The IDF’s Intelligence Corps technology unit, Unit 81, like many other Israeli agencies, has been recruited in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

But like the Mossad, which has played a role in obtaining vital medical equipment from unnamed countries, no one knows exactly what the unit is doing and how they’re doing it as a veil of secrecy lies over its operations even when the enemy is one faced by the entire world, a Globes report said.

“The unit’s mission is to deal with the complex challengess facing the State of Israel as presented to us by our commanders,” Lieutenant Colonel A., the unit’s deputy commander, told Globes, in a statement leaving readers as clueless at its end than at its beginning.

“If it’s possible to purchase innovative developments and they meet our needs, then we’ll buy them off the shelf,” he says. “Mostly, however, they don’t precisely match the operational requirements. We deal in breakthrough developments in short to very short periods of time, in a range of fields, mainly software, hardware, mechanics, materials, and cyber, that serve intelligence and operational purposes in the security challenges that Israel faces.”

One detail that Colonel A. did reveal is that the unit took responsibility to find a creative solution to providing Israel with ventilators.

“Even at an early stage we understood the challenge posed by the shortage of ventilators. There was a real fear, which did not materialize, that we would find ourselves in a situation similar to that of Italy, and would have to decide whom to put on a ventilator and whom not. It was also feared that it would be very difficult to import ventilators from overseas because everyone is fighting over the same equipment. We also knew that producing a ventilator from scratch, with the challenge of obtaining approvals from the health regulators in Israel, would be liable to make it a project that did not just depend on us, and that would make it hard for us to work.”

Since obtaining ventilators was such a formidable yet vital goal, the unit allowed itself to reveal its involvement in a rare exception to its policy. And its display of candor paid off.

“A second after the item was published, many former members of the unit started calling us to share their capabilities,” said Colonel A. “Factories offered to let us take what we needed and put production lines at our disposal, and hospital managers came to us with suggestions, and with requests for help.”

Although managing this operation wasn’t particularly challenging from a technological viewpoint for the unit, it was a complex operation due to the time pressure and the fact that “health-related tasks are challenging because of the regulation and the norms in the field,” A. said.

One of the unit’s former members who subsequently worked in medical technology came up with the initial plan. “We reached the conclusion at the beginning that it would be best to take home breathing apparatuses with no monitoring and warning systems, such as breathing aids originally intended for people who suffer from sleep apnea (for example BiPAP machines), and to add monitoring and warning capabilities to them,” A. said.

“You can’t attach a breathing machine if you don’t know how much oxygen you are introducing into the patient’s body, or if you have no graphic display of his or her breathing, no warning of a drop in pressure, and no indication of the concentration of oxygen in the blood,” says A.

“Sheba Hospital, the Ministry of Health, and pulmonologists and anesthetists advised the unit right from the initial stages and guided the unit 81 personnel as to their precise needs.”

The unit’s accomplishment have been remarkable for the short amount of time they have been operating. “That’s how the unit works,” says A. “It doesn’t wait to hit a wall but looks a long way in advance for ways of getting around the wall when it appears on the horizon. We don’t wait to come up against it and then look for a ladder. That’s the approach in the unit, and that’s how we approached the coronavirus challenge.”

A. says that the plan for the ventilators is in its last stages. “We are in the final stages, at the assembly stage, and looking towards handing over our closed boxes that will become breathing aids. Inside the devices is a circuit board attached to a collection of sensors for measuring such things as oxygen supply and differential pressure. These are processed through the circuit board and from there go to a display that beeps if anything is anything is abnormal in the parameters. The medical team controls the system via a touch screen on which it can change parameters and control them. We later added warnings in the event of problems and the ability to transmit performance measures.”

“Essentially, we took a home device and upgraded it to make it into something that facilitates artificial respiration with intubation. It is not a substitute for a proper ventilator, but it does make it possible to bridge the gap if health organizations run short of equipment.”

Besides ventilators, the unit is involved in dozens of other projects, including the development of protective installations in Magen David Adom ambulances equipped with a window, a system for the driver to communicate with the paramedic and a sealant for the aeration system, keeping it stable and quiet while the ambulance is in motion.

“When the crisis began, we had people who needed to go into isolation. We added a partition in one of our military vehicles so that the driver would not be worried, but at the same time would not have to wear excessive protective clothing that would make it hard for him to do his job,” said A.

“After we did that, we thought, wait a minute, we transport a soldier here and a soldier there, but who transports patients all the time? We called the director-general of Magen David Adom and offered our assistance a long time before the army became involved on a large scale. We were the harbingers. The director-general was astounded that the IDF was calling and offering help, but he immediately asked if we could supply 150 partitions. A few days later, we started installing them in the ambulances, and we have already installed more than 100.”

The unit also received a request to provide a solution for a face mask that could easily be made at home or cheaply produced at workshops. The unit passed on the challenge to former members and their families through Whatsapp, giving them 24 hours to produce a viable result.

A young lieutenant in the unit provided the prototype, including a pattern and photos, and the masks are about to be mass-produced across the country with a Health Ministry label.

“I have one of these masks hanging in front of me in my office, produced in the Druze village of Beit Jann,” A. said.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)