by Amir Bohbot
AIDF is intended to serve as a living bridge made up of experts, recruiting stars from Israel’s hi-tech industry to bring the forefront of technology and creativity into the IDF’s decision-making.
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An Artificial Intelligence Division for the IDF was established by the C4I and Cyber Defense Directorate, under the command of Maj. Gen. Aviad Dagan, and was done in response to the military's security failure on October 7.
The dramatic move within the C4I Directorate gave rise to the unique reserve unit AIDF.
This unit is intended to serve as a living bridge made up of experts, recruiting stars from Israel’s high-tech industry to bring the forefront of technology and creativity into the IDF’s decision-making processes across various units. The overarching goal is clear: efficiency and effectiveness.
Interview with an AIDF official
Lt. Col. N., head of a staff branch in the division and the officer leading the establishment of AIDF, gave Walla an exclusive look at innovative projects designed to streamline the IDF’s decision-making process across a range of areas.On October 7, Lt. Col. N. left his home immediately after the first launches and rushed to headquarters at the Kirya, where he was then responsible for air defense domains within the C4I Directorate. A clear objective stood before him: to sharpen IDF strikes against launch sites. Later, he also took part in missions as a remotely piloted aircraft operator.
During his service in the C4I Directorate, working with the Air Force and diverse teams, he implemented an AI-based algorithm for an operational home-front defense process. The process runs in real time and helps make precise decisions in identification and interception capabilities within the air-defense domain.
While describing the new processes, N. also referred to the C4I Directorate’s knowledge centers and talent pools: “Without these strong people, we won’t be able to produce high-quality research and deliver things that meet the battlefield at a very high pace. This touches all the joint systems in the IDF. There are places where the Israeli military has no competition, but there are many places where we operate in a changing, transformative world at a dizzying pace.
"If we try to advance only from within the IDF, we simply won’t be able to deliver the required speed. Therefore, we created paths and lines of thinking - how we manage to join the major companies developing the big things and bring them, with the necessary adaptations, for military use. One of the central steps is establishing the AIDF reserve unit, which is currently in recruitment stages and will expand to about 100 positions in the first phase. Already today it’s showing initial, modest sparks."
Project “Osnat” is one of the processes Lt. Col. N. spoke about with pride. Its goal is to construct scenarios and examine desired decision-making processes. “Building an exercise is a very big task. You need to seat several people to analyze certain enemy behavior, decide what you want to practice, imagine the scenario, and then build an exercise within that, including alternative developments that could occur.
"The project still has room to grow, but it’s already in use. Imagine a scenario of the IDF working alongside bodies like MDA, the Israel Police, and the Fire and Rescue Service, and it actually integrates into the way a complete IDF headquarters exercise is conducted.”
“It’s still in its early stages,” Lt. Col. N. said. “The challenge is very big: finding the suppliers you want, understanding that your requirements are valid, verifying that your price estimates are accurate before you even go out to procurement. We’re talking about insane efficiency gains. When you look at a large organization like the IDF, the ability to go to procurement is faster and more precise, and with more suppliers, and ultimately to deliver more value for less money.”
What is done with all the information?
The goal of the AI Division is to integrate into all IDF AI processes.“The IDF is a huge organization with many service members, and we generate orders, instructions, directives, and information sources that reach a wide range of fields. These things change all the time, and the organization is young with high soldier turnover. Therefore, even before the operational process, AI entering the organization increases the IDF’s effectiveness by enabling the retrieval of information that already exists within the organization itself, and integrating information from many people.
"This is true for the Operations Directorate, Military Intelligence, the Technology and Logistics Directorate, the Manpower Directorate, and the rest of the military. AI already exists in many places in the IDF, and there is still enormous room for it to grow - especially in the worlds of command and control,” said Lt. Col. N.
Building a situational picture against the enemy during critical moments brings up the painful moments of October 7.
“The goal is to produce a picture that helps the person make a decision that affects the battlefield. It’s super complex because today I can exploit sensors that exist on almost every weapons system at a very high level and with very high accessibility. The question is how one manages to distill it into decision-making. That’s the challenge,” explained Lt. Col. N. "We brought in a lot of information, and now the tip of the pyramid is not the information itself, but deciding on the operation. That’s where AI also comes in, and it will enter the worlds of detection and warning.”
The next step is teaching the “machine” to analyze content learned from video footage. “If I can turn it sufficiently well into text, and feed it into the information pool along with all the other data - that’s one step,” Lt. Col. N. clarified. He noted that a single camera doesn’t interest him, but masses of videos like those that flooded social networks at a time when the security system did not understand where the main centers of terrorist activity were on October 7.
“I can point to a phenomenon, tell you that someone is broadcasting a tone of distress, that the nature of the reports presents an event that is significant, which can all be achieved using AI.”
In the Artificial Intelligence Division, they believe that the multitude of projects will bring about a cultural change in the IDF as an organization, as demonstrated by the joint project with the IAF in the air-defense domain.
“The mission of the AIDF unit will be to work across branches with the various bodies. It will have a central place, and it will enable work in different arenas in our way, to kick off projects, certainly in places where there are no software houses that can provide a solution,” Lt. Col. N. explained.
The C4I Directorate is already processing the onboarding of hi-tech stars it seeks to integrate into reserve service.
“Through these actions, we’re already doing things differently to help,” Lt. Col. N. said. “I believe in personal mission. I truly invite them and anyone who wishes to come and take part. In these worlds, no one person holds all the knowledge, and often the approaches we encounter in the civilian space allow us to bring tremendous value. We’ve accumulated a lot of information over the past two years. In some places, we’ve managed to complete the process, and in others, less so. I hope that together we’ll do the best work we can-and safeguard the security of the state.”
Amir Bohbot
Source: https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-880818
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