The Israeli defense ministry has selected Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) as the prime contractor on a program that is developing an armored fighting vehicle of the future, the company revealed on Sunday.
The future AFV – the Carmel – will leverage autonomous capabilities and artificial intelligence to introduce a significant upgrade in the field of AFV development, according to the defense ministry.
Five years after first tasking its three industry majors, IAI, Elbit Systems and Rafael to come up with ideas on a next-generation two-man AFV with closed hatches, the defense ministry has now selected IAI as the integrator for the further development of the Carmel concept and technologies.
The next phase of the program will be to develop and demonstrate technologies for a multidimensional combat team, based on an AFV containing two crew members operating a range of systems alongside integrated autonomous, air, and land platforms, enabling significant improvement in the system maneuverability.
As explained by IAI, the Carmel concept combines an operational concept with the latest technologies providing solutions based on a small team, and extensive reliance on autonomous capabilities based on AI, and minimizing the risk to human lives in a ground campaign.
This solution is based on automatic and autonomous systems that complement the two-man team, and operate the central subsystems – the vehicles’ mission planning and management, situational awareness, driving and lethality.
“The central principles behind the company’s concept of land combat include intelligence gathering and acquisition of targets in the battlefield, conducted autonomously. The Carmel solution, as demonstrated by IAI, brings to the world of land combat the concept of system of systems, and includes a combination of capabilities, systems, groundbreaking innovation and connection to the world of artificial intelligence,” IAI president and CEO, Boaz Levy, said.
