Israeli defense contractors rolled out combat-tested lasers, cruise missiles and a new electronic-warfare aircraft at the Farnborough International Airshow this week. No one asked them to hide a single system, unlike France three weeks earlier.
Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Elbit Systems filled the show’s static park and chalets with hardware built and refined during wars in Gaza, Lebanon and against Iran. Organizers told Reuters that defense firms now make up half of a record 1,600 exhibitors at the biennial event, a shift from an industry that began in 1948 showcasing British aerospace technology.
The same combat record selling that hardware comes from wars whose legality a British court has already been asked to rule on, and whose optics got Israeli booths boarded up in Paris weeks before Farnborough opened its doors.
ELLYON Leads IAI’s Pitch From Stand-Off Range
Israel Aerospace Industries used opening day to unveil ELLYON, a multi-role aircraft built to operate from hundreds of kilometers away from a target area. That range is meant to keep the plane outside the reach of the air defenses it is designed to jam and watch, according to the company.
The aircraft combines electronic attack across the electromagnetic spectrum with signals intelligence, or SIGINT, and ISTAR, the military’s term for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance. Long-range SAR/GMTI radar, electro-optical sensors and satellite links round out a single airframe meant to replace work once split across several specialized planes. IAI’s own product page describes ELLYON as a turnkey multi-mission aircraft built for global customers.
Dror Bar, an IAI vice president who also runs its ELTA Systems radar and intelligence division, told the Jerusalem Post the aircraft “significantly shortens intelligence-cycle closure and expands the freedom of action for forces even in the most challenging operational environments.” IAI Chairman Boaz Levy said ELLYON “unifies advanced intelligence, electronic warfare, and mission management into a single airborne platform,” calling it a continuation of the company’s tradition of pairing innovation with combat experience.
Rafael Banks on Fifteen Years of Intercepts
Rafael brought its Iron Beam high-energy laser interceptor to Farnborough, alongside a layered air-defense setup that pairs the laser with Iron Dome. Iron Dome has intercepted thousands of rockets, cruise missiles and drones since entering service roughly fifteen years ago, a record few rival systems can claim.
The company also displayed precision-strike weapons, including the SPICE 250 glide bomb, the ROCKS air-to-surface missile and the Ice Breaker cruise missile, plus its Litening 5 targeting pod. Litening 5 is already flying with 28 air forces, including Britain’s Royal Air Force. In March, an RAF Typhoon used a Litening 5 pod to guide an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rocket, known as APKWS, that downed Iranian drones over Jordan.
Rafael’s president and chief executive, Yoav Tourgeman, told the Jerusalem Post the market has moved past treating any of this as experimental. “The security environment has changed fundamentally, and so have the expectations placed on defense suppliers,” he said. “The threshold has shifted. Proven performance and reliable delivery are now the baseline requirements, not differentiators.” He added that the systems on display “are not concepts or prototypes,” but hardware “refined through operational experience in the most demanding environments any defense technology has faced.”
Elbit Is Already Inside Britain’s Military
Elbit Systems used its UK subsidiary to make a narrower but more concrete point at Farnborough. It does not need to win British business. It already has it.
The company showed its Thor and Magni-X uncrewed aerial systems, both backpack-portable, vertical-takeoff drones already in service with the British Army. A contract awarded through the Ministry of Defence’s Future Capability Group first put Magni-X into army units as part of a wider push to pair soldiers with autonomous systems. Elbit also highlighted electronic warfare work for the Royal Navy’s Maritime Electronic Warfare System Integrated Capability program, known as MEWSIC, and its X-Sight helmet-mounted display, which overlays sensor and mission data across a helicopter pilot’s field of view.
| System | Maker | Role | Real-World Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELLYON | IAI | Stand-off electronic attack and ISTAR aircraft | Unveiled at Farnborough on July 20 |
| Iron Beam | Rafael | High-energy laser air defense | Paired with Iron Dome in a layered system |
| Litening 5 | Rafael | Fifth-generation targeting pod | Flying with 28 air forces, used in March’s RAF intercept over Jordan |
| Thor and Magni-X | Elbit Systems UK | Backpack-portable VTOL micro-drones | Already in service with the British Army |
| X-Sight | Elbit Systems | Helmet-mounted display for helicopter crews | Wide-field overlay of sensor and mission data |
Farnborough asked none of these companies to alter what they showed. That was not true three weeks earlier, roughly ninety minutes from Paris.
Same Firms, Different Reception in Paris
Eurosatory, France’s biennial land and air defense exhibition, ran from June 15 to 18 outside Paris. French authorities barred Israeli government officials and a national pavilion, and limited private Israeli exhibitors to air and missile defense systems, keeping offensive weapons off the floor entirely.
More than a dozen Israeli companies that complied anyway found their booths boarded up overnight with wooden partitions, according to Israeli press reports from the show floor. Among the firms walled in:
- Smart Shooter, a maker of rifle-mounted fire-control sights
- Controp, an electro-optics and long-range camera manufacturer
- Orbit, a communications and intelligence systems firm
- Aeronautics, a tactical drone maker
- Marom
- Source
Controp’s representatives wrote directly on the wall blocking their own booth, saying its long-range cameras had “’defeated’ Iranian ballistic missiles, but lost to French short-sightedness.”
Israel’s Ministry of Defense called the move “cynical” and “discriminatory,” adding that it would keep promoting Israeli exports “despite French efforts to conceal Israel’s technological superiority from the global community.” IAI, Rafael and Elbit kept their own Eurosatory booths open because all three limited themselves to defensive systems there. At Farnborough days later, the same three companies showed precision-strike weapons and cruise missiles with no wall anywhere near them.
Paris has done this before. French authorities barred Israeli firms from the 2024 Eurosatory before reversing course, then partitioned Israeli exhibits again at the 2025 Paris Air Show.
Why Is Britain’s F-35 Pipeline to Israel Still Legal?
Britain’s High Court ruled in 2025 that London can keep exporting components for F-35 fighter jets bound for Israel, rejecting a challenge from the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq. Judges said it was not their place to override the government’s own security assessment, even though ministers had already suspended dozens of other arms licenses over Gaza.
The government suspended roughly 30 of Britain’s 350 active military export licenses to Israel in September 2024, citing a “clear risk” that UK-made equipment could be used to breach international humanitarian law in Gaza. It exempted components flowing through the global F-35 program, arguing that pulling out would jeopardize the entire fleet and, by extension, NATO. A parliamentary committee later questioned whether that carve-out holds up against Britain’s obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty and the Genocide Convention.
Research from the Campaign Against Arms Trade estimates the UK supplies around 15% of the value of every F-35, the jet Israel’s air force has flown throughout the Gaza war.
- Rights groups – Al-Haq, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch argue the F-35 exemption breaches Britain’s obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty and the Geneva Conventions.
- The UK government – Ministers say cutting F-35 components would endanger the global fleet and undermine NATO security, calling the carve-out an exceptional measure.
- The High Court – Judges declined to rule on the merits, saying it was not for the courts to override the executive’s own national security judgment.
That legal fight has not stopped British officers from working Rafael’s and Elbit’s stands this week, or the Royal Air Force from flying combat missions with Israeli-made targeting pods already mounted on its jets.
Proven Performance Becomes the Price of Entry
Farnborough’s own numbers explain some of the calculus. Defense firms make up half of a record 1,600 exhibitors this year, up from a historical 40%, as European defense spending posts its steepest rise since the Cold War. Ukraine’s war is in its fifth year. A ceasefire in the Gulf has collapsed.
That is the market Tourgeman described when he said combat testing had become a baseline rather than a selling point. It is also the market where the conflicts producing that combat data are the ones a London court and a Paris trade fair are still arguing over.
Farnborough runs through Friday. Whether Israeli firms get the same open floor at the next Eurosatory is Paris’s call, regardless of what the hardware just proved it can do.
