Orion Puts a War Room in an IDF Platoon Leader’s Hands
In a dusty field near Israel’s southern border, a young commander hunched over a glowing tablet is the starting point for Gabriel Colodro’s deep dive into how Orion, a handheld “digital vision” system by Israeli firm ASIO, is rewiring the way the Israel Defense Forces fight. Instead of waiting for distant command centers, small units now spin up real-time 3D maps, mark enemy positions, and test approach routes in minutes, all from a device that weighs less than a water bottle and works even when radios and GPS go dark.
Colodro follows ASIO co-founder Tomer Malchi, a former field intelligence officer who remembers calling in air support with paper maps while civilians already used smartphones. Orion is his answer: an ecosystem of tablets, thermal monoculars, and drone tools that stay offline, pass mission data by encrypted QR codes, and let a platoon generate its own high-end intelligence “on the edge” of the battlefield.
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The article walks readers through live demos in which a sniper’s field of view, drone paths in jammed skies, and full 3D models of entire neighborhoods are built in an afternoon by exhausted infantry, not tech wizards in a bunker. Israel’s ground forces have now pushed the system down to company and squad level, and Western armies are watching closely as “tech for defense” begins to challenge slow, big-ticket procurement.
Colodro ends by returning to that young commander, closing his tablet and signaling his men forward, carried by data that only existed hours earlier. For the full story of how Orion was born from frustration and turned into a lifeline on modern battlefields, including a video report, readers will want to stay with Gabriel Colodro all the way through.
