Israel’s Heven Drones says its hydrogen-fueled flying robots are a military game-changer
Partnering with a US manufacturer to eliminate reliance on Chinese exports, the Israeli startup says its models set new standards for heavy lifting and prolonged airtime
Sharon Wrobel is a tech reporter for The Times of Israel
Israeli-American startup founder Bentzion Levinson is one of many entrepreneurs who returned from the battlefield with a sense of urgency after being on extended reserve duty during Israel’s 17-month military campaign against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip. For Levinson, the war exposed the IDF’s vast challenge to defend against cheap and effective enemy drones that were causing casualties and damage.
“On October 7, 2023, Hamas used cheap Chinese drones bought on Alibaba to disable our cameras and monitoring systems,” Levinson, a reserve combat commander, told The Times of Israel. “Serving on the northern border for more than two months, I experienced how the [Iran-backed] Hezbollah group was taking down soldiers with drones.”
“I came back to work at the drone startup I founded a couple of years ago with the urgency and need to take action and provide the best tech for the most complex missions, as drones are reshaping modern global warfare and can get Israeli soldiers out of harm’s way,” Levinson said.
Born in New York, Levinson moved to Israel with his family at the age of 10, went through the Israeli education system and served as a combat commander in the IDF. In 2018, he joined a national hackathon project tasked with helping quash the scourge of balloons, kites and drones that Hamas launched from the Gaza Strip carrying airborne incendiary devices that started countless fires and burned large swaths of Israeli land.
Levinson recounted that initially, the idea was to equip drones with thermal cameras to identify the location of fires and provide firefighters with the GPS coordinates. That process wasn’t quick enough to stop the fires from spreading, so a larger drone prototype was developed that also sprayed a solution to extinguish the fires.
The experience inspired Levinson to establish his own startup and develop an affordable and compact drone that can autonomously complete a variety of tasks, in contrast to the military’s large UAVs, which cost millions to build and maintain.
“Drones are becoming a strategic asset,” said Levinson. “With the Russia-Ukraine war and following the October 7 onslaught, most countries understand that drones are the X-factor reshaping today’s modern warfare and are trying to get the best technology, but also to build their own capabilities of being able to produce them.”
Heven, headquartered in Miami with an R&D center in the Mevo Carmel Science and Industry Park near Yokne’am in the north of the country, was founded in 2019 to build affordable drones to be used by the military, homeland security, firefighters and aid organizations and for various civilian needs.
The most pressing issues for military or security forces are how much a drone can carry and how long it can stay in the air, Levinson said.
“In 2019, we started focusing on the heavy lifting aspect, so we started our operations in Israel and built a drone that could lift 70 pounds of payload, about 35 kilograms,” said Levinson. “As most traditional drones run on electric batteries and are limited to staying aloft about 40 minutes or at most an hour, we created drones that are powered by hydrogen fuel cells.”
Hydrogen power increases flight time fivefold over traditional batteries for the Heven drones, which are designed to carry larger payloads, the startup says.
“The drones we develop can be used for heavy lifting logistics of sensors, robotic and intelligence-gathering functions, as well as for extreme missions and air launch missions, including launching missiles off drones,” said Levinson.
Heven has developed a series of three hydrogen-powered drones with GPS-independent navigation that it says are capable of flying between 100 minutes to more than 10 hours with a payload capacity of between 10 and 22 pounds. At its production facility in the north of the country, Heven, which has a workforce of 50 employees, can produce up to 100 drones a month.
“Fast forward to October 7: Customers’ minds opened up as there was a need and an urgency, and when you have these two things, especially in a government area, that totally opens the market,” said Levinson. “We are seeing that there are more and more specific drone units within battalions, as in today’s warfare, a battalion commander can use drones not only to detect threats but to eliminate threats.”
Levinson said one of the biggest obstacles to the adoption of drone technologies is the lack of production facilities.
“If today you had to produce 1,000 drones a week, there is no production facility in Israel that can support that,” Levinson said. “A lot of companies have been working on defense stuff since October 7, but we had a facility that can produce 100 drones a month when the war broke out, which helped us become a supplier for the Israeli army.”
“We are currently the only sole-source supplier for hydrogen-powered drones to the IDF,” he said.
Levinson acknowledged that as with many government agencies, infiltrating the Israeli defense establishment and winning significant contracts as a startup is very challenging. Apart from its production capacity, what helped Heven clinch deals is that its president is former Israel Aerospace Industries CEO Yossi Weiss, who also leads the startup’s Israel office.
“Our customers, which include the Israeli army and US Department of Defense, urgently need thousands, and eventually tens of thousands, of drones to be deployed in-theater,” said Levinson. “The goal of the IDF is that at the end of 2025, every single battalion will have these capabilities, which means hundreds of tactical drones being deployed into the field.”
To meet the need and demand for advanced drone technology, Heven earlier this month partnered with Mach Industries, a US developer of defense tech for the US military, which is backed by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. That’s as Western armies are seeking to reduce their dependence on drones manufactured in China, as well as Chinese materials and parts for drone development and deployment.
As part of the partnership, California-based Mach Industries will allocate part of its flagship factory in Forge Huntington to boost full-scale production of Heven’s hydrogen-powered drones and build a US-based defense supply chain.
“We launched this joint venture together to build facilities that can produce and support drones at significant scale,” Levinson said. “To start with, we hope to produce 1,000 drones a month.”
In addition, the two companies will jointly develop critical drone components, including avionics, radios, fuel sources and propulsion systems, for use by Heven and other companies.
“If you are a country like the US, Israel, the UAE, or the Philippines, you want to be able to control your own local supply chain, as there are many different types of drones which require flexible production lines, including the know-how, training and maintenance,” said Levinson.
Levinson said that the buildout of the drone manufacturing base in the US will serve as an ecosystem that Heven and Mach Industries plan to expand globally to build overseas factories and “guarantee sovereign production to US allies.”
“Eventually, the vision is to have a core heavy-lift drone platform that will be commoditized and will be available off-the-shelf, just like you can buy a Tesla online today,” said Levinson. “Similar to adding software to hardware kits, users will add appropriate kits depending on the purpose of the deployment of the drones such as farming, or delivery.”
