WASHINGTON — Israel Aerospace Industries has exclusively licensed mid-sized tech firm Palladyne AI to build IAI’s Harpy, Harop and Mini-Harpy attack drones in the US, the companies announced today.
Initially targeting the US Army’s Long Range Precision Munitions competition this fall, Palladyne will “Americanize” the drones for US requirements and upgrade them with its autonomous swarming AI, Palladyne CEO Ben Wolff said in an exclusive interview.
The LRPM sources-sought notice specifically seeks “a precise, long-range (greater than 100km) capability against Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS).” In layman’s terms, that means hunting enemy anti-aircraft systems, especially their radars — a mission where IAI and Palladyne say Harpy in particular has a combat-proven record of success. The notice “anticipates awarding a prototype Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) in October 2026” worth $100-$200 million.
But there’s plenty more drone/loitering munition money in the budget to go after, Wolff argued: Palladyne just has to have a little patience.
“There are budgeted line items that have funding,” he said. “They have not turned into specific programs of record yet or even necessarily RFIs [Requests For Information] or RFPs [Requests For Proposal], but… I would be shocked if there aren’t five key funded programs that we are applying for, submitting for, over the next 12 months.”
The Harpy/Harop family is particularly well positioned for those potential contests, he argued, because of its proven track record of combat successes (and upgrades) since its first fielding in the 1980s.
“People at the Pentagon are familiar with these weapon systems,” he said. “I say ‘partnership with IAI’ and people’s eyes light up.”
So what’s so special about these drones?
With a wingspan of not quite seven feet, Harpy and Harop are much larger and more expensive than the mini-drones now dominating the battlefields of Ukraine, albeit they’re also much smaller and cheaper than America’s iconic Predator/Reaper family. Their size lets them carry an extensive sensor package, enough fuel for extended flights — IAI claims up to 9 hours — and a 30-pound-plus explosive warhead. (Mini-Harpy is much smaller). In contrast to the mini-drones, a Harpy/Harop can hunt solo for hours, spot “fleeting targets,” and hit them itself before they can escape.
Harpy in particular is a long-range “anti-radiation” weapon designed to detect and home in on enemy radar emissions. Harop uses different types sensors for different types of targets. Modern air defense tactics rely on turning radars on briefly, just long enough to get a fix, and then quickly back off again, trying to avoid detection: Harpy’s designed to catch radars in that brief window.
“You’ve got a Harpy in the air for up to nine hours … waiting for the bad guys to poke their heads up above ground,” he said. “One of the things IAI has perfected — and nobody else in the world has on a vehicle of this size — is an anti-radiation capability so they can detect those intermittent radars.”
To upgrade the IAI drones further, Palladyne is offering its own artificial intelligence software, SwarmOS, as an upgrade to the base Israeli design. The AI can run on Harpy/Harop’s existing hardware with no modifications, just some straightforward software engineering, Wolff said.
Once installed, he went on, SwarmOS would allow Harpy/Harop drones to share sensor data, not just with each other, but with other aircraft, ground vehicles, and control consoles running compatible software — either Palladyne’s own or coded by other companies, as long as they meet modern data-sharing standards. Sharing data with older “legacy” software takes more work but is still possible, Wolff said.
Such software work is actually Palladyne’s core competency, with the company only branching out into manufacturing with a series of acquisitions last fall. When Palladyne first started talking to IAI about license-building the Harpy family, Wolff recalls, the Israeli’s initial response was “you’re an AI company — what do you know about manufacturing?”
While the Harop/Harpy family “checks a lot of boxes” for LRPM, Wolff said, the Army has no “requirements out there, yet, that talk about anti-radiation capabilities” like Harpy’s. Historically, the US targets enemy radars with relatively short-ranged High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) launched from high-speed manned fighters, not loitering drones.
Instead, “we’re going to pitch the anti-radiation capability as something … that exceeds what their requirements-stated are,” he said. “Maybe somebody will bite and maybe they won’t.”
That’s one way in which, in an increasingly crowded and competitive drone market, Palladyne plans to pitch Harpy/Harop on capability, not cost.
“It’s not a Shahed,” Wolff said. “These are not the cheapest throw-away drones [but] a fairly exquisite piece of machinery.”
Seth Franztman contributed to this story from Israel.