Can Israel Keep Its Place In The UAV Market?

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For many years Israel has been one of the top UAV exporters in the world.

Unmanned air vehicles (UAV) have become a very important item in the defence items shopping lists of countries around the world.

Between 2010 and 2014, Israeli companies delivered 165 units across the globe. The US came second with 132, followed by Italy’s 37.

Since 1985, Israel has accounted for the majority (60.7%) of UAS  exports worldwide. Despite China’s move into armed UAV exports, it only supplied 0.9% of total exports during these last couple of decades.

Can Israel keep its position as top UAV exporter?

Well, this will not be easy, due to factors that some can be controlled by Israel while others are not in the country’s influence.

The open war between the two major Israeli UAS manufacturers has a very strong impact.

Two years ago, this war resulted in a partial withdrawal in the export permits to at least one country held by the two major Israeli UAV manufacturers  – Israel aerospace industries (IAI) and Elbit Systems.

This competition or rather “war” in many cases resulted by a third party winning contracts.

But this is only part of the problem – some countries have developed UAV’s and offer them for less.

These UAV’s are in many cases inferior to the ones developed in Israel but many of the clients need them mainly for training.

So the competition has become very fierce and as some experts stress, this must result in a new “deployment” of the Israeli UAV industry.