The future of unmanned aircraft lies in the development of VTOL aircraft, vertical takeoff and landing, and advanced areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are finding their place in the worlds of UAV systems, says Moshe Defense Levy, IAI VP and Director of the UAV Division, in a conversation ahead of the UVID conference to be held this week (10.11) in Tel Aviv.

"To this day, we are a major player in a highly competitive field," says Levy, "so we are one of the only companies in the world that deals with all kinds of aircraft and unmanned platforms. From a few kilograms to tons. Such a variety of course ensures the production of tools for a variety of tasks on land, air and sea.

"An important keyword is integration. You buy the system today and can incorporate upgrades and improvements and additions later, as required. You give the customer communality, a correlation between different systems. We offer a large selection of tool chargers, which allow operation in line of sight or beyond the horizon , Standard communication and satellite communication. A customer can integrate systems or components from his product or other products within the tool we provide him."

The IDF continues to purchase the largest UAV of the State of Israel, "Eitan", while IAI is currently a UAV supplier for the German army.

As for future trends in unmanned aerial vehicles, Levy points to advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which will find their place in the field, as well as the worldwide tendency to develop small tools with VTOL feature, vertical takeoff and landing, or STOL, takeoff and landing from short runways.