Middle East's military drone market heats up; and more Middle East AI News
Carrington Malin
⚡𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜-𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱⚡𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 | CEO Advisor | Artificial Intelligence | Tech Marketing | GTM strategy | Board Advisor
Welcome to Middle East AI News!
Lots of interesting news to share today, although no AI mega-announcement this week, it seems! My top stories are the Middle East defence sector's increasing focus on drones; Khalifa University's first big research project with Lockheed Martin; and the success of the UAE's government sector artificial intelligence capacity-building programme.
For those that have a focus on smart cities, scroll to the end of this newsletter to listen to WSP's lengthy interview with ZainTech's (previously NXN) UAE general manager Yousef Khalili on smart city priorities and making cities people centric.
Have a question or want to share your own perspective? Please do leave a comment or send me a message. I'd love to hear from you!
/Carrington
Middle East AI News – 16-Dec-21
🔊 Listen to the podcast version of this newsletter
Middle East military drone market gathers momentum
In common with many others around the world, Middle East defence departments are increasing military spending on UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drones, changing military strategy, and presenting both new advantages and new threats. With emerging technologies driving the development of both remote-controlled and autonomous vehicles at a fast pace, this is no surprise. However, it's becoming clear that new UAV technologies are also opening up market opportunities for manufacturers to succeed in competition with the world's top, and long-established, defence exporters.
The US, of course, has long enjoyed the lion's share of the Middle East's defence market and that's not likely to change in the foreseeable future. That said, UAVs, AVs (autonomous vehicles) and USVs (unmanned surface drones) are one area of production where more emerging defence players may have a chance. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all have national initiatives to increase the percentage of local defence production, compared with imports. In line with this, all three have military drone development programmes.
Abu Dhabi defence conglomerate Edge Group, first demonstrated its QX prototypes for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones for use as loitering munitions - or kamikaze drones - in 2020. This year, the group introduced a family of six QX drones developed to meet the needs of the #UAE armed forces. QX models 1 to 5 are kamikaze drones designed to carry payloads of 0.5 kg through to 25 kg, while the QX-6 is a fully-autonomous VTOL UAV able to deliver a payload of 150 kg to to remote and inaccessible locations (with both military and commercial applications).
In #Saudi Arabia a number of agreements have been signed during the past few weeks to manufacture the Sky Guard UAV system, developed buy the Prince Sultan Defense Studies and Research Center (PSDSARC). Sky Guard is capable of carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance missions at altitudes of up to 18,000 feet with a maximum payload of 50 kg, and can be produced in several configurations. Meanwhile, earlier this year, two Saudi manufacturers confirmed that they had started produce Turkish medium-altitude, long-endurance drone Karayel-SU under licence.
As with all defence sales, diplomacy also plays a role in drone buying. The thawing of relations between the UAE and #Turkey, have opened up the possibility of UAE orders for Turkey's medium-altitude long-endurance UAV, the Bayraktar TB2. After being battle-tested in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, the Bayraktar now seems to have become the military 'drone du jour', with increasing sales across the Middle East and Africa, repeat orders from Ukraine and even the United Kingdom considering the UAV. This week, #Iraq's defence minister confirmed that the country had earmarked $100 million for buying the Turkish drone.
With this UAV production developing very fast, with so many potential players, it's hard to predict what the relevant segments of the Middle East defence market might look like in 2-3 year's time. However, with UAV opportunities growing for sales to air, land and sea defence forces - in the short term - it looks like there's something for everyone.
Go deeper into this story:
KU and Lockheed Martin to collaborate on computer vision project
#AbuDhabi-based Khalifa University and Lockheed Martin have announced a new computer vision and pattern recognition - or CVPR - research project using AI reinforcement learning. This is the first in a series of university research projects following an MoU on research and development signed with the US global aerospace, defence and space group last year.
The new CVPR research project will create a framework to integrate computer vision, machine learning, and expert systems, capable of accurately locating markings and symbols on aircraft and, potentially, marine craft.
CVPR has so far been applied to biometrics, target identification, aimpoint refinement and automated control. The Khalifa University project will use a CVPR framework to inspect and verify measurements, in order to improve the speed and accuracy of aircraft logo inspections during the NATO aircraft production cycle. The project aims to significantly improve quality assurance for the sign-off of placement, spacing and positioning of logos.
The project will also research techniques to improve the ability of CVPR to accurately register standard symbology in imagery. These techniques could then be applied in any process that is attempting to accurately locate markings and symbols.
The ongoing partnership between Khalifa University and Lockheed Martin is expected to create unique R&D opportunities, help evolve the country’s research ecosystem and increase the pipeline of highly skilled aerospace, defence, technology and security engineers. Machine intelligence, autonomy, microelectronics, structural and thermal materials, and air vehicles were all identified as potential areas of research in the 2020 agreement.
UAE national AI training programme graduates 240 students
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the #UAE and Ruler of #Dubai, honoured the 240 graduates of the second and third cohorts of the ‘Artificial Intelligence Programme’ at Expo 2020 Dubai this week.
It's not so much the numbers that impress, nor the details of the training. It's the commitment and drive of the UAE government to upskill the nation and build capacity to cope with the demands of the AI race. One of the first to announce a national AI strategy, the UAE was quick to identify the scale of the change management challenge ahead. There's no point whatsoever in trying to create transformational projects using the latest technologies, if the majority of your public sector employees become bystanders - or worse, obstacles. So, how do you build AI capacity nationally?
The AI programme's participants came from 90-odd local and federal government entities. All those participants now bring a new perspective to their organisation and, one would hope, will now understand a little more about and think about government transformation initiatives a little differently. No one is going to come away an AI expert from a three month course, but if that new level of knowledge and understanding helps replace friction with focus in the digital transformation of government, then that's real progress!
Launched in 2019 with the aim to train UAE nationals and enhance their skillsets, the government AI training programme is a joint collaboration between the UAE National AI Programme and Kellogg College - University of Oxford.
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More News!
Here's some other interesting news from the past week:
AI Strategy
AgriTech
Education
Defence
Industry 4.0
Oil & Gas
Quantum Computing
R&D
Robotics
Interview of the week!
Listen: Why people should be the real focus of Smart Cities
This week's Anticipate Podcast from leading engineering professional services firm WSP, discusses smart cities. WSP Middle East's head of building technology systems Iftikhar Zubair talks to Yousef Khalili, general manager of ZainTech in the UAE (formerly NXN) about smart city priorities and how to create truly 'people-centric' cities.
Listen to the podcast (49 minutes)
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