HAMZA-1: Havelsan and AOI unveil jointly built drone in El Alamein

The HAMZA-1 has celebrated its premiere in Egypt: at the El Alamein International Aviation Show, Turkish and Egyptian defence manufacturers presented the jointly manufactured drone for the first time. At the same venue, the Turkish defence company Havelsan and the Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) – both produce the system jointly – signed an agreement on the bulk sale of these drones.

The basis for this is the strategic cooperation agreement that both organisations concluded on 26 August 2025; it aimed to establish joint drone production in Egypt. The HAMZA-1 programme brings together Havelsan’s technological know-how with the manufacturing capacities that the contract partner provides locally in Egypt. For Havelsan, it is not the first platform of this kind – the company has previously developed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as BAHA, BOZBEY, POYRAZ and BULUT.

HAMZA-1 enters the commercial phase

A prototype of the HAMZA-1 had already been on display at EDEX 2025 in Cairo in December of last year. Following the joint production activities, the purchase agreement signed at the El Alamein International Air Show now marks the programme’s transition to the commercial phase. Havelsan’s technologies in the field of autonomous systems have thus been fed into AOI’s local production infrastructure – according to a Turkish military publication, this has resulted in a concrete product for the international market.

At the same time, the programme exemplifies how Havelsan approaches international co-production – and the ever closer cooperation between Turkey and Egypt in the field of defence technologies.