EDEX 2025: Egypt's electromagnetic weapon breaks cover

The HPEM SkyWolf emitter displayed next to an EADF IRIS-T SL launcher at EDEX. (Janes/Jeremy Binnie)

Diehl Defence has delivered its high-powered electromagnetic (HPEM) weapon to the Egyptian Air Defence Forces (EADF), it was confirmed during the Egypt Defence Expo (EDEX) 2025 held in Cairo from 1 to 4 December.

The German company's Guardian system, which includes an HPEM emitter, was displayed next to one of the EADF's new IRIS-T SL surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers. Both systems had the same camouflage scheme.

Diehl told Janes in 2022 that it had secured a contract to supply its HPEM SkyWolf to an African customer it did not identify. The HPEM SkyWolf was subsequently integrated into the Guardian system, which the company's brochure says is ideally suited to protecting IRIS-T SL batteries against small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Egypt is Diehl's only confirmed African customer. An Egyptian order for 16 IRIS-T SL batteries was approved by the German government in late 2021, and the first was shown in Egypt during a parade held in October 2024 to mark the anniversary of the 1973 war with Israel.

The HPEM SkyWolf has a large horn antenna pointed in the general direction of the incoming threat to jam communication and navigation signals at longer ranges and damage electronic circuits to cause malfunctions at very short ranges.

The key advantage of this type of weapon is that it can defeat multiple small UAVs simultaneously, including ones that are operating autonomously or linked to their operators by fibre-optic cables.

For more information, please see Egypt displays IRIS-T SL system for first time .