EDEX 2025 – Amstone, a rising star in the Egyptian defence world
Among new Egyptian companies with considerable footprint at EDEX, Amstone was certainly among the rising stars, its exhibition surface being one of the greatest inside the four halls hosting the Cairo event
Created around 10 years ago, Amstone set up an aggressive growth plane in the las four years, becoming a major player in the Egyptian defence arena. Two years ago, at EDEX 2023, the company was much less visible; in the last two years Amstone boosted its product range, mostly thanks to partnership with French, Italian and Turkish defence companies, the link with South Africa being quite obvious when looking at the armoured vehicles on show.
Aiming at becoming a role player in the Middle East, two and a half years ago Amstone set up a subsidiary in South Africa to support its business across the continent, the company having some 20 African countries as trading partners.
Amstone opened a new facility in Egypt to augment its local production and is also increasing its intellectual property share in new products, 60% of the Research and Development being now done in-house on most products. That said Amstone maintains its role as a commercial company, taking in orders that are then produced by technology manufacturers, more and more based in Egypt.
To the traditional land, sea, and air products, Amstone is moving into the artificial intelligence and cybersecurity arena.
Starting from unmanned systems, the Jabbar 150 is the Amstone-designed loitering munition, which gives Egypt a national long-range one-way attack system. A delta-wing airframe with a 2.2 metres span and vertical rudders at its rear extremity, with canard configuration and a cylindrical fuselage 3 metres long, it is powered by a 4-cylinder internal combustion engine which gives it a 10-hour endurance. Considering its 200 km/h (55 m/s) maximum speed, the range declared by Amstone is of 1,500 km. Maximum take-off mass is 150 kg, no details being provided on the warhead. Guidance is inertial/GNSS by waypoints along the way to the target area, it was designed as a low-cost system, capable to be launched from rail-type systems.
Remaining among UAVs, on the Amstone exhibiting area we could see the Aybars-II, designed by BMS Defence Technologies of Turkey; a fixed wing airframe with high wing with winglets and a twin-boom rear empennage, in horizontal flight it is powered by a 60 cm3 internal combustion engine operating a two-blade pushing propeller, while take-off and landing operations are performed thanks to four rotors powered by electric motors installed in two nacelles under the wings.
When operated in the hybrid mode it has an endurance of 7-8 hours with a 2 kg payload, while with the same payload, in the conventional take-off and landing version, endurance is increased to 11-12 hours thanks to a bigger fuel tank, which doubles the capacity from 10 to 20 litres. With a maximum take-off mass of 35 kg, it carries a 5 kg maximum payload; when this capacity is used the endurance is reduced. Beside the Aibars-II another BMS Defence system was showcased, the Boran-2M rotary wing assault drone, capable to drop four 81/82 mm mortar bombs.
Switching to land vehicles, Amstone partnered with IMUT, the defence design and manufacturing entity of the Cairo-based Marathon United Technology, which IMUT ST-100 MRAP and ST-500 LTV. These are not new vehicles, they were unveiled in the last years of the previous decade, but now Amstone is promoting them on the export market, with a focus on the African continent, EDR On-Line understood. A version of the ST-100 armed with a multiple rocket launcher fitted on the rear flatbed was visible at EDEX, an add-on armour kit bringing the vehicle to STANAG 4569 Level 3 being also exhibited, with a43 kg/m2 density.
Unmanned ground vehicles as well as wing and guidance kit transforming dumb aerial bombs into smart weapons were also visible at the Amstone stand. The previously mentioned systems were only a small part of those showcased at the Cairo exhibition. Now that the company has surfaced showing off most of its products, many of which still produced by partner companies, it will be interesting to see the evolution of Amstone at the 2027 edition of EDEX.
Photos by P. Valpolini
