Although scheduled long before the UAV attack at the Golani basic training base, the coincidental timing was certainly unsettling. The Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, together with Defense Ministry Director-General Maj. Gen. (res.) Eyal Zamir, Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Amir Baram and Directorate of Defense Research & Development (DDR&D) chief, Brig. Gen (res.) Danny Gold, last Monday ran the first test day of its kind to discover and prove new UAV interception capabilities.
The tests, in which eight of Israel’s industries participated, in the tests which Eight in the tests the Eight were conducted in a test field in southern Israel. The companies, from the largest (Elbit, Rafaelwhich, and IAI) to startups, presented technological solutions for intercepting UAVs. Solutions meeting Process Demonstration Stage criteria will be advanced to the accelerated development stage and IAI)and tested in the field.
In the competition, defense compcompanies loyed interception system prototypes developed by DDR&D and presented interception capabilities, for UAVs at various ranges and flight altitudes. To deploy new operational capabilities within months, when the results are fully analyzed, the Defense Ministry will choose to accelerate production to go into development and accelerate production. Defense companies' CEOs, senior IDF officials, and defense ministry officials participated in the test.
For obvious reasons, we cannot elaborate on these developments too much at this time, but contrary to previous statements, none of the short-range solutions are connected to either laser or the “Keren Or” system addressing short range missiles, also in development at the same time. The defense establishment aims to ultimately develop a system similar to the multi-layered system protecting the country from missiles that will have the capability of adapting itself to ongoing changes in the field in efforts to address various rockets, UAVs, and drones.
Better late than never
The 2024 battlefield looks nothing like previous battlefields. Technology plays a more decisive role than ever, and the line between “civil” and “military” technologies - defensive or offensive, cheap or costly – is entirely blurred.
Meanwhile, and very quietly, during the months of the war, many civil and defense companies have joined in development efforts. Following long months of intensive work around the clock, they presented their considerable progress and formulated several solutions, including some based on rare collaborations between startups and well-established companies. It’s all “Blue & White.”
October 7 exposed not only weaknesses in the technological means installed on the Gaza border - from the failure of the “Brain”, Israel’s computerized intelligence defense system, through to the collapse of the sensor wall and the “Roeh-Yoreh” (Sees-Fires) system. The IDF also was caught unprepared for Hamas attack paragliders, and later, as we sadly saw last week, for UAVs from Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqis.
The “Black Sabbath” exposed not only weaknesses in the technological means installed on the Gaza border - from the failure of the “Brain”, Israel’s computerized intelligence defense system, through to the collapse of the sensor wall and the “Roeh-Yoreh” (Sees-Fires) system. The IDF also was caught unprepared for Hamas attack paragliders, and later, as we sadly saw last week, for UAVs from Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqis.
By the first days of the ground operation in Gaza, Hamas’s Chinese toy drones proved a dangerous, sometimes deadly, threat that, surprisingly, hadn’t been seriously considered in advance - and for which no serious response had been prepared.
Drones you can buy on Ali Express for $100 repeatedly hit our soldiers and forces.
Moreover, the deadly UAVs (whose effectiveness could be learned from the past two years’ war in Ukraine, and could have been prepared for advance) resurfaced as a dangerous threat. For known reasons (their smallness, low altitude,s, and slow velocity), they’re hard to detect, track,ck, and shoot down with traditional aerial defense systems.
The purse strings open with a dagger to the neck. The drones were the first problem urgently addressed by DDR&D at the outset of the Gaza ground operation. It was the first swallow of exciting collaboration for war purposes of civilian companies, with products serving a variety of purposes, and the defense establishment. The drones were just for starters: Software systems and AI in various fields have been upgraded, automatic control systems painted in khaki, and warning devices adapted.
“We closed the capability gap about the drones in the southern sector in the first three weeks of the war,” says Col. Nir Weingold, 39, head of the planning, economic, and IT department at DDR&D. “As in intelligence systems, there are lots of civilian startups in the defense field against UAVs that are in high demand across the globe. At the start of the war, we had stocks of them in warehouses. Over the past year, we’ve bought off-the-shelf, ready-made products from over 100 startup companies in fields such as drone identification and disruption, robotics, and remote control. At the same time, we accelerated our development.
For neutralizing drones, the supply was indeed particularly large. The “D-Fend: system, which can be carried on one’s back, and used by the police and security companies, automatically detects suspicious drones and neutralizes them. The “Robotican” system has the autonomous “Goshawk” drone that homes in on the enemy drone, traps it in a special net while in flight, and brings it down in a safe area. “ThirdEye,” which developed an electro-optic detection system that, until the war, operated drones used for measuring plots of land and complex security matters, has also adapted its products to detect enemy drones.
The IDF has also adopted the automatic, fast “Optimum” networks developed by Aerobatics, that ordinarily support big cities in managing events and and monitoring large-scale building projects. Even before the war, the company had developed a special system named Iron Drone for intercepting enemy drones and UAVs.
DDR&D is also looking into a further option for neutralizing attack drones. They connected Skylock’s special vest that vibrates and gives a warning signal when it identifies a drone in the area, and Smart-Shooter’s “Pigyon” computerized target system. The target is attached to the gun, and after the trigger is pulled, a precision bullet destroys the drone. Oh, and Skylock was originally born out of technology for detecting stolen cars.
Alongside this, the IDF is also checking its own UAV system, until now used for field intelligence. Israeli company, Air EV’s huge eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft), used for passenger transportation, will soon be onboarded for supply missions to forces deep in the field.
And the Roboticon’s veteran “Rooster” device, presently serve IDF’s dedicated units, inspecting Hamas and Hezbollah tunnels before the soldiers go in. The device is a hybrid of sorts of a drone and a robot, originally developed to help evacuate the wounded from natural disaster zones and survey areas contaminated by radiation or toxic gases. It has an outer cage that protects it, can easily transition from flight to rolling over or bouncing, and can maneuver on the ground.
Before October 7, 2023, DDR&D was working with 206 Israeli startups. Now, amid the war, that figure is 272, a 32% increase. Before the war, 50% of the startups were annually getting Defense Ministry orders to the volume of NIS 20 million. That number has since doubled.
More than half (54%) of the startup companies operate in the field of UAV remote control. The others specialize in sensors and detectors (14%) and digital and AI (13%). Others contribute to the IDF in cyber, aerospace, and more.
Now you remember? Why didn’t you bring them on much earlier?
Col. Weingold, “At the end of the day, that’s the defense budget. Building up force, and the development and procurement processes, are limited and determined in keeping with preference assessments. Resources are just too tight. In an interview during the war, former financial advisor to the chief of staff, Reem Aminoach, put it this way: ‘They’re always talking about how we’re a small, smart army. In practice, we’ve become a wise and tiny army.’ This has worked to our detriment. We’re a very small country with the challenges and capabilities of a superpower.”
International business information firm Pitchbook submitted its annual defense report. The State of Israel stars in three sections in two respects: The October 7 failures on the Gaza border, represent the collapse of advanced technological defense means that collapsed in real-time.
Countered by: their historic zenith that November night when, in the Arrow 3’s first operation use, a missile was first intercepted in space, outside of the Earth’s atmosphere; on the nights of April 14, and October 1 of this year with the preemptive interception of hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles and UAVs simultaneously launched at Israel.
Sadly perhaps, for the average Israeli, intercepting huge missile barrages at Israel has become routine, but for world experts, is regarded as a phenomenal technological event. Thousands of complex technologies of all possible kinds are crammed into a single interception missile – both adopted from the civilian market and developed by Israel’s defense industry’s greatest minds. Not to mention the complex, partly AI-based, synchronization and control systems that operated those nights.
The connection between the country’s defense organizations, from the IDF through to the Mossad and the manufacturers of these special technological means these organizations demand, goes through DDR&D. This is a unique civil-military department in the Defense Ministry, headed since 2016 by the father of the Iron Dome, Chief of Staff Forum member, Brig. Gen (res.) Danny Gold.
As far as DDR&D is concerned, the deterrence of the Iranian missiles at Israel is the result of three decades of complex development, combining various civil and technological fields – an amalgamation characterizing the organization’s work. DDR&D presently employs 800 people, 20% of whom are civilians. It deals with procurement, project management, directing R&, D and mediating between the industry and the IDF. DDR&D also has many in-house developments. Approximately 99% of DDR&D employees have academic degrees, most having completed their academic studies via the army.
DDR&D also has its AI Center of Excellence, mainly aiming to improve existing defense arrays already deployed, making them more precise; tunnel detection; intelligence gathering by plan, es, and more. DDR&D has won over 30 Israel Defense Prizes over the years, mostly for developments that wil remain covert for years to come. DDR&D ordinarily has a close relationship with Israeli technology companies and has, through the years, developed a special relationship with the defense industry giants (Rafael, IAI, Elbit, etc.).
Defense Ministry Director-General Maj. Gen. (res.) Eyal Zamir stubbornly promotes a preference for Blue & White companies, primarily in the fields of AI and robotics. In recent years, the organization has understood that real breakthroughs aren’t isn’t always in plain sight, i.e., within the system, DDR&D recognizes almost any Israeli civilian startup company whose products may support the defense system.
And the drones are merely a prelude to collaboration with civilian companies. In the war’s first 48 hours, DDR&D urgently asked the big defense companies for a detailed outline of all the products in their warehouse that could be purchased immediately. Things moved fast from there, according to demands in the field. As Hezbollah started firing at sensors and border cameras in the north, the IDF had to quickly install new ones in their place, and DDR&D went out to look for existing products on the private market.
When the ground operation in Gaza kicked off, and the ground forces started flooding Israel with vast quantities of data – millions of gigabytes of document files, audio recordings, and video clips, AI systems had to analyze and quickly produce relevant information from this mountain of information. DDR&D quickly found civilian companies with proven powers of analysis, inference,ce, and extraction of information from video, including field Leaderder, startup Airis Labs, and companies specializing in picture analysis such as Cortica. They proved very helpful in identifying victims, and in analyzing the vast amount of information the IDF was sending from Gaza.
Meanwhile, startup companies specializing in analyzing social media were brought on board. NextDim, which monitors online campaigns for money laundering and extortion for banks and financial institutions, adapted its platform to analyze postings of hate and incitement against Israel online. At a later stage, the Air Force used civilian AI systems to develop “swarm intelligence” – precisely synchronizing the various bodies in the skies - the same AI technology showcased by Intel in its mass drone displays.
The Panda D9 - star of IDF forces in Gaza - is a regular D9 for civil usage converted by IAI to be activated remotely, without endangering the forces, for dangerous engineering tasks such as breaking through obstacles and clearing routes. This is a world first for ground robotic tools of this kind playing a serious role in battlefield ground operations. The IDF also uses a system manufactured by Elbit and others, that remotely activates armored vehicles such as APCs for certain tasks.
Some of the developments used in the field seem a far cry from their original purpose in civilian life: the Vayyar developed a “radar on a microchip” facilitating 3D imaging of concealed objects (beneath the skin, behind a wall) for medical uses such as detecting breast cancer, tracking and monitoring seniors falling, and for the automobile industry. The IDF has converted this technology for demands such as detecting small movements in suspicious areas.
Frenel, which developed technology firefighting technology for agriculture, enabling the detection of objects through smoke and mist, or distinguishing between a bird and a UAV, is in the development stages for integrating the IDF needs.
But it’s not all high-tech. DDR&D also takes pride in relatively low-tech ideas, whose use in the field, saves lives. Convex Engineering company has developed a mobile kit that opens up protecting fighting forces’ “backs” at entrances to buildings and tunnels. This is an “umbrella” made of stiff blades that open up, “locking” the entrance from the inside, that can be folded away again upon exit.
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A further example is Alumor’s, originally biological, invention - a tiny electro-optic water purifier known as H2O Pro, designed for disaster-stricken areas. In the IDF, it looks like a cigarette lighter hooked onto each soldier’s drinking water bag. When needed, it can purify any water source in the field of germs and bacteria, allowing soldiers to survive in harsh conditions.
Col. Weingold, can existing Israeli startup companies provide all the defense establishment’s needs?
You can find Israeli startups in all fields. What Israel is short of, is advanced production capabilities – fast, autonomous robotics. We’d like to see more of these as, right now, they could shorten the transition from the prototype to the serial production stage of innovative devices and faster introduce changes and adjustments as well as quickly change the designation.”