Federmann joined Elbit when his El-Op company merged with it in 1998. That doubled it in size. Elbit was naturally going to benefit from the global growth of the UAV market however, the 700% growth of Elbit over the following decade was also largely due to Federmann and CEO David Ackerman's leadership of Elbit Systems. They embarked on an ambitious global buyout strategy for the sake of growth. The strategy has made Elbit into a multibillion-dollar multinational.