Structurally the airframe is a tubular fuselage with cruciform wing and tail surfaces that fold flat for storage inside its launch canister and open automatically after launch.² A single electric motor turns a rear-mounted, two-bladed pusher propeller, giving the type a quiet, low-thermal-signature flight profile compared with piston- or jet-powered rivals such as the HESA Shahed-136.^2,3 Guidance runs through a gimbaled electro-optic/infrared seeker with automatic target tracking, an encrypted datalink, and a man-in-the-loop control scheme: the operator watches the live feed, commits to an attack, and can abort or re-attack a different target in the final seconds if conditions change.^4,5 That combination — cheap-enough electric propulsion, an hour of loiter time, and a human still making the final call — is the case UVision makes for the Hero-120 against both fire-and-forget guided missiles and the more numerous, less precise one-way drones fielded elsewhere in the loitering-munitions category.

The Hero-120's clearest recent claim to attention is procurement scale rather than combat record: in October 2025 the US Army awarded a five-year, up-to-$982 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to UVision USA and integrator Mistral Inc. for the type, described by trade press as the largest publicly disclosed US procurement of loitering munitions to date.^11,12 Whether the Hero-120 is in service today therefore has two different answers depending on which force is asked: it is a fielded, funded program for the US Marine Corps, US Special Operations Command, and the US Army, and a recently delivered or still-arriving system for Argentina, Hungary, and at least one undisclosed NATO buyer, while independently confirmed combat employment of the Hero-120 specifically, as opposed to its smaller sibling the Hero-30, remains thin in open sources.^7,16

Published dimensions for the Hero-120 are reasonably consistent: one 2024 US trade-press account gives a length of about 1.34 m and a folded width of about 1.4 m, figures that fit a canister-launched airframe of this size.⁵ Weight and warhead figures are where sources diverge. Army-Technology and several manufacturer-linked summaries list a roughly 12 kg airframe carrying a 4.5 kg warhead; the specialist reference site Designation Systems separately puts all-up weight, including the launch canister, at about 18 kg; and older or lower-end citations, including some current retail-aggregator listings, still describe a 3.5 kg warhead rather than 4.5 kg.^2,3,17 The most defensible reading is that the 4.5 kg, dual-purpose shaped-charge-and-fragmentation warhead reflects the type's current production standard, while the 3.5 kg figure traces to earlier marketing material or a lighter configuration.²

Endurance is the one performance figure that holds steady across nearly every source reviewed: about 60 minutes of loiter time.^2,3,5 Speed figures are less consistent, with Designation Systems citing a loiter speed as low as roughly 90 km/h and a terminal-dive speed up to 260 km/h, while a 2024 US trade account gives a flat maximum speed of 185 km/h; operating altitude is typically cited at 360-900 m, with one source noting a demonstrated capability up to 5,500 m.^2,5

Launch flexibility is one of the type's more consistently documented traits. The Hero-120 fires from a single man-carried canister with a bipod mount, from 4-, 6-, or 8-cell vehicle-mounted multi-canister racks, and from naval platforms; the US Marine Corps has integrated it onto the LAV-M light armored vehicle, the JLTV, and the Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel under its Organic Precision Fires-Mounted (OPF-M) program.^3,6 In May 2023, UVision USA demonstrated an airborne launch from a Bell 412EP helicopter at Yuma Proving Ground, releasing the munition at altitude, handing tactical control between operators, and striking a ground target after covering roughly 50 km, with the round retaining a 30 km control range from the launching aircraft.⁶ That test fed into a dedicated modular aerial launcher for helicopters that UVision unveiled in June 2025, developed with US integrators Fulcrum Concepts and Mistral Inc. and pitched as installable on Western and NATO-standard rotorcraft without deep avionics integration.¹⁴ The US has separately explored launching the type from fixed-wing C-130 transport aircraft, a concept that drew commentary in Indian defense media about potential lessons for India's own indigenous loitering-munition programs, though no Indian purchase or induction of the Hero-120 itself has been reported.

A flyaway unit cost of about 150,000 USD, with a gross unit cost (including support and integration) of roughly 202,500 USD, appears in Shephard Defence Insight estimates; neither UVision nor its government customers have published an official per-unit price, so this figure should be read as an independent analyst estimate rather than a confirmed contract price.^5,6

UVision Air was established in 2011 and is controlled by businessman Aaron Frenkel through the Magnus holding company; former IDF deputy chief of staff Yair Naveh became chairman in 2015, and the company is led today by CEO Ran Gozali with roughly 300 employees.¹ The Hero product line grew outward from that founding point across the following decade into a family spanning the man-portable Hero-30 up through the vehicle- and rail-launched Hero-900 and Hero-1250, with the Hero-120 occupying the anti-armor middle tier aimed at infantry and mechanized units rather than special-operations teams alone.^1,3 The Israel Defense Forces became an early customer: UVision disclosed in July 2020 that the IDF had taken delivery of the smaller Hero-30 and used it successfully in combat, a milestone that predates most of the export activity described below.¹⁶

Export activity accelerated from 2021. UVision signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Germany's Rheinmetall in October 2021 under which Rheinmetall, through its Italian subsidiary RWM Italia, manufactures and markets Hero systems across Europe.^7,10 That partnership's first disclosed European sale, revealed through EU procurement documents in December 2022, was a roughly 3.88 million euro contract for Italian special forces to receive the smaller Hero-30 under an "urgent mission requirement," not the Hero-120 covered in this article.⁷

Latin America's first Hero customer followed within days: on 27 December 2022, Argentina's Ministry of Defence signed a contract, through Israel's Directorate of International Defense Cooperation, for both Hero-120 and Hero-30 systems, described by Israeli officials as the first such sale to a Latin American country.^8,9 Argentine sources characterized the initial buy as a small training batch for the army and marine corps rather than a large operational order.⁸ Hungary followed in July 2023 with a contract in the "low three-digit-million euro" range through the Rheinmetall-UVision partnership; Rheinmetall's own announcement did not disclose which Hero variants or how many units were included, though several trade outlets separately reported it as a Hero-120 order, with deliveries running from 2024 into 2025.¹⁰

In the United States, the Marine Corps selected the Hero-120 for its OPF-M requirement in June 2021, targeting integration onto the LAV-M, JLTV, and Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel.⁶ US Special Operations Command followed in June 2024 with a 73.5 million USD contract, running through 2029, for a special-operations-optimized Hero-120SF variant offering, according to UVision, improved payload capacity and greater deployment flexibility across launch platforms; production for US orders runs through UVision USA's Virginia facility and a South Carolina plant opened with SAIC in March 2024 to satisfy Buy American Act requirements.⁵ Brazil was reported in January 2024 to be advancing negotiations of its own for Hero-30 and Hero-120 systems, though as of this writing no signed Brazilian contract has been confirmed, so it is treated here as a reported prospect rather than a completed sale.

UVision continued expanding the program's reach through 2025: a modular aerial launcher for helicopters in June, a multi-layered AI "Common Operating System" in September intended to coordinate Hero-120, Hero-400, and Hero-1250 rounds alongside SpearUAV's rotary-wing Viper munition as a single networked force, and the acquisition of SpearUAV itself in November 2025.^14,15,1 The largest single milestone came on 7 October 2025, when the US Army awarded UVision USA and Mistral Inc. an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to 982 million USD for Hero-120 systems, building on the Army's earlier Lethal Miniature Aerial Missile Systems program, with deliveries expected to begin in early 2026.^11,12 An undisclosed NATO member in Europe placed a further order, reported in the low three-digit-million-euro range, for several hundred Hero-30, Hero-120, and Hero-400 systems produced through RWM Italia, with deliveries planned from early to late 2026.¹³

Open-source reporting on the Hero-120's own combat record lags well behind its procurement record. The type that UVision has publicly confirmed in actual combat is the smaller Hero-30, which the company said in July 2020 had already been used successfully by IDF units after completing testing and evaluation; company and trade materials describe the wider Hero range, including the Hero-120, as "operationally proven" and field-tested by "leading fighting forces," but without naming a specific engagement in which a Hero-120 was fired at a real target.^16,3

No source reviewed for this article documents Hero-120 use in Ukraine by either side, in the 2020 or 2023-2024 Nagorno-Karabakh fighting involving Azerbaijan, or in operations attributed to Serbia or Colombia; the loitering munition most closely associated with Azerbaijan's 2020 campaign is Israel's own IAI Harop, a separate anti-radiation design from a different Israeli manufacturer, and it should not be confused with the Hero-120.¹ Given Israel's general reluctance to export weapons usable against Russia, and Russia's own use of Iranian- and domestically-produced loitering munitions against Ukraine, no Hero-120 presence in that war has been reported in the sources checked here. Readers researching "Hero-120 combat use" should treat the type, for now, as a heavily procured but only lightly combat-documented system, a status shared with a number of other recent-generation Western loitering munitions still early in their fielding.

The Hero-120 sits in the middle of a six-tier family that scales from man-portable anti-personnel use up to long-range strategic strike, with the smaller members sharing the same cruciform-wing configuration and, per Rheinmetall's own marketing, a common ground control terminal across variants.^3,4

The Hero-120SF is a dedicated special-operations variant developed for US Special Operations Command under the June 2024 contract, which UVision describes as offering improved payload capacity and broader launch-platform flexibility relative to the baseline Hero-120, without a public breakdown of exactly which internal components changed.⁵ Because Rheinmetall and UVision have repeatedly declined to specify which Hero variant a given foreign contract covers, some deals referenced in this article, including Hungary's, are described by trade press as Hero-120 orders without official confirmation of the exact model mix.

The United States is the Hero-120's largest disclosed customer, spanning three separate programs: the Marine Corps' OPF-M requirement (selected June 2021, integrating the type onto the LAV-M, JLTV, and Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel), US Special Operations Command's Hero-120SF buy (73.5 million USD, June 2024, through 2029), and the US Army's indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract worth up to 982 million USD (awarded October 2025, deliveries from early 2026).^6,5,11

Argentina became the first Latin American Hero customer under a 27 December 2022 contract covering both Hero-120 and Hero-30 systems, initially described as a small batch intended to train army and marine corps personnel; by mid-2024, the Argentine Army's Special Operations Forces Group (AFOE) had publicly shown Hero-family systems as part of its own inventory.^8,9

Hungary signed a contract in the low three-digit-million-euro range in July 2023 through the Rheinmetall-UVision partnership, with deliveries running 2024-2025; several trade outlets identify the order as covering the Hero-120 specifically, though Rheinmetall's own announcement withheld variant and quantity details.¹⁰ An unnamed NATO member state placed a further order for several hundred Hero-30, Hero-120, and Hero-400 systems in the low three-digit-million-euro range, with deliveries planned through 2026.¹³

Israel, as the type's country of origin, is treated here as a likely operator on the strength of the IDF's confirmed use of the smaller Hero-30 and UVision's domestic ties, though a specific documented Hero-120 engagement by Israeli forces was not found in the sources reviewed.¹⁶ Brazil was reported in January 2024 to be negotiating for Hero-30 and Hero-120 systems, but this remains an unconfirmed prospect rather than a signed deal as of this writing.

Set against the AeroVironment Switchblade 600, the Hero-120 occupies a similar anti-armor niche but with meaningfully different reach: the Switchblade 600 is generally cited at a 40-plus km range and a 40-minute endurance, while the Hero-120's current-generation figures of 60-plus km and 60 minutes give it both greater standoff distance and roughly 50 percent more time over a target area before it must strike or return.^5,12 Both systems share a broadly similar tactical concept, a gimbaled EO/IR seeker feeding a human operator who commits to the final attack, but the Hero-120's wider adoption across US Marine Corps, Army, and Special Operations programs simultaneously gives American forces two independently sourced systems in roughly the same weight and mission class rather than a single vendor for organic precision-strike loitering munitions.

Against Israel's own IAI Harop, the comparison runs in the other direction: the Harop is a considerably larger, faster, longer-endurance anti-radiation weapon built to hunt hostile radar emitters over hours rather than an hour, whereas the Hero-120 is a smaller, canister-launched round built for a soldier or vehicle crew to engage a directly observed target such as a tank or fighting position.¹ The two systems come from different Israeli manufacturers and serve adjacent but distinct roles within the same loitering-munitions category: the Harop trades portability for stand-off suppression-of-air-defense range, while the Hero-120 trades range for the ability to be carried, launched, and retargeted by a small ground unit within minutes.

What are the Hero-120's specifications?

Sources converge on an airframe of roughly 12-18 kg depending on whether the launch canister is included, a 3.5-4.5 kg dual-purpose warhead (with 4.5 kg reflecting the more current figure), about 60 minutes of loiter endurance, and a stated range that has grown from around 40 km in earlier material to more than 60 km in current manufacturer and US Army contract descriptions.^2,3,5,12

How much does the Hero-120 cost?

No government buyer has published an official unit price. Shephard Defence Insight estimates a flyaway unit cost of about 150,000 USD and a gross unit cost, including integration and support, of roughly 202,500 USD.^5,6

What is the Hero-120's range?

Current manufacturer material and 2025 US Army contract coverage describe a range in excess of 60 km, up from approximately 40 km in Rheinmetall's product materials and a 50 km figure in a 2024 US trade account, most likely reflecting genuine product improvement over the type's production life rather than inconsistent reporting of a single fixed spec.^2,3,5,12

Is the Hero-120 in service today?

Yes, with several forces, though at different maturity stages: the US Marine Corps selected it for OPF-M in 2021, US Special Operations Command holds a dedicated Hero-120SF contract running through 2029, the US Army's roughly $1 billion IDIQ deliveries were expected to begin in early 2026, Argentina and Hungary have both signed contracts with deliveries into 2025-2026, and an undisclosed NATO member is due deliveries through 2026.^{6,5,11,8,10,13}

How does the Hero-120 compare to the Switchblade 600 and other rivals?

The Hero-120 offers greater range and endurance than the AeroVironment Switchblade 600 in its current-generation figures, while both share a similar gimbaled-sensor, man-in-the-loop attack concept aimed at armored and high-value targets; against Israel's own IAI Harop, the Hero-120 is the smaller, shorter-endurance, more portable system built for direct ground-unit use rather than the Harop's longer-range anti-radiation mission.^5,12,1

Who makes the Hero-120, and how many have been exported?

UVision Air of Israel designs and originally manufactures the Hero-120; in Europe, Germany's Rheinmetall produces and markets it through Italian subsidiary RWM Italia under a 2021 cooperation agreement, and in the United States, UVision USA and integrator Mistral Inc. handle production and support. No total production or export figure has been publicly disclosed; confirmed buyers include the United States, Argentina, and Hungary, alongside at least one undisclosed NATO member, with Brazil reported as a prospective additional customer.^{1,7,11,8,10,13}