February 18, 2026 at 2:45 PM
SCOPA exec details Saudi firm’s relaunch, reveals ambitious aims
“A company cannot work with East and West. You have to make strategic decisions. And the decision has been made within SCOPA. We’re working with NATO countries,” company executive Walid Abu Khaled told Breaking Defense.
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.