CORTEX

Israeli loitering munitions manufacturer Uvision launched a new battle management software system on June 1 that connects sensors, decision-making processes, and multiple weapons into a single unified framework, announcing the CORTEX active Battle Intelligence and Mission Management system at ILA Berlin 2026 as the company's most ambitious step yet toward automating the full sensor-to-shooter chain across air, land, and maritime domains. The system is designed to do something that has become the central challenge of modern multi-domain warfare: move targeting decisions and weapon deployments from individual operators manually controlling individual platforms to a higher-level supervisory role where a small team manages coordinated strikes across multiple simultaneous engagements. A human operator manually controlling a single loitering munition, guiding it to a target while simultaneously monitoring the surrounding airspace and communicating with other units, can manage a limited number of parallel actions before cognitive overload degrades decision quality and response time. An adversary who understands that constraint can exploit it by presenting multiple simultaneous threats that individually are manageable but collectively saturate the operator's attention and allow some threats to get through. The answer that militaries and defense companies have been converging toward is automation that handles the lower-level coordination tasks, leaving human operators to make the mission-level decisions that require judgment, situational awareness, and rules of engagement compliance rather than the mechanical work of tracking and routing individual systems. CORTEX addresses that challenge through a three-layer modular architecture. The sensing layer ingests data from multiple sources simultaneously, including electro-optical and infrared payloads, unmanned aerial vehicles, radar systems, radio frequency detectors, airborne platforms, and external intelligence inputs, processing that data into a usable operational picture. The fusion and decision layer then performs multi-source data fusion, combining those different sensor inputs into a coherent picture, while simultaneously running threat verification, target classification, behavioral analysis, and anomaly detection, and applying AI-driven decision support to generate recommendations about which threats to engage, in what order, and with what tools. The response layer then manages the coordinated deployment and dynamic allocation of Uvision's own weapons, including the HERO, VIPER, and PEREGRINE families, according to target characteristics, mission priorities, and available engagement options, while maintaining human oversight throughout the engagement process. Uvision's HERO family of loitering munitions has been in operational service with multiple militaries and has seen combat use in several conflicts, establishing a track record that the company now builds on with CORTEX's automated management capability. Loitering munitions, often called kamikaze drones, fly to a target area and wait for a specific engagement opportunity before diving onto their target as a precision-guided weapon. They combine the persistence of a surveillance drone with the lethality of a guided missile at a cost dramatically lower than conventional air-launched precision weapons. The HERO family covers targets from dismounted personnel through light vehicles to armored platforms and electronic systems, depending on the variant, while VIPER addresses autonomous multi-mission operations and PEREGRINE covers tactical kinetic operations. Managing all three families simultaneously against a dynamic threat picture, allocating the right weapon to each target based on type and priority while maintaining coordination across the full engagement, is the operational scenario that CORTEX is built to enable. Dr. Ran Gozali, CEO of Uvision Air, described the strategic direction the system reflects in terms that frame CORTEX as a response to an emerging operational reality rather than a product update: "The future battlefield will be defined by speed, scale, and connectivity across multiple domains. As military forces deploy increasing numbers of autonomous systems, sensors, and effectors, the ability to unify and standardize command, control, and mission execution across complex operational environments becomes mission-critical. CORTEX is designed to connect these layers, integrating operational intelligence, command systems, and multiple effectors into one scalable, software-driven ecosystem that enables faster decisions, greater interoperability, and more effective mission outcomes." The open architecture that Uvision built into CORTEX reflects a practical recognition that military forces operate heterogeneous equipment fleets and will not replace their existing command and control infrastructure to adopt a new system from a single manufacturer. By designing CORTEX to integrate with external command systems, battlefield management platforms, and third-party sensors through open interfaces, Uvision positions the system as an addition to an existing force's architecture rather than a replacement that demands wholesale commitment to a single vendor's ecosystem. That integration flexibility is increasingly a procurement requirement rather than a nice-to-have feature, as military organizations have learned from decades of systems that worked in isolation but failed to deliver their advertised capability because they could not exchange data with the other systems operating in the same environment. Controlling weapons from a forward position exposes the operator to the same threats the weapon is being used against, and the trend across military applications toward greater standoff distance between operators and the battlefield reflects both survivability concerns and the practical recognition that a skilled operator behind a screen can manage more systems more effectively than one who is physically present at the point of engagement. CORTEX's architecture explicitly shifts operators from frontline platform control to stand-off mission-level supervision, which the company describes as enhancing survivability while improving mission continuity.

CORTEX

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CORTEX

Israel’s Uvision connects drone swarms to one AI command system

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About The Defence Blog