For Israeli defense exporters, the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition in Washington, DC, was not only where deals were signed. It was where relationships are built before the next procurement battles begin.
“It’s like speed dating,” Brig.-Gen (ret.) Yair Kulas, head of Israel’s Directorate for International Defense Cooperation (SIBAT), told Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview at AUSA, describing the exhibition as a place where governments, military officials, and defense companies hold strategic conversations that can eventually become contracts, partnerships, and programs of record.
Kulas explained that Israeli firms see the United States not simply as a customer but as the center of a global defense ecosystem. With military spending rising across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Israeli companies, large and small, arrived in Washington this week focused on two priorities: helping militaries adapt to rapidly changing threats and positioning themselves in fast-growing sectors such as autonomy, air defense, counter-drone systems, and AI-enabled warfare.
“The demand is growing,” Kulas said. “Defense budgets are growing.”
He told D&T the main sectors of interest are counter-unmanned aerial systems (c-UAS), air defense, and space to protect strategic assets.
Brig.-Gen (ret.) Yair Kulas, head of SIBAT at the IMOD. (credit: ANNA AHRONHEIM)
That demand was evident throughout the Israeli pavilion, where companies have integrated lessons, sometimes personal, from several years of war in the Middle East into their platforms.
According to Kulas, for the 19 companies that are part of Israel’s national pavilion, “it is a great opportunity to be here. All the companies are focused on how to help forces in the field and provide what they may need. This is the Israeli spirit, and we are proud of our defense ecosystem.”
‘Get the mission done’
That focus on software and autonomy was echoed by XTEND, which has transformed itself from a drone company from northern Tel Aviv into a public American company traded on the New York Stock Exchange and a builder of operating systems for autonomous warfare with a strong global footprint.
The Xtend booth at AUSA. (credit: ANNA AHRONHEIM)
Speaking to D&T at the exhibition, CEO Aviv Shapira compared XTEND’s XOS platform to an app store, allowing developers, autonomous systems, and third-party technologies to plug into a common operating environment.
Hundreds of companies, with platforms ranging from ground robotics to fixed-wing platforms, are currently working with Xtend to integrate their systems.
“We are the execution layer,” Shapira said, “there are no humans, but AI pilots [are] executing missions. Drones are the vehicle to get the mission done.”
“It’s a new generation of buyers, and there is something new every day,” he said, arguing that military customers are becoming less interested in individual drones and more focused on the software layers that coordinate them.
The Israeli pavillion. (credit: DEFENSE MINISTRY)
The company has deployed more than 12,500 systems across more than 30 countries and helped integrate thousands of systems into US military activities, while building an ecosystem of partner companies that rely on its architecture to bring new capabilities to market. The goal is to create interoperability across autonomous systems rather than forcing militaries to operate disconnected technologies from multiple vendors.
During the exhibition, the company announced that it had secured a $40.5 million order for 6,000 STRIKER systems after being named a top performer in the US Department of War’s Drone Dominance Program Gauntlet II.
Xtend was originally founded as a gaming company that used drone-based extended reality technology along with virtual reality to simulate flight in video games. Shapira, who won Emmy awards for the VR gaming technology, told D&T that “while Emmys are great for entertainment, winning the Drone Dominance gauntlets and awards means that I am doing the right thing and saving lives. Keeping troops out of harm’s way is a big deal.”
From connecting systems to connecting markets
While XTEND is focused on connecting systems, Mistral is focused on connecting markets.
The US-based, Israeli family-run company has built its business around identifying promising Israeli technologies and adapting them for American military customers. Executives described an acquisition environment increasingly driven by operational urgency rather than technological novelty.
“Everybody focuses on technology,” one executive told D&T at AUSA. “We’re focused on operational gaps and warfighter threats.”
The opening of the Israeli pavillion at the AUSA in Washington DC. (credit: ANNA AHRONHEIM)
The company believes the fastest path to adoption is identifying technologies already addressing battlefield problems and integrating them into American military programs and “Americanizing” the platforms.
Executives said SOCOM’s interest in rapidly deployable Israeli capabilities and platforms has become a focus as the US military searches for ways to shorten development cycles and field new systems more quickly. D&T understands that senior SOCOM officers visited the booth with clear interest in one specific Israeli platform.
For Mistral, the lesson of recent wars is simple: Technologies need to move from development to deployment faster, and that requires cooperation across industry rather than isolated development efforts.
“On a tactical level, the US and Israel face similar threats, so we cut the R&D time and are able to quickly field the products,” one executive told D&T. “Companies need to cooperate.”
From ground threats to balloons to drones
That focus on battlefield adaptation also showed at Smart Shooter, whose fire-control technology has evolved alongside the aerial threats facing modern armies.
Sitting with D&T at AUSA, Michal Mor, Smart Shooter’s co-founder and CEO, said that when the company first encountered airborne threats years ago, executives recalled, they were relatively simple systems, such as fire kites and balloons launched from Gaza.
A decade later, Israel and allied militaries are confronting increasingly sophisticated drones, from commercial quadcopters to Iranian-designed one-way attack UAVs.
The Smartshooter booth at AUSA. (credit: ANNA AHRONHEIM)
“No one can tell the future,” she said. “But we have seen how they evolve.”
Smart Shooter’s flagship SMASH systems use artificial intelligence, computer vision, and machine learning to transform standard infantry rifles into precision-guided weapons. The system automatically locks onto and tracks targets such as small, fast, low‑flying drones and releases a round only when a hit is highly probable.
Rather than designing for a single threat, Smart Shooter built its software to adapt to changes in target size, speed, and flight profile.
The company said customer demand is increasingly being driven by lessons learned from active conflicts. Smart Shooter works with military agencies across the United States, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia, among others.
“Different culture, different language, different needs,” she said. “But the threat is the same.”
That shared threat environment has strengthened relationships with international customers that existed before the current conflicts and deepened after they observed battlefield performance and operational lessons learned.
Autonomous warfare increasingly present
Nearly every conversation at AUSA echoed the same theme: warfare is becoming increasingly autonomous.
Troops and executives alike repeatedly pointed to the transition from manned systems to unmanned platforms, from standalone weapons to integrated networks, and from hardware-centric procurement to software-enabled capabilities.
The busiest discussions inside the Israeli pavilion and at the booths of Israeli defense companies were not about tanks, artillery, or traditional platforms. They were about drone dominance, autonomous systems, and the software architectures needed to manage them.
For Kulas, that’s why Israeli companies continue to view AUSA as one of the most important events on the defense calendar. The companies that arrived in Washington this week were not simply marketing products. They were selling lessons learned from an era of accelerating conflict and technological change.
And judging by the crowds who moved through the pavilion, military buyers are listening.