US Defense Giants Make Their ADEX Debut at Baku’s Biggest Show Yet

For the first time in the exhibition’s 12-year history, US defense primes have come to Baku in force. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, SIG Sauer, Vantor and Ondas are all first-time exhibitors at ADEX 2026, and Northrop Grumman took the show’s Country Partner sponsorship.

The American arrival was flagged by the organizers before the show and confirmed on the opening day by APA, which described the strongest US presence in ADEX history, alongside debuts by Germany’s Rheinmetall and Rohde & Schwarz and Britain’s BAE Systems.

Why US companies skipped Baku before

Azerbaijan’s procurement map long ran through Moscow, Ankara and Tel Aviv, and US export policy toward the Caucasus was cautious through years of Armenia-Azerbaijan fighting. For American primes, the market looked small, politically complicated and already claimed. A sponsored pavilion-scale presence in 2026 suggests that calculation has changed, on both sides.

What changed by 2026

Three shifts stand out. Azerbaijan’s defense and security budget has climbed to about 8.7 billion manats, roughly $5.1 billion, for 2026. The Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process has lowered the political barriers that constrained Western engagement. And the regional supplier picture has been scrambled, with Russian industry consumed by its own war and sanctions. Into that opening stepped the Americans, with Northrop Grumman putting its name on the show itself as Country Partner while Turkiye’s Roketsan holds the General Sponsorship.

The commercial logic differs by company. For a small-arms maker like SIG Sauer, the Caspian is a straightforward export market for rifles and pistols of the kind Azerbaijan already produces under license from other partners. For Vantor and Ondas, both first-timers from the space-intelligence and drone sectors, the draw is a region that buys exactly what they sell and has few political attachments to legacy suppliers in those niches. For Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin the play is longer: relationships with a well-funded military that is only beginning to look west, in a week when 59 delegations from across Central Asia and the Middle East are in the same building.

The Europeans making their debut follow the same logic. Rheinmetall arrives as the continent’s busiest ammunition and vehicle supplier, Rohde & Schwarz sells the secure communications layer every modernizing force needs, and BAE Systems’ appearance under a UK national pavilion extends a British push into markets it long left to others.

Northrop Grumman arrived in Baku in the same month it won new US Army propulsion work, covered in our report on its $18.8 million ramjet contract. The full ADEX exhibitor picture is here.