L3Harris in ‘mature’ talks for regional HQ in Saudi Arabia as it looks to expand supply chain

WORLD DEFENSE SHOW 2024 — Looking to build on tactical radio and C2 work in Saudi Arabia, American defense contractor L3Harris is looking to expand its supply chain and has had months-long discussions with Saudi officials about establishing a regional headquarters in the Kingdom in line with KSA’s Vision 2030 push to localize defense production.

“We’ve been in extensive discussions with MISA [Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment] on setting up regional headquarters, [to] understand how the regional office needs to be set up,” Adrian Kemps, an L3Harris executive and the CEO of a joint venture between L3 and Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI), told Breaking Defense here in Riyadh. “We are committed to the Kingdom and we want to set up, operations here. Discussions are mature. But we’re waiting to understand a little bit more of the regulations [and] how it applies to our industry before we actually can commit to actually having a regional office. So we are moving in that direction. We definitely want to comply.”

L3Harris, like other major international defense firms, is currently trying to figure out how best to comply with the Kingdom’s new mandates while balancing other business in the region, especially in neighboring United Arab Emirates. But Kemps said that L3Harris is not regionally structured, so it has no regional hierarchy. This makes the potential inauguration of a Saudi regional headquarters much easier than the other firms who already have set up headquarters in UAE.

“The discussions with MISA has been going on for about four or five months now,” he said, adding that the US government has signaled its support. “If I was to speculate, I would say the goal is to have something done this year.”

L3Harris announced on Feb. 1 that it is joining forces with the UAE’s EDGE Group to open a new WESCAM Authorized Service Center (WASC) to support customers there, but Saudi Arabia remains the major presence for the firm in the region. L3Harris’s website lists a hosts of activity for the company in the Kingdom, for example, billing the firms as the “primary provider of radios to the Ministry of National Guard.”

In 2020 L3Harris’s commitment to business in the region was signaled when it said it became the first US firm to create a joint venture with SAMI, creatively named SAMI L3Harris Technologies. In August 2023, the joint venture inaugurated a multi band radio systems production line at SAMI-AEC facilities in Riyadh.

“[I’m] glad to say that we have established software-defined radio production line very successfully, [and] total transfer of production [and] technology [has] taken place. In fact, [I’m] happy to report that we’ve also made deliveries to our end-user of several thousand radios, assembled and produced in Saudi Arabia,” Kemps told Breaking Defense.

He added that such progress was made through working very closely with the local suppliers to develop a supply chain base in the Kingdom. Kemps told Breaking Defense that the joint venture right now is going out and qualifying suppliers who can provide accessories and components so they will provide parts for the Saudi line.

“In addition to that they will be qualified to supply to the L3Harris global supply chain as well, which is important given that some of the challenges we have today in supply chain [is] to have multiple avenues to fulfill and use orders around the world. So it’s not the radios made here. It’s the accessories in the local supply chain,” he said.

He added that the firm is also setting up an engineering center at joint venture laboratory where “we will be doing waveform development, crypto, and that type of niche technology that complements the production capabilities in Saudi Arabia.”

“We are in the process of establishing it. We have actually hired our engineers, [who are] actually in training right now, learning software development, waveform engineering. The whole idea is to transfer that knowledge into Saudi Arabia. So that all of the other predominant part of our engineering needs are fulfilled through the SAMI L3Harris JV,” Kemps said.

Regarding the timeline for launching operations in the engineering center Kemps projected to be the third quarter of 2024. “The resources are already in training and the infrastructure is in place at SAMI L3Harris facility,” he said.