Unmanned Aerial Systems On Israeli Navy Ships?

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

By ARIE EGOZI

The increasing use of UAVs by armed forces can be defined as a revolution.

Missions that in the past were solely performed by fixed wing and rotorcraft are being taken by UAVs.

In that respect it is always interesting to see what other “clients”, not the air force, are thinking about unmanned platforms.

The Israeli navy is currently using the Eurocopter AS-565 Panther (Atalef) helicopters on its Saar-5 missile corvettes.

The search for an unmanned substitute for the “Atalef” has been going on for some years, so far with no real result. This in spite of the fact that Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a leading developer and manufacturer of UAVs, has been involved in a long effort to develop an unmanned helicopter. The effort brought IAI to cooperate with Indian industry but still there are no operational products.

The navy people know that they will have to find a replacement for the “Atalef” (Hebrew for Bat) but admit that instead of a full size unmanned rotorcraft, they have a different vision. This is based on a number of small unmanned vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) platforms that will each perform one dedicated mission.

One, they said, may be equipped with an electro-optical payload to spot threats in the sea. The other can be fitted with weapon direction aids like a laser designator and another with weapons to help in defending the ship.

The navy goes even further. They have a vision on unmanned small VTOL platforms that will be deployed not only on the full size Saar-5 missile corvettes but also on the small Super Dvora fast patrol boats.

The one factor that will decide if all this vision turns into operational reality is that all these platforms must be fully autonomous.

This is not an easy task especially when your landing surface sometimes shakes and rolls by sea 5 or more waves. But work is being done and technology will find a way to compensate for nature’s forces.