Sapir: The enigmatic Israeli military unit moving IDF intelligence underground - exclusive

It has been widely reported that despite Iran’s two massive ballistic missile attacks on Israel in 2024, Tehran failed to cause serious qualitative damage to Israel’s defense establishment. How was this possible? It turns out: Portions of the IDF’s military abilities were spread out. 

Moreover, the Magazine – during a visit and a series of recent interviews with senior IDF intelligence officers – has learned that the full extent of the spacing of military abilities and the IDF’s fortifying of its secret underground locations are still not completely known, especially with regard to IDF intelligence.

The Magazine viewed a classified presentation also provided to IDF intelligence officers.

Already in 2020, there were multiple reports of a trend of IDF intelligence moving many of its operations to secret underground facilities. But a less well-known unit in IDF intelligence, Sapir, has been responsible since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, for accelerating the military’s intelligence services’ move to underground facilities full time or having significantly more emergency underground facilities available for them.

In fact, by the time the Islamic Republic fired its first 120 ballistic missiles on Israel in April 2024, the majority of what needed to be below ground was already up and running.

Sapir has a number of missions for IDF intelligence, but a key component of its mission is ensuring that operations continue to function even in the worst of crises.

Most of where IDF intelligence is moving underground is highly classified, though there have been reports about some underground operations in unspecified parts of the North and South, and at military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

IDF sources said Iran’s attack in April 2024 helped clarify what additional minority percentage of operations needed better reinforcement or technological answers underground, such that by the October 2024 Iran attack, most of these issues had been addressed.

While most concrete examples are classified, a generic example could be certain unspecified technological platforms to keep Unit 9900 data flowing properly.

The number of IDF intelligence personnel is also classified, but the move underground has affected thousands.

Sapir itself has several lieutenant colonels, a majority of whom are from IDF intelligence, but a significant minority are “on loan” from the IDF Communications Command. Its number of soldiers almost doubled after Oct. 7 to sustain all of the newly required work.

LT.-COL. R., from Sapir, is 33 and the mother of two young children. Her husband has served as a tank commander in Gaza and Lebanon during the war.

“I come from the Communications Command, started handling operations for a battalion, and later for a brigade, and now with Sapir,” said R.

“I took up my post in Sapir only two months before Oct. 7,” she noted.

She commands a couple of hundred regular service soldiers and, since the war, has gained another 250 reservists. “We are very strong in operations and in technology and are running 24/7.”

Discussing the moves to more protected areas, she said, “We had already done many drills for moving in emergencies to underground spaces. Resilience is very important.

“The battalion-level Sapir units are in a protected space, which is a preliminary answer” to newly increasing rocket and drone threats from Israel’s adversaries.

“The infrastructure is more usable to maintain continuous functions,” she elaborated. “We still can’t include everyone, but we had some increased readiness after November 2023.

“There are units at IDF military headquarters, but there are Sapir support units in many other places.”

Asked if the biggest challenge in this area is Iran, R. responded, “The hardest challenge is not just to deal with Iran but to deal with all of our adversaries at the same time. Everything needs to happen really fast.”

IDF intelligence should essentially not work aboveground in the long run if the military wants to guarantee continuous functioning, said IDF sources.

The entire IDF needs to move in a more underground direction, they said, but especially IDF intelligence and related critical infrastructure. The intelligence picture cannot be run from caravans in the middle of a mass disaster, the sources said.

The move to the South

Significant portions of the new locations for IDF intelligence were being built underground from the start. IDF sources said the lessons of this war would only empower this trend and would not require a major architectural or conceptual rethink.

Still, IDF sources have said that all IDF installations’ defenses have undergone and are undergoing evaluations as regards potential attacks from Israeli enemies, after what the country witnessed on Oct. 7 and afterward.

Another project of Sapir has been to enhance encryption capabilities for records and software in the worst-case scenario event of a base being overtaken, such as occurred in the Gaza border area on Oct. 7.

There are new cutting-edge techniques for addressing complicated issues, which the Magazine learned about but cannot publicize.

Also, Sapir has established a variety of additional sophisticated redundancy systems beyond the smaller and more basic backup plan it used to have in place.

Critically, after Oct. 7, Sapir received a huge amount of additional funds to accomplish its mission. IDF sources said that the Finance Ministry finally understands the significance of preparing for worst-case scenarios.

At the very start of the current war, there might have been some yelling about funding, but eventually everyone understood that the war’s needs meant cutting through red tape so the IDF could take action more quickly.

Fighting on seven fronts – with hundreds of missiles coming in not just from so-called expected enemies but also from far-off, unforeseen threats like the Yemeni Houthis – radically altered how budgeting is being approached for future potential threats.

LT.-COL. H., 37, hopes to continue in IDF intelligence. To help with her career, her husband has been looking after their children during the war.

H. started in the IDF studying electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University, and then moved on to various roles in IDF intelligence.

She has been in Sapir for six years. She is also in charge of force buildup planning to cover all of the fronts.

H. has dozens of engineers, intelligence analysts, and data analysts working for her, especially relating to the IDF intelligence cloud. Dozens more reservists joined up during the war. In addition, H. makes plans for how the infrastructure will eventually be set up.

“My background is in IDF intelligence, and we are the computer of the IDF intelligence community,” she affirmed.

Data center

The data center must remain at a certain temperature and be kept according to certain other environmental requirements. Sapir provides engineers, electromechanical engineers, installation experts, and others to ensure this.

Even some top IDF intelligence and high command officials may think that a variety of underground facilities are equal. But IDF sources said that the intelligence data center is the most well-defended data center in the Middle East, ready for any scenario. If some other underground facilities ensure survival in a disaster, the data center ensures full functionality, even with air-conditioning.

Flowing intelligence

Sapir handles operational technology and its members are viewed often as battle-support soldiers, providing fiber optics, mobile technology units, computer Internet, cellphone Internet, satellite and radio network infrastructure, and hookup platforms.

Computers and artificial intelligence systems might have gathered intelligence during the war – as a theoretical example, about some Hamas leaders – and this needs to get passed on digitally to IDF intelligence officers’ emails and phones so they can analyze it, summarize its implications, and then pass it on to field intelligence officers and commanders.

Sapir handles such issues. Moreover, Sapir provides encryption services for all the different lines of IDF intelligence communications. It also defends against new incoming files that might contain viruses. In the digital sphere, Sapir also provides cyberdefense specific to IDF intelligence.

Sapir faces many more cyber threats than ever before, and there is more information and tactics sharing with the Israel National Cyber Directorate. There have also been improvements to defend against AI-based hacks.

“Part of our role is defending the network from cyberattacks,” Lt.-Col. H. said.

As a key technological infrastructure wing of IDF intelligence, Sapir has also received considerable media attention for its role in aspects of the large-scale beeper operation against Hezbollah. 

Sapir enters enemy territory for the first time

Operating in all of these areas is far more challenging than operating in the West Bank, where the IDF and intelligence communities have vast infrastructure, operated by Sapir, said Lt.-Col. R.

Lt.-Col. H. said Sapir “does not need to change a lot for operations in the West Bank. We have worked there a lot before.”

In contrast, in these enemy territories they didn’t have a launch point, information security defenses, or any infrastructure. Having to work in enemy territory required a paradigm shift.

Every brigade commander with the rank of colonel needed, and was eventually provided with, his or her own network for receiving and disseminating intelligence.

Lt.-Col. R. has provided digital support for Unit 188. In the current war, “We brought the technology into the field to the brigade commanders and battalion commanders, and this has a major impact. They could see everything on the computers. They did not need to wait to receive the intelligence from someone far away, deep into Israel.

“This was born during the current war. After a month, in November 2023, we went in and got great feedback.”

Moreover, R. said, “I went into the field a few times, every time in a different place just to check that my soldiers were okay.”

As to human intelligence Unit 504, “We had a system set up for intake of Unit 504 intelligence.”

Additionally, R. stated that one of her roles was to meet with field intelligence commanders on an ongoing basis to gauge their evolving needs.

Lt.-Col. H. said Sapir provided the required response for setting up intelligence networks in Gaza, after many southern networks were damaged during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

“The first new system in Gaza was with Tank Brigade 401 for six weeks, and we got very good feedback. Then we were able to copy how we set up those systems to other parts of Gaza,” said H.

“We have more staff than from before the war, and the IDF and the government understand the importance of their work more, so there are no longer budget problems.”

“Plans [now] started to get approved in days or hours, which would have taken months” during peacetime.

In 2014, the field intelligence chief didn’t enter Gaza with the lead forces. Rather, he operated intelligence and updated them from a distance inside Israeli territory.

Now, the updated forward intelligence systems in enemy territory can show a map that was updated 10 minutes before. With that 10-minute-old update, IDF commanders can decide to take a new or different road instead of using the road that looked right on a folded, wrinkled map that was harder to read and a day old.

The forward brigade commanders have a plasma screen to show them the battle landscape more clearly. Attack plans are loaded digitally, and IDF personnel can see changes in the positions of the enemy and newly discovered tunnels in real time.

Before, when soldiers found enemy objects, electronics, and other physical sources of intelligence, they would need to be taken back to Israel to IDF intelligence bases. This created a significant delay in integrating the intelligence for operational use.

During the war, there were multiple installations in Gaza at various divisions’ forward headquarters at major logistics locations. Any laptop could be immediately integrated or scanned, and all of its data could be instantly sent to essential IDF intelligence bases deep in Israel without having to physically travel there. This information could then be turned into operational use at a much faster speed.

SAPIR SOLDIERS faced the hardships of serving in enemy territory for the first time. Many were not fully ready to be in the field with gunfire all around them as they tried to set up an antenna on a rooftop.

But now IDF sources say these Sapir soldiers have developed greater resilience.

There was also an evolution where, earlier in the war, such roles were carried out by more experienced Sapir commanders and soldiers, and only later were the less experienced soldiers integrated into field Sapir installation teams. By the time they had to erect networks in enemy territory in Lebanon in September 2024, the Sapir unit was much readier for such special challenges than it had been in Gaza in fall 2023.

Furthermore, in Lebanon there was less captured enemy physical intelligence, but IDF troops were able to seize huge quantities of Hezbollah rockets. The IDF has previously announced that in Lebanon it seized around 60,800 electronic items, equipment, and documents.

Still, the IDF did not go into Beirut. Consequently, it did not get to some of the more senior Hezbollah officials’ personal electronics. Regardless, in Beirut the IDF bombed much more of Hezbollah’s top echelons.

There was also less gunfire when setting up infrastructure in Lebanon, as almost all Hezbollah fighters ran away before IDF forces arrived in large numbers.

Asked about potential differing challenges for different fronts, Lt.-Col. R. responded, “Our systems are less influenced by the particular topology of the particular front, given that most are digital. But on the different fronts, we did confront some different threats.

“Now we have more experience on how to quickly set up IDF intelligence servers and platforms in enemy territory.”

Both R. and H. had to manage their units during the war under pressures far beyond what their technology and intelligence soldiers ever expected.

To cope with this, H. explained, “You need to stay levelheaded and cool under the war pressure.

“That is why we commanders are here. If the soldiers see that I am under pressure, they will be in worse shape.

“For the average 18-year-old soldier,” she added, “war crises have been hard and very new to them, and they’re not used to working around the clock. But everyone stepped up and understood the importance of what we do. We have a lot of pride in the organization due to recent successes.”

R. noted she had many talks with her soldiers, “both as a group and individually.” Sending feedback their way, “I told them the commanders were impressed, and that they had succeeded in their missions.” 