Elbit Systems profile

Elbit Systems is a public Israeli defense prime with tactical and medium-altitude UAS families.

What Elbit Systems does

Elbit Systems integrates unmanned aircraft, sensors, mission systems, and services across defense domains. Its UAS business is broader than the aircraft itself, which makes system contracts and lifecycle support as important as airframe sales.

The product lines that define the company for research purposes:

• Hermes 450
• Hermes 900
• Hermes 650 Spark
• Skylark I-LEX
• Skylark 3 Hybrid

This profile is qualitative by design. It carries no share price, no price target, no valuation multiple, and no rating — those change faster than any page can honestly track, and the filings linked below are the authoritative source for them.

Elbit Systems drone lineup

Elbit’s UAS portfolio is organized around Hermes and Skylark families.

Statuses are editorial classifications from the company’s current public catalog: active means currently presented for sale, delivery, or program work; development means publicly disclosed but not a mature production offering; legacy means retained for historical or installed-fleet coverage.

Recent contracts & awards

A dated log of the specific contracts, orders, funding, and deployments reported for Elbit Systems, each tied to its primary source. This is a record of what was announced — a "selection", "award", or "partnership" is not the same as obligated money, so read each source before treating a figure as revenue. No figure appears here unless a source reported it.

• PartnershipOct 20, 2026
  Elbit Systems completes acquisition of Canada's International Submarine Engineering (ISE)

  On October 20, 2026, Elbit Systems announced that it completed the acquisition of International Submarine Engineering Ltd. (ISE), a company near Vancouver, British Columbia, that designs and builds autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and computer control systems and robotics for the maritime domain.

  ISE reports more than 50 years in subsea robotics, over 250 underwater vehicles delivered, and customers in more than 20 countries. Elbit Systems says ISE expands its underwater intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), mine countermeasures (MCM) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities and strengthens its end-to-end maritime offering.

  Elbit Systems does not disclose the price and describes it only as "not material to Elbit Systems," so for ESLT the deal adds underwater-drone capability without publishing any price, revenue or backlog figure. Naval Today reported the deal on October 22, 2026, and the unmanned underwater vehicles guide explains the AUV and ROV classes ISE builds.

  Elbit Systems: acquisition of International Submarine Engineering (ISE)
• LaunchSep 9, 2026
  Elbit Systems rebrands American subsidiary as Twenty-Six Defense

  Elbit Systems has rebranded its American subsidiary as Twenty-Six Defense under parent Nasdaq ticker ESLT. According to a StockTitan wire report, Twenty-Six Defense plans to display weapon and munition effectors at the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) 2026 conference.

  Neither source discloses specific product names, contract values, or program awards, so researchers should check Elbit Systems's own newsroom or investor relations page for further detail on the rebranded subsidiary's scope.

  Defense News: Israeli-based defense company rebrands American subsidiary to Twenty-Six Defense
• ContractSep 1, 2026$270M
  Elbit Systems Signs $270M ISR Payload Contracts With International Customer

  Elbit Systems signed contracts worth $270 million with an undisclosed international customer. The deal covers two product lines. One is its SPECTRO family of electro-optic payloads, which pair several infrared and visible-light cameras with a laser designator and onboard AI image analysis.

  The other is its AMPS NG airborne system for spotting and pinpointing targets at long range. Performance runs up to six years. Elbit reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $2,287.1 million and a $32.0 billion order backlog as of June 30, 2026.

  The award adds to an already large book of unmanned and sensor work rather than opening a new customer relationship on its own.

  StockTitan: Elbit Systems signed contracts with an international customer valued at approximately $270 million

Where Elbit Systems sits in the value chain

Elbit Systems is a defense contractor whose unmanned work sits inside a wider defense portfolio, so drone headlines are only one input into results and can be offset — in both directions — by unrelated segments.

Its disclosed activity spans aerial drones, ground robotics, maritime autonomy. That placement is the single most useful thing to fix in your head before reading any coverage, because the same headline means different things at different layers: a large platform award is transformative for a pure-play, material but diluted for a diversified contractor, and only indirectly relevant to a component supplier whose exposure arrives later as build-rate demand.

Retail coverage routinely applies one story to all three layers at once. For the layer-by-layer comparison across the sector, see the drone stocks research shortlist and the list of publicly traded drone companies.

Elbit Systems' main competitors

Elbit Systems primarily competes with other defense contractors offering tactical and medium-altitude unmanned aerial systems. These include Israel Aerospace Industries, which also fields the Heron UAS family, and Aeronautics, known for its Orbiter and Dominator lines.

Outside Israel, companies such as General Atomics (with the MQ-9 and MQ-1C lines) and Leonardo (with Falco) vie for many of the same international surveillance and reconnaissance programs. Elbit tends to face the strongest competition in countries open to multiple Israeli and US bidders, with selection depending on political alignment, desired capabilities, and offset agreements.

Revenue concentration and customer risk

Elbit Systems' unmanned segment faces moderate customer concentration risk, as large platform deals typically come from a small number of sovereign buyers. Major drone contracts are often government-to-government, so a single country decision can influence results for several years. This concentration creates a business risk if export controls tighten or if a core customer shifts procurement toward a competitor.

However, Elbit's broader defense portfolio reduces the impact of any one UAS program compared to a pure-play drone provider.

Limits to direct comparability with pure-play drone companies

It is often difficult to directly compare Elbit Systems’ UAS business to pure-play drone firms because Elbit reports its drone results within a larger multi-segment defense business. Unlike smaller drone manufacturers with narrow product lines, Elbit’s results may reflect margin, capital allocation, or delivery challenges from unrelated segments.

This means UAS program wins or losses might not move company-level metrics as much as headlines suggest. Researchers should be cautious when benchmarking Elbit against smaller, single-segment drone peers.

What to watch

The signals worth tracking are structural, not price-based — they tell you whether the business is changing shape, which is what eventually shows up in the numbers.

• The balance between complete UAS, sensors, and services.
• Export and local-production arrangements.
• Whether tactical systems scale through repeat orders or remain country-specific.

How to research Elbit Systems

Every question below has one authoritative source, and using the wrong source is how most retail research goes wrong.

One failure mode is worth naming explicitly: a company announcement describing a "selection", "award", or "partnership" is not the same as obligated money, and the two are easy to conflate because they use the same vocabulary. Check the official record before treating either as revenue. Our full approach is documented on the methodology page.

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