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The Defense Ministry’s Defense Research and Development Directorate (MAFAT) deployed software updates to frontline weapon systems within days of the October 7 massacre, had new capabilities under purchase order within weeks, and has since scaled its startup partnerships to over 300 companies, Colonel Yishai Cohen, a senior MAFAT official, told the Jerusalem Post Defense & Tech podcast.
Cohen pulled back the curtain on how MAFAT has operated under wartime pressure across seven fronts, detailing how some of the capabilities used against Iran, including long-range drone strikes deep inside Iranian territory, had been in development for two decades before being battle-tested for the first time.
Israeli defense exports, he noted, hit $19 billion last year, a 30-percent surge, with the trajectory still rising.
Cohen addressed several of the most pressing challenges facing the IDF today, from the race to counter fiber-optic-guided drones, which he called a low-tech threat that remains difficult to defeat with high-tech solutions, to the strategic need to develop capabilities to counter Iran’s deeply buried tunnel networks and missile arsenals.
On AI, he said the technology has already proven itself in intelligence analysis but that the real leap will come when robotic platforms can take over the most dangerous ground missions, reducing the human cost of clearing buildings and villages door by door.
Perhaps the most significant shift Cohen described is structural. In the counter-drone domain alone, MAFAT’s recent procurement spending has been split evenly between Israel’s legacy defense giants and startups, a balance that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
A single MAFAT purchase order, he said, can help a startup raise five to ten times that amount from private investors, fueling what MAFAT’s director general has called Israel’s evolution from “cyber nation” to “defense nation.”
Asked to define MAFAT in one word, Cohen chose “vision,” the ability to imagine a capability and bring Israel’s talent and industry together to deliver it.
