The 2023-2025 Israel-Hamas War was the first-ever robotics war, Col. (ret.) Yaron Sarig, head of the AI and Autonomy Program Executive Office of MAFAT within the Defense Ministry, said on Monday.
“This is the first robotics war,” he said. “In this conflict, we have mobilized our entire defense ecosystem and deployed tens of thousands of autonomous systems across the battlefield – from drone swarms to agile ground robotics distributed across vast areas.”
Although remotely controlled drones and some other systems have been used for a longer period of time, Sarig revealed at the International Defense Tech Summit sponsored by the Defense Ministry’s DDR&D and the Yuval Ne’eman Science, Technology and Security Workshop at Tel Aviv University, that thousands of kilometers of the invasion in Gaza were carried out by robotic systems.
The robotic systems have gotten much more diverse and standardized, being deployed in much higher volumes to assist with exploring Hamas tunnels, to save risking soldiers’ lives from that process.
In addition, remote vehicles were used to enter new areas above ground to crash into Hamas positions or to intercept and spring ambushes, so that soldiers could come in afterwards knowing where concealed Hamas fighters were located.
Improving the quality of detection and tracking of Hamas terrorists
Moreover, robots were used with artificial intelligence to improve the quality of detection and tracking of Hamas terrorists in the field on a much broader and more advanced level.
“The AI and Autonomy PEO, working in coordination with the IDF, has accelerated innovative developments from start-ups, defense contractors, and research institutions, with the goal of integrating them into the operational theater and maintaining our relative advantage on land, in the air, and at sea,” he said.
Moreover, he stated, “We are only at the beginning of this revolution. In the coming years, driven by operational necessity, we will significantly expand our robotic capabilities. Robotics serves as a critical bridge to the world of AI, which, looking forward, will be integrated into every weapon system and into the operational capability of every soldier.”
Meanwhile, later Monday at the conference, recently retired IDF Hostage and Missing Persons Directorate chief Nitzan Alon made his first public appearance.
He detailed how, within 24 hours, an improvised headquarters was established to address the rapidly evolving crisis. “On day one, about 200 people were involved. Most of the time after that, around 500 were active. Altogether, more than 2,000 people worked in the headquarters across several months,” Alon noted.
Despite retiring only weeks earlier, he stepped in immediately: “No organization could handle this kind of catastrophic event alone. Not the IDF, not Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency], not Mossad. When you face a new type of challenge, you need to build a new kind of organization.”
Reflecting on leadership principles, Alon emphasized that decision-making under uncertainty is not gambling, but structured risk management. Citing strategic interpretations of “He who dares, wins,” he explained, “It’s about developing your ability to manage risk based on skills and professionalism. Act, cooperate, do not freeze – and make decisions in the dark.”
Alon contrasted military and business decision-making, stressing that in both arenas, leaders must move decisively without full information. “In the military, when you’re wrong, people die. With the hostages, it was even more extreme. These aren’t anonymous figures. You might talk to a hostage’s family in the afternoon and make an operational decision about them that night.”
Also at the conference, Dame Fiona Murray, chair of the NATO Innovation Fund, warned, “Innovation alone is not enough. We must industrialize at scale.”
Explaining further, she stated that without production capacity, even breakthrough technologies cannot deliver impact:
“It’s no good making one of something. We need many solutions. We need many missiles, many drones, many interceptors”.
She cautioned that years of outsourcing have created global vulnerabilities: “Manufacturing and supply chains have been almost invisible... Investors will tell an entrepreneur: outsource your manufacturing, be capital efficient... But fast forward, and we’ve seen the challenge of that approach… There’s really no access to some of the critical parts, including the means of production.”