 Egypt and China had signed an agreement to build twelve ASN-209 UAVs including technology transfer in order to enhance Egypt's domestic drone industry.In addition, China uses fewer proprietary technologies in their designs in order to reduces licensing and manufacturing costs as the ASN-209 system costs 30 percent less than comparable US design while providing many of the same performance and most of the same tasks.In May 2012 six Egyptian drones of ASN-209 was built in collaboration with a foreign defence manufacturer during the first phase and are fully operational under the Egyptian armed forces according to Hamdy Weheba, the Chairman of the Arab Organization for Industrialization which he claimed that Egypt has started the production of the ASN-209 Multi-purpose UAV System and about 99.5% of the components are locally manufactured.