Show Notes
Since October 7, Israel's defense R&D directorate has pushed weapons from concept to combat in weeks, and now works with more than 300 startups. Col. Yishai Cohen explains how.
In this episode of Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post, Anna Ahronheim sits down with Col. Yishai Cohen, a senior official at MAFAT, Israel's Directorate of Defense Research and Development, for a rare look inside the organization that decides which technologies reach Israeli soldiers, and how fast. Cohen describes software fixes pushed to live weapon systems within days of October 7, capabilities against Iran that spent two decades in development before being fired for the first time, and others assembled in the final weeks before the fighting began. On Iran's long-range drone campaign, he is blunt: more than 1,500 fixed-wing UAVs were launched at Israel, and he says only two hits were recorded. "Low tech works," he says of the improvised fishing nets soldiers used against short-range drones, a reminder that the most sophisticated answer is not always the right one.
The interview is also a candid account of what Israel has not solved. Cohen concedes that fiber-optic drones, cheap, unjammable, and impossible to defeat by electronic warfare, remain an open race, one that Ukraine has pushed further than anyone. An open call for counter-solutions drew over 300 proposals, and recent purchase orders running to hundreds of millions of shekels have split roughly 50-50 between Israel's legacy defense giants and small startups. He is equally frank about Israel's thin position in autonomous maritime systems, about Iran's deeply buried missile and nuclear infrastructure, and about the strategic lesson he says will define the next decade: Israel must be able to manufacture what it designs, at scale, at home, regardless of what happens abroad.
Cohen also addresses the question dominating Israeli venture circles: whether defense tech is a bubble. His answer, and his explanation of why a small purchase order from the Ministry of Defense can unlock a funding round five to ten times its size, is essential listening for anyone tracking where Israeli engineering talent is going now that cyber is no longer the only destination.
Produced and edited by Gadi Zaig and Shifra Jacobs.
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