Skapion: from Counter-UAS to Counter-Swarm

Funded in late 2025 and based in Ramat Gan, adjacent to Tel Aviv, Skapion emerged in July 2026 and at AUSA it unveiled its native Counter-Swarm system, a hard kill solution which aims at physically neutralise incoming enemy drones at a reasonable cost, An answer to what was during recent and ongoing conflicts: some nights Ukraine was targeted by over 800 drones, while during the recent conflict Iran launched against the United Arab Emirates over 6,000 one-way attack drones

“Back in the 1970s or 80s it made sense using effectors costing 10 or even 50 times more than the incoming threat, as adversaries had a limited number of weapons, dozens or hundreds of ballistic missiles, numbers the Western alliance could cope with. Today we are talking about hundreds a night and thousands a month, and defenders can no longer spend 10 or 20 times the cost of the threat,” Ido Bar-on, Skapion CEO tells EDR On-Line. A reserve Special Forces officer in the IDF and three times a chief business officer in defence-tech companies, he is the co-founder of the company together with Brig. Gen. (res.) Pini Yungman, former General Manager of Rafael’s Air & Missile Defense and developer of David’s Sling and Iron Dome, many of the key actors in the company having experiences in the air defence sector.

From the very beginning Skapion management aimed at developing a system capable to automatically react in the best possible way to a swarm attack, thanks to AI-based algorithms, keeping a man on the loop when required, managing a high number of dedicated low-cost effectors that could be installed on mobile platforms which, when needed, can be easily redeployed on the battlefield to reduce vulnerability and optimise positioning, the system being obviously also capable to protect fixed sensible targets.

Starting from the system “brain”, we find the software developed by Skapion; the only elements that are acquired from third parties are the sensors which allow detecting and tracking the incoming drones, the rendering showing four AESA hemispheric radars installed on an elevated mast. The system is built according to MOSA (Modular Open System Approach) standards, therefore any type of radar which satisfies DRI (Detection/Recognition/Identification) requirements set by Skapion can be easily integrated. The one on the rendering looked the Leonardo DRS/RADA Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar (MHR) very much, the Echodyne EchoShield being another obvious solution, more similar systems being also possible options. Coming to the Skapion software, “It is a counter-swarm battle management system, which does end-to-end from analysing the tracks, fusing all the sensors, building the sky picture of threats, analysing the swarm operational concept behind it, because a swarm is not a hundred or a thousand discrete different targets, it’s an operational vehicle,” Ido Bar-on explained EDR On-Line. “The counter swarm C2 allocates interceptors, it plans the whole interception strategy, and carries out the guidance and the interception, and follow-up on these items.” According to open-source data the system is designed to carry out over 100 interceptions simultaneously, with an over 97% interception rate.

The system is fully interoperable with higher echelon battle-management systems such as UK SAPIENT, US LATTICE 4D, or other. To operate with them a reliable connectivity is needed. “The reason we make the system intelligent with edge AI and edge processing is because we cannot assume we will have connectivity on every operational scenario, therefore if connectivity is not available it is fully autonomous based on rules of engagement, it can self-sustain itself, it can collect the data, analyse it, and action upon,” the company CEO added.

As said, the word “swarm” does not indicate only a massive saturation attack; it encompasses an operational concept designed to maximise the chances of success and the amount of damage caused to the enemy. The edge AI-based algorithms developed by Skapion give the system a learning capability, which might be of use in the following engagements, as the system can learn and adapt to changing operational scenarios and environments. “We built an engine to constantly improve the system capability, match what we predicted against what happened in the real-life scenarios, and basically provide reinforced learning for the system,” Ido Bar-on confirmed, adding that “In parallel, we have a dedicated team that does counter-swarm research and AI-based research, and we are trying to constantly push the system to the edge and want to make sure that we prepare it to be agile and responsive for unpredicted and unprecedented scenarios,” in short don’t rest on your laurels… Updates are not automatically pushed, as per customer policies, Skapion considering that some level of control is needed even within the same customer systems, the company being always very protective of customer proprietary and operational data.

Skapion counter-swarm software has now done his job and data are available to be sent to the effectors. Before going into details, the basic element of the Skapion interception system is a vertical launch module which comes in the form of a parallelepipedal box with a square section hosting 25 effectors in a 5×5 matrix. It is relatively compact, no data being provided we can guess a 0.6×0.6 metres top section, a 1.2 metres height, and an overall mass, loaded, of around 300-350 kg. Two renderings were made available, one being an 8×8 unmanned ground vehicle and one a one-axle trailer. In both cases we find four modules at the rear, for a total of 100 interceptors; moving forward, on each side we find a cabinet, these hosting all electronics, the telescopic mast being at the front. “Today in Ukraine, we have thousands of UGVs in use. Imagine a portion of these carrying our system each of them being capable to 50 to 100 Geran or Shahed drones,” Skapion CEO stated.

Of course, these are just two examples of how the basic modules can be put together, the system accepting to click together up to 10 modules for a total of 250 effectors. It is up to the customer to decide which is the optimal number of modules on a single platform, a distributed response deploying modules on several mobile platforms that can reconfigure constantly the defensive system being probably the most valuable in terms of effectiveness and survivability in most cases, counter swarm posture becoming more and more a shoot-and-scoot business, similarly to what artillery has learned to do confronted to today transparent battlefield. Something pretty different from what medium-range air defence is capable to do with its cumbersome and exceedingly expensive systems, while generating a much higher interception density against drone-type threats. Of course, the system can also be installed on naval platforms, even relatively small ones, integration on airborne assets being also mentioned.

The final key element of Skapion’s counter-swarm system is the effector itself. The company is not much talkative on this, however EDR On-Line understood the missile is around 1 meter long, has a diameter of some 100 mm, and a mass at launch of approximately 10 kg. We understood that the warhead is of the explosive-fragmentation type and is designed to disintegrate the target while minimising collateral damages. The only available image of the missile, based on the first iteration of the effector, shows proximity sensors around the missile body, just behind the ogive. The latter hosts the seeker, which should not be of the electro-optic type, as no aperture can be seen. Thrust is provided by a rocket motor, no indication on steering being provided, the only statement being that “to be effective an effector must be two times more manoeuvrable that the target it is chasing.” According to company sources the missile can reach a high subsonic speed. Speed is a key issue considering that Russia’s jet-powered Geran-4 proved to easily outrun Ukraine’s cheap interceptor drones, which were designed to cope mostly with propeller-powered Shahed. The massive use of those new drones, which around in May, saw the Ukrainian interception rate fall from over 90 per cent to just above 50 per cent, and we are not yet talking of AI-powered swarm attacks. No indications of the range being provided, an estimate puts it at around 5 km, while the vertical-launch architecture provides 360° engagement capability.

When talking about missiles designed to face swarm attacks conducted by hundreds of drones, performances are of course a key issue, however they would not be decisive without a strict control of costs as well as a mass-production capacity, something that must be considered since the very early stage of the design phase. “My co-founder and CTO, Gal Goren, another IDF Commando officer in reserve, is a world expert in design for scale and design for assembly. Therefore, from day one of the R&D, it was considered not only how much every component will costs, but also how we can manufacture it,” Ido Bar-on told us. EDR On-Line understood that the company aims at producing as many parts as possible through 3D printing, which allows easy scale up of production; “There is a lot of advancement in the printing technology today, we can now print many different materials, rigid, heat-resistant, all sorts of materials that were not available previously,” the CEO explained. He also underlined that the cost of the production infrastructure and the overtime return on the cost of the product must be evaluated according to numbers produced. “All those part of the R&D team which is developing the new missile have been involved in the past in the development of most of the top air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles built in the last few decades in the world, such as Derby, Spyder, Iron Dome, David Sling, Arrow, Python 5, and Python 4. So, it is a team that has an excelling experience in building these systems, but the new thing that we did here is that from day one, we are focusing on design for scale and design for cost,” Ido Bar-on underlined.

Initial production will focus on a few hundreds per month, scaling up to over 10,000 per year. Talking cost, Skapion considers that the interception cost with its system will be 1:100 of the cost when traditional missiles are used.

Speaking of the status of the programme, Skapion CEO told us that the first live fire test will take place in a couple of weeks in Israel, after which the system should be considered TRL 4. Early next year it will climb to TRL 5, the company planning to run an operational test and evaluation by mid-2027, which will allow Skapion to safely start its marketing campaign. To accelerate the development and validation of its counter-swarm defence system Skapion recently announced a US$ 36 million Seed funding round led by UP Partners and Khosla Ventures.

“Our opponents are building an autonomous world, and we are building the AI to counter that,” Ido Bar-on concluded.

Graphics courtesy Skapion