Pressed into service by war, national drone delivery project moves closer to takeoff

As Israel’s skies filled with military hardware following the outbreak of war, the country put strict restrictions on civilian air traffic, including drones. In order to allow certain types of civilian drones to continue flying, the Civil Aviation Authority tasked a government project developing an experimental drone delivery network with registering and tracking UAVs to keep them out of the Israel Defense Force’s way.

The Israel National Drone Initiative, or INDI, was launched in 2019 to try to create a central network that could manage air traffic for multitudes of autonomous drones taking flight around the country at any given time. The ambitious experiment, it was hoped, could eventually usher in a new world, in which drones zip safely through the skies, delivering everything from emergency medical supplies and even personnel to takeout food and online purchases.

But when the war began a year ago, the project was forced to change direction and start registering active drones on a live network.

“It was an assignment that brought our experiments to the real world very quickly,” said Daniella Partem, who leads INDI as head of the Israel Innovation Authority’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “It forced us to take capabilities that we had been developing gradually and create a working mechanism in a very short time frame.”

The potential commercial uses of a centralized drone network are staggering, and span virtually every field, Partem noted. Replacing current delivery options with autonomous drones could cut transportation times and costs, reduce congestion on roads, and provide access to remote or hard-to-reach areas. Mainstreaming the use of drones could help create new industries that are not even feasible now, she said.

But building an effective drone delivery network is not a simple endeavor. Thus far, INDI and the 11 different drone technology companies partnered with the project have run more than 24,000 test flights in experiments of increasing difficulty to learn how a drone delivery network could be feasible.

Some of the pilot runs have helped fuel the public’s imagination with accomplishments that sound like science fiction: delivering sushi and beer by drone in Tel Aviv, or transporting people in pilotless air taxis to hospitals in Jerusalem.

But these headline-grabbing feats are just a small part of the bigger picture. Developing a national network means solving for safety, privacy, logistics, regulatory requirements, commercial viability, and a host of granular details that could eventually affect the implementation of a real-world drone delivery system.

One of the biggest challenges is coordinating between different parties, Partem explained, comparing the network model to that of an airport’s traffic control center.

Instead of offering a closed system in which one technology provider manages everything, Israel’s national drone network would allow independent companies to register on the system and deploy their own drone fleets, with everything connected and coordinated through a central clearinghouse. That approach encourages innovation and competition in the market, promoting a vibrant and sustainable drone ecosystem, Partem noted.

Some of what INDI is developing is generally analogous to what the Civil Aviation Authority does with manned aircraft, directing traffic and keeping commercial planes out of the army’s way. But the sheer number of drones, coupled with the fact that they can take off and land practically anywhere and be piloted by practically anyone, not to mention Israel’s small size and vast array of military sites, makes the task extremely complex.

The difficulty in balancing INDI’s civilian needs with those of the military came into focus as soon as the war began on October 7, Partem said.

“One of the major challenges of creating a civilian drone infrastructure is perfecting a model for how the defense world and the civilian world can live together in the skies without interfering with each other,” Partem said. “Once the war started, it put this tension on steroids.”

When fighting began, Israel initially banned most drone traffic, but authorized some UAVs to continue flying. The Civil Aviation Authority asked INDI to provide a comprehensive picture of where civilian drones still authorized to fly were located, and to assist them in making sure they fly in approved areas and altitudes.

Using electronic remote identification technologies developed by INDI, authorities wanted to register and track drones to ensure their identities and keep them from interfering with army business. Doing so required INDI to quickly put many of the theoretical concepts it was developing into action.

“We needed to develop a system to quickly register new drones on the network and coordinate them with the army network. This required a combination of technology, regulation, and the ability to act rapidly,” Partem said. “This was only possible because we had already developed the infrastructure and created a relationship of cooperation and trust with the regulator.”

INDI, which was created as a collaboration between the Innovation Authority, the Transportation Ministry, the Civil Aviation Authority, and the Smart Transportation Authority, returned to its regular operations the following spring when the regulator reopened the skies to the public.

“But the war taught us a lot of lessons about how to make our ecosystem more resilient and adaptive to new scenarios,” Partem said.

Pie in the sky

INDI’s main purpose remains the creation of a commercial drone network. One of the early lessons that the team learned was that economies of scale are critical to making drone deliveries financially viable.

During the first phase of testing in 2021, as a safety precaution, INDI was only allowed to test deliveries using small drones with payloads of up to 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds). One of its first operations, the delivery of a Pizza Hut pizza to a nearby village, helped illustrate how un-cost-effective the method could be if not managed properly.

“The expense for a company to set up its own delivery network and deploy a fleet of drones means that, in the early stages, every drone flight will cost hundreds of shekels,” Partem noted. “That doesn’t work if all you are doing is delivering take-out food.”

INDI also understood that door-to-door delivery is technically unfeasible, due to the safety and privacy problems of having drones buzzing around apartment buildings. In the pizza trial and other delivery demonstrations, deliveries are made to designated drop spots, where they are picked up by a messenger and brought to their destination in person.

The second phase of testing, which began in 2023 with a NIS 60 million investment from both government and private organizations, set more ambitious goals, including the ability to carry heavier loads, including people. That summer, it tested air taxis –essentially flying cars without a driver — to transport passengers and heavy cargo between hospitals in urban areas like Jerusalem.

“Most likely, public sector bodies like hospitals and police offices will be the first to adopt the new technologies,” Partem said.

She noted that during the past year, a number of Israeli municipalities have begun using new autonomous “drones in a box” that can deploy on their own and monitor large areas from above.

“But ultimately,” she said, “everything has to make sense for business.”

Other countries are also building out or backing the creation of infrastructure for drone networks, including the United States, Switzerland, Australia, India, and Brazil. However, Israel is generally recognized as the leader in the field, noted Shlomi Kofman, vice president and head of the Israel Innovation Authority’s International Collaborations Division.

“The procedures and templates for legislation that we are developing are being studied and copied around the world,” he said.

The second phase of testing is slated to end in April 2025, and it is not yet clear how the program will continue after that point.

“The state budget was just approved last week, and we don’t know where we stand with that,” Kofman said. “But we’re confident that we will keep working to create groundbreaking change for Israel and the whole world.”

In the meantime, INDI is still engaged in a learning process, testing theses and making mistakes in the hopes of eventually getting the formula right.

“In each phase, we learn about new challenges, and then we set out to find the solution to each challenge,” Partem said. “How many years have people spent developing autonomous cars? Everything takes longer than you expect. There are a lot of open questions, but we’re here to try to solve them.”