Two of the 50 entries in the Israeli Defence-AI Deployment Index fall in electronic warfare and signals intelligence. One is graded L2 · Contract and one L1 · Trial. Neither reaches L3 · Operational, which means that among the Israeli SIGINT companies the index covers, no named public source yet reports a military using the system in actual operations.
That is a small category for a country whose signals-intelligence reputation is large. The reason is the index's inclusion test rather than the state of the sector, and the distinction matters for anyone reading the number.
What this category covers and who is excluded
The index admits a company only where its core product is AI or autonomy applied to defence. Electronic warfare in Israel is dominated by the large primes, for whom electronic support, jamming and SIGINT sit inside broad portfolios in which AI is one component among many. Those firms are outside the index by design, a decision set out in full in why the Israeli primes are excluded.
What is left is the narrower set: companies whose product is software that ingests radio-frequency or communications data and applies machine learning to it. Two of those met the sourcing threshold. The grading rules and the full index are published alongside.
L2 · Contract — Cognyte Software
Cognyte Software (founded 2020, Herzliya Pituach) sells investigative and signals-intelligence analytics to state agencies. Israel Defense reported that the company won an agreement worth approximately $5 million with a Tier-1 national security agency in a NATO member nation, under which the agency would deploy Cognyte's tactical SIGINT platform to support operational investigations. Cognyte's own announcement of a separate approximately $5 million deal with a Tier-1 military intelligence agency in EMEA describes the same product line, and is a company source rather than independent reporting.
A further expansion was reported in July 2026, when an existing military intelligence customer in the Asia-Pacific region added a contract of approximately $15 million. In every one of these announcements the customer is unnamed. The index grades Cognyte L2 because publicly announced procurement exists and no independent public source describes the platform in operational use.
L1 · Trial — R2 Wireless
R2 Wireless (founded 2019, with a US office in Texas) builds passive radio-frequency sensing software. The Jerusalem Post reported that the company won a US Army competition, and covered its approach to wireless-domain defence in an interview. Globes has separately profiled the company's work on securing the wireless front.
In March 2026 the company issued a release describing global expansion and its ambition to build a passive RF sensing layer for defence and homeland security customers. That is a company statement and the index treats it as such. R2 Wireless is graded L1 because the public record establishes competitions, evaluations and interest rather than a publicly announced procurement contract or a reported operational deployment.
What the distribution shows
Two entries, no L3, and one of the two resting substantially on company-issued releases. Read narrowly, that is a statement about publication practice, not about capability. Signals intelligence is the part of the defence market least likely to produce a press release naming a customer, a quantity or a use case. Agencies that buy SIGINT analytics do not announce it, and vendors that want to keep selling to them do not either.
The consequence is systematic. Categories whose customers publish get graded higher than categories whose customers do not, and SIGINT sits at the far end of that spectrum. The same effect is visible next door in Israeli military cyber AI, where the customer is equally often described only as "a European national security agency."
It is also worth noting what the two entries have in common. Both sell software that sits on top of collected signals rather than hardware that collects them. Collection platforms — airborne SIGINT payloads, jammers, direction-finding suites — remain a primes' business, and the index does not attempt to cover them.
What would change it
Three things would move this category, in ascending order of difficulty.
A named customer in a contract announcement would let a reader verify who bought the platform. At present the index can confirm that money changed hands and nothing about where it went.
Independent reporting — a defence outlet, not the vendor — describing a named military using either platform would move that entry to L3. The threshold is deliberately blunt: an identifiable publisher, a dated report, operational use rather than an exercise.
Finally, more companies entering the category would change the shape of the finding. The index is a working list of 50, weighted toward firms with English-language coverage. Hebrew-only coverage of a smaller RF-analytics company would not currently surface, which is treated at length in the deployment evidence gap.
Limits of this reading
Two entries is too few to describe a market. It is enough to describe what has been published about a market, which is the only thing this index claims to do.
Both companies may hold contracts that are classified or otherwise unpublished. Neither grade is a judgement about the quality of the software, its accuracy, or its fitness for any buyer's requirement. The index records what a sceptical reader can open and read, and the thinness here belongs alongside the other thin categories the index reports as a finding.
Frequently asked questions
How many Israeli SIGINT and electronic warfare companies are in this index?
Two: Cognyte Software at L2 · Contract and R2 Wireless at L1 · Trial. The count is small because the index admits only companies whose core product is AI or autonomy applied to defence, which excludes the large primes that dominate Israeli electronic warfare.
Has any Israeli SIGINT AI product been reported in operational military use?
Not in this category at version 0.2 of the index. Both entries rest on contract announcements, competition wins and company statements. No named outlet has published a report describing either platform being used by a military in actual operations.
Why do these contract announcements never name the customer?
Intelligence agencies rarely permit disclosure of what analytics they buy. Vendors therefore describe customers as "a Tier-1 agency in a NATO member nation" or similar. The announcement is verifiable and dated; the buyer is not identifiable from it.
Sources
- idf.ai, The Israeli Defense-AI Deployment Index v1.0, 24 August 2026
- Israel Defense, Cognyte wins $5 million NATO intelligence contract as AI reshapes SIGINT
- Cognyte (company announcement), Cognyte secures ~$5M deal with new Tier-1 military intelligence agency in EMEA
- Yahoo Finance, Cognyte military intelligence customer in APAC expands partnership with new ~$15-million contract, July 2026
- The Jerusalem Post, Israeli deep-tech company wins US Army competition, talks wireless defense to 'Post'
- Globes, Israeli startup R2 secures the wireless front
- Business Wire (company announcement), R2 Wireless expands globally, building the universal passive RF sensing layer for defense and homeland security, 31 March 2026
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.