AUSA 2024 — Israel Aerospace Industries has announced the development of a new lightweight missile called Teaser, which it says is the “first guided missile in the world using an external optical guidance without a homing sensor.”
Avi Kadoori, a manager at IAI, told Breaking Defense Tuesday that the missile, which can be shoulder-launched and weighs less than five pounds, operates without relying on the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The company describes the weapon as an “ACLOS (Automatic Command to Line-of-Sight) tactical, affordable infantry weapon system.” This means it’s immune to traditional GNSS jamming or spoofing.
“It’s important that you are not relying on GNSS,” Kadoori said. He said IAI developed the tech due to the customer focus on these types of requirements. “We had a lot of thought on the version we wanted. We learned a lot from the experience in wars.”
He didn’t specify any particular Israeli experience, and the company didn’t comment on the recent Gaza war, but rather mentioned Ukraine’s large conventional battlefield as an example, where both sides are engaged in perhaps the most intense electronic warfare environment in history. Israel has also reportedly compromised GPS signals, allegedly to interfere with GPS-guided weapons weilded by the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
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The new weapon uses an external sight, called Teaser-Sight, to guide it into targets up to 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) away. As the operator needs to stay locked on target through flight, the company emphasized that the missile flies fast — some 200 meters per second. The warhead is designed for use with battalion-sized or smaller infantry and special forces units, enabling them to target light structures, light armored vehicles or in an anti-personnel capacity.
Photos distributed by the company show how IAI envisions it being deployed as a shoulder-launched weapon or on a truck using cannisters to launch it. Kadoori also said that the sight could be put on a drone so that an operator could lock on and direct missiles remotely toward a target.
Kadoori noted that the decision to focus on this range came from the sense that forces need a system like this both for short range combat in urban environments and open areas. Kadoori also pointed out that it could be used by crews of small boats, apparently for naval applications or in littoral combat environments.
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The company said in a statement that “the missiles two-stage embedded motor (ejection stage and booster) enables safe back-blast, allowing for firing from enclosed areas.” It also has a remote launch capability meaning a “launch command given by the operator through a GCS (Ground Control Station).”
While not operational yet, Kadoori said several potential customers have been waiting for a solution like this. “They have spoken to us in the last year about this,” he said.
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