• WORLD DEFENSE SHOW 2026 - SCOPA Defense Industries, a Saudi Arabian firm, has garnered a certain air of mystery at the last two editions of the World Defense Show outside Riyadh. • For visitors to the show, SCOPA billboards appeared at regular intervals on the highway to the event space, but at the show itself, SCOPA had a very low profile, without a dedicated booth of its own amid a sea of local and international competitors. • That’s because, chairman of SCOPA’s executive committee Walid Abu Khaled told Breaking Defense, SCOPA has been in semi-stealth mode: reorienting itself as it prepares to launch partnership and defense platforms in hopes of becoming one of the largest privately owned defense firms in the region. • “The reason there’s no participation this year is purely [because] when we want to have a place in World Defense Show, we want to showcase our own products that we manufactured in Saudi Arabia,” Abu Khaled, who previously served as CEO of the state-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries, told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview during the exhibition last week. • “I believe in the near future - when we’re talking 2028 onward - you will see that we will take a huge space with our own products that’s been either assembled in the Kingdom, manufactured in the Kingdom, designed by us in the Kingdom. • But we will showcase our own product.” In the Q&A below, Abu Khaled discussed SCOPA’s recent rebranding, plans for the future and why the company made a “strategic” decision to pursue partnerships with NATO-aligned organizations.
Sources: