries Company, Emirates Advanced Investments Group, Tawazun Holding and other firms. Faisal Al Bannai was named chief executive and managing director at the launch; he later moved to the presidential court as adviser for strategic research and advanced technology, the role in which he met Macron at Tawazun.