Feature: From smartphones to smart goggles, Israeli army is going through technological revolution

By Keren Setton

JERUSALEM, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army is in the midst of a technological revolution in which it is feeding off civilian technological advancements, making adaptions necessary to military life.

This is a significant departure from the past, in which the military looked inwards to develop solutions.

The changes the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is making will alter the way it fights on the battle ground and modify its daily routine.

For years, the Israeli military has been fighting untraditional armies - guerilla organizations, non-nation entities, that have an edge in warfare in heavily populated areas.

"The enemy is trying to blend into the space, underground, in natural reserves, within populations and also in cyberspace," a senior Israeli military commander, head of the Lotem technological division, told reporters in central Israel earlier this month. "The enemy has disappeared. We need to be faster and more precise in order to overpower him."

The Lotem unit is the military's largest software producer with thousands of soldiers at its service. It is the army's research and development (R&D) unit.

The Israeli army is more hi-tech than ever, with more advancements to come, as revealed in the briefing.

"This is a change in our state of mind," said the commander, citing the last two years as the beginning of an accelerated process.

One of the flagships of the IDF's modernization process is the launching of the army's smartphone which has been in development with Motorola and is expected to be rolled out in the coming year.

Col. Avi Duek, head of the systems and projects department in the unit, said his department aims to create synergy between interception capabilities, tanks, planes, naval and infantry units.

"We want to communicate more transparently," said Duek, "The new technologies, and specifically the smartphone, will flatten hierarchies."

In the past, commands were reported through a rigid chain - from soldier to commander. This will now become obsolete and the message will spread faster and more accurately. The implications on the battlefield are drastic.

But the smartphone potentially exposes the army to threats that were not present in the past, including the potential of an unwanted entity infiltrating its network, or the machine itself left behind beyond enemy lines.

According to Duek, these threats have been addressed. In addition, the unit has to guarantee wide-reaching and continuous cellular coverage beyond the borders of the country and "above and below ground." Its battery power lasts 12 hours.

Zero delay in delivering messages must also be guaranteed - a few seconds of delay on a YouTube video is insignificant for a home user, but for a soldier in the field, it might mean the difference between life and death.

Envisioning how the phone will impact the way the army conducts its battles, Duek said it will create "a revolution in the operational culture" of the IDF.

The true revolution is in how the army is now open to technological developments in the civilian world.

According to the senior military commander, the unit now needs to update its software every two months, a dizzying pace. Each update must then be distributed down to all army units.

"We want to leverage technologies that exist in the civilian market," said Duek, adding the army is taking these new technologies "to the brink" in order to tailor to the army's needs.

The unit is also in the experimental stages of new goggles that have the potential of saving lives of injured soldiers or civilians. The goggles will enable a paramedic with basic training to receive live instructions from a surgeon who is not on the field. This will enable the goggle-wearing paramedic to conduct complex life-saving procedures he is not normally trained to do.

"A combat soldier will be able to wear goggles without dropping his arms from his weapon or his eyes from the target," said Maj. Tzvika Zecharia, head of the Chief Programmer's Desk in Lotem.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to become a more integral part of how the army works.

"Data is the new oil. The data will tell us the story and the IDF needs to understand that story," said Lt. Col. Nurit Cohen-Inger, head of the Sigma branch. According to her, the army is now collecting information from thousands of sensors it has all over - be it cameras on borders, sensors on tanks and so forth.

"Anything that moves online - we want it," said Cohen-Inger.

Up until now, such data would reach only the relevant branch headquarters and commanders. Now it can be shared in the field.

"We need to be careful not to overflow the soldiers with information," said Col. Duek, "that would miss our target."

The army, that mans the crossings with the Palestinian controlled territories in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, has already begun using AI-based facial recognition in order to streamline the process of workers coming to work inside Israel.

The IDF has also launched "ZTube" as an online platform for real-time video feeds of its sensors from all over the country.

"We are incorporating more deep-learning abilities and some of the newest solutions in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the IDF," said Lt. Col. Cohen-Inger.

Advanced analytics are already being used in the recruitment process of the military. Predictive maintenance through sophisticated sensors on machinery such as tanks is also gradually being rolled out.

"It's important to keep the man in the loop," Cohen-Inger emphasized, acknowledging the challenges facing the army as it incorporates sophisticated technologies.

With young minds at his disposal, the senior military commander realizes he has a tough job keeping his unit attractive to soldiers who want to capitalize on their potential in the civil sector.

"At the end of the day, we are defending our homeland," said the senior officer, "Money is significant, but it is not everything." Enditem