“It’s a copy of a similar system that fell in Iran,” Brig. Gen. Tomer Bar, chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force, said of the drone in Israel’s possession, which he identified as Shahed 171.

“They more or less duplicated it … but I won’t grade them,” said Bar, referring to Iran’s reverse engineering capabilities.

Iran released a video of the Shahed 171 in flight back in 2014. Two years later, Iran showed another knockoff based on the Lockheed Martin Sentinel, an armed version known as the Saeqeh, according to Tal Inbar, director of the UAV and space program at Israel’s Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.

“There are two copies that Iran made out of the RQ-170. One is Shahed 171, and this is supposed to be jet powered and for reconnaissance missions. Then there is the other variant of this vehicle — similar in design to RQ-170, with a piston engine and a propeller — named Saeqeh. This variant was shown in 2016 armed with four laser-guided munitions,” Inbar told Defense News.

Officers here said Israel maintained persistent intelligence of the drone as it took off from the Palmyra area of Syria, made its way through northern Jordan and entered Israeli airspace, where it was shot down by an Israeli Apache helicopter. “We have full situational awareness, 24/7 … and we remain steadfast in the face of the strategic aims of Iran and Hezbollah,” Bar said.

In response to the Feb. 10 breach of Israeli territory by the Iranian reverse-engineered U.S. system, Israel deployed a force package of eight F-16Is to target the Iranian command trailer near Palmyra in central Syria.

It was during that retaliatory raid that one of the Israeli F-16Is was hit by a Syrian-based air defense missile on its return to Israel. The front-line fighter fell in Israel’s Galilee region after the pilots ejected over Israeli territory.

Shortly after its Feb. 12 interception of the Iranian drone, Israel released grainy video footage of the aircraft flying in Israeli airspace, but has yet to release images from the wreckage of the Iranian knockoff now in its possession.

“I don’t know what was the specific vehicle that penetrated Israel. But if it was the Shahed, as the Air Force general said, it’s more sophisticated since it’s supposed to be jet powered. But from the video released by the Israel Defense Forces, you don’t see any trails of hot air typical of jet-powered vehicles,” Inbar noted.

“Either way, the fact that it was tracked and shot down by the Israel Air Force was a test for both sides: For the Iranians, it showed that they need to improve upon their stealth properties. And for the Israelis, it was validation of its air defense network,” he added.

Last May, in an indication that U.S. or allied forces could face knockoffs of the RQ-107 in battle, the U.S. Army included the Lockheed Sentinel system in its manual of “Visual Aircraft Recognition.”

Inspired by the Israeli Iron Dome, which combines radar, a discriminating battle management system and kinetic interceptors against short-range rockets and other cross-border threats from the air, the so-called steel dome is a multilayered system of new technologies, tactics and procedures aimed at denying militants from Hamas and Gaza-based terror organizations the ability to attack Israel from underground.

The latest demonstration of the new system came in the early morning hours of Jan. 14, when the Israel Air Force — supported by ground forces from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Southern Command — detected and destroyed a tunnel that extended nearly a kilometer within southern Gaza, traversed some 200 meters under Israel’s border, and continued about 400 meters into neighboring Egypt.

“The tunnel was located using combined technological, intelligence and operational capabilities,” the Israeli military noted in its Jan. 14 statement. “Locating these tunnels is part of a wide-scale defensive effort led by the IDF and Southern Command.”

In an interview to the Arab-language, U.S.-based satellite television station Alhurra, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, coordinator of Israeli government activities in the West Bank and Gaza, indicated that Israel has detected additional cross-border tunnels and warned Gazans working in or near them that they, too, would be destroyed.

“Just like there’s Iron Dome for [threats coming from] the air, there’s a technological umbrella of steel underground,” Mordechai said. “I want to send a message to everyone who is digging or gets too close to the tunnels: As you’ve seen… these tunnels bring only death.”

Since late October, Israel has employed ground- and air-based detection capabilities that not only locate the tunnel, but provide Israeli authorities with clearer indication of their route.

In addition to the new detection capabilities and means of destroying the tunnels, Israel is constructing a sensor-fused, underground barrier on its side of the border at an estimated cost of some $800 million, or $11 million for each kilometer its 65-kilometer border with the Gaza Strip.

That physical barrier is scheduled for completion by the end of next year.

With a 13-meter wingspan and an endurance of eight hours when fully armed with a 120-kilogram payload, the Karayel-SU is the latest in a family of UAVs built by Vestel for the Turkish Armed Forces and the export market.

“We are focusing our marketing efforts on the Middle East and Africa region, and we are beginning efforts to secure our first export customer,” Oner Tekin, Vestel’s general manager, told Defense News.

Vestel executives said the armed and unarmed shorter-winged (10.5-meter wingspan) versions of the automated takeoff and landing Karayel UAV have flown a total of some 3,000 hours, primarily through a power-by-the-hour-type leasing arrangement with the Turkish Armed Forces. The extended-wing version is not part of that agreement.

Without weaponry, the new extended-wing aircraft carries a 50-kilogram day/night sensor in its fuselage bay and is designed to fly for a constant 20 hours at altitudes reaching 18,000 feet.

“We have a contract to give them services, and were proud that our aircrafts have flown more than 3,000 flight hours without incident,” Tekin said of the earlier-model unarmed Karayel and lightly armed Karayel-S.

Flight tests on a partially weaponized Karayel-SU are set to begin in January 2018, said Suha Dinner, the firm’s deputy general manager. “We will commence fight tests with weapons on two of the four hard points the first week of January.”

Vestel executives said weaponry by Ankara-based Roketsan has already been integrated on the four hard points under the wing and that armed flight tests will begin soon. The UAV displayed here for the first time outside of Turkey was shown with two types of miniaturized, anti-tank missiles ― the MAM-L and the laser-guided MAM-C ― developed by Ankara’s state-owned Roketsan.

Hudai Ozdamar, Roketsan’s director for market development, said the firm’s miniature smart munitions ― both capable of striking targets within an 8-kilometer range – are optimized to meet what he characterized as a growing global demand for unmanned precision-strike capabilities.

“All the armies are interested in combat UAVs, and it’s only a matter of time until we see this interest translate into export sales,” Ozdamar said.

He added that Roketsan is supplying its miniature missiles to all three Turkish firms now manufacturing UAVs: Turkish Aerospace Industries, Baykar Machine and Vestel. And because the missiles are completely indigenous, Ozdamar said export licensing issues are not a problem to end users approved by the Turkish Ministry of Defence.

“The UAV companies supply their UAVs, and we are arming them. We try to design all our systems to be self-sufficient. We don’t want to be limited by export licensing restrictions,” he said.

The MAM-L, a motorless version of Roketsan’s laser-guided, long-range, anti-tank missile, was declared operational by the Turkish Army in the past year. The smaller caliber MAM-C, which first debuted at the International Defence Industry Fair in Istanbul last May, is undergoing final developmental tests and should be operational “in some months’ time,” he said.

Both are offered in high explosive and tandem penetrating warhead versions.

As for Vestel’s newest Karayel-SU UAV, executives in Dubai indicated their first export customer could be Saudi Arabia. The firm signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this week at the Dubai Airshow with Saudi Arabia’s Advanced Electronics Company for purposes of “collaboration and localization,” details of which they declined to elaborate.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Patriot batteries owned by Arab partners in the Middle East have intercepted more than 100 tactical ballistic missiles launched from Yemen since the Saudi-led war against Iranian-backed Houthis began in 2015, according to U.S. prime contractor Raytheon.

That number, which appears on the Raytheon website, is much larger than publicly available data from think tanks, the Saudi government or the other eight Mideast and African nations fighting in the Saudi-led coalition against Iranian-backed militias loyal to former Yemeni President Al Abdullah Saleh.

The Missile Defense Project of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies shows 40 interceptions and 18 strikes since the war began Saudi-Iranian proxy war began in March 2015. However, the group did include the latest Patriot intercept of a Yemen-launched tactical ballistic missile on Nov. 4, which indicates its data is not completely up to date or inclusive.

Accounts sympathetic to the Yemeni cause posted on social media have assessed tactical ballistic missiles launches at 93. But that figure does not distinguish between strikes and successful interceptions and is widely believed to be inflated.

But in a Nov. 15 interview, Riki Ellison, chairman and founder of the Alexandria, VA-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, not only confirmed Raytheon’s 100-plus figure, but insisted it was a conservative count. “Between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there have been over 150 intercepts of Yemen-launched missiles,” said Ellison.

When asked to define the ratio between successful intercepts and TBM threats that leaked through the active defense, Ellison said he did not have that data. “I don’t know about leakage, but over 150 intercepts in combat is impressive,” he said.

A U.S. source clarified that all of the intercepts took place in the skies of Saudi Arabia or in Yemen, where UAE air defenders forward-deployed Patriot PAC-3 batteries. Arab coalition forces have publicly acknowledged just a few successful intercepts over Yemen, the last one of record in June 2016 when rebels in the country’s south launched east of the capital city of Sanaa.

And while the coalition never identified which partner nation conducted that intercept, sources from the U.S. and another country in the region attributed that successful engagement to Emerati air defenders operating the Patriot PAC-3. The UAE’s forward-deployed Patriots in Yemen, those sources said, was a direct lesson from the September 2015 SS-21 attack launched from southern Yemen that killed dozens of Emerati and Yemeni soldiers in the center of the same war-torn country.

Aside from Russian and North Korean Scud-class missiles and the Russian SS-21 Toshka, the Houthi TBM arsenal includes the Iranian-supplied Burkan 1 and Burkan 2 and what some analysts have called the Qahr, which is a surface-to-surface version of the SA-2. According to Western sources, the Burkan 1 is similar to a regular short-range Scud while Burkan 2 carries a smaller, but separating warhead with extended range that can reach beyond the Saudi capital to the Kingdom’s oil production facilities and sensitive desalination plants.

In interviews here at the Dubai Air Show, Raytheon executives declined to specify which regional partners other than Saudi Arabia were responsible for Patriot intercepts of TBM threats in recent years. Nevertheless, they repeatedly referred to “100+ tactical ballistic missiles intercepted in combat since 2015” to underscore the success of a continuously upgraded system originally designed to defend against aircraft.

“We are constantly tailoring the product to the threat,” said Joe DeAntona, “Some of our very important partners in the Middle East have been engaged in conflict with an enemy that has ballistic missiles. And during that time, over 100 successful engagements using the Patriot missile systems to defeat incoming missiles have occurred.”

Of those 100-plus intercepts of Yemen-launched threats, Raytheon executives here credited more than 90 to the firm’s PAC-2 Guided Enhanced Missile-T (GEM-T), whose powerful blast fragmentation warhead neutralizes incoming missiles by exploding itself on or near its target. Saudi Arabia deploys Raytheon’s Pac-2 interceptors as well newer Lockheed Martin-built hit-to-kill PAC-3s, which are designed to destroy targets by sheer force of impact.

When asked why the Raytheon interceptor has scored such tremendous success relative to the more advanced PAC-3, Timothy Cahill, Lockheed Martin vice president for integrated air and missile defense noted that the firm just started delivering the newer missiles to Saudi Arabia last summer.

“I don’t know the precise numbers, and if I did, I wouldn’t say because the governments consider that information to be closely held. What I can say is that PAC-3s are not fully deployed there yet. So it’s more a matter of shooting what you have out in the field,” Cahill said.

The Lockheed executive insisted that the ostensible disparity in intercept successes should not be misconstrued as any failure or “issue” on the part of the Lockheed Martin PAC-3. “I am aware of no problems at all in any shape or form. You use what you have. And considering the number of high-level people we’ve talked to this week — and believe me, we’ve talked to everyone — I would have heard about it,” he said.

Cahill said he did not know when Riyadh would be ready to declare initial operational capability of its Patriot PAC-3 force.

Washington approved some 600 PAC-3 missiles and associated support equipment to Saudi Arabia in July 2015; a potential sale estimated at $5.4 billion. And last October, Washington cleared a potential sale of 360 Lockheed Martin-produced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) hit-to-kill missiles, 44 launchers and associated fire control stations and radars in a package assessed at $15 billion.

In parallel to that potential U.S. deal, during an early October visit to Moscow by Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud Salman to Moscow, Saudi Arabia announced an agreement with Russia to procure the S400 air and missile defense system. According to U.S. and Russian executives interviewed in Dubai, neither deal has been formally concluded.

TEL AVIV, Israel ― After-action analysis from last month’s massive drill at Israel’s northern border has validated, with very few exceptions, more than a decade worth of development, deployment and operational procedures associated with the military’s cyber-secure, C4I-operational network, the military’s chief signal officer said.

“Our concept of fighting in the cyber domain was validated in the latest drill,” Brig. Gen. Netanel Cohen, the Israel Defense Forces‘ chief signal officer, told Defense News. “We took all the digital transformation of the past decade, and … bottom line: It worked.”

He was referring to last month’s drill of the IDF’s Northern Corps ― the largest in nearly 20 years ― designed to simulate extreme scenarios of war against Iran-armed and –trained Hezbollah forces beyond its northern border.

More than 25,000 active-duty and reserve forces from all service branches, combat disciplines and command echelons took part in the two-week drill, which involved cross-border infiltration, high-intensity ground maneuvering in urban areas, and sustained salvos of enemy rockets and missiles directed at the Israeli homefront.

Cohen also serves as chief of staff of the J6 C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate of the IDF General Staff with responsibility for developing, deploying, operating and defending C4I networks (command, control,. communications, computers and intelligence). In a recent interview, he said the drill marked the first opportunity for the IDF to test its multilayered, cloud-supported networks in such large numbers and across all combat and command echelons.

While Israel demonstrated many of the integrated C4I capabilities in Israel’s 2014 Gaza war ― particularly with regard to closing so-called sensor-to-shooter cycles by way of the networked operations ― the drill marked the first time the IDF could evaluate technologies, tactics and procedures on such a broad scale.

“It was the first time we managed to connect a broad portion of our order of battle and all fighting echelons deployed in the field on the same secure net,” Cohen said. “We validated that every ground-fighting platform had the ability to connect to the network.

“Battalion commanders got all the info they needed within their command post, and then they were able to take information that was relevant and push it to the company commander.”

Beyond command and control of targeting operations, Cohen said the drill validated IDF inroads in using organizational networks to manage logistics. It also provided an opportunity to demonstrate in-house-developed support clouds for the IDF High Command as well as a tactical cloud for maneuvering forces.

Going forward, the IDF plans to expand significantly on cloud-supported command, control and prosecution of war aims, he said.

“We have a maneuvering cloud that doesn’t stay back with the infrastructure; it all the time maneuvers with the forces. And within the battalion, the commander knows how much ammunition he has via an organizational network that allows him to more efficiently command his battalion,” Cohen said.

As for cyber defense, Cohen said the IDF’s C4I branch deployed a “red team” of crack hackers whose mission was to penetrate or otherwise contaminate the IDF’s operational network. “We had a full red team that challenged us immensely during the fog of war. It helped us validate with precision our strong points as well as our vulnerability points,” he said.

“There’s a lot we learned from the drill in terms of simultaneously operating with many networks and how to broaden capacity, which is our biggest challenge,” he added.

Cohen acknowledged that after-action assessments pointed to “some challenges with capacity and connectivity, where we needed to make patches here and there.” One of the skill sets demonstrated in the drill was the ability to conceive of ways to “working around” gaps revealed during the fight.

“We couldn’t have tested the system and learned the way we needed to learn without such a large-scale drill,” Cohen said.

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Here at Depot 22 ― the Israeli Air Force’s central depot tasked with repairing and maintaining much of the force’s fixed-wing aircraft ― commanders are preparing to transition from 3-D scanning of selected parts to actual 3-D printing of those parts. The transition process, officers say, involves meticulous evaluation and testing, and will focus only on nonstructural parts that can endure stress loads of flight.

But once they master initial printing of flight-worthy parts, depot professionals say they’ll be on their way to an in-house ability to shorten supply chains and bridge strategic gaps that may confound them in times of war.

“In wartime, we can be here around the clock working to return aircraft to their home squadrons,” said Lt. Col. Maxim Orgad, commander of Depot 22’s Engineering Division. “The more we master this technology, the more we’ll be able to use it to save precious time and bridge critical gaps.”

Orgad said Depot 22 has spent nearly three years improving its ability to use 3-D scanners to support the designing and conventional manufacturing of spare parts. What used to take several weeks or months now takes a matter of hours or a few days, he said.

“Before, we had to make a mold of the part, but now we’re using a 3-D scanner, which we can take anywhere and use to scan different parts of the aircraft. The scanner makes the 3-D model, which we then take to our manufacturing center where we manufacturer through traditional methods,” the officer said.

“Granted, this is only the beginning. But eventually we’ll be able to reap even bigger benefits by actually printing our own parts.”

Over the past year, Depot 22 professionals have been flying 3-D-designed plastic parts on Heron and Hermes UAVs to analyze reliability and flight worthiness. The depot is also experimenting with small, noncritical parts associated with the CH-53, F-16 and F-15 aircraft, officers said.

Orgad said the depot’s focus is primarily on UAVs, where it is evaluating future operational needs and determining how they can be met by way of 3-D printing. To that end, Depot 22 is working with the Defense Ministry’s Defense Research and Development Directorate and industry to keep abreast of new technological and procedural developments.

“Our engineers are working in this new field. We’re researching the materials, properties and processes associated with 3-D design and manufacturing. We’re looking at how we can use this technology to fix airplanes and to fly on airplanes. … And as we gain knowledge and experience, we’ll begin to prove some parts in manned aircraft,” Orgad said, before pausing and quickly adding: “But we have a long way ahead of us until then.”

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Speaking at a Defense News Conference panel titled “Defining the Military Agenda,” uniformed officers and civilian officials from the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army as well as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conceded that much work remains to be done before high-powered lasers are mature enough to translate into operational capabilities.

“To be able to keep a laser on a target for a certain amount of time is a challenge,” said Col. Joe Capobianco, chief of staff of the U.S. Army Rapid Capabilities Office. “Lasers are maturing to a point that we’re seeing them in the commercial industry. Lasers are out there. But as far as military applications, there’s still work to be done.”

Capobianco noted there are myriad prototypes and demonstrations that have proved promising for future military use, but translating them into operational capability will take time. “Eventually you’ll have a capability that can be put on a major weapon system. Lasers for military applications are coming. … But we’re not seeing it at a maturity level to be a war-fighting capability at this point.”

Retired Col. Fred Kennedy, deputy director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, acknowledged that the advanced research agency has been working lasers for many long years. He said high-powered, solid-state lasers are “clearly on the table,” yet deferred to the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, “as to what specific application they want to come out of this.”

Rear Adm. Jon Hill, MDA deputy director, went as far as to characterize lasers as a “game-changer” for missile defense. Nevertheless, he acknowledged it would require “robust investment to get to the power scale and the range we’ll need to reach out far enough and remain lethal.”

According to the MDA deputy, adversarial nations are “moving ahead” with lasers and the U.S. must not lag behind. “We all know cost per kill is very expensive, but if we don’t invest in it, it will remain a problem,” he said. “If you want a solution tomorrow, you must invest today.”

Conversely, space-based sensors — another essential element for modernized missile defense — and the need to protect space assets are starting to receive requisite attention by congressional appropriators and the U.S. government writ large, said Brig. Gen. Mark Baird, director of space programs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. “We’re working in partnership with MDA to make sure we can protect the nation if, God forbid, we’re in a contested event,” Baird said.

Baird told Defense News Conference participants that he was pleased to see “how much attention people are paying” to critical space-based capabilities. “There’s a fundamental shift in how we look at missile defense and space. Space used to be a non-contested domain. It is not now. We have demonstrated capabilities now that make space a war-fighting domain.

“Nobody wants to take a war into space, but as a military — both civilian and those in uniform — we have to be ready to institute a space war-fighting construct and a space enterprise vision.”

Brig. Gen. Tim Lawson, deputy commanding general for operations at the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, said space-based sensors are an essential element for missile defense, which remains a top service modernization priority. “Space-enabling is so critical. When you look at sensors and shooters, they are reliant on space enabling,” Lawson said.

Thomas Karako, senior fellow and head of the Missile Defense Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the space sensor layer has been a critical part of the US national missile defense program for the past five administrations. But only recently, he said, is it moving from talking points on paper to reality.

“If there’s one major muscle movement that we can do across the spectrum from regional defense to homeland defense, it’s tracking from space,” Karako said.

As world attention has turned to North Korea and the intercontinental ballistic missile threat, Karako urged government officials not to neglect shorter-range missiles that threaten regional allies or threats posed by cruise missiles and UAVs.

“As we presumptively rebalance from regional defense to homeland defense, it’s important not to lose sight of the other threats,” he said. “We can’t just be chasing the ball on North Korean ICBMs.”

And as government and industry develop new sensor and shooter capabilities, it’s important to seek new ways of integrating new developments and speeding their deployment in the field, said Tim Cahill, vice president for Integrated Air and Missile Defense Systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. “We need to find a way to increase the speed with which we field systems. One way to do this is to look at things differently. In missile defense, it’s important to apply innovation,” Cahill said.

According to the Lockheed Martin executive, too often in missile defense, people focus on getting as close as possible to 100 percent capability before introducing a system to the field.

“When you’re rapidly trying to put capability in the field, it might be OK to field systems with 85 percent capability and follow that with requisite testing and due diligence. Having something that is not quite 100 percent is better than nothing.”

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“If your children tonight ask if we’re safe from North Korea, I will tell you we have the strongest defense possible against the threat right now, today. What we’re really concerned about is downstream as the threat becomes more complex,” said Rear Adm. Jon Hill, deputy director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Speaking just four days after Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear detonation and against the backdrop of the dozens of North Koran ballistic missile tests conducted in the past two years, Hill said additional funding is required to render active defenses more robust to meet future threats.

“We’re focused on threats to our nation and to our allies and constantly performing threat projections. We have the programs and initiatives in place to keep pace and stay ahead of the threats. But much depends on public investment,” Hill said.

But, he added, “such projections and programs can be difficult if you don’t have the resources.”

To that end, Hill said MDA has three top priorities. Firstly, it aims to enhance the reliability of existing systems, build the confidence of war fighters and work to reduce the number of missiles needed to intercept threats.

Secondly, he said, MDA is working to augment capability and capacity of existing systems through additional sensors and interceptors. “We need to continue to build out the sensor architecture. If you can’t see it, you can’t shoot it. … So we need to upgrade global missile defense capabilities and then the numbers of interceptors.”

Thirdly, the MDA deputy said, the organization was working with industry and international partners to develop new means of detecting and intercepting much more advanced, future threats that are likely to involve decoys, separation warheads and saturation attacks. Key focal points for development, he said, include directed energy, which Hill characterized as a “game-changer.”

Other developmental priorities include space-based and other sensors, and the means for linking disparate “sensors and shooters” deployed by the different service branches and allied nations.

“If you want a layered and effective defense against what is pretty much a 360-degree threat, you have to go in there and engineer to make sure your sensors are tracking. If you’re limited to terrestrial or ship-based radars, you need to make sure they are handing [data] over from one radar to the next and to other missiles. Once you do that, and harness capabilities of all the services, the power will be enormous,” Hill said.

“We need to focus on finding cyber adversaries before they get into our networks,” Thomas Bossert, homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, told participants at Cyber Week, an annual international event held at Tel Aviv University.

The new working group, an extension of an existing cyber agreement and routinized cooperation between the two nations, was endorsed by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the American leader’s trip here last month. It aims to develop “a different operational construct toward stopping adversaries in networks and identifying ways to hold bad actors responsible,” according to Bossert.

“We believe that the agility Israel has in developing solutions will result in cyber defense we can take back to the U.S.,” he added.

Rob Joyce, Trump’s cybersecurity adviser, told conference participants that Washington is seeking a new model to deter governments through the imposition of painful penalties. “We need to figure out a deterrence model of how to impose costs on other nations so that they cannot achieve their desired outcomes,” Joyce said.

Neither Joyce nor Bossert mentioned Russia or North Korea, two nations that the U.S. intelligence community has identified as repeat offenders in attacks against American networks, the most controversial of which was the alleged hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which is currently under investigation. Joyce did note, however, that Saudi Arabia was a target for an ongoing cyberattack, the likes of which should be deterred or punished.

Netanyahu, in his address to the plenum, underscored the importance of international cooperation and the added value he said Israel can provide for common cybersecurity defenses. “We are ready to cooperate with other countries; we are ready to cooperate with other governments because in general — with some reservations — we’re better together.”

Netanyahu said cyber cooperation would feature high on the agenda during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel next week. He also hinted that Arab countries with whom Israel has no diplomatic ties are turning to Israel for its cyber and high-tech expertise.

“Most of the governments, in fact, all of the governments in the world that I come into contact with want cooperation with Israel on high-tech, and just about every one of them wants cooperation with us on cyber technology and cybersecurity technology,” Netanyahu said. “This is an expression of the change in Israel’s status. There used to be a thing called the Arab boycott, remember that? Well, that’s dissipated for many, many reasons, strategic and others.”

Maj. Gen. Nadav Padan, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ C4I and cyber defense directorate, also highlighted the need for cooperation, both internally across all branches of the Israeli military and with key strategic partners.

“We need to conduct persistent campaigns with the enemy to ensure freedom of action,” Padan told attendees. “This can’t happen without cooperation. … We need to join hands within the country and outside of it to meet the challenge.”

In one of the more unambiguous public acknowledgements of Israel’s offensive cyber capabilities, Padan spoke of the changes underway in the Israel Defense Forces to achieve technological superiority. “The basic change we are undergoing is the change from basic data protection to actual combat in the cyber world.”

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Called SkEye, the firm’s eye-in-the-sky system covers some 80 square kilometers at a time, enabling users to zoom in and out over multiple points of interest while going “back in time” to analyze events from ongoing or previously recorded missions.

“For the first time, there’s a capability to go back in time. And it’s not the playback option that you’ve come to know,” Yair Ganor, senior director for business development and marketing for the firm’s Wide Area Persistent Surveillance line, told reporters here.

“Today, we’re completely changing the paradigm of aerial surveillance; we’re no longer in the world of viewing regions of interest through video soda straws,” Ganor said. “We’ve added a unique layer of intelligence collection on top of existing electro-optical systems to record and analyze events over very wide areas. We’re talking about 80 square kilometers.”

He cited terror events in Paris and more recent events in London where authorities were forced to launch multiple aerial platforms and determine specific areas for priority surveillance. “In terror events that involved multiple affected areas, authorities had to launch several helicopters, and each helicopter had to know what he was looking for. The decision-makers had to prioritize and to compromise,” he said.

“Here, they can do it simply with a single system. Within the 10 windows, we can zoom in and out. And from the moment of the blast, some can continue forward while others can go back in time to connect people and places,” he added.

Danny Israeli, vice president for business development and strategy for the firm’s ISTAR Division, said SkEye is operational and has been installed on the firm’s Hermes 900 and Hermes 450 UAVs as well as the DHC-6 Twin Otter and Cessna 208B platforms.

In a briefing to reporters here, Israeli said the airborne intelligence system incorporates many of the technologies developed for the firm’s GroundEye, which Elbit demonstrated for the first time in 2014 during the Carnival in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Both systems, he noted, allow professionals to simultaneously monitor multiple events for full situational awareness.

Like the Elbit GroundEye, SkEye features a customized alert system that allows commanders and first responders to be notified of specific or unusual events.

He said Elbit will debut the system, installed in the firm’s Hermes 900, at the Le Bourget Paris Air Show later this month.

Twitter: @opallrome