Siemens Energy redesigns Gulf power plants to withstand drone and missile attacks

Siemens Energy is redesigning power plants across the Gulf to withstand drone and missile attacks, drawing on hard-won lessons from Ukraine as the Iran war forces governments to rethink how they protect critical electricity infrastructure.

The German industrial group is working with regional customers to reinforce existing facilities with protective shelters and barriers and is exploring placing parts of new plants underground, Hussein Shoukry, Siemens Energys managing director for the Middle East and Africa, told The National at Adipec in Abu Dhabi.

Energy security now is national security, Shoukry said. Were protecting our power infrastructure in the same way we protect a military base. He acknowledged the measures are costly but argued they are necessary given the damage some countries have sustained when energy assets were hit.

The redesign push follows a string of attacks that have exposed the vulnerability of power plants, transmission networks and other energy facilities across the Gulf since the Iran war began in February. Those incidents have prompted governments and operators to ask how to protect fixed, obvious assets that cannot be easily concealed or relocated.

Siemens Energy is drawing on its experience supporting Ukraines electricity system, where repeated attacks forced operators to strengthen protections and develop ways to restore power quickly. In the Gulf, customers want designs that shield vulnerable equipment and can limit disruption including reinforced enclosures, blast-resistant barriers and alternative layouts that reduce exposure.

The conflict has also highlighted supply-chain fragility. With shipping through the Strait of Hormuz disrupted, Siemens Energy is examining ways to transport large equipment in smaller sections that can be assembled on site, reducing reliance on moving heavy machinery by sea. Customers are increasingly opting to hold larger inventories of critical components, some of which have long manufacturing and delivery lead times.

To address local service needs after travel and flight cancellations made importing specialists difficult, Siemens Energy is training more engineers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other markets across the region. At the same time, Shoukry warned against national attempts to become fully self-sufficient in manufacturing energy equipment, saying isolation is inefficient and simply not doable.

Siemens Energy, spun off from Siemens in 2020, supplies gas turbines, power-generation equipment and grid technology. The company has roughly 100 gigawatts of installed generation capacity across the Middle East and Africa, with about 15 gigawatts of potential projects in the pipeline. Its regional footprint includes around 20 gigawatts in Saudi Arabia (with another 13 gigawatts under contract or execution) and about 13 gigawatts installed in the UAE, according to figures provided earlier this year.

Regionally, Siemens Energy employs more than 4,000 people across 29 offices and recorded €9 billion (about $10.4 billion) in regional orders in its 2025 financial year. Globally, the company generated €39.1 billion in revenue for that period.

The security-driven design changes come as Gulf demand for electricity rises steeply from industrial expansion, population growth and electrification. Shoukry estimates regional power generation capacity will need to increase by about 50 percent over the next five to six years a surge that puts strain on manufacturers already struggling with heavy order books. He said Siemens Energy is completely sold out of gas turbines and is expanding its factories to catch up.

The company has highlighted recent successes in the region: in July it won contracts to supply and service equipment for Omans Misfah and Duqm gas-fired power plants, with a combined capacity of about 2.6 gigawatts, and expects to announce further projects in the sultanate soon. It also recently announced a $150 million investment in a transformer factory in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, to expand regional manufacturing.

Shoukry noted the conflict has not derailed renewable energy plans. Solar and wind typically spread across multiple sites can offer security advantages over large centralised stations, and he said he has not heard customers slowing investment in renewables. For governments, resilience has become an additional priority to balance alongside affordability, reliability and sustainability: We dont want one to replace the other, he said. We just add another component that didnt exist before.

As Gulf states scale up generation and modernise ageing grids, investment in transmission and distribution is expected to grow. The redesign and resilience measures Siemens Energy is proposing will add to upfront project costs, but executives argue the expense is justified by the need to reduce the risk of catastrophic outages and to maintain national energy security in an increasingly contested region.