Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

IDF Using Virtual Reality Headsets To Prepare For Next Gaza War

The Israeli Defense Forces are using virtual reality headsets in order to train soldiers how to navigate and fight in Hamas’ network of underground tunnels.

The IDF began utilizing technology made by the Facebook-owned Oculus and the Taiwanese program HTC Vive in April, Bloomberg News reported Monday. Despite costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the initiative has been beneficial and cost-effective, cutting training time in half and allowing soldiers to undergo exercises that they could not do in real life, an IDF officer said.

The soldiers use both specially-designed workstations and a physical, modifiable tunnel in order to simulate operating in such conditions.

The IDF destroyed dozens of Hamas tunnels during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, but the IDF reportedly believes that the terror group’s tunnel network has been totally rebuilt since then, with some pathways extending inside Israel itself. The IDF says that the quickest way to demolish such tunnels is for soldiers to enter them and plant explosives, hence the training sessions.

The army’s combat engineering unit hopes to expand the program so that a full squad of 20 can train together.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.