Israeli startup says it can help detect deadly terror drones with smart signal tech

This month, explosives-laden drones fired by the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah have targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private home in Caesarea and the dining hall of an IDF training base in the northern town of Binyamina.

The attack on the military base killed four soldiers and wounded dozens. Netanyahu’s home suffered minor damage — the reinforced glass of a bedroom window was cracked — and there were no injuries, as the prime minister and his wife were not home at the time.

Both drones flew undetected by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system and triggered no warning sirens, leaving victims completely vulnerable. They are the latest examples of the lethal threat drones pose to military and civilian assets, and expose the IDF’s struggle throughout the ongoing multifront war to effectively identify and detect unmanned aircraft coming from as nearby as Lebanon and Gaza, and as far away as Yemen, Iraq and Iran.

One Israeli startup working on a technological solution to counter this threat is R2 Wireless, a developer of deep signal processing technology designed to improve the detection of deadly drones and UAVs.

Founded by electrical engineer Dr. Yiftach Richter about four years ago, the startup came out of stealth eight months ago with a system that uses machine learning algorithms to detect, classify, geolocate, and track in real time any kind of flying threat that transmits a signal, whether it is airborne or grounded, on land or at sea. The proprietary sensing tech scans for wireless threats and is tailored to detect multiple signal types and protocols that could be coming from a drone, a tactical radio, Bluetooth earphones, a smartwatch, or a cellphone.

Over the past few months, the startup has started to pilot with the Israeli military, its system has been trialed by the UK military, among others, and it has recently participated in an exercise with NATO countries.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” R2 Wireless CEO Onn Fenig told The Times of Israel. “We will continue seeing UAVs that succeed in breaching Israeli air defenses, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone as the current military systems weren’t designed to counter the rapidly evolving threat.”

“The biggest challenge is not in the interception, but in the detection — because if you don’t know what you are looking for and where the threat is, you will not be able to effectively intercept it in time,” he said.

Recognizing that Israel needs better counter-drone systems, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant asserted shortly after the deadly drone strike on the IDF dining hall that the army is shifting “significant efforts to developing solutions to address the threat of UAV attacks.”

Despite having one of the world’s best defenses against missiles and rockets, Israel has struggled to deal with the drone threat throughout the current war. It was Hamas drones that first crossed from Gaza into Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023, to disable electronic monitoring systems and pave the way for the massive cross-border onslaught in which terrorists brutally killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip.

Since last October 8, Hezbollah forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the terror group saying it is doing so to support Gaza during the war against Hamas there. Drones launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen have also managed to cause fatalities after evading Israel’s air defenses.

Throughout the yearlong war, some 1,200 drones have been fired at Israel, and 221 have gotten through Israel’s air defense system causing casualties and property damage. So far, the war on the northern front has resulted in 31 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 60 IDF soldiers and reservists.

One of the main difficulties in the ongoing drone war is that the Israeli army isn’t prepared for the challenge, according to Fenig.

“The IDF has focused on countering missiles and rockets and didn’t view drones as a strategic threat, as it treated them as something that has minimal destructive capability and they thought that the solutions they have are good enough — but they have been proven wrong,” said Fenig. “It is no secret that there aren’t good enough technologies on the detection side as the IDF system is heavily reliant on radar, which continuously proves to be mostly irrelevant for this threat.”

Fenig emphasized that the ongoing war, especially the recent heightened fighting with Hezbollah, has highlighted how the terror group improved its capabilities from the deployment of surveillance drones that fly over military bases to Iranian-designed explosive drones and so-called first-person-view drones, or FPVs, that are often mistaken for birds.

“The rapid advancement in technology has made them faster, cheaper, and much more difficult to detect,” said Fenig. “They have relatively small radar cross-sections and are made out of cheap composite over-the-counter materials like plastic or wood, which makes them hard to detect and track because they fly at low altitude and are slow-moving compared to high-speed metal objects such as missiles that Israel’s much more expensive Iron Dome and other Israeli aerial defense systems were designed to counter.

“If 10 years ago you could have just flown one, now you can fly a swarm of 100 for the same price. And also in terms of precision and the optical payloads you can put on these UAVs everything has changed, so that has made the usage much more effective and popular — it’s not new, but October 7 demonstrated what drones could do,” he said.

Fenig welcomed a recent exercise held earlier this month by the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D, or MAFAT in Hebrew) to help bolster the military’s counter-drone capabilities, but lamented that it focused solely on scouting for novel technologies to intercept deadly drones and not on detection as well.

“Countering the UAV threat is a critical national priority,” stated Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir. “To date, the Defense Ministry has invested hundreds of millions of shekels in developing, extensively procuring, and deploying defensive capabilities.”

“Our objective is to expedite the development and deployment of new interception systems… These will constitute a more comprehensive defensive strategy with the laser system and other technologies we are advancing.”

The DDR&D conducted what it described as a “first-of-its-kind” operational trial among eight defense tech firms and startups that showcased their solutions to intercept UAVs at various ranges and altitudes. Among the firms participating in the competition were the large incumbents Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Israel Aerospace Industries, alongside startups Xtend, Airobotics, Smartshooter, and General Robotics.

“Many of the participants were the large defense players, the same companies the IDF has been working with supplying extremely expensive solutions, and that so far haven’t demonstrated a good capability to deal with this threat,” said Fenig.

Fenig echoed the frustration of many Israeli tech entrepreneurs facing great difficulty in finding their way into the Israeli defense establishment.

“It’s no secret that the Defense Ministry has been very slow in adopting new technologies,” he said, adding that his startup is working with the IDF but not as much as he would want to.

“There’s a mismatch between dinosaurs and astronauts that don’t speak the same language, as the folks in the military don’t know how startups work and the challenges they face,” he said.

Fenig referred to the need for a complete change in mindset when it comes to developing a modern warfare counter-drone technology.

“We can’t provide a 100% hermetic layer, and there is no magical solution,” Fenig said. “If attacked by a swarm of drones, hundreds or thousands of them, it’s going to be impossible to completely eliminate the threat.”

“One system is not enough; you need a system of systems, and our system could be another layer in the air defense system, but it should be a multi-layered counter-drone system,” he said.

Fenig’s team of 14 employees — mostly graduates in electrical engineering, signal processing, mathematics, machine learning, and software development — built a tool system with hardware made of commercial, off-the-shelf components to make it accessible and affordable. The sensor itself is the size of a soccer ball, and is mounted on a tripod that weighs less than 5 kilograms (11 lbs.) and goes up 3.5 meters (11.5 feet).

“Our system does not need radio towers or large antennas, as the whole idea is to be able to put everything in a backpack, send a team, and deploy it within minutes,” said Fenig. “The idea was to bring military-grade capabilities not only to [military] forces and law enforcement agencies but also into the commercial world to help protect critical infrastructure and for the use of private companies.”

Drones are not only completely redefining modern warfare, but they are also redefining criminal activity, Fenig cautioned.

“What worries policymakers, defense forces, and law enforcement agencies is the proliferation of the threat of commercial drones to non-military settings and environments targeting critical infrastructure, sensitive sites, concerts, and mass events with a lot of people, and they don’t have a proper solution.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.