Buoyed by Trump ‘boom,’ General Atomics expects MQ-9 LoA with UAE this year: Exec

MQ-9B SeaGuardian with Emirati flag, at General Atomics booth at UMEX 2022. (Agnes Helou / Breaking Defense)

IDEX 2025 — With an aggressive Trump administration back in office, the head of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems said he expects the long-suffering, high-dollar deal for the United Arab Emirates to acquire MQ-9B SeaGuardians will move forward swiftly, with a Letter of Offer and Acceptance expected as early as this year.

“We expect that to move. It’s been a long time in the making, and then it got on hold, and I think that’s going to be all behind us now,” GA-ASI President David Alexander told Breaking Defense on the International Defense Expo show floor here in Abu Dhabi.

Back in January 2021 the UAE struck a $23.3 billion deal to procure 50 F-35 fighter jets along with 18 SeaGuardians. But the combination deal was halted over US concerns about the Emirates’ use of Chinese network technology and a perceived threat to the F-35.

A breakthrough appeared to come last year, when Alexander told Breaking Defense at a different Middle East defense show that the MQ-9B part of the deal had been disentangled from the F-35 controversy, clearing the way for it to go forward alone.

Now, especially with businessman-turned-president Donald Trump back in office, Alexander said he sees a general defense sales “boom coming this way.”

“They mean business now, and they want to see the business deals happen and where we’ve been, maybe stuck in policy and bureaucrats,” Alexander said in an interview Tuesday. “I think it’s going to move out quick, so I predict a lot of action in this area, and a lot of business growth for General Atomics.”

C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for the company, put it succinctly referring to the MQ-9 deal, which was negotiated under the first Trump administration: “Trump started this. Trump’s going to end this.”

“I think the Trump administration is committed to closing this deal. The Trump administration has made it very clear that they’re committed to the UAE, and they’re committed to putting this deal back on track,” he said.

Alexander told Breaking Defense that because there’s been such a long pause in the deal, it’s currently being updated to reflect current realities. “A lot has happened in four years and we’re on the other side of COVID. We have to address the time issue, when we can make deliveries, what they cost, how fast can we get it delivered,” he said.

Alexander said that there’s been some configuration changes since the original signed LOA, “it’s essentially the same system, [but] there are some [things] added and some things taken away.”

In November 2023, Breaking Defense reported that General Atomics was planning to integrate Emirati EDGE Group missiles on the MQ-9B SkyGuardian platform.

Representatives for the State Department, which has already approved the Foreign Military Sale of MQ-9s to the UAE, did not respond to Breaking Defense’s request for comment on the new MQ-9 timeline.

The Next Big Middle East Customer

As GA-ASI puts what it hopes to be the finishing touches on the UAE deal, Alexander said his eyes are already on the “biggest potential international deal” in GA-ASI history with neighboring Saudi Arabia.

“I can’t discuss the numbers right now because we’re still going back and forth, but it’ll be the biggest deal in the region by far,” he added.

He didn’t specify any details but said that “there’s a long list of things to provide —  MQ-9 [is] part of that list. So it’s a significant program.”

While the actual announcement date of this deal is not known yet, Alexander expected “some details [to] come out later this year.”

Regarding the localization mandate these Gulf countries request for any deal, Alexander didn’t see any issues.

“Almost every international deal has some kind of reach back [localization] like that. We’re doing it. India’s got a maintenance repair that we have to stand up. Here in the UAE, they’ve got to offset requirements. Canada has 100 percent offset requirement. So we have to get creative on other ways to bring business,” he said.

He added that “it’s not just the unmanned aircraft system that we bring in, but there’s the sensor packages, and then there’s the MRO, and maybe split the production and do half of the assembly, in-country.”