Miss. Gov. Phil Bryant. Photo: AUVSI.

Like many other countries, government and industry officials in Israel are grappling with an unmanned systems industry that is transitioning from its military past to a commercial future.



“I am amazed at how things have advanced just in the last few years,” David Harari, the conference chairman, said, kicking off the opening day of the AUVSI Israel UVID 2015 conference, cosponsored by AUVSI’s Israel Chapter and Israel Defense, held in Tel Aviv.



Brig. Gen. Nir Halamish, head of military research and development for the Israel Ministry of Defense, said the military is grappling with the familiar challenges of increasing automation, making components smaller and boosting power.



For its smaller vehicles, the military would like to move entirely to fuel cells to increase flight times, he said, but isn’t quite there yet.



“We are now focusing on these fuel cells, … but it’s not clear how to advance it,” he said. “I think that’s a significant upgrade to these tactical drones.”



Ground vehicles are also expected to take on additional roles. Unmanned car-like vehicles built by the Israeli company G-NIUS are now being used in the areas around the Gaza Strip, where the topography is well understood and where they can serve as first responders, he said.



“We save human lives by avoiding that first conflict,” he said.



The service would like to use such ground vehicles for ground maneuvers elsewhere, but they need to be better at sensing their environment because the communications and topography can’t be preset, as they are near Gaza.



“It’s not going to happen tomorrow morning; it’s going to take time,” he said.



New technology from the commercial and civil world can help with these challenges, he said, but the reliability needs to be improved before they can be routinely used in a military context.



Rafi Maor, the chairman of Israel Aerospace Industries, flatly declared that “everything that can be unmanned will be unmanned, and civil aviation is no exception.”



He noted that Israel spearheaded the development of unmanned aircraft by strapping a camera onto a glider in 1969. It then went on to develop landmark aircraft such as the Pioneer, the Scout and the Hunter — all of which were also pressed into service by the U.S. military — before moving on to modern aircraft such as IAI’s Heron family of vehicles.



Maor predicted unmanned systems will crowd out manned aircraft for military use and on the ground battlefields as well.



“In the future, you will find our battlefields filled with such vehicles,” he said, including everything from dog-like vehicles that carry cargo to unmanned tanks.



On the commercial side, cargo aircraft will become unmanned, followed by passenger aircraft, he said.



The technology won’t be the hurdle, Maor predicted. “The difficulties are found in regulation,” he said.



Ziv Levy, cofounder of a company called SkyRails, said his team is working with the Israeli city of Ashdod to make it “the first city in the world that is drone adapted.”



His software allows users to plan paths for UAS missions, which he illustrated by setting up the fictional delivery of a medical inhaler to a patient in California via an Amazon drone.



Such software is not unique, but Levy said he wants to move it into the real world, working with Ashdod, which is “aggressively pushing to be a smart city.”



In the next few months, his company plans to implement SkyRails software in Ashdod, where he can demonstrate its use for such deliveries, working with a task force made up of academics and regulatory agencies.



The conference also included a keynote from Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who made a pitch for investing in his state, which he said is banking heavily on unmanned systems.



Mississippi State University is home to the Federal Aviation Administration’s new UAS Center of Excellence, a consortium of universities intended to coordinate and advance UAS research. It’s also home to numerous aerospace and technology companies, including IAI subsidiary Stark Aerospace, which makes a family of small UAS.



Bryant said now is a critical time for the industry, which is poised to enter the mainstream unless concerns over privacy lead to excessive regulation.



“If we over regulate this industry, it will go away,” he said.