Defence

Israel moves to expand unmanned air vehicle force

By Arie Egozi

The Israeli air force is set to invest "big sums" in acquiring unmanned air vehicles in a bid to build a three-tier force.

A senior air force officer told Flight International that the new force would increase the variety of missions performed by UAVs: "If we had twice the number of UAVs, we would have missions for all of them. The demand is simply high and increasing constantly."

In the past five years, the Israeli air force has slashed the operational cost of its UAVs by 60%, taking the average cost of a flight hour down to about $1,000.

The service will soon phase out its Israel Aerospace Industries Searcher 2s and will base squadrons on the medium-altitude Elbit Systems Hermes 450 (Zik), the IAI Heron 1 (Shoval) and IAI's high-altitude, heavy Eitan.

Small UAVs will be jointly operated by the air force and Israeli defence force ground forces command. The ground forces command is about to select its baseline mini-UAV, with the main candidates being the Rafael SkyLite, Elbit Systems SkyLark and IAI I-view.

As part of the UAV force building plan, new optronic payloads are being developed by Controp, IAI and Elbit, while IAI subsidiary Elta is working on new radar payloads. Some of the UAVs will have both optronic and radar payloads for greater flexibility.