A joint venture between a US defense startup and a Saudi firm is building a factory near Riyadh to manufacture combat drones modeled on Iran’s Shahed system, which has been used to pummel Gulf countries over the past few months. The facility is being developed by SR2Vector, a new partnership between Utah-based Vector Defense and Saudi-based startup SR2 Defense Systems. It will build a one-way attack drone developed by Vector, dubbed SKYWASP, that is capable of hitting targets up to 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away — about the distance from the kingdom’s northeast coast to Tehran. “SKYWASP is a program that can level the playing field and boost Saudi Arabia’s deterrence capabilities,” Lucien Zeigler, SR2’s chief strategy officer and co-founder, told Semafor.

Full report : The made-in-Saudi SKYWASP attack drones are part of a Gulf-wide push to localize military manufacturing.