Israel’s Air Force is on track to developing UAS that within four to five decades would carry out nearly every battlefield operation executed today by piloted aircraft, a high-ranking Israeli officer told The Associated Press on Sunday.
The officer, who works in the field of unmanned aircraft intelligence, said that Israel is speeding up research and development of such unmanned technologies for air, ground and naval forces.
“There is a process happening now of transferring tasks from manned to unmanned vehicles,” the officer said, speaking anonymously because of the classified nature of his work. “This trend will continue to become stronger.”
Isaac Ben-Israel, a former Israeli Air Force General, said however there was no way UAS could entirely overtake manned airplanes. He said there are just some things UAS can’t do, like carry heavy payloads needed for major assaults on targets like underground bunkers.
“The direction is UAS playing a bigger and bigger role in the Air Force,” he said. “In a decade or two they should be able to carry out a third or half of all missions. But there are still certain things you cannot do without a piloted plane.”
Israel is a pioneer in UAS technology. Its military was the first to make widespread use of UAS in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon and Israeli companies are considered world leaders and export unmanned aircraft to a number of armies, including U.S.-led forces that have used them in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unmanned aircraft have been a major part of Israel’s arsenal in battling Gaza rocket launchers over the years. UAS were seen as crucial by giving soldiers eyes in the air, keeping watch over rooftops and alleyways in congested urban areas and notifying troops of threats or obstacles in their path. Israel insists its UAS only perform surveillance missions but Palestinian witnesses have long claimed that Israeli UAS fire missiles in Gaza.
The officer claimed Israel is second only to the United States in the range of unmanned aerial systems its produces. He said he was “aware” that American UAS are capable of firing missiles, but refused to say whether Israeli UAS could do the same.
Source: Daily Free Man