The famous Israeli company Aeronautics, one of the world leaders in manufacturing tactical drones, recently announced the latest addition to its combat-proven family of ORBITER unmanned aerial vehicles: the ORBITER 2 LM.

The new platform is envisioned as a one-way loitering munition (LM), designed to work in concert in “sensor-to-shooter” (STS) mode, with nearby surveillance UAV able to scout the target for former and conduct battle damage assessment after the strike.

As confirmed by its Vice-President of Marketing and Business Development, Eyal Assenhaym, noting the lesson learned from Ukraine, in this new system Aeronautics has shifted the vision of seeing “the drone primarily in counter-terrorism operations to being used in concert with regular infantry battalions”, where soldiers may not have immediate access to high-performance surveillance UAV. The new system is born to be unit organic, meaning they can operate it by themselves for their needs in time-sensitive actions. The Orbiter 2 LM offers an optimal solution to this operational requirement, being a combined system, with the unit that can launch, and “go hunting”, an ISR ORBITER 2 together with some ORBITER 2 LM. This offers an incredible advantage in terms of resource management: both have the same platform communication, ground control, the same human-machine interface (HMI), and operational software. It represents “the shortest and most efficient way to close STS circle,” having the same system able to accomplish ISTAR missions, strike, provide the BDA, and reiterate the attack or switch target in a very short time window, in minutes.

The new ORBITER 2 drone is launched from a catapult. It weighs around 28 pounds (12,7 kg) and has a wingspan of 9 feet (2,7 m), with a flight time of 2 hours. It has a low detection probability due to low acoustic (it is electric so very quiet), with a reduced optic and radar signature. The system is fully operational in GPS-denied areas, uses advanced communication, immune to interference, and is encrypted for secure data transmission. The system supports full connectivity to external C4I systems and, as confirmed by Assenhaym, it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist and increase operational capabilities such as Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) and Video Motion Detection (VMD).

At this stage, Aeronautics has not provided any information on who committed customers of the new combo-system might be, other than the Israeli Defense Forces.

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