Israeli defense tech companies Airwayz and Tenna Systems have launched a strategic partnership that embeds Tenna’s real-time spectrum‑intelligence capabilities into OVERWATCH, Airwayz’s command-and-control and airspace-governance platform. The integration, already deployed through Israel’s National Drone Initiative (INDI), is operating in the field with additional data layers under development.
“OVERWATCH brings the ability to control the airspace, to understand which aircraft flies where and where to broadcast, like a control tower,” Airwayz CEO Eyal Zor told Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post. “The chaotic environment of drones in the lower skies - from 400 feet or 7,000 feet - showed us the outcome of non-controlled airspace and the missed potential to utilize drones. The new airspace control is all about drones and autonomous systems.”
Zor described OVERWATCH as “the brain to take over control of the chaotic lower airspace,” comprising airspace planning, unified operational-picture creation, and end-to-end management.
Airwayz’s OVERWATCH is a command-and-control and airspace-governance platform used by military, law-enforcement, and critical-infrastructure organizations worldwide, including the IDF, the Port of Rotterdam, and Israel’s National Drone Initiative. The company operates across the Middle East, the United States, and Europe.
“To smartly and safely command the airspace, you need to know if there’s any interference and current RF and GPS information,” he said. “Whether it’s over the city or on the battlefield, the spectrum is everything. Without control, you cannot command. Without information, you cannot do anything. Tenna provides the information for the spectrum.”
The companies said the integration gives defense and homeland-security operators a unified operational picture that combines airspace management with live radio-frequency (RF) awareness. According to Airwayz, the capability allows operators to identify zones at risk of RF interference before deployment and maintain command and control in GPS-contested environments.
Commercial drone operators are also expected to benefit from the platform, gaining visibility into spectrum-dense conditions and knowing the RF picture even before the platform takes off.
From the cockpit to the boardroom
The collaboration between Zor and Tenna CEO Avner Bendheim didn’t start with OVERWATCH. Zor told D&T that the collaboration of the two companies is rooted in his long personal and professional history with Bendheim as both served together in the Israel Air Force.
“We served together; it’s personal,” he said. “I’m happy that our collaboration extends past the cockpit.”
According to Bendheim, Israel’s busy and contested airspace makes it “a great testbed.” Still, the capability is already scaling abroad as more and more countries recognize the urgency of airspace control.
“All countries see that controlling the airspace is an issue. The world is watching and learning, and even if they haven’t seen the battlefield yet, it can happen within a day. A few months ago, the UAE was quiet. Now it’s contested,” he said.
“These capabilities have no borders, and most of the operation of our companies is abroad,” he added. “We took high-TRL capabilities that have been proven and combined them to enable an extremely effective tool that has saved lives and autonomous systems.”
Busy skies
The partnership began under INDI, where Tenna’s intelligence layer was first incorporated into OVERWATCH. It has since expanded into a broader operational capability.
“Spectrum interference is one of the most underestimated threats to safe and effective airspace operations,” Zor said. “Integrating Tenna’s intelligence layer into OVERWATCH means our defense and homeland security customers no longer have to choose between airspace governance and electromagnetic awareness; they get both in one operational picture.”
According to Bendheim, the integration addresses a challenge shared by both commercial and defense operators.
“Spectrum interference doesn’t discriminate between commercial and defense operations,” he said. “The OVERWATCH integration puts our real-time RF intelligence directly inside the platform operators already rely on. Whether you're managing commercial drone corridors or complex airspace environments, the ability to see the spectrum before you fly changes everything. INDI was a significant proof point.”
Tenna Systems, founded in 2023 and headquartered in Tel Aviv and New York, provides software-based spectrum intelligence that fuses airborne, space, and terrestrial data to detect interference, geolocate emitters, and strengthen electronic-warfare resilience without additional hardware. Its customers include commercial, civil, and critical-infrastructure operators in Israel and the United States.
“Airspace used to be defined by altitude, and now it’s more about advanced airspace management, including for remotely autonomous systems. It’s less and less a physical boundary and more the systems themselves, manned and unmanned,” Bendheim said.
“We’re giving the intelligence layer for commercial, government, and military customers to understand the spectrum, where to target the emitters and how to give resilience to all the systems,” he said. “We’re not only an intelligence tool; we enable effective autonomy. Giving this layer of intelligence to OVERWATCH and Airwayz is a natural transition for us to support effective autonomy across all domains.”