Non-Subscriber Extract
Israel Navy to deploy first UAVs
- Article Tools
| 23 December 2005 |
By Alon Ben-David JDW Correspondent
London
The Israel Navy (IN) will deploy its first reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in January.
The IN has been allocated a few Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Mahatz I (also known as Heron) medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAVs out of several dozen recently acquired by the Israel Air Force (IAF). Two UAVs will be operated jointly by the IAF and IN for maritime patrol missions.
The IN-designated Mahatz UAVs are equipped with EL/M-2022U UAV maritime patrol radars from IAI's Elta subsidiary featuring automatic detection and tracking of maritime surface targets. Providing range signature and inverse synthetic aperture radar (RS and ISAR) imaging, combined with autonomous classification, the display video and data of the sea surface are transmitted via a datalink to the ground control station.
"We are just beginning to learn the naval applications of UAVs," a senior IN source told JDW. "We have yet to develop a full concept for operating UAVs for our needs."
154 of 379 words