Elbit Systems to Unveil UUV Capabilities at Euronaval
The Israeli company is expanding its maritime autonomy portfolio into the underwater domain following its acquisition of ISE, integrating UUVs with its Seagull USVs.
By Ami Rojkes Dombe, israeldefense.co.il, 01/11/2026
Haifa-based Elbit Systems announced that it will debut its unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) capabilities at the Euronaval 2026 exhibition.
The UUV solutions will be presented alongside the company's Seagull unmanned surface vessel (USV) family, as well as additional systems from Elbit Systems' extensive naval portfolio.
This debut marks the expansion of the company's autonomous maritime offerings into the underwater domain, reflecting a strategic move that tightly integrates existing operational capabilities with recently acquired advanced technologies.
These new capabilities join Elbit Systems' portfolio following its acquisition of International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (ISE), a leading provider of autonomous underwater systems that has delivered more than 250 submersibles to customers in over 20 countries worldwide.
International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (ISE)'s Explorer Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. ISE was acquired by Israeli defense giant Elbit. Published October 20, 2026. (photo credit: ELBIT SYSTEMS)
The integrated architecture enables synchronized operations between autonomous underwater and surface systems, while opening expanded operational opportunities for Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) concepts to enhance response in the theater.
The systems support extended long-range autonomous operations and incorporate a variety of dedicated payloads, including advanced sonars, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, and specialized sensors tailored to diverse naval missions.
With more than 40 years of accumulated experience in autonomous systems, Elbit Systems has developed and deployed operational unmanned solutions across air, land, and sea domains. In the maritime arena, the company has been active for more than a decade, with mature unmanned systems already in routine operational use by customers worldwide.
The expansion into the underwater domain further reinforces Elbit Systems' end-to-end maritime autonomy offering, bringing together UUVs, the Seagull USV family, mission systems, payloads, sonars, advanced communications, and autonomous mission management capabilities into a unified operational architecture.
The company's vertical integration approach enables the creation of coordinated autonomous maritime formations tailored to evolving operational requirements, supporting integrated mission planning, launch and recovery phases, and the successful execution of complex coordinated surface and subsurface missions.
Oren Sabag, General Manager of Elbit Systems ISTAR & EW, stated that navies are increasingly seeking comprehensive autonomous solutions for complex maritime missions. He added that the addition of UUV capabilities further expands the company's autonomous maritime portfolio and strengthens its ability to deliver an end-to-end operational response spanning surface and subsurface autonomous systems, payloads, and mission management capabilities.
At Euronaval 2026, Elbit Systems will showcase a range of autonomous solutions designed to support modern naval operations and evolving maritime security challenges, as part of a maritime portfolio that includes command and control, electronic warfare, electro-optics, precision munitions, coastal defense, and comprehensive underwater warfare solutions.
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Hula valley's Gesher Benot Ya’aqov. (photo credit: Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee and Hannah Farrell, University of Haifa)
Long before modern history, the Hula Valley’s Gesher Benot Ya’aqov was as close to a Garden of Eden as the ancient world could offer. The site at the “Daughters of Jacob Bridge” is so even today.
Nearly 800,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene Era, giant straight-tusked elephants, hippos, and rhinoceroses roamed a lush sanctuary of woodlands, wetlands, and waterways.
Living alongside these massive creatures were the region’s earliest humans – hominin toolmakers who left behind a remarkable record of survival along the Levantine corridor.
Nestled in northern Israel, the Hula Valley has long served as a vital bridge between Africa and Eurasia. Today, remarkable finds –including a well-preserved ancient elephant tooth and basalt handaxes – provide evidence of giant elephants and early toolmakers that together made the Hula Valley their home.
Saber-tooth tigers, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giant wild cattle deer, gazelles, wild boars, freshwater turtles, lizards, and snakes shared the lush landscape of woodlands, wetlands, and waterways during the Middle Pleistocene Era that began some 780,000 years ago. But among the most impressive creatures were giant elephants alongside hominids – the Hula Valley’s most ancient humans.
Prof. Gonen Sharon. (credit: TEL-HAI UNIVERSITY OF KIRYAT SHMONA IN THE GALILEE)
Today, elephants, or other large animals, are kept in Ramat Gan’s Safari or Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, but the area remains verdant and bountiful, according to archaeologists from Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee and colleagues at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University.
They found a remarkably preserved elephant tooth and tusk fragments at the prehistoric site in northern Israel, where early humans made stone tools – basalt handaxes and cleavers that were hallmark tools of the Acheulian tradition, one of the earliest and most widespread stone-tool technologies in human history.
The resource-rich environment that helped sustain both large mammals and early humans along the Levantine land bridge connecting Africa and Eurasia remains.
After studying the area for more than three decades, the archaeologists have just published their latest findings in Quaternary Science Reviews under the title “Elephant dental remains from the Acheulian site at North Bridge Acheulian-Gesher Benot Ya’aqov: hominin behavior and environmental implications.”
The study was led by University of Haifa doctoral student Hannah Farrell, at the site and excavated by Prof. Gonen Sharon of Tel-Hai. The team included Cheryl Makarewicz (isotope studies) and Nimrod Marom (archaeozoology) from the University of Haifa, along with Minji Jin and Dafna Langgut (pollen studies) from Tel Aviv University.
The research focuses on a giant elephant molar and tusk fragments discovered alongside Acheulian stone tools at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov’s northern locality located in the valley in northern Israel. The remains belonged to Palaeoloxodon antiquus, the straight-tusked elephant, one of the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene.
Rather than studying the elephant alone, researchers said they used the tooth as a biological archive to reconstruct the broader ecosystem shared by large mammals and early human toolmakers. “We applied high-resolution CT scanning of the tusk and molar recovered from the site,” Sharon noted.
The valley has abundant water, emanating from the Hermon Mountain range (mostly as melted snow), feeding underground springs and accounting for much of the abundant water. Today, the Jordan River with its three main tributaries – the Dan, the Banias and the Hatzbani – is the primary water body of the valley. From as early as the Lower Paleolithic, humans have opted to occupy the Hula Valley.
Today, the bridge is located south of the Hula Valley, probably due to the presence of high basalt there. A stone bridge was built by the Mamluks (an Arabic word that literally means “one who is owned” or “slave”) sometime in the 13th century that was replaced in 1934 by a modern bridge further south during the draining of Lake Hula.
The existing bridge was built almost two decades ago and now forms part of Israeli Highway 91, straddling the boundary between the Galilee and the Golan Heights.
Alongside the broad exposure of archaeological bearing sediments, there are uniquely well-preserved ancient flora specimens – wood, bark, seeds and fruits that provide exclusive data on the environment of the area during the Pleistocene Era and the behavior and diet of early humans in this landscape, Sharon told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. “Understanding how humans and animals responded to environmental change hundreds of thousands of years ago helps us better understand the forces that shaped our species.”
Using CT scanning, 3D reconstruction, microscopic wear analysis, isotope geochemistry, and pollen studies – each field being the expertise of a variety of experts – the team found evidence for a long-lasting landscape of woodlands, grasslands, marshes, rivers, and shallow-water habitats.
Carbon isotope values suggest the elephant lived in a consistently well-watered environment, while pollen recovered from sediments revealed abundant wetland vegetation, including reeds, sedges, willow, tamarisk, and aquatic plants.
Wildlife and human groups both moved via the Levantine Corridor land bridge. “We didn’t actually find human bones because we excavated just 100 square meters, so we would have needed a lot of luck to find them,” he explained. “But we have found tens of thousands of animal bones and tools at the site.”
Conditions for wildlife to survive
The availability of water, vegetation, and animal resources shaped where humans and wildlife could survive, Sharon added. “The wetlands, rivers, and woodlands helped sustain life along one of the world’s earliest migration corridors, offering a rare opportunity to understand the ecological conditions that supported both animals and human populations in that era.
Sharon, who heads the Tel-Hai Prehistory Laboratory, is also curator of the Upper Galilee Museum of Prehistory at Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch. He earned his three degrees in archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lives at Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan just 15 minutes away from the archaeological site.
Asked what the single most important discovery that you could not have made without this particular elephant tooth and that the stone tools, other animal bones or sediments alone could not, he said: “The elephant helped us reconstruct the environment; we didn’t find any human skeletons. We found one elephant’s tooth, out of eight altogether that grow in its jaws, but this is what we do. Quite impressive.
“They eat leaves and other vegetarian food, and this wears down their teeth. When all are worn out, they die of hunger.” The teams were able to establish that both the tooth and the stone tools made by humans were contemporaneous, because they came from the same layer. Humans imported the animal tooth to the site.”
They knew that the environment could support a population of elephants, each of which consumed more than a hundred kilos of food per day. “We have collected bones there from the other animals – wild cows. Boars, bears, and birds. We know that the tooth we found belonged to an elephant species weighing about 10 tons.
“The largest in the Safari Zoo – born in 1974 and named Yossi – is only 6.5 to seven tons. The ancient humans were involved in very sophisticated activities, making stone tools and using nuts, wood, and animals. The ancient elephants couldn’t have been easy to hunt and eat. They apparently killed them with spears.”
The site endured seven or eight ice ages, but even if it got colder in the Hula Valley, the inhabitants survived. Europe was covered by destructive ice, but here, the climate didn’t bother the people and environment much even if the temperature dropped by five degrees.”
The latest findings were a pilot study. “We will study more elephants and animals and combine all the evidence. Dozens of people forming many teams – each with expertise on pollen, seeds, frogs, elephants, fish, isotopes, and much more – worked together since 1989. I joined in 1995. I suppose we have 700 or 800 more years to keep us busy,” Sharon joked.
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Artist's illustration of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched to Earth orbit in November 2004 and will soon fall out of space.(Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)
Swift is expected to crash back to Earth in the next few days.
NASA's Swift space telescope is expected to crash back to Earth in the next few days.
Swift launched to Earth orbit back in November 2004. Over the next two decades, it studied gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe — and other cosmic objects and events using a trio of telescopes: a Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), an X-Ray Telescope (XRT), and its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT).
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On Oct. 20, NASA reported that Swift's orbit had decayed to 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth and that the roughly 3,300-pound (1,500-kilogram) observatory was no longer able to compensate for the effects of the increased drag. It entered safe mode, followed by Swift's operations team at Pennsylvania State University sending a command to the spacecraft that effectively ended its operations ahead of its destructive and fiery nose-dive. It's unclear at the moment exactly when and where Swift will plunge to Earth. But researchers definitely have their eyes peeled.
A surge of reentries
In physics fashion, for the most part, what goes up must come down with more space hardware to follow.
Thanks to the growing surge in low Earth orbit constellations and technology refresh cycles, there are 10 times more objects reentering per year than there were just five years ago, said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that keeps a watchful eye on what's going on above our planet.
"It is unfortunate that Swift was not 'reorbited,' but from a reentry hazard perspective it is a small portion of the stuff coming back in. The rub on this, of course, is that, while many people bemoan the reentry of more objects, I am much more upset about the rapid rate of abandoning massive objects above 400 miles [644 km]," McKnight told Space.com.
Swift will likely disintegrate sufficiently upon reentry to not pose a ground casualty hazard, McKnight said. However, the internal workings of the observatory's X-ray and optical telescope might survive, McKnight said.
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Where in the world?
Similar in view is Dean Sladen, a quality manager and aerospace engineer at the U.K. precision-components supplier Accu Components.
"Once Swift falls to about 120 kilometers [75 miles], the end usually comes within a few minutes. The air in front of it heats up so much that the satellite will start to glow. Solar panels and antennas are typically the first to tear off, and at around 78 kilometers [48 miles], roughly eight times the height of a passing airliner, the main body breaks apart. Most of it will melt and vaporize," said Sladen.
While it isn't yet known exactly where any surviving pieces will land, Sladen noted that Swift's orbit only passes over a band within about 21 degrees of the equator.
"That band is mostly ocean, though it also crosses populated parts of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America," he said.
A diagram depicting the makeup of the Swift space telescope. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
As for which parts are most likely to survive and reach ocean or ground, Sladen pointed out that most of Swift's body is aluminum, wiring and electronics, which melt away early in the reentry process. What reaches Earth is usually small, dense and heat-resistant, such as titanium, steel and glass.
"The most likely survivors are its six heavy reaction wheels, the spinning flywheels it used to aim itself, along with tougher telescope parts such as lenses and mirrors. Its mask of around 52,000 tiny lead tiles will almost certainly melt. Only a handful of small, scorched fragments are expected to make it down — nothing recognizable as a telescope," Sladen said.
Sladen said that, at the current time, it appears that no detailed risk assessment has been published for Swift's fall.
"However, this does not mean NASA has not done the work," said Sladen.
"NASA's own orbital debris requirements state that the risk of human casualty from surviving debris shall not exceed one in 10,000, so it is highly likely this work has been completed but not published," he told Space.com. "Personally, I believe it should be published, as NASA has done with previous satellites. The risk is almost certainly very small, but it would give people a clear, factual picture rather than guesswork."
A pre-launch photo of the Swift Observatory. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
Design for demise
Sladen added that there's far more focus on how a satellite's life ends these days than there was in the past.
"Many now carry enough propulsion to steer themselves into a remote stretch of ocean, or are built from materials designed to burn up completely, an approach called 'design for demise.' NASA and the European Space Agency limit the chance of anyone being hurt by a reentry to one in 10,000, and if a satellite can't meet that, it's expected to come down in a controlled way," said Sladen. So, should people be worried about having a nasty run-in with Swift leftovers?
Sladen doesn't think so. NASA has said that harm to anyone on the ground is unlikely, and LeoLabs also describes the risk as very small. Most of the spacecraft will burn up, and any surviving pieces will most likely fall into the sea, he said.
"The real concern is the long-term trend. With more satellites being launched than ever, the number of uncontrolled reentries is growing, which is why designing satellites to come down safely matters more and more," Sladen concluded.
Leonard David is an award-winning space journalist who has been reporting on space activities for more than 50 years. Currently writing as Space.com's Space Insider Columnist among his other projects, Leonard has authored numerous books on space exploration, Mars missions and more, with his latest being "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published in 2019 by National Geographic. He also wrote "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet" released in 2016 by National Geographic. Leonard has served as a correspondent for SpaceNews, Scientific American and Aerospace America for the AIAA. He has received many awards, including the first Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History in 2015 at the AAS Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium. You can find out Leonard's latest project at his website and on Twitter.
