Tunnel-detection project awarded top Israeli defense prize

Israel awards its top defense prize to three high-level projects determined to have significantly contributed to the country’s security.

The Israel Defense Prize is awarded each year by the president to individuals, units, or projects that are found to have significantly improved the security of the state.

President Reuven Rivlin presents the three prizes, alongside Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, and director-general of the Defense Ministry Udi Adam.

One prize is granted to the project to locate attack tunnels from the Gaza Strip, which Israel has used to find and destroy at least 10 border-crossing tunnels since October 2017, the Defense Ministry says.

“This is a system that has no equal in the world, which has led to a turning point in the campaign to thwart the tunnel threat,” the ministry says.

The second award is granted to a project whose details are almost entirely classified. The ministry says the project “gave the first solution of its kind to a major threat to the State of Israel.”

It involved both technological advancements and “extraordinary operational courage,” which has given a “significant and unique strategic contribution to the security of the state,” according to the Defense Ministry.

The third prize is granted to a technological project that was designed to identify potential terrorists using large amounts of data.

“The project dramatically influenced the security reality, mainly in thwarting hundreds of terror attacks,” the ministry says.

Apparently to keep aspects of these projects a secret, the Defense Ministry does not specify the recipients for each one. Instead, the ministry says that the two prizes were awarded to: Military Intelligence, the IDF Central Command’s intelligence unit, the IDF J6/C4I & Cyber Defense Directorate, MAFAT, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Israel Aerospace Industries MLM Division, which manufacturers missiles and space vehicles.

— Judah Ari Gross