WORLD
Israel said to be world leader in UAV exports
Baku, May 21 (AZERTAC). Israel's high-tech defense industry leads the world in exporting unmanned aerial vehicles, a new study says, while UAV designers are reported to be moving toward developing drones so advanced they could replace manned aircraft.
The international business consultancy Frost and Sullivan reports that over the last eight years Israeli manufacturers have sold UAVs worth more than $4.6 billion.
Just more than half of the deals in 2005-12 were with European states, primarily Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Russia and Spain.
A particularly large number of drones supplied to Britain's Watchkeeper UAV program, which is a joint project between Israel's Elbit Systems and the French defense multinational Thales. Watchkeeper drones are based on Elbit's Hermes 450 aircraft.
One-third of Israeli exports went to the Asia-Pacific region, including India, a major buyer of Israeli defense systems, and Azerbaijan.
Israel, which pioneered UAV technology in the 1970s, has steadily cultivated military and intelligence links with the former Soviet republic, Iran's northern neighbor, and has become a key arms supplier to the oil-rich Caspian state.
In addition to exports, Israeli defense firms set up subsidiaries in consumer countries "to target markets, rather than expand local manufacturing," Israel's Haaretz daily observed in 2009.
One example is the Aerostar and Orbiter 2M aerial drones being manufactured in Azerbaijan by Azad Systems Co., a joint venture between Israel's Aeronautics Defense Systems and the Azeri Defense Ministry.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported a few weeks ago that Israeli companies were behind 41 percent of all UAVs exported from 2001-11. Those Israeli exports went to 24 countries, including the United States.
Israel, with the most advanced defense industry in the Middle East, is in the forefront of the rapidly expanding drone business that's changing the way wars will be fought for decades to come.
"In recent years, there have been more pilotless sorties than piloted ones in the air force," observed Ophir Shoham, a reserve brigadier general who heads the Defense Ministry's Research and Development division.