DEFEA 2025 – IAI inks MoU with HAI on the BlueWhale UUV and awaits good news on the “Achilles Shield” programme
On May 7th at DEFEA, the defence exhibitions held in Athens, Israel Aerospace Industries, IAI in short, announced an agreement with Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI) to offer the Hellenic Navy the Israeli company advanced BlueWhale autonomous submarine system
It may sound strange that two aeronautical companies team up to propose a naval asset, but in fact this is only partly true. “The big advantage that IAI gives to this unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) is that we take all the heritage built in the last 40 years working in unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and implemented them into the UUV,” Dror Bar, IAI’s Executive Vice President and ELTA’s Chief Executive Officer, told EDR On-Line. “The BlueWhale is a cutting edge and a very unique autonomous vehicle. It was developed in the recent years under ELTA leveraging all the heritage of the autonomous capability of UAVs. IAI was the first in the world to introduce UAVs in the 1980s, and now it is a pioneer in UUVs,” he underlined.
“We are very pleased to offer it to the Greek Navy. It is obvious that Greece, as a multi-island country with very complex water, needs those vehicles,” Drod Bar added, highlighting their advantages. First comes the reduced cost of operation, as being unmanned this is around one tenth of that of a manned submarine, not to mention the fact that they do not put the crew at risk. Secondly, they are able to move very close to the shore, even as close as 10-15 metres, while a manned submarine must remain at a safe distance from the shore. The third one is modularity; the Blue Whale can be equipped with mission modules that make it capable to carry out a wide variety of missions, intelligence, reconnaissance, anti-submarine warfare, mine detection, and other. “On its special mast you can modularly install any device that you would like, whether it is optical, radar, electronic intelligence, COMINT, etc. It is therefore a very cost-effective package that meets Greece needs to monitor its littoral waters.”
10.9 metres long, with a 1.12 metres diameter, the Blue Whale has a mass of 5.5 tonnes, can operate for 10 to 30 days, depending on mission and battery configuration, at an operational speed of 2-3 knots, maximum submerged speed being 7 knots. It can be fitted with a variety of sensors and systems such as radar, day/night optronic, SIGINT suite, sonars, magnetic sensors, while SATCOM can be adopted for long range communications. It can be easily transported in a 40-foot shipping container.
The Blue Whale was fully developed by ELTA, the radar house of IAI, which obviously could access all technologies available within the group. “We already invested dozens of millions of dollars in its development, and we are now in a very advanced stage of negotiation with several countries, the one know being Germany, which Navy took the Blue Whale to a very intense two weeks of harsh testing in the Baltic Sea with great success. All of that was in the papers and in YouTube. We are currently converging with the German Navy for procurement, the same being true for other customers both from Europe and outside Europe.
However the Blue Whale, which is also referred to as the ELI-3325 in IAIs catalogue, is not the only unmanned product from ELTA that is fully operational. In the war in Gaza its autonomous combat bulldozer known as RobDozer, commercially known as “Panda”, was used for the first time alongside combat formations. “It was the first time such an unmanned system was employed fighting shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers in the Gaza Strip,” Drod Bar told EDR On-Line, explaining that “it was opening the routes before the fighters, armour and infantry, followed. It was a huge success, I would say it was a historical event.”
Autonomy can be considered at various levels. “We give a mission t our RobDozer, for example building a 5 metres high earth embankment, 20 metres long, in a given location, from point A to point B. The Panda drives there and starts it mission, building the required protective wall with few centimetres of tolerance,” Drod Bar said. “In the last one and a half years, Israeli forces have learned to work shoulder to shoulder with those robotic systems that are leading the force and are also used to recover damaged vehicles from dangerous locations, pulling them out as they are fitted with an autonomous hooking system.”
Talking to the ELTA CEO we could not avoid asking something about the company core business, radars, discovering during the discussion that Drod Bar led in the past the development of the company Green Pine Radar, one of the key assets in defending Israel against the barrage of rockets and missiles coming from some of its neighbouring countries.
“Since the conflict started, Israel was targeted by more than 30,000 missiles and rockets fired against civilian targets. Out of them, at least 550 were long-range ballistic missiles, launched from 1,000 to 2,000 kilometres, carrying huge warheads. The unbelievable fact is that none of those missiles caused disruption,” Drod Bar told us, underlining how this proves the effectiveness of IAI systems in detecting, tracking, and intercepting those threats, adding that the alarm system that reaches every single citizen allowing him or her sufficient time to reach cover is also provided by ELTA.
“For the Greek ‘Achilles Shield’ layered air defence system we are now proposing the same systems, with the same quality, with the same heritage.” In fact, IAI’s proposal goes beyond the air and missile defence and includes also the air situation picture. For detection IAI is proposing its MMRs, the same that are used in Israel. They are capable of detecting ballistic missiles, UAVs, cruise missiles, sea-skimming cruise missiles, as well as fighters, so one AESA radar gives the flexibility to encounter all threats,” he explains adding that the company sold the system to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Finland, Canada, as well as Asian countries, and obviously Israel.
“As for interception we are offering our best system, the Barak which means lightning in Hebrew. It is a true 360 vertical launch supported by Elta radars. There are three types of Barak, the 150, which has anti- ballistic missile capabilities, and of course fighters, at 150 kilometres, the 70 and the 35, the numbers showing the range.” Protecting a nation like Greece, with its numerous islands, is not simple, but the modularity of the system will help, the final decision on where and how many sensors and effectors should be deployed being in the hand of Greek authorities, based on military as well as on political considerations. Having integrated its systems with those of many other key layers in the air defence domain, IAI is ready to do the same in Greece, as the different layers will of course have to work in a coordinated manner.
The same is true for cooperation with the local defence industry. “At IAI we have a vast experience in transferring technology and in cooperation with third parties, we have a very open mindset. Talking about Greece two years ago we acquired Intracom Defense, while the MoU we signed today adds to those we signed with other Greek defence companies. “We fully understand the need to support full independence of Greece in aerospace and defence systems, and we are ready to cope with the 25% of local content recently announced by the Minister.”
Photos courtesy IAI and P. Valpolini
