Sahm Drone's Toughest Flight Yet: 150kg to Al Halaniyat Islands

Oman's home-built cargo drone just flew its toughest mission yet: 100 kilometres over open sea from Salalah to the remote Al Halaniyat Islands, carrying 150 kilograms of medical supplies. It is the second phase of the "Sky Bridge" initiative and the clearest sign so far that Oman's indigenous drone programme is moving from demonstration flights to real logistics.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Oman's Ibn Firnas Center for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles flew the "Sahm" cargo drone from Salalah to the Al Halaniyat Islands on September 2, 2026, delivering roughly 150kg of medical supplies, according to Times of Oman.
• The flight marks the second phase of the "Sky Bridge" initiative, run entirely by an Omani team under the patronage of Sayyid Marwan bin Turki Al Said, Governor of Dhofar, as reported by Times of Oman.
• The Sahm drone cruised at over 120 km/h and up to 2,000 metres altitude, this time crossing water to reach an island archipelago with no reliable land or sea supply route.
• Phase one, flown in January 2026, delivered 100kg of medicine over 100km of mountainous terrain from the Military Technological College to Al Jabal Al Akhdar, as covered by Oman Observer.
• The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology and the Civil Aviation Authority were both involved, positioning the programme as national infrastructure rather than a one-off trial.

🚁 From Mountain Peaks to Open Water

The Al Halaniyat Islands, also known as the Khuriya Muriya archipelago, sit roughly 50 kilometres off Oman's Dhofar coast in the Arabian Sea. The main island, Al Hallaniyah, holds the group's only permanent settlement, and it depends on infrequent sea crossings and limited air links for supplies. That geography made it the natural next test for Oman's cargo drone programme after its debut over the mountains of Al Jabal Al Akhdar.

According to Times of Oman, the "Sahm" (Arrow) drone carried approximately 150 kilograms of medical supplies and equipment from Salalah to the islands, flying at speeds exceeding 120 km/h and altitudes up to 2,000 metres. The mission was executed entirely by the Ibn Firnas Center for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, with an Omani engineering and operations team overseeing every stage of the flight.

A companion report from Times of Oman confirms this was the second phase of the "Sky Bridge" initiative, held under the patronage of Sayyid Marwan bin Turki Al Said, Governor of Dhofar, and attended by government and private-sector officials from the governorate. The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation were all named as stakeholders in the operation, underlining that this is a coordinated national logistics programme rather than a single ministry's pilot project.

🏔️ What Changed Since Phase One

The first phase of Sky Bridge, flown in January 2026, sent the same class of drone 100 kilometres from the Military Technological College to the Al Jabal Al Akhdar highlands, delivering 100 kilograms of medicine over mountainous terrain, as reported at the time by Oman Observer. At that launch, Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Harithy, CEO of the Ibn Firnas Center for Drones, framed the flight as the start of a longer programme:

Eight months on, that promise has been tested against a different, arguably harder problem: sustained flight over open water to an inhabited but isolated island group, rather than a single mountain crossing. The Sahm airframe itself is rated for a maximum payload of 250 kilograms and a 300-kilometre range, so both flights so far have operated within a comfortable margin of its design limits, according to details from Oman Observer's earlier coverage. That headroom matters: it suggests the Ibn Firnas Center is deliberately building an operational track record before pushing the drone toward its outer limits.

🌐 Part of a Wider Drone Push

Sky Bridge is one strand of a broader effort by Oman to build a domestic unmanned aerial vehicle industry rather than simply import foreign hardware. The Ibn Firnas Center has framed the programme as an effort to "localise sophisticated aircraft production and institute a national manufacturing foundation" inside Oman, a goal that aligns with Oman Vision 2040's push for technology-based economic diversification. Alongside government-led efforts like Sky Bridge, private Omani firms are also building drone expertise: Muscat-based Star Drones has been at the centre of talks between Oman and Bangladesh on drone manufacturing and AI cooperation, showing the ecosystem extends beyond a single state-run centre.

📋 Technology Snapshot

Source: Oman Observer and Times of Oman.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Oman's geography, mountains in the north, a scattered island archipelago in the south, has always made "last mile" logistics expensive and slow for remote communities. A domestically engineered drone that can reliably move medical cargo over both terrains gives the Ministry of Health and Dhofar's local authorities a genuine new delivery option rather than a research curiosity. It also reinforces the broader ambition behind Oman's Vision 2040 push to build homegrown technology capacity: rather than only hosting foreign AI infrastructure or importing hardware, Oman is trying to design, assemble and operate its own advanced systems. If the Sky Bridge programme keeps stacking up successful flights, it could become one of the more tangible, replicable technology deployments to come out of the Sultanate's wider drone and advanced-manufacturing ambitions, one that other coastal and mountainous governorates could eventually adopt for their own remote communities.