DAYTON — Leaders of the state’s aerospace hub in Dayton are heading back to Israel for renewed efforts to build on technology partnerships and perhaps persuade Israeli defense and aerospace companies to bring operations to the Miami Valley.

The Israeli companies specialize in unmanned aircraft, intelligence and surveillance support and image generation services including geo-specific databases. Those specialties fit with the needs of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as well as Dayton’s drive to develop itself as a center of unmanned aircraft expertise.

This week, officials of the Dayton Development Coalition and Joe Tuss, Montgomery County’s director of economic development, will head to Israel. As a follow-up, Director Kerry Taylor of Ohio’s aerospace technology hub in Dayton will be in Tel Aviv for a March 20-22 meeting of the U.S. trade group Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The Dayton delegations plan meetings with Israeli business representatives.

In early 2010, Dayton, Montgomery County and the Dayton Development Coalition jointly established the region’s trade office in Haifa, Israel. The University of Dayton and Wright State University support that relationship.

The Dayton region relies on Uri Attir, the trade office’s point man in Haifa, for connections with that country’s aerospace and defense companies.

“Our international business development with Israel is just that: a relationship. It requires ongoing interactions and opportunities to meet face to face,” Tuss said. “The goal is to keep that going.”

Some connections already exist. STAN Solutions LLC, a sensor technologies company in Dayton, markets a surveillance camera developed by an Israeli company, Adaptive Imaging Technologies. J. Tony Manuel, STAN Solutions’ chief executive officer, said his company is working with the Israeli company to begin producing the camera in Dayton, to make it easier to serve the U.S. market.

The University of Dayton-led Institute for Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology (IDCAST) has a relationship with Israel’s Tiltan Systems Engineering Ltd., Tuss said. Tiltan’s customers for image generation systems and related software include Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

Taylor, a former U.S. Air Force officer who was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv in the mid-1990s and developed relationships then with Israeli defense companies, said he hopes to refresh those relationships in hopes of encouraging companies to establish operations in the Dayton region.

Taylor leads the aerospace technology hub that former Gov. Ted Strickland established in 2009. The University of Dayton, the city, county, Dayton Development Coalition and CityWide Development Corp., Dayton’s development arm, are partners in the hub.

Much remains to be done in building Dayton’s status as a center of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) — the planes and their sensors. Obtaining federal approval of designated flying space in the region for testing military and civilian uses of the planes is critical, Dayton’s advocates said.

Officials haven’t publicly projected the number of jobs they hope the industry could generate over time in the region.

Sinclair Community College, which offers training courses for operating unmanned aircraft, will host an Ohio UAS conference April 17-18 at its downtown Dayton campus, 444 W. Third St.