One of the 50 entries in the Israeli Defence-AI Deployment Index is classified as active protection, and it is graded L2 · Contract. There is no L3, no L1 and no L0 in the category, because there is nothing else in it. For a country whose active protection systems Israel built are among the most widely fitted in the world, a category of one demands an explanation, and the explanation is the index's own inclusion test rather than a shortage of Israeli capability.
This is one of three categories the index reports as almost bare. The emptiness is the finding.
What the index counts as a company in this category
The index admits a company only where its core product is AI or autonomy applied to defence. That is a deliberately narrow test and it does most of the work here.
Israel's best-known active protection systems are products of the large primes. European Security & Defence's survey of Israeli vehicle active protection systems describes Rafael's Trophy and the Iron Fist family now associated with Elbit, and Shephard has reported both securing vehicle protection contracts. Those are substantial programmes. They are also lines within very broad portfolios, in which sensing, tracking and countermeasure logic are components of a hardware product rather than the product itself. On that basis the primes fall outside the index, a decision argued in full in why the Israeli primes are excluded.
Strip the primes out and the category is close to empty. One company remained at version 0.2. The grading rules and the full index are published alongside this page.
L2 · Contract — BIRD Aerosystems
BIRD Aerosystems (founded 2001, Herzliya) sells the Airborne Missile Protection System, or AMPS, a self-protection suite that pairs missile-approach warning with a directed infrared countermeasure. European Security & Defence reported an AMPS delivery in October 2025, the entry on which the index's grade rests.
The company's contract record is unusually well documented for an entry at this grade. Armada International reported in September 2025 that BIRD had been awarded a contract by the Israeli Ministry of Defense Directorate of Defense Research and Development to develop, install and test AMPS with its compact DIRCM on an Israeli Air Force Apache AH-64A. EDR Magazine reported the same award, and separately reported a multi-million-dollar contract to fit AMPS with SPREOS DIRCM to a Boeing 737 BBJ head-of-state aircraft, with delivery and EASA supplemental type certification to follow. A further contract to supply AMPS for Mi-17/8 and Mi-35 helicopters to an African air force was reported in March 2025.
Several of those are development, installation and testing awards rather than deliveries into service. The index grades BIRD Aerosystems L2 because publicly announced procurement exists across multiple customers and no independent public source describes AMPS being used by a military in actual operations. Reporting the outcome of a self-protection system in use would, by its nature, mean reporting an engagement, and that is not something operators publish.
What the distribution shows
A category of one, with no operational tier, tells a reader two separate things and it is worth keeping them apart.
The first is about market structure. Active protection is a hardware-and-integration business with long qualification cycles, live-fire testing, platform certification and export licensing attached to it. Those are barriers that favour incumbents with facilities and programme histories, not software companies. Israeli AI in this area remains a primes' business, and the index cites the UK's Project THESEUS sustainment programme as a parallel case: the Ministry of Defence selected Rafael's AI-based battlefield resupply solution and awarded a demonstration contract to Marlborough Communications with Israel Aerospace Industries, rather than to startups. Where a Western defence ministry has gone shopping for autonomy applied to a hard logistics or protection problem, it has bought from primes.
The second is about evidence. Even the one entry that does qualify cannot reach L3, because the event that would demonstrate operational use is an engagement, and engagement reporting attributed to a named product is exactly what this index does not do and operators do not publish. That is a structural ceiling on the category, not a comment on BIRD Aerosystems.
The same pattern appears in the two sibling thin categories, targeting and fire control and military logistics and sustainment, and the three are treated together in three categories came back almost bare.
What would change it
New entrants are the most likely source of change. A company whose product is the perception and decision layer of a protection system — threat classification, sensor fusion, countermeasure selection — sold as software to platform integrators would meet the inclusion test and would enter at whatever grade its published evidence supported. Nothing in the current record shows such a company in Israel with English-language coverage.
For BIRD Aerosystems specifically, an L3 would require a named public source reporting a military using AMPS operationally. The index will not construct that from an incident report, and does not link products to named strikes or casualty events under any circumstances.
The third route is a change to the inclusion test itself. The index could be widened to admit the primes' active-protection lines, and the category would immediately look full. It has not been widened, because a directory that counts Rafael and Elbit alongside a fifteen-person startup answers a different question from the one this index asks, as the deployment evidence gap sets out.
Limits of this reading
One entry describes one company. It does not describe Israeli active protection, which is a large and long-established field almost entirely outside this index's scope.
Nothing here should be read as a capability judgement about BIRD Aerosystems or about the primes. The index holds no performance data, no test results and no comparative information of any kind. It records what has been published, by whom, and when, and in this category what has been published is a run of contract announcements and no account of use.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the index list only one Israeli active protection company?
Because it admits only companies whose core product is AI or autonomy applied to defence. Israel's principal active protection systems belong to Rafael and Elbit, where such capability is a component of a hardware portfolio rather than the product, so those firms fall outside the test.
What grade does BIRD Aerosystems hold and why?
L2 · Contract. Multiple publicly announced contracts exist, including an Israeli Ministry of Defense award for AMPS development, installation and testing on an Israeli Air Force Apache, and no independent public source reports the system being used by a military in actual operations.
Does an empty category mean Israel lacks the capability?
No. It means no company whose core product is defence AI or autonomy in that area met the index's evidence threshold. The index treats these thin categories as a finding about where startups have not gone, not about national capability.
Sources
- idf.ai, The Israeli Defense-AI Deployment Index v1.0, 24 August 2026
- European Security & Defence, BIRD Aerosystems AMPS delivery, October 2025
- Armada International, BIRD Aerosystems awarded contract to develop, install and test its Airborne Missile Protection System (AMPS), September 2025
- EDR Magazine, BIRD Aerosystems awarded contract to develop, install and test its AMPS featuring its DIRCM on Israeli Air Force Apache AH64A
- EDR Magazine, BIRD Aerosystems secures new contract to provide AMPS with SPREOS DIRCM for Boeing 737 BBJ head of state aircraft
- European Security & Defence, Vehicle active protection systems from Israel
- Shephard Media, Active vehicle protection comes to the forefront as Trophy and Iron Fist secure contracts
- Raksha Anirveda, UK Ministry of Defence selects RAFAEL's solution for battlefield logistic resupply for Project THESEUS
- Raksha Anirveda, UK MOD Project Theseus: Marlborough Communications Limited and Israel Aerospace Industries awarded contract
Independent publication of idf.ai. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli Ministry of Defense, or any government body. Compiled entirely from publicly published sources. No classified, restricted or non-public information. Listed companies may dispute any entry: send the published source that contradicts it and the entry will be amended or removed.