Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) introduced HYPNOSIS, a navigation warfare system built to counter large numbers of drones and other satellite-guided aerial threats by scrambling the navigation signals those weapons depend on to find their targets, rather than physically shooting them down.
Most modern drones, including the cheap, mass-produced one-way attack drones that have become a defining weapon of recent conflicts, rely on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, commonly known as GNSS, the broader category that includes America’s GPS along with other countries’ satellite navigation networks, to determine their exact position and timing as they fly toward a target. HYPNOSIS attacks that dependency directly using two related but distinct techniques. Jamming works by overpowering the legitimate satellite signal with a stronger radio transmission on the same frequency, effectively drowning out the real navigation data a drone needs to receive. Spoofing goes a step further, broadcasting fake navigation signals that trick a drone’s receiver into calculating an incorrect position or heading entirely, sending the weapon off course without the drone ever realizing its guidance has been compromised.
IAI is marketing HYPNOSIS as what the defense industry calls a soft-kill system, meaning it disables a threat through electronic interference rather than physically destroying it with an interceptor missile or projectile, the approach known as hard-kill. Boaz Levy, IAI’s Chairman of the Board, framed the system as part of the company’s broader push to give militaries options beyond traditional missile-based defense.
“IAI is a global leader in air defense solutions against evolving aerial threats, with decades of operational excellence, continuous innovation, and an uncompromising commitment to our ally’s security,” Levy said. “Today’s battlespace demands integrated, multi-layered defense capabilities that can address multiple threats. IAI is at the forefront of this mission, delivering advanced technologies that provide our customers with decisive operational advantage to safeguard both national security and civilian lives.”
The soft-kill approach solves a specific and increasingly expensive problem facing air defense planners worldwide. Interceptor missiles built to shoot down aircraft or ballistic threats typically cost anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars per shot, while the drones now flooding modern battlefields, weapons like Iran’s Shahed and its Russian-built derivative the Geran-2, can cost as little as a few thousand dollars each, creating a lopsided economic equation where every successful drone swarm attack forces defenders to spend vastly more money defending against it than attackers spent launching it. Houthi rebel forces in Yemen have repeatedly demonstrated how effective that imbalance can be, launching drone and missile barrages toward Saudi Arabia and international shipping lanes that have forced American and allied warships to expend expensive interceptors against comparatively cheap threats. A system that can disable dozens of drones simultaneously through electronic interference, rather than requiring a missile for every incoming target, offers a way to break that cost equation without necessarily improving hard-kill interception rates at all.
Guy Barlev, Executive Vice President and General Manager of IAI’s Space Missiles and Systems division, described HYPNOSIS as designed to work alongside existing missile defenses rather than replace them.
“HYPNOSIS provides a critical and highly effective soft-kill defense layer, enabling nations to address the growing spectrum of GNSS-based aerial threats,” Barlev said. “The system represents a significant leap forward in protecting strategic assets. When integrated with hard-kill defense systems, it further strengthens the multi-layered defense concept by adding an additional protection layer that is operationally effective and cost-efficient complementing existing kinetic interception systems.”
Mechanically, HYPNOSIS consists of a network of mobile jamming and spoofing stations deployed around whatever site the system is protecting, with each station feeding data back to a central command and control center that coordinates the entire network in real time. That networked design lets the system identify and respond to threats approaching from multiple directions simultaneously, a critical requirement given that drone swarm attacks are specifically designed to overwhelm defenses by attacking from several angles at once rather than in a single predictable line. IAI says the command center can also operate the entire network autonomously, without requiring a human operator to manually direct each individual jamming station, a feature meant to compress response times during an attack that could otherwise unfold in seconds.
HYPNOSIS builds on navigation warfare technology IAI has developed over years of related work, including its existing ADA GNSS Anti-Jamming system, a defensive tool built to protect friendly aircraft, drones, and vehicles from having their own navigation signals disrupted by an adversary, using a multichannel antenna that filters out interference from unwanted directions. HYPNOSIS effectively flips that same underlying expertise around, applying it offensively against enemy navigation signals instead of defensively protecting friendly ones, a natural extension for a company that has spent years building both sides of the same electronic warfare problem.
IAI is positioning HYPNOSIS specifically for customers protecting fixed, high-value locations such as strategic government sites, energy infrastructure, and existing air defense installations, rather than marketing it as a mobile battlefield system meant to accompany troops on the move.