Israel’s $200 Million Dollar Heron UAV Export To an Unspecified Country
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has signed a $200 million contract for the export of Heron drones to an unnamed country in Asia. With the said contract, the IAI has now signed their fourth UAV contract in 2021. The IAI doesn’t specify what the contract’s contents are, but it states it’s about providing “unmanned aerial systems services to a country in Asia.”
“The agreement is a proof of our customers’ high satisfaction with Heron UAVs, particularly their operational and technical performance,” IAI President and CEO Boaz Levy said of the signed UAV contract. “Our customers consistently choose Heron for a wide range of intelligence-gathering operations in a variety of ground and weather conditions.”
The Heron group is at the top of the company’s drone lineup. Various Heron models are currently in use with 20 customers around the world. The Heron is a long-range, medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system principally used for strategic reconnaissance and surveillance. The Heron can also assist both land and sea missions and may be operated from a frigate or from the ground. Long-range operating flexibility is provided by the aircraft, which can be fitted with UAS, LOS, or SATCOM. The Heron can operate at altitudes of up to 35,000 feet and for up to 45 hours.
In recent confrontations with Hamas, this drone has been employed extensively, with regular patrols over Gaza to pinpoint targets, particularly rocket launchers.
Heron’s key features:
- Battle-proven ISTAR operational configurations with hundreds of thousands of flight hours
- Multi-sensor feature
- Proven and safe dual automatic taxi take-off and landing systems (ATOL)
- Satellite communications (SATCOM) for Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS)
- Fully redundant, fully automatic system
- Effective in Extreme weather conditions – Cold, Hot, Humid, Icy, Snowy and High Altitude runways
- Landing on unpaved runways
- Safe, reliable and easy to use
- Best flight performance and payload
- Proven high MTBF/MTBL and low life cycle cost