Elbit Systems
Elbit Systems is an Israeli military technology company founded in 1966 as a spin-off from the Haifa electronics group Elron. It is headquartered in the Matam high-tech park in Haifa and listed on both the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and Nasdaq under the ticker ESLT. Michael Federmann chairs the company; Bezhalel Machlis is chief executive and president. The firm has grown from a domestic avionics house into the primary supplier of land systems and unmanned aerial vehicles to the Israel Defense Forces, with wholly-owned subsidiaries including Elbit Systems of America, the electro-optics house Elop, the land and C4I division, and the electronic-warfare and signals-intelligence arm Elisra.
The product line spans tactical UAVs, loitering munitions, electro-optics, electronic warfare, artillery and armoured-vehicle systems. The best-known airframes are the small Skylark family carried by infantry sections and the Hermes 900, a medium-altitude long-endurance drone operated by a number of foreign air forces. The SkyStriker loitering munition — a single-use kamikaze drone that lingers over an area before diving on a designated target — was demonstrated jointly with Diehl Defence in September 2026 and has been exported to Azerbaijan, among other customers. Elop supplies the optics on Israeli tank sights and aircraft targeting pods; Elisra builds self-protection suites for rotary and fixed-wing aircraft.
Customers reach well beyond Israel. The company has delivered equipment to armed forces in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Romania, Sweden, Belgium, Australia and Brazil, with local production in several of them. In Europe its land arm has supplied artillery and training systems; in North America its US subsidiary builds helmet-mounted displays, night-vision gear and ground vehicle sights for the US Army and allied forces. For the financial year 2025 Elbit reported revenue of US$7.94 billion, operating income of US$671 million and net income of US$534 million, with roughly 20,537 employees across its global footprint. The order backlog disclosed on the company’s own site stood at US$22.6 billion.
Several controversies attach to the firm. Investigators in Colombia pursued bribery allegations tied to local procurement; the UK subsidiary Instro Precision has repeatedly been targeted by direct action over components used in munitions sent abroad; and a NATO corruption investigation named Elbit entities. In October 2025 and again in April 2026 Belgian authorities seized shipments at ports and airports, alleging irregularities in the export paperwork, and in France cargo workers at a Paris airport refused to load Elbit freight. Protest camps have formed outside Elbit sites in the Czech Republic, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, and several European pension funds have divested from the company on ethical grounds.
Elbit sits in an unusual position: a prime contractor that is both a national-security instrument of a small state and a global exporter competing with the much larger American and European primes. Demand for its UAVs, loitering munitions and electronic-warfare products has grown with the war in Ukraine and with European rearmament, which is reflected in the backlog. The next few years will test whether the political friction around its exports keeps pace with that order book, or begins to narrow it.