The Israeli air force is set to invest "big sums" in acquiring unmanned air vehicles in a bid to build a three-tier force. A senior air force officer told Flight InternationaI that the new force would increase the variety of missions performed by UAVs: "If we had twice the number of UAVs, we would have missions for all of them. The demand is high and increasing constantly." In the past five years, the Israeli air force has slashed the operational cost of its UAVs by 60%, taking the average cost of a flight hour down to about $1,000. The service will soon phase out its Israel Aerospace Industries Searcher 2s and will base squadrons on the medium-altitude Elbit Systems Hermes 450 (Zik), the IAI Heron 1 (Shoval) and IAI's high-altitude, heavy Eitan.
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机译：以色列空军将“大笔资金”用于购买无人驾驶飞机，以建设一支三级部队。一位高级空军官员对国际飞行组织说，新部队将增加无人机执行的任务的种类：“如果我们的无人机数量增加一倍，我们将为所有无人机执行任务。需求量很大，而且还在不断增加。”在过去的五年中，以色列空军将其无人机的运营成本削减了60％，使一个飞行小时的平均成本降低至约1,000美元。该服务即将淘汰其以色列航空航天工业Searcher 2，并将在中空Elbit Systems Hermes 450（Zik），IAI Heron 1（Shoval）和IAI的高空重型Eitan基地部署中队。
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