Harpy

The Harpy UAV is designed to detect and destroy radar emitting devices, such as SAM installations. The Harpy is currently operational and in use by air forces from several countries.

On Feb 15, 2016 Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) unveiled at the Singapore Airshow the newest members in its Loitering Munitions (LM) family. IAI is the world's pioneer in developing and fielding various types of LMs: the most prominent so far being Harpy (an autonomous anti-radiation LM for SEAD/DEAD missions) and HAROP, an Electro-Optical/Infra-Red (EO/IR)-guided, man-in-the-loop LM, designed to locate, track and destroy high quality static and mobile targets. Both systems have been sold extensively worldwide.

One member in the extended family is the Harpy NG (New Generation), which is designed to counter the newer types of air defense radar threats that have evolved since the introduction into service of its former version.

The totally revamped model introduces two major changes:

• Improvement, as well as extension of the covered frequency band to much lower frequencies, to deal with all types of air defense radars, while still building on the extensive capabilities of the former generation Harpy.
• Packaging the new Anti-Radiation (AR) Seeker in the more advanced airframe of its stablemate - the HAROP. This repackaging enables better flying characteristics - including longer loiter time, extended range, higher altitude as well as commonality in maintenance and training.

The new Harpy can better detect radars because of the expansion of bandwidth installed, whose frequency range was lowered. In this way, the missile is able to detect more of the enemy’s radars installations.

The air time of the new missile has been increased by 40 percent compared to the previous model, meaning it can hover  for about 9 hours, flying at an altitude of 15,000 feet at an average speed of 120 kilometers per hour. It can thus cover enormous distances. This means that if it is used by air forces, it can be used to blind the enemy’s radar systems.

The internal system of the new model has been improved and can be preprogrammed by the operator, running multiple attack scenarios in the autonomous fire-and-forget method, so if the missile recognizes that the primary target is not there, it guides itself to explode on a secondary target or crash in a predetermined area.

Like previous models of the same family, the new Harpy has a warhead carrying 15 kilograms of explosives and its total weight reaches 160 kilograms per missile. It will be possible to launch 12 missiles together or separately from each launcher. Each battery consists of three launchers and a command vehicle.