An Apache helicopter landed in the Freedom Wing during the air force flight, the 75th independence celebrations for the State of Israel April 26, 2023/without
Seven years ago, an Air Force Apache helicopter crashed while landing at the Ramon base.
The pilot Major Dodi Zahar was killed, another pilot was seriously injured. The investigation of the accident revealed that a rod that transmits steering commands from the pilots' sticks to the tail rotor suddenly failed and the combat helicopter suddenly lost its steering shaft.
This accident gave the Air Force a big boost to the issue of predictive maintenance: Identifying faults while they are starting to occur and more can prevent major damage and crashes. Today, the army's first Apache has already flown with the Israeli Odysight.ai system, which does exactly that: the company scatters cameras at critical points in the aircraft, which record sensitive parts that are not Always accessible even to mechanics, and by analyzing the image with the help of artificial intelligence, a crack that begins to widen or a part that begins to come loose is detected in time.
In Apache, the part that came loose was only checked once every five years, during a level D inspection at the maintenance unit of the Air Force (IA) in Tel Nof .
Today, the prototype has a camera in the same place that allows it to be constantly monitored, a matter that is becoming increasingly important when some of the Air Force's Apache helicopters are already 30 years old.
"The Air Force is not the only one operating old airplanes and helicopters today, due to the high prices of new platforms. The entire world of military aviation faces the challenge of continuing to fly them safely," explains Ofer, who has been flying the Hercules for 50 years and the Air Force plans to operate them even more from a decade
American Sihawk helicopter.
"We will have 20 cameras at critical points, which can detect in time, for example, a crack that can lead to a tail disintegration"/US NAVY
In the Air Force, which is known for investigating and learning from mistakes, lessons were learned.
These days, Odysight received a contract from the Ministry of Defense to install its system in the new Sihok helicopters, which are nothing more than used helicopters retired from service in the US Navy, refurbished and operated by the Air Force for the Navy's steels.
"There are systems today that claim to identify faults before they occur based on vibration analysis .
Our system is camera-based and more accurate," explains Odyssey's CEO, Col. (Military) Yehu Ofer, former commander of the Hercules squadron, commander of the Sde Dov base and IDF attaché in Italy.
"In Sihawk, we will have 20 cameras at critical points, which can detect in time, for example, a crack that can cause a tail to fall apart."
Odysight's system has another advantage: thanks to the information it collects, it can dramatically shorten the necessary pre-flight checks, by 40% of the time required today, and enable savings in mechanic work and shorten the turnaround time between sorties, a critical issue in war.
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Ofer
"The Boeing door that came apart had four screws that were probably not tightened properly, and a camera would have detected the process in time"/Odysight
Odysight was established in 2015 and operates from the industrial park in Omer in the south, and is based, among other things, on the research of Prof. Kobi Bortman, former head of an equipment division in the Air Force, and currently a professor in the mechanical engineering department at Ben Gurion University.
The main investors in the company Arkin Holdings of businessman Modi Arkin and Sons, which controls it with 52% of the shares, and institutional investors such as Phoenix and Meitav Dash.
The company, which has raised 44 million dollars to date, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange at a value of 63 million dollars, after almost doubling its value in the last month.
The company is already turning to civil aviation as its next field.
Ofer: "We could have located the door that came apart from the Boeing plane during flight due to a maintenance problem before it came apart. There were four screws that were probably not tightened properly, and a camera would have recognized the process in time. Civil aviation makes decisions more slowly than the military, but we aim to be the strong maintenance standard its".
At the same time, the company, together with Elbit, is developing a fault detection system for unmanned aircraft.
In the Iron Swords War, the Air Force lost several drones, and most of them were not shot down by enemy fire. Without a pilot who can detect a developing malfunction with his senses, and when the unmanned aircraft are no longer great aviators, Odyssey's technology can be just as important.
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