Israel’s military will open a fourth service branch for unmanned systems and artificial intelligence by early December, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff, announced on 8 September at a naval officers’ graduation at Haifa.
The Israel Defense Forces have three branches today, each under a major general: the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the Navy. Zamir said the new one will “be responsible for the rapidly developing field” and that “maritime, land and aerial robotic capabilities will be developed.” He ordered it inaugurated by Hanukkah. “The battlefield is changing at a dizzying pace, and we are changing with it,” he said.
No commander has been named and no budget or headcount has been published. Nor has the IDF said which existing units move across. Today the Air Force and the Artillery Corps fly the drones, the Navy runs the unmanned vessels, and the Ground Forces operate remote-controlled bulldozers and converted M113 armoured carriers. Each of those is a capability inside a service built around something else.
The Ukrainian precedent
Ukraine did this in 2024, when it created the Unmanned Systems Forces as a separate branch of its armed forces with its own brigades, its own recruiting and its own procurement voice. Russia answered with the Rubikon centre for unmanned technologies. The argument in both cases was the same: a drone unit inside an infantry brigade gets the brigade’s priorities, and a drone unit inside an air force gets the air force’s. A branch gets its own.
Israel is following the model at the level of a full service, which the United States has not done. The Pentagon has kept drones inside the existing services and stood up offices and task forces instead, and no American general in charge of unmanned systems answers only to a service chief.
FlightBrief analysis: what a branch changes is who writes the requirement. When the Air Force specifies a drone, it specifies an aircraft; when a ground brigade does, it specifies a consumable. A service that does nothing else will specify something in between, and it will have the standing to buy it in volume from Israel’s own industry, which by one 2026 index ranks third in the world for commercialising AI.
Zamir said the branch will “increase operational activity on the battlefield and save lives” and called it “a once-in-a-generation transformation.” The inauguration date, Hanukkah, falls on 4 December.
