Israel Aircraft Industries To Unveil Unmanned Fast Patrol Boat At New Delhi Defense Expo
Israeli Aerospace Industries Ltd, or IAI, will be present with an important new naval concept which seeks to replicate the use of UASs, unmanned aerial systems, and sometimes known as “drones”, in a maritime context.
IAI will be unveiling their new concept for the “Katana” unmanned ship, which is designed to protect critical marine infrastructures, such as oil and gas rigs, gas terminals, undersea pipelines, perhaps even LNG carriers and of course the approaches to ports.
To do so the Katana will be equipped with the latest in automated navigations and fast propulsion systems and its own specialized arrays of weaponry.
Israeli defense companies are well known for their success in unmanned aerial vehicles, which they have sold in the billions, including to a number of Asian countries. IAI will clearly be hoping to replicate the exercise with the Katana as well.
That is one cool-looking boat. Why make it a drone? I’ll love to be at the wheel of something that looks that great. It’d be worth getting shot at just to steer it.
Keep in mind that there’s a critical difference between a drone aircraft and a drone boat. Even slowly circling on patrol, no one can sneak up on an aircraft and board it. Someone could do just that with a boat like this, particularly at night and in a fog. Once on board, it’d be easy to disable for towing away or to arm with explosives that’d go off when it returned to base. A boat isn’t just like a plane. It has added vulnerabilities.
–Michael W. Perry, Chesterton on War and Peace