https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-894775
IDF's AI unit transformed air force effectiveness in Iran war
Col. Rotem Beshi, was commander of an IDF unit responsible for integrating and relaying artificial intelligence across the military
Matzpen, the IDF unit most responsible for integrating and relaying artificial intelligence and “big data” intelligence across the military, played a critical role in transforming the air force’s effectiveness during the recent war with Iran, its commander, Col. Rotem Beshi, told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview.
A new system managed by Matzpen, known as the LOCHEM system, handled all the planning for attacks on Iran, starting with working with the air force’s special, relatively new Iran unit, said Beshi, 38.
According to Beshi, during the war, Matzpen’s digital applications and processes “helped decide priorities and helped integrate the planning of whole waves of attacks.”
He said that gathering certain data to make operational decisions, which used to take days, can be done in hours, or in some cases, minutes, and that Matzpen is pushing to get nearly all the processes that connect to emergent situations down to minutes.
Part of this process was sped up by the formation of a brigade-sized IDF unit, announced in December, to address the spread of artificial intelligence use across the military, including the Matzpen unit.
All of these units are part of the Communications and Cyber Defense Command, headed by Maj.-Gen. Aviad Dagan.
Matzpen could be working on a couple of dozen new applications at a time to improve the military’s offensive and defensive capacities.
The work is integral to all of the military’s major successes
If in the recent past, developing complex new applications to confront new challenges took months or years, now the military develops new programs much more rapidly.
Overall, Beshi’s goal is for IDF field commanders to feel they are dealing with a familiar, user-friendly technological world that empowers them to better carry out the war’s strategy and tactics. In contrast, new technologies that are confusing to use could unintentionally slow them down with having to learn too many new skills.
Later, Beshi, who has two degrees in computer science, a master’s degree in technology and systems management, and a certification as a chief data officer (CDO) from MIT, stated that data is transmitted across all major commands, including the northern, southern, and central commands.
All of this significantly helps planning and fundamentally alters military processes, noted Beshi, who for around 20 years served in various roles in the Communications Command, including what was once known as the LOTEM Brigade, which has now been absorbed into the new AI-focused brigade.
The IDF Spokesman credited Beshi’s work “with being integral to all of the military’s major successes” during the recent war, which wasn’t the first time his work has been recognized. In 2017, Beshi was selected by Forbes magazine for its 30 Under 30 list.
In a sense, one of Beshi’s jobs has been to help the IDF and many senior commanders across a variety of fronts transform from a technology-friendly army into a supercharged technology military.
Beshi was asked to provide specific examples of how the new system affected target prioritization for the 2,600 Iranian military-industrial targets and 2,200 regime-strength targets (as other IDF sources have revealed), but declined to disclose the specific numbers to avoid endangering operational security.
Instead, Beshi spoke more generally about the comprehensive capabilities that Matzpen enables for the IDF, such as its tight integration with operational and intelligence processes.
Describing Matzpen’s impact step by step for targeting during the war, Beshi stated that, “the intelligence process finds a target, then you move to operational processes and then to concrete planning, approval, and the actual attack.
“Next, there is the BDA [battle damage assessment] process. We are partners to connect the intelligence and the operations, sending data into and out from field operations closest to the front,” Beshi commented.
All of this could lead to different Matzpen data processes for the air force targeting Iranian ballistic missile threats versus its targeting the IRGC and Basij forces used to oppress domestic Iranian protesters, though how it was done was kept classified.
It also allows the air force and IDF intelligence to integrate targets much more effectively and faster into the overall targeting plan.
During the war, which played out on both the Iranian and Lebanese fronts, Beshi said Matzpen’s creative, cutting-edge data streaming facilitated “quickly changing plans and maximized operational flexibility.”
This could include influencing “the trajectory of an aircraft so as to focus on certain targets more than others. This keeps the attacks streaming much more fluidly for specific targets.”
Another unique aspect of Matzpen during the recent Iran war was the impact on the scale of information sharing with the US.
IDF sources have previously told the Post that there were senior American officers in several Israeli classified operations rooms to advance joint coordinated attacks between the countries against Iran in real time.
Without giving specifics, Beshi noted that, “To fully exploit the data, there was a joint picture with the US.”
Matzpen helps radically increase the IDF Home Front’s safety promotion capabilities:
During the Iran war, the impact of air force attacks on Iran and of Israel’s vast number of sensors and surveillance relaying data via Matzpen to the IDF Home Front Command helped it prepare and issue much faster warnings.
This allowed the command to plan much more in advance and to even make more life-saving or routine protective adjustments in real time, said Beshi.
Beshi revealed that in the months between the June 2025 Iran war and the 2026 war, the IDF Home Front, working with Matzpen, overhauled many processes for establishing the coordinates of an Iranian attack and for getting that data interactively to the police, Magen David Adom, and the broader civilian population.
This facilitates the full exploitation of the information needed to connect the offensive and defensive sides of the IDF, Beshi remarked.
These new Matzpen data processes empowered the IDF to know where all Home Front Command forces are, to best direct them to the ideal spot.
Another Matzpen application, which Beshi referred to as “Binah” (insight), coordinated the positioning and capacities of all local village security teams and their commanding security coordinator.
Matzpen has also performed joint big data AI research with IDF Intelligence, the air force, and the home front district units to make it possible to reduce the size of the potential target elliptical area within Israel, referred to as “the polygon,” which needed to receive warnings, Beshi noted.
This made warnings and responses more focused, “reducing the disruption of everyday life routines from receiving a missile warning, to more specific residential areas. It is a very advanced integration of different kinds of digital media with AI,” he said.
For example, initial warnings at the start of the war for a potential Iranian ballistic missile hit covered a polygon of two million people, but eventually this was reduced to 900,000 people, and, in some cases, even fewer.
Lebanon
Besides the home front, Matzpen helps with the process of conveying warnings to IDF forces invading and otherwise maneuvering within southern Lebanon.
Beshi said there are “tons of sensors to analyze the potential of very diverse threats,” including rockets, anti-tank missiles, and low-flying drones. He said that other threats were not by sensors, but by analyzing video footage of threats taken by human beings.
In Lebanon, as with Iran, Matzpen’s partnership with the air force has been very important. Combined with ground force sensors, Matzpen has painted an incredibly detailed real-time threat picture for the Northern Command to respond to and shape.
As with the home front, Beshi said Matzpen has “used highly complex algorithms to increase its ability to give targeted warnings only to the clearly targeted IDF forces” in a specific locality of southern Lebanon so as not to disrupt the operations and progress of other military forces.
Recently, Matzpen added new digital infrastructure to expand its capacity to issue certain warnings on radio frequencies.
Matzpen has also improved at dissecting multiple diverse geographic threats and issuing different kinds of warnings for them, Beshi noted, such as when Iran and Hezbollah both attacked portions of northern Israel with different kinds of weapons at the same time.
Beshi said that the data they relay in such instances is “robust and at very high quality and scale.”
That said, Beshi said that Matzpen is always seeking to add more sensors, devices, applications, and digital infrastructure to maximize the IDF’s broader capabilities.
Beshi gave an example in late March when a Hezbollah fighter fired an anti-tank missile toward IDF troops in southern Lebanon and, via a Matzpen application, those forces were warned within two seconds of the impending threat. This “gave them enough time to get to a protected stance. We were pleased that there was no harm to those forces.”
MAPIT
Matzpen’s program, MAPIT, works with satellites, including with IDF Unit 9900, which handles satellite information, and part of its work was acknowledged during the war, when, on March 16, a senior 9900 official made a public statement following strikes against Iran’s satellite launch center and its center for attacking other countries’ satellites.
MAPIT is part of the IDF’s apparatus for the intake of operational geographic media and sharing that data with different defense establishment entities. It integrates AI and moves information that has been received onto a digital map.
“If a report comes in about a threat to Beersheba or Haifa, MAPIT takes the data or the text, such as a video of a ballistic missile with a large impact destruction area,” said Beshi.
“It categorizes where the data is from and then pulls it up on a digital map. It has huge data capacities, which multiply the use of big data power. Being connected is the story.”
Another issue where Matzpen’s big data and programming abilities have helped is to reduce friendly fire incidents.
Matzpen’s applications already help map out friendly forces so precisely that, while accidents still happen, usually it is not because soldiers did not know where other units were located.
Instead, friendly fire incidents have occurred more often where soldiers are pinned down so badly that they lack the time and space to physically interface properly with the available data.
Broad focus
“The IDF is in the process of a major revitalization of its management of AI, data, and media for operations,” Beshi explained.
Next, he stated, “We receive and absorb operational reports from around the world, on every front, including open source data, to build a platform that serves as a mosaic of information.
“We were not starting from zero, but the IDF understood, like any large business or entity, what the value is of its data. The value of AI and big data, if the data is closed off and inaccessible to groups of people who might need it, compared to different kinds of data storage clouds, which might make it more accessible, can change and directly impact the real-world military front lines.”
In recent months, Beshi has felt that Matzpen has been even more at the center of gravity of the IDF’s operations.
He noted that Matzpen is different from any other data manager in the IDF, as it operates across all lines and arms of the military, whereas each military arm also has its own smaller data managers who focus on specific needs, such as the air force or the navy.
Beshi concluded that Matzpen “increases the value of data for the IDF.”
https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-894775
