IDF App Gives You a Chance to Defend Israel – Virtually

The IDF has a sophisticated web site, an active Twitter account – and now it has its very own computer game. Knafayim (“Wings” in Hebrew) is a first-person shooting game that lets players take control of an Israel Air Force plane or helicopter, and defend Israel by eliminating “bad guys,” including enemy aircraft and land-based missile launchers.

Playing Knafayim should be familiar to any student of shooter games: You move the plane along the screen by guiding it with a finger (the app was developed for iPhones with touch screens; Android version under development). You have a choice of a Karnaf (Israel’s version of the C-130 Hercules), a Yanshuf (Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopter), or a Sufa (F16), and when you come across an enemy plane or a nest of rocket-firing terrorists, you use one of the two shooting buttons on either side of the screen to release missiles and bombs, depending on the aircraft you’re flying.

Of course, you’re getting shot at as well, so you have to be adept at moving quickly, shooting, and evading incoming – all at the same time. If you’re a teenager (the people the IDF is aiming this game at), succeeding at a game like this is probably second nature already – and if it isn’t, you’re probably not Air Force material anyway!

Note that the game is in Hebrew; although play is straightforward and should be easy to pick up without even needing to read the instructions, there are trivia questions you can answer in order to gain time or turns. The questions involve Israel Air Force-related issues and history – such as “What is the name of the IDF’s new anti-missile defense system (Iron Dome). The questions aren’t too difficult, and most people even vaguely familiar with the Israel Air Force should be able to get them right – and even if you know nothing about the Air Force, you will be an expert after just a few games, at least on the answers to Knafayim’s questions, since there are only about ten questions that keep repeating themselves.

Why the Israel Air Force needs a first-person shooter game is an interesting question. Traditionally, armies have issued such games as recruitment tools (the U.S. Army has a wildly successful virtual army game, called America’s Army), and Knafayim certainly follows in this tradition: That it is aimed specifically at teenagers is clear from the (somewhat annoying, to my ears) driving heavy metal-style music that plays in the background (and apparently cannot be turned off). In its official statement on the game, the IDF said that Knafayim “allows a first-hand view into the missions the Air Force undertakes, in the tradition of Israel’s flying defense forces.”

The free app was released at the end of December and has had thousands of downloads so far – a success that has led the IDF to think about developing more apps. Among those apps will be some in English, the IDF said, a novel method of Hasbara that will, hopefully, present a side of the IDF to people in the U.S. and Europe that they might not get from the media.