An American defense technology company will build the next batch of small attack drones that Israeli combat units carry into the field. Ondas Inc., the Nasdaq-listed autonomous systems firm headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, said Tuesday it won a multi-million-dollar strategic tender from the Israeli Ministry of Defense to develop and produce next-generation tactical attack drone capabilities under a program named “Digital Bat.”
The idea behind the program is straightforward: build a strike drone cheap enough that the army can hand them out to ordinary infantry units in large numbers, rather than treating each one as an expensive asset to be conserved. Ondas will lead development of a new generation of low-cost tactical attack drones designed for scalable deployment across frontline combat units.
What Ondas is contracted to deliver is not just an aircraft. The development work covers the full operational package — the aerial platform itself, the autonomous flight software, mission integration, systems engineering, production readiness, and compatibility with the military’s wider command-and-control environment. In practice, that means a soldier should be able to pull the drone out, send it toward a target, and have it work with the same digital systems the unit already uses.
Eric Brock, Ondas chairman and chief executive, framed the award as proof the company can now run large programs itself rather than supplying parts to someone else. He called it “an important validation of the defense technology platform we are building at Ondas.”
Israel’s defense establishment has been rebuilding its drone procurement from the ground up since the Swords of Iron war, and the shift is toward volume. An earlier tender for assault drones went to Israeli startup Xtend, and senior figures in the country’s defense industry have described the technology as still in its infancy — many expect assault drones to become the infantry equivalent of a grenade or a rocket launcher, a tool a soldier throws a few meters toward an enemy without needing line of sight.
Ondas has not won everything it bid on in Israel. Last month, two young Israeli startups, Kela and eyesAtop, beat Ondas for the separate Ministry of Defense tender covering the autonomous command-and-control platform for the Digital Bat program — effectively the national software layer that will manage future attack drone swarms. The Tuesday award gives Ondas the aircraft side of the same effort.
The company’s Israeli footprint is substantial and was assembled by acquisition. Ondas has bought Israeli firms including Airobotics, Iron Drone and Roboteam, giving it a combined aerial and ground robotics operation inside the country. It also holds contracted work tied to Israel’s Eastern Border Security Barrier through its 4M Defense demining unit. Across the group, Ondas now organizes its defense business into four areas: air defense and counter-drone systems, aerial intelligence, aerial attack, and unmanned ground systems, with AI-based command and mission software tying them together.
Brock tied the Israeli program directly to what is happening in Washington. He pointed to the U.S. Drone Dominance Program, a $1.1 billion initiative aimed at rapidly fielding low-cost unmanned systems including one-way attack drones, and said defense priorities are shifting fundamentally toward affordable autonomous systems that can be produced at scale. The same engineering and manufacturing base, in other words, is meant to serve both markets.
For investors, the timing matters. The award lands two days before Ondas reports quarterly results, and the stock has been on a run. Shares traded around $9.35 in premarket Tuesday, up roughly 8% over the week. The company closed Friday at $9.11 after climbing 21.6% the prior week, and faces a demanding second half: early revenue projections of about $68 million to $69 million for the reported quarter leave more than $405 million to be booked against its $406 million second-half target. Ondas has been stacking orders to get there, including a $50 million U.S. Army task order last week that lifted its Mistral subsidiary’s awards past $240 million under a multi-year lethal unmanned systems contract worth $982 million.
Neither Ondas nor the ministry disclosed a delivery timeline or unit quantities for Digital Bat.
JBizNews Desk | West Palm Beach
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