IDF’s newest elite unit armed with top-secret technology fights ‘deep in enemy territory’

The multi-dimensional unit will fight deep in enemy territory, equipped with top secret technological aids.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The IDF inaugurated on Wednesday its newest special operations unit that will fight deep in enemy territory, using the latest combat techniques and technology.

Soldiers from elite units such as Yahalom, Duvedevan and Gadsar have joined paratroopers, members of the Oketz canine unit, engineering and armored corps, field intelligence troops and even pilots to form a multi-dimensional force that one IDF officer called “the first of its kind in the world.”

The men will be equipped with the latest technology, some of it not even fully developed as yet. They will also use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for their surveillance and target-marking capabilities, and be digitally connected to each other.

The as-yet-unnamed quick-strike force will be commanded by Lt. Col. A, a former head of the Duvdevan commando unit.

“The unit will operate with new capabilities [in the] detection, exposure, assault and destruction of the enemy” which “currently exist only at the division level,” the IDF said.

It is expected to take as long as a year to integrate all the disparate elements from so many different corps into one smooth whole. Once the book has been written on how to create such a force, the plan is to establish many more such units so as to make the army more lethal, innovative and effective than ever before.

The units will be part of the new five-year plan that outlines how Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi envisions the IDF will do battle in the modern era.

Dubbed “Tnufa” (Momentum), the blueprint for 2020-2025 calls for the IDF to change its methods of operation to overcome the challenges of battling an enemy that usually fights by using civilians as human shields, and in small groups that appear and disappear quickly, rather than as a standing army.

A major question that looms over the ambitious plan is that of funding. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has talked of the need to raise the defense budget by some 4 billion shekels ($1.15 billion) a year to enable the IDF to meet its objectives.

This target will be difficult to meet at least in 2020, as there will be no government to pass a budget until the second quarter of the year has begun (in a best-case scenario). This means that all ministries, including defense, will have to make do until then with receiving one twelfth of their 2019 allocation every month.

IDFMomentum Plan