Lieutenant Colonel Itzhar Jona, who heads Israel Aerospace Industries,
spoke about “loitering munitions” — what he called a “politically
correct” name for Suicide Drones. They are a hybrid of drone and missile
technology that have “autonomous and partially autonomous” elements,
and are “launched like a missile, fly like an UAV [unmanned aerial
vehicle],” and once they identify a target, revert to “attack like a
missile.” Jona called the Suicide Drone a “UAV that thinks and decides
for itself,” then added, “If you [the operator] aren’t totally clear on
the logic, it can even surprise you.”

Jona praised the advantage
of the Suicide Drone because the operator “doesn’t have to bring it home
or deal with all sorts of dilemmas.” The Suicide Drone will quickly
find a target using its internal logic, which Jona explained in this
way: “It carries a warhead that eventually needs to explode. There needs
to be a target at the end that will want to explode. Or it won’t want
to and we will help it explode.”