‘It works!’: The Ness Ziona company that solved NASA’s big problem

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NASA is primarily known in Israel as the American space agency, the elite team of test pilots and brilliant engineers who managed to land on the moon, develop the space shuttle, and land research spacecraft on Mars. These are the people who defeated the Soviet Union in the most expensive race in human history.

However, NASA also engages in aviation research, identifying challenges and problems, and developing solutions for them. Today, for example, it is working on developing efficient manned drones and a supersonic passenger plane that will dramatically shorten flight times without creating sonic booms that prevent it from flying over land, halting the revolution attempted by Concorde 50 years ago.

Recently, NASA received a mission to develop wildfire firefighting as part of the need to address the increase in large-scale fires caused by the climate crisis. Most of this mission is carried out from the air. In the first hours of a fire outbreak, it will be determined whether it will be a small local event or a large, very expensive event with heavy consequences. NASA aims to deploy significant airpower immediately upon learning of a fire, in the initial phase of fire fighting, to stop or contain the fire.

The drone revolution occurring on the battlefields in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon will also change civil aviation and our lives. With delivery drones dropping packages at our homes instead of couriers in vans or motorcycles, cargo drones flying heavy and urgent deliveries over traffic jams between hospitals, logistics centers, airports, and seaports, and drones serving firefighting, rescue, and policing forces. And of course, passengers in manned drones, “flying taxis,” continuing the revolution started by the helicopter but not completed due to high purchase and operation costs.

“For this to happen, an efficient system is required to prevent collisions between aircraft. Collisions between drones endanger not only them and their cargo but also us walking underneath them. A system that prevents collisions between drones and manned aircraft such as helicopters,” explained Lt.-Col. (Res.) Moshe Cohen, CEO of Ciconia and one of its founders. “Today there is an air control system with human controllers managing the traffic, and in most aircraft, there is still a human factor that can identify collision danger and respond. In an era where thousands of drones will fly simultaneously, just over Israel, they cannot be controlled by humans. Every aircraft will have a system that identifies situations where the aircraft endangers another aircraft and prevents the collision.”

Ciconia team during a test with an IDF representative, 2020 (credit: Adir Haruvi)
Cohen is one of the legendary helicopter pilots of the Air Force. He commanded a Cobra squadron, was the first commander of the first Apache squadron. He also earned a Chief of Staff commendation in Operation “Blue and Brown” in 1988, where he, along with pilots Eran Pierre, Dan Laluz, and Yalin Marcelo, rescued four Golani soldiers from Lebanon under fire, using the skids and doors of their Cobras.

Ciconia, the scientific name for the stork, whose ability to fly in large flocks without collisions the company aims to replicate in the drone era, was founded by Cohen with Lt.-Col. (Res.) Gil Yanai, former test pilot and commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center and Boeing 787 captain at El Al, and Lt.-Col. (Res.) Dr. Ilan Zohar, an expert in electrical engineering and drones and UAVs. They were joined by another test pilot and algorithm expert Lt.-Col. (Res.) Eran Bar-On, flight test engineer Ronen Shtuffman, and software engineer Misha Foyarkov.

Drone and helicopter in a Ciconia test, 2023 (credit: Eran Nir, Ciconia)
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“The Air Force has already lost helicopters and planes, and not a few pilots and passengers in collisions even before the helicopter disaster. But only after I was discharged and already in the industry did I start working on the solution. We built an initial algorithm to show the Air Force we have a solution. The Air Force tested the solution in its simulator. Senior helicopter pilots came to evaluate the system in the simulator. We learned that in a manned aircraft, it is important not only to warn the pilot in time and indicate where to turn to avoid an accident, but the command must also make sense to him. If he is used to turning right, it won’t help if we tell him to turn left. We brought another version.”

“The Air Force installed the systems on two Black Hawk helicopters. Test pilots got off the helicopters and praised: ‘It works.’ We planned two sorties, one for data collection, parameter calibration, and a test sortie. There was no need for the second sortie. Our C&CAS worked well on the first sortie.”

The base is an inexpensive system that will be installed in every aircraft, broadcasting flight data and its current route a few kilometers. Thus, each aircraft can build its sky picture without needing a central system. A human pilot will receive a warning and, if necessary, an immediate emergency maneuver command, while a drone will receive a maneuver command from the system to its flight control computer.

Cohen says, “Large passenger planes have had a TCAS system to prevent collisions for years. These planes fly at great distances from each other, except when landing and taking off. If we take such safety distances for the drone era, there will be no room in the skies for many of them. Our system allows packing the skies tighter, putting more aircraft in the same airspace, while still reducing the likelihood of collision. We believe the commercial demand already exists today and will grow significantly in the coming years.”

Drone and helicopter in a Ciconia test, Yeruham 2023 (credit: Dror Ben David)
The Air Force has not yet equipped itself with the system, and Ciconia continues to develop it in experiments it conducts with Robinson helicopters and civilian drones, funded by the BIRD Foundation, a binational American-Israeli fund, and private investors. “The BIRD Foundation has helped and continues to help along the way. In the last year and a half, there has been a surge, we have conversations with two serious customers, and many inquiries. More and more entities are encountering the problem, are concerned, and are looking for solutions.”

One of these entities is NASA, which has integrated the team from Ness Ziona and Beersheba into its work teams for air traffic control and preventing drone and UAV accidents, alongside giant companies like Airbus. Ciconia’s solution, known professionally as C&CAS (Coordination & Collision Avoidance System), already appears in NASA’s ConOps (Concept of Operations) documents as one of the technologies that will revolutionize aerial firefighting.

The commercial potential is significant: beyond selling the system to every aircraft, costing up to thousands of dollars per unit depending on the aircraft, using the system will require a subscription fee for operation and maintenance, potentially generating billions in annual revenue. The system performs with high success rates in tests and simulations, and the company is working on giving the C&CAS the ability to prevent collisions between aircraft with the system installed and those without it.

The first field expected to adopt the technology is wildfire firefighting in North America, as early as next year. “The most burning problem in aerial firefighting, and we encountered it in Israel as well. Firefighting and police forces use drones to locate fire hotspots and identify the pace of spread. During a fire, firefighting pilots operate in harsh conditions, very low altitude, smoke, often heavy heat, and great fatigue. It is impossible to identify drones from the air. Therefore, to avoid a collision, when a firefighting helicopter or plane arrives, all drones must be on the ground. However, the drone is lifesaving equipment, and it is crucial to allow the firefighter to use the drone even when firefighting planes operate nearby. We have proven in many tests and demonstrations: with the C&CAS, planes, drones, and helicopters can operate together without the risk of collision.”

Another problem that the C&CAS solves is preventing the dropping of fire retardants from planes on firefighters on the ground in forest fires. “In a forest fire, the pilot does not see firefighters on the ground. Accidents have occurred in the past due to dropping retardants near firefighters on the ground. In one incident, a tree collapsed, killing one firefighter and injuring two others; in another, firefighters were washed away with the liquids several hundred meters down a steep slope. The C&CAS will prevent such events,” says Cohen.

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