Building a drone bridge from Israel's Negev to NATO’s eastern flank

Rezekne, Latvia, early September 2026, is quiet in a watchful way. Looking at it first through my innovation diplomacy lens, then through my photojournalist's lens, the geography tells its own story: dense birch forests giving way to open, swampy lowland close to the Russian and Belarusian border, a pivotal node on NATO's eastern flank.

Addressing the assembly, Krists Avots, parliamentary secretary to the prime minister of Latvia, reflected candidly on the wake-up call that reshaped his country's defense establishment. "On May 7, in this very city, two drones came by," he told the audience. "The government fell. We were caught somewhat unprepared. I think it was something to remember: that we need to be always ready, and being always ready means having the right capabilities that match what's the latest and greatest."

That May incursion followed a pattern of low-altitude airspace penetrations, met at the time with hesitation and a lack of counter-UAS response. Baltic citizens now watch for emergency airspace alerts on their phones as a matter of routine.

I know that sound. Two decades ago, I spent time documenting the “Tzeva Adom” sirens over the Western Negev, the one that gives residents 15 seconds to find concrete cover from incoming rockets fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Standing in that Rezekne auditorium, tens of kilometers from the Russian and Belarusian frontiers, I heard the same acoustics of a border under siege. Later, at a drone integration workshop outside Riga, the security protocol mirrored an active combat deployment.

For a decade, my photojournalism has followed landscapes under pressure, from the salt chimneys rising along the receding Dead Sea to the kinetic friction of the Western Negev's border envelope. Along this cold, marshy front line, the collision of East and West creates a different kind of pressure, and it leads the same place mine does: back to the battle-tested innovation hubs of the Negev, where survival has long depended on technology built not to break.

Days before I landed in Latvia, I stood inside Start-Up Nation Central's Tel Aviv headquarters for the demo day of the SouthUp DefenceTech Accelerator's third cohort. SouthUp's home base and live sandboxes sit in the Western Negev along the Gaza border, but this event was brought to Tel Aviv deliberately, putting frontline southern founders in the same room as more than 20 defense venture funds, institutional investors, and senior officials from MAFAT, Rafael, and Elbit.

Jointly run by SouthUp and Hamitbah alongside the HLS Innovation Community, the accelerator’s selection process was uncompromising: out of more than 120 defense-tech startups evaluated across Israel, exactly seven companies made the cut. Tech7 Chairman Yoram Sadan and Program Director Ron Reis emphasized to the room that selection went far beyond raw technology. The non-negotiable bar was whether a venture could absorb rapid business growth, scale globally, and deploy solutions forged in Gaza border operations, such as directly into NATO’s eastern theatre.

Three of those technologies stood out as tools built for survival. SelfS has built a microchip lighter than a single battery that gives drones an offline digital brain, letting them map underground tunnels with no GPS signal, a direct answer to subterranean infiltration whether along the Gaza border or the forested Belarusian frontier.

Cipax has built a self-healing communications link that keeps drone pilots connected through complete electronic warfare blackouts. Baxera has built a passive acoustic array that detects incoming low-altitude drones by sound alone, without broadcasting a signal an adversary could trace.

These systems were forged in the world's most contested airspace, and taking them to Latvia tests them against dense pine forest, marshy bog, and freezing winter - conditions the Negev desert never offers. A system that can navigate both a dusty tunnel and a snowbound forest earns its place anywhere on NATO's flank.

An Optical Target Seeker venture is already evaluating a Latvian assembly plant for its smart optronics, to keep production and intellectual property inside Europe. And an Agricultural Robotics Platform has pivoted from precision farming to rugged perimeter security, patrolling border stretches where human sentries face brutal weather and terrain.

Latvia's Economics Minister Viktors Valainis opened the forum without hedging. "The link between security and the economy has become very direct," he said. "For Latvia, positioned on the eastern border of the European Union and NATO, the dual-use sector is both an existential defense necessity and a strategic economic engine. Latvia has surged defense spending from 3% to over 5% of GDP. Our national goal is to double the size of our economy by 2035, and dual-use industries are the primary spearhead."

That is the opening Hamitbah and SouthUp exist to fill. In a working session, Jevgeņijs Rjascenko-Saraks, head of Innovation and Research Policy at the Latvian Defense Ministry, walked me through the integration pathway for Israeli innovators, routing our portfolio through Latvia's Autonomous Systems Competence Center for live trials under heavy jamming at the Selija military range, alongside a local corporate footprint to access joint European Defense Fund bids.

Laura Strovalde, deputy director of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), described a two-billion-euro dual-use deal pipeline and stressed that international joint ventures need local incorporation to anchor long-term production. Behind both conversations stood Irina Rubincika, LIAA's representative in Israel, whose coordination set this pipeline in motion following the Latvian ambassador's recent visit to the Western Negev. UniLab Defence, the technology transfer consortium linking Latvia's four leading research universities, offered the academic foundation I am now working to connect directly to Sapir Academic College's Faculty of Technology in the Western Negev.

Israel's Ambassador to Latvia Sandra Simovich framed a wider vision for bilateral relations. While hardware and drones dominate the headlines, she pointed to another expertise forged in the Western Negev: societal resilience, first-responder methodology, and emergency community management. Two decades under security pressure have shaped a resilience triangle in Negev municipalities, linking rapid emergency response, mental health support, and community trauma infrastructure, a model she sees as directly relevant to Baltic societies now bracing for hybrid border threats.

This diplomatic vision aligns with the grassroots civil work of Lina Farber and her organization, Jewnited.lv, formed in the immediate aftermath of October 7 to lead public diplomacy delegations of Baltic parliamentarians, journalists, academics, and medical leaders to Israel.

During our exchanges in Riga, Lina described how border incursions are transforming Baltic public consciousness. "What people are not prepared for here is resilience tech, learning first responders and how to deal with emergencies," she told me, noting that phone-based airspace alerts have suddenly brought border threats into daily life. Her goal with Jewnited.lv is to deepen Latvia-Israel relations through long-term civil, academic, and societal bridges.

Preparing her next delegation for late November, which includes senior medical academy professors and military health directors, she described a shift already underway: "I would love to adjust the program to be less tragic, more looking to the future, looking to what Israel can give to the story through innovation and development in times of constant pressure."

A senior Baltic strategy consultant put the principle behind all of it plainly in a closed-door session at the summit: "Trust is an active piece of defense infrastructure. If companies do not share operational problems openly, development lags. Small countries cannot afford stovepiped innovation."

Standing on the historic battlefields that for centuries served as the brutal collision ground between Russian and German empires, I looked out across the pine woods, mist-covered lakes, and concrete boundary markers along the border corridor, a landscape that gave away nothing of the severe tension sitting just beyond it.

The electronic warfare disrupting GPS signals over the Baltic Sea runs on the same doctrine used against tactical networks in the Middle East. The loitering munitions crossing into Baltic airspace share a direct lineage with the ones I have watched fall near my own home.

Rezekne and Sderot share little more than a place on a border line. Sderot and the Western Negev have spent two decades building battle-tested defense and resilience technology under fire, an experience Rezekne is only now starting to recognize it needs. Latvia is already ranked the seventh-largest drone exporter in Europe, and that capacity - paired with the Negev's field-tested edge - is what innovation diplomacy is built to connect.