Global conflicts have spurred a faster pace of product development, entry into market and delivery amid the defence contractor’s push to boost sales to foreign buyers, the head of UAE's Edge has said.

Wars have brought "higher urgency" in delivering defence solutions to overseas customers, prompting Edge to "move faster" to meet demand, Hamad Al Marar, managing director and chief executive of Edge, the biggest defence conglomerate in the country, told The National.

"With these public conflicts, capacity is consumed by the home country, so you might not receive the solutions that you've contracted before. You might face delays in certain capabilities that you wanted at a certain time ... so then you have to go the alternative route," he said in an interview before the Dubai Airshow next week.

"China, Russia, Europe, the US are all very consumed with each other ... so where do the other countries get their solutions from? That would give us maybe an opportunity. And therefore we accelerated, we reduced the time to market and we're yielding these results in terms of exports."

Launched in November 2019, the state-owned defence contractor is working on products from unmanned ground vehicles to aircraft and has formed partnerships with countries from Brazil to Malaysia.

The group is part of the UAE's push to develop its defence manufacturing industry to gain further autonomy in military equipment, diversify into strategic non-oil sectors and export Made in UAE products.

President Sheikh Mohamed and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visit the International Defence Exhibition and Conference (Idex) in Abu Dhabi.