by Yonah Jeremy Bob
Israel's MAFAT also wants to engineer viruses or germs to detect explosives in the field as part of the process of neutralizing them.
 |
Artistic depiction of how innovative laser defense system would function on the battle field
(photo credit: Courtesy)
|
Senior Defense Ministry official Brig.-Gen. (res.) Danny Gold on Tuesday said Israel’s air defense lasers could shoot down the drones Iran has been sending against Ukraine.
Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) conference at Tel Aviv University, the Director of MAFAT [Directorate of Defense Research & Development] said his ministry is working on developing “the next generation of using lasers.”
He talked about multiple successful tests destroying rockets “with a very sophisticated laser weapons system. We have done the same for mortars, rockets and UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). The Iranian UAVs they are sending to Ukraine? It’s the same concept. We could shoot them down also.”
Israel must avoid "the valley of death"
Gold warned that in order for his ministry and others to keep up with technological advancements, they needed to avoid “the valley of death.” This was a name he and others sometimes give for the gap between wanting to make a large new idea happen which will take a long time, bringing together the immense financing needed and somehow keeping the ship afloat during the many years of uncertainty along the way.
In order to overcome this dilemma, he said, “We changed inside our organization, to process faster. If [ministry affiliated] researchers want to work with a start-up, it can happen in [only] two months. In the past, it was one year. I hope we can shrink it to two weeks.”
A part of an unmanned aerial vehicle, what Ukrainian military
authorities described as an Iranian made suicide drone Shahed-136 and
which was shot down near the town of Kupiansk, amid Russia's attack on
Ukraine, is seen in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, in this handout picture
released September 13, 2022 (credit: THE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
DIRECTORATE OF THE UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)Likewise, he said that, “the one-year process for setting up” a new AI platform, “we are shrinking to one month.”
Besides using startups to speed up and alter the funding and bureaucracy dynamics, he said that the ministry is partnering with foreign investors from Canada, Japan and Singapore with common interests as well as “raising money with some pension funds in Israel to invest in our organization.”
All of this goes along with still partnering with Israeli defense giants like Rafael, Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries.
Further, he said, the ministry is using AI algorithms with new kinds of sensors and complex physics applications to break through immense amounts of raw data.
Next, he said that his ministry has designed an app “which is very fast and we change the operator [situation so] the operator doesn’t need to be an expert in the field.”
Moreover, he said, “We want to take the DNA revolution… and synthetic biology – we want to engineer things like viruses or germs to detect explosives in the field and then radiate some light and we can get the light withdrawn," in the process of destroying the explosives.
"This can also have medical uses, in engineering and with sensors. It’s another emerging technology which is booming,” he added.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-731559
No comments:
Post a Comment