Meet Israel’s newest missile…it looks like a drone, can stay airborne for 9 hours, and destroys targets at enormous distances

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) unveiled in an international aviation exhibition in Singapore this week new “Roamer” class missiles that look like an unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), but are in fact missiles that hover in the air until they lock on their targets, then collide with and destroy them.

AI also unveiled the Rotem, a tiny drone that can roam in urban environments. The Rotem is an lightweight electric drone that can be operated by a single soldier, and has the ability to stay in the air for 30 minutes.

The drone is equipped with an electro-optical thermal camera and is vertically launched from a small launcher. The Rotem is simple to use, allowing entry through windows and nimble maneuvering around fences.

Harpy NG, and is considered the next generation of what IAI terms its “loitering attack systems”, referring to these models’ ability to loiter over a target before destroying it.

Like its predecessors, the Harpy NG is launched from a launcher placed on a truck or a boat, but its properties allow it to stay much longer in the air, and particularly to better identify enemy radars, which are the supreme target until the arrival of manned aircraft.

The new Harpy can better detect radars because of the expansion of bandwidth installed, whose frequency range was lowered. In this way, the missile is able to detect more of the enemy’s radars installations. 

The air time of the new missile has been increased by 40 percent compared to the previous model, meaning it can hover  for about 9 hours, flying at an altitude of 15,000 feet at an average speed of 120 kilometers per hour. It can thus cover enormous distances. This means that if it is used by air forces, it can be used to blind the enemy’s radar