Is Italy Sending Israel’s Tank-Busting Loitering Munitions To Ukraine?

An article in Italy’s leading newspaper on Wednesday suggested that Ukraine will soon receive Israeli-designed loitering munitions assembled in Italy.

Israel has consistently declined to supply arms to Ukraine, possibly due to concerns that this might jeopardize its interests in Syria, even rejecting a request to send outdated U.S. air defense missiles from storage. This is a pity for Ukraine, not least because Israel is a world leader in drones. Russia’s Forpost drone, used for bombing attacks on Ukraine, is a licensed copy of the Israeli Searcher.

However, the piece in Corrriere Delle Sera quotes supposedly credible sources as saying that Italy’s aid package to Ukraine to be announced in February will include ‘special delivery’ items not in the public list. Chief among these will be “drones originating from the Israeli project and assembled in Italy” (in the original, «droni originati dal progetto israeliano e assemblati in Italia»).

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo, a European correspondent for Defense News who is based in Italy, told me that this phrase could really only refer to items from one supplier: the Hero series of loitering munitions or kamikaze drones from UVision.

Like many defense contractors, UVision has an organization in Europe to do business with the EU. This is RWM Italia, a partnership between UVision and Rheinmetall, based in Italy as the name implies. The partnership scored its first order from an (un-named) major European nation in September. The contract is for Hero-30 munitions, which will be used by Special Forces. The eight-kilo, backpackable weapons roughly analogous to the U.S. Switchblade 300. The order was placed in July, and delivery is scheduled for some time this year.

Ukraine is unlikely to be interested in the short-range Hero-30 with its half-kilo warhead, especially when it has a growing supply of modified racing drones which can carry a bigger payload as improvised loitering munitions. The demand will be for something more substantial with much longer range and a heavier punch.

The Hero-120, which the U.S. Marine Corps selected last year to add long-range firepower to mobile units, looks like a better fit. This is an 18-kilo weapon, usually mounted on a vehicle, with a warhead capable of taking out a tank and a range in excess of 40 miles. The Hero-120 has an electric motor and an endurance of 60 minutes, during which time the operator can scan the area with high-resolution optical and thermal cameras to locate targets such as artillery, air defenses, or armored vehicles before locking on and destroying them.

Ukraine would certainly welcome such weapons, which could help silence Russia’s artillery and would wreak havoc on any Russian armored offensive.

There are even bigger versions; the Hero-400EC has a stated range of over 75 miles, but NATO has so far hesitated to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine.

The deal may go ahead as Corrriere Delle Sera’s sources indicate, or the Israeli government may raise objections. But there are a couple of complicating factors.

One is the lead time. The order for Hero-30s appears to have a lead time of over six months. The bigger Hero-120s may take longer to arrive (like the Switchblade 600s, the bigger brother to the 300 promised by the U.S. to Ukraine but not yet seen). There is also the question if training and, if the weapons will be vehicle mounted, the weapons will need to be integrated with a suitable platform – like Ukraine’s unique truck-mounted Brimstone missiles.

The other is that we may never know. The U.S. has supplied large numbers of Phoenix Ghost loitering munitions to Ukraine, including some 1,100 in the latest batch, but no confirmed pictures or video has ever been seen. And now that Ukraine is using Switchblade 300s, Polish-made Warmates, locally-made loitering munitions, plus improvised munitions made from racing drones, not to mention the elusive Phoenix Ghosts, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what type of loitering munition hit any given target. (The situation is made even more complicated when some Russian targets get hit by Russian loitering munitions.)

Under these circumstances, the chances of confirming whether Hero-120s are actually in use in Ukraine are slim. The claim may have been made simply a way to make Italy’s contribution sound more significant, with the knowledge that it could not be checked. Or the Israeli-designed loitering munitions may genuinely be part of the package, but not announced publicly because of the potential political fallout; again, being impossible to check, the deal can easily be denied.

We may never know the truth behind the claim made in Corrriere Delle Sera – except perhaps by the ripples it creates in the world of politics, especially if it draws strong denials from Israel.