"When you see the drone, it's too late," I hear behind me as I scurry into the sky. We are standing in a field behind Tel Aviv, it is said that the drone is 400 meters from us towards the sea. No, I don't see him. Maybe at least the owner of the "toy" knows where it flies. I don't feel good about it. It's been a few years since a drone almost hit me in the head while walking through the center of Krakow, Poland.

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In Krakow, it was a toy in the hands of an individual with limited intelligence, but there are already very clever weapons in the Middle East. Suffice it to recall a few events in recent years: Iranian drones set fire to Saudi oil facilities, the US allegedly removed Iranian chief Kuds Solemmani from Iran using a drone driven from Nevada, and the latest report - a fully autonomous drone attacked a soldier in Libya.

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In the press, everything is called a drone, but the Israeli colonel in the reserve, Shay Kuller, disagrees, although both fly without pilots. Perhaps I understood it: the drone has propellers, the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle - from the English Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) wings and flies further, up to thousands of kilometers.

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Between the clouds over the field, I'm trying to find a drone about 30 x 30 centimeters. I don't see him until I'm almost over my head. It flies fast. "If he carried a grenade or an explosive, you wouldn't have time to hide," said Ido Bar-Oz of MCTech RF Technologies, which created the invisible drone shield and is working with diplomat guests to demonstrate how it works in collaboration with BE 1 Defense Technologies and Solutions. And really, the drone seemed to hit an invisible wall.

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Ido passes the controller to other people: "Try to control the drone!" No one succeeded. Devices consisting of radar, camera and transmitter paralyzed the drone. Completely uncontrollable falls to the ground.

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Send the drone to the owner

"This is a version for civilians, for example for open-air concerts, as well as no-fly zones such as an airport or prison. In recent years, criminals in many countries have smuggled drugs and weapons into prison with the help of drones, and thanks to our technology, this is over, ” tells me Chaim Meirovich, director of MCTech.

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"We can send the drone back to the owner, ground it on the edge of the no-fly zone or blind, depending on which solution is appropriate at the time," he adds. In short, when a child plays with a drone at the airport, this technology sends the toy back. When a terrorist sends a drone with explosives to a crowd of people or, for example, to a chemical factory, the drone will be destroyed in a safe place.

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Cynically thinks to me that even in this case, it might not be a good idea to send the drone back to its owner. But this is not original. A few years ago, terrorists from Hezbollah, Iran's extended arm in Lebanon, complained of damage caused by a drone explosion. Israel is said to have sent them. Looking at the pictures, Israeli journalists wondered, "They are not Israeli drones."

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Now the field after Tel Aviv I get the answer: "Sure, that our technology can hostile drones sent to where we want." While then sent Iran from Syria drones with explosives often, even speculated about the threat of thousands of drones deployed to the territory of Israel, after forwarding the drones to another address came calming.

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No more sci-fi

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The fact that drones are a dangerous weapon is also proven by the last Israeli-Palestinian conflict when Hamas fired hundreds of rockets a day at Israel in May this year. There were many more missiles, but attack drones also flew between them from Gaza. And those anti-missile systems will not catch.

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"The advantage of anti-aircraft shields is that they can also be mounted on old anti-aircraft systems, and thus modernized to respond to the relevant threats," Chaim Meirovich tells me that I argue that the defense against increasingly technically advanced weapons - here against smart missiles, there again against clever drones - it must ruin state budgets. It is on the hot soil of the Middle East that one feels that the saying goes for Europe that the generals are preparing for the last war.

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Until seven years ago, when Hamas fired hundreds of missiles at Israel every day, Israel defended itself by ground operations in addition to raids on launchers and weapons depots. An Israeli soldier did not enter Gaza for a second this year. Many security experts, who have also come to look at anti-drone technology, agree that soldiers will be pushing buttons and robots will be fighting. The technology that allows you to control an unmanned aircraft, for example from a living room chair, I saw last year in the workshop-laboratory of engineer Baruch Dilion from the BE 1 advisory team, a company that is looking for the best security and defense technologies in Israel.

The vision is frightening: terrorists or soldiers of the enemy state will play nicely in cover with drones or robot-killers. And civilians will die.

 

However, another BE 1 security adviser, Shay Kuller, is more skeptical. "We already have autonomous cars today, but they still need a driver," he said . Baruch Dilion adds that there is now a robot that can be sent to a building, for example, to check for explosives or other hazards and possibly destroy them - provided that someone remotely controls it.

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However, communication between the soldier and the machine is a common problem, according to Dilion. According to him, the next step will be that machines, such as drones, will act completely autonomously. They are given a task and set up accordingly - they analyze the problem themselves and fix it. It will no longer be necessary to have a chair in the living room, or in the case of terrorists somewhere in a shelter or tunnel under a school or hospital. As is reported to have happened to a soldier persecuted by a drone in Libya.

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"When Israel hit Hamas, Nasrallah (Hezbollah leader) preferred to hide 25 meters underground," laughs Israeli political science student Uriel. Another arch-terrorist, Mohammed Deif, also escapes thanks to underground shelters. It is Deif who is credited with the "brilliant" idea of ​​deploying launchers throughout Gaza among civilians, while he is safely hidden somewhere. But even here water is boiled.

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Drones are being developed that can fly and operate inside buildings, including tunnels. "It's not such a demanding technology, rather the problem is that drones can not orient themselves in the interior only according to GPS, there are many more obstacles, they have to use sensors and cameras," says Baruch Dilion.

"These drones can be very small. And he won't hear them, "he describes the future, perhaps quite close. In any case, even those who hide underground will not be able to be sure of such drones.