The year is 2028. A fleet of autonomous resupply drones weaves through a narrow canyon in a contested coastal region. No pilots. No radio chatter. Just algorithms, sensors, GNSS coordinates, and data links stitched together into what looks like a perfectly orchestrated machine.

Then, without a single shot fired, it starts to unravel.
The lead unit veers slightly off course. The “Blue Force” map on the command deck flickers. Coordinates begin to drift – not catastrophically, not obviously – but just enough to poison the system. Precision sensors lose confidence. Autonomy degrades. The mission quietly fails.

The cause isn’t kinetic. There’s no explosion, no jamming alert, no smoking gun. An adversary deployed a low-power spoofing array that corrupted the invisible environment the system depended on.

In the modern battlespace, you don’t need to destroy the asset. You just need to make the data lie.

This is not science fiction. This is the direction of modern conflict and increasingly, modern critical infrastructure. As systems become autonomous and connectivity-dependent, the electromagnetic spectrum is no longer a support layer. It is the frontline.

That’s why we’re excited to back Tenna Systems (formerly Tip & Cue). They’re building what we believe will become the platform that allows operators – military and civilian – to confidently say: All Systems Go.

Spectral Dominance Is the New Air Superiority

For decades, military superiority was about air, sea, and land. Today, all of those domains are mediated by the same fragile dependency: wireless connectivity. GNSS. Datalinks. SATCOM. Tactical radios. LEO constellations. The RF spectrum is now the nervous system of modern operations – and it’s under active attack.

Over the last decade, the supply of RF signals has exploded. Between Starlink and other LEO constellations, Earth observation satellites, civilian aviation, maritime traffic, and billions of mobile devices, the spectrum has gone from sparse to deafening.
Adversaries have noticed.

We’ve seen GPS spoofing incidents in commercial aviation rise dramatically. We’ve seen Russian EW systems disrupt satellite communications in Ukraine. We’ve seen precision weapons and autonomous platforms rendered ineffective not by interception—but by deception.

The lesson is clear: if you cannot trust the spectrum, you cannot trust the system.
And yet, despite how central this problem is, the way we manage the spectrum today is fundamentally broken.

The Invisible Crisis: A Missing Data Layer

Historically, spectrum awareness has been solved with hardware: dedicated SIGINT sensors, bespoke platforms, long deployment cycles, and billion-dollar programs.

That model no longer works.

Electronic warfare now moves at software speed. Threats appear, adapt, and disappear faster than hardware can be fielded. Meanwhile, the RF ecosystem itself is deeply fragmented—by regulation, by classification, and by decades of prime-contractor incentives that discouraged integration.

Sensors don’t talk to each other. Data is siloed. Creating a real-time, actionable picture of the spectrum requires rare expertise and access to multiple classified domains.

The result? There is no shared, real-time ground truth for the electromagnetic environment. This is the missing link in the ecosystem – and it’s exactly where Tenna plays.

Tenna: A Software Platform for the Spectrum

Tenna’s insight is deceptively simple: the world is already covered in sensors.
Aircraft, drones, ships, satellites, and cellular infrastructure are constantly measuring and interacting with the RF environment. The data exists. What’s missing is a platform that can fuse, normalize, and turn it into something operators can actually use.
Tenna is a software-first, hardware-agnostic platform that does exactly that. Instead of deploying new sensors, Tenna turns existing ones into a unified, real-time map of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Their platform includes:
• Arena – Continuous monitoring of RF coverage gaps, interference, and anomalies.
• Tracer – Precise geolocation of jammers and spoofers, typically within 50–200 meters.
• Halo – Embedded software “armor” that allows systems to maintain operational continuity in degraded or denied environments.

The magic isn’t just the algorithms – it’s the data network effect. Every new sensor integrated improves the fidelity of the map for everyone else. As signal density increases globally, Tenna’s advantage compounds.
This is why we believe Tenna is building a moat that hardware-centric players simply cannot.

 

 

A Wider Infrastructure Play

This isn’t only a defense story.

Commercial aviation is experiencing rising spoofing events. Maritime shipping faces navigation interference. Ports, energy grids, telecom operators, drone delivery networks, and autonomous vehicle fleets all depend on trusted positioning and connectivity. Autonomy doesn’t scale without spectral trust. If GNSS becomes unreliable, entire business models break. If interference goes undetected, risk compounds quickly.

Tenna has the opportunity to become the resilience layer for both national security and civilian infrastructure.

Founder–Market Fit That Actually Matters

Tenna’s team is a rare combination of operational depth, technical authority, and commercial execution:

• Avner Bendheim – Former Head of the Israeli Air Force’s Space Program and SIGINT Department. He has made real decisions under real operational pressure.
• Gabriel Bendheim – Brings commercial firepower from D-Fend, where he led pre-sales at scale in the EW and counter-drone market.
• Ronen Shatz – One of the most senior ELINT figures in Israel, responsible for virtually every major sensor deployed over the last three decades. His ability to attract top-tier talent is unmatched.

This team doesn’t theorize about the spectrum. They are living inside it.

That shows up not just in product depth, but in how Tenna navigates the notoriously difficult defense procurement landscape – lean, focused, and operator-driven.

Battle-Tested and Commercially Validated

Tenna’s situational awareness capabilities have already seen operational deployment with the IDF in one of the most contested RF environments on earth. On the U.S. side, they’ve won contracts with both the U.S. Army and Air Force. It validates Tenna’s ability to sell, deploy, and deliver inside the most demanding customer environment in the world. Bridging Israeli deep-tech innovation with U.S. DoD requirements is non-trivial – and Tenna is executing.

Why We’re In

At Viola Ventures, we invest in companies of consequence – those tackling problems that sit at the intersection of national security, critical infrastructure, and technological inevitability.

The world is going wireless. Autonomy is accelerating. The spectrum is becoming more crowded, more contested, and more weaponized.

Tenna Systems is building the platform that allows us to see, understand, and secure the invisible domain.
We’re proud to partner with Avner, Gabriel, Ronen, and the entire Tenna team as they define what spectrum superiority looks like for the next decade.

 

Alex Shmulovich is a Partner at Viola Ventures, leading investments in national security, traditional industries, and AI infrastructure.