Israel buys more AI-guided remote weapon stations for drone defense

Smart Shooter, the Israeli defense company that has turned AI-guided fire control into one of the most rapidly adopted infantry technologies of the past five years, signed a new contract with Israel’s Ministry of Defense on May 20 to supply SMASH Hopper lightweight remote-controlled weapon stations valued at approximately NIS 6.7 million ($1.8 million), with options that could push the total to NIS 14.6 million, roughly $4 million at current exchange rates.

The deal arrives weeks after the company announced a separate $10.7 million U.S. Army award for its rifle-mounted SMASH 3000SA systems, underscoring how quickly the SMASH product family has moved from niche counter-drone technology to mainstream military procurement across multiple allied nations simultaneously.

The SMASH Hopper is the remote weapon station variant of Smart Shooter’s fire control technology, a system that strips the human requirement out of the aiming and trigger-pull sequence by doing that work computationally. The Hopper weighs approximately 15 kilograms, mounts on tripods, fixed masts, light vehicles, and unmanned ground platforms, and applies the same AI-based image processing that Smart Shooter’s rifle-mounted systems use: the system detects a target, locks onto it, tracks its movement in real time, and fires only when the weapon’s computed firing solution guarantees a hit. Against a small drone moving fast and erratically, that computational layer is what makes the difference between a weapon that can engage the threat reliably and one that cannot, because a human gunner tracking a drone by eye and manually pulling a trigger is working against reaction times and angular velocity that the physics of the engagement make nearly impossible to master at drone speeds.

According to Smart Shooter, the SMASH Hopper is engineered for one-shot, one-hit accuracy, available in standard and enhanced night vision configurations for 24/7 readiness, and capable of engaging both ground threats and aerial targets including small drones.

Michal Mor, founder and CEO of Smart Shooter, described the operational logic of the system in the company’s announcement: “The remotely controlled SMASH Hopper system enables forces to engage ground and aerial threats with high precision, while keeping soldiers at a safe distance. As drones and other rapidly evolving battlefield threats continue to challenge forces worldwide, SMASH systems are proving to be an effective operational solution for precise, controlled engagement of both ground and aerial threats.”

Smart Shooter was founded by Michal Mor and Chief Technology Officer Avshalom Ehrlich, both former employees of Rafael’s missile division, according to company background reporting by Israel Electronics News. The company’s SMASH systems, known within the IDF as “Dagger,” have been deployed across Israeli infantry brigades since 2018, giving the technology a combat track record that predates most of the international competition in the AI-assisted fire control category. In late 2025, Smart Shooter successfully adapted the SMASH 3000 fire control system for use on heavy machine guns, significantly expanding the caliber range and engagement envelope of the underlying technology, and trials in the same period confirmed that the Hopper configuration could engage aerial targets at ranges out to 400 meters when paired with heavy machine gun armament.

The contract structure gives the Israeli MOD flexibility without locking in a fixed procurement commitment. Delivery of the initial systems and services is scheduled for the second half of 2026, with a four-month option to procure additional systems valued at approximately NIS 6 million and a further option for additional services worth NIS 1.9 million. The fully-exercised total of NIS 14.6 million represents roughly $4 million across both tranches, modest by major defense program standards but consistent with the kind of rolling procurement that field-tested counter-drone systems tend to generate as operational units report their effectiveness.

The international adoption of SMASH systems has accelerated sharply since the counter-drone mission became a first-priority concern for ground forces worldwide. Germany procured SMASH systems for infantry counter-drone capability, the Netherlands bought into the system, the British Army deployed Smart Shooter’s fire control systems in 2024, and Indian special forces have used the SMASH X4 sight operationally, according to reporting compiled by the DIMSE defense information database. In May 2025, the U.S. Army awarded Smart Shooter a $13 million contract to field SMASH 2000L systems under the Transformation in Contact program, and the U.S. Marine Corps placed its own order targeting squad-level counter-drone capability for dismounted Marines. Australia’s evaluation program has been specifically testing the system’s ability to share targeting data across a network in real time, an interoperability dimension that points toward the next generation of networked counter-drone applications where multiple weapons stations share lock-on data rather than each acquiring targets independently.