Israel to supply suicide drones to undisclosed European nation

Tel Aviv: Israeli defence contractor Elbit Systems announced on Sunday it was awarded a $95 million contract to supply its Skystriker “suicide” drone to an unspecified European country.

The Haifa-based company said the contract will see Elbit supply several hundred of the drones over a two-year period.

Elbit Systems’ SkyStriker LM is a fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle that can passively loiter in the sky until it locates a target and fires a warhead of up to 10 kg.

SkyStriker enables covert operations of up to two hours and has a range of 100 km.

Israeli defence exports by Rafael, Elbit Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries soared in 2022. The surge was attributed to European countries boosting their defence budgets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.