IDF set to compete with free, commercial emergency apps that offer more flexibility
Israelis have grown accustomed to the protection offered by the combined system of strategically-placed Iron Dome anti-missile missiles, a network of some 3000 alarms placed country-wide in residential neighborhoods, and rocket-proof shelters.
Barrages of rockets that used to cause widespread panic, and untold damage in loss of life and property, have become a much less threatening prospect.
And yet, in a fast-moving and information-drenched world, there is always room for improvement. During the 2014 Gaza War, Israelis became addicted to free apps such as Tzeva Adom [1] (Red Alert) that clanged and shook every time an air raid siren sounded. You might be living in Haifa, but if your radio happened to be off and your spouse had forced you to turn off your notifications, your phone would let you know that rockets were expected to land, say, in the vicinity of Ashkelon.
This was useful for journalists who were scrambling to report on each and every event; for regular civilians, it was just adrenaline-producing.
From the vantage point of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it turns out, such apps, “were designed for trouble” in the words of Lt. Col. Shlomi Maman, Alert Branch Commander of the Home Front Command. Also, the fact that you could just lie back and hear about alerts ringing all over the country “had nothing to do with saving life, which is our mandate, but was just, you know, gossipy,” Maman said in a conference call with journalists, unveiling the IDF’s new “iHomeCommand-style” app to the world. “For someone in Tel Aviv to know that a rocket has hit Eilat has value only for chatterers, in fact, it takes up bandwidth,” Maman explains.
The IDF’s new App, called the Home Front Application [2] and available for free in all app shops, works according to Maman, “two to four seconds before other apps because of our high standard and the specific architecture,” and, it goes without saying, because it is part and parcel of the IDF’s systems.
Whether news-obsessed Israelis and West Bank Palestinians, who are also covered by the app that operates in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and English, are going to be willing to give up omnipresence for those two to four seconds remains to be seen.
Jerusalemite Avi Dahan, 53, waiting for his sandwich at a lunch counter, expressed “little to no interest” in downloading the app, but said his wife was more likely to get it. “I don’t want something shaking in my pocket all the time,” he told The Media Line.
Jabber Taha, also waiting for his lunch, said he’d download it, “why not?” But he had no intention of removing the other apps. “So you want your phone to ring three times every time an alarm sounds?” Haim, the man preparing the sandwiches, asked him, adding, “I can’t be bothered. I hear the siren and that’s enough.”
Until now, if a rocket was aimed at the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev, Maman pointed out, “sirens would ring out all over the city of Jerusalem.”
His hope is that new technology tied to advances made with the apps will allow the IDF to make sure, “only the one specific neighborhood gets the siren.”
The new app is not supposed to be used on its own, as a total alert device. One reason is that its dependence on an internet network or on wifi makes it unreliable for some of the emergency situations Israel anticipates. The IDF’s assumption is that it will be used alongside television, radio, local and national media, the internet and more.
It is being marketed as a “personalized” form of emergency alert.
Israel’s Home Front App is expected to work not only in cases of military emergency, but also in the event of “artillery, shooting, terror attacks, tsunamis, earthquakes,” any calamitous event in which the command is engaged to protect civilian life.
So will Nebraskans, say, be able to download the app to warn them of upcoming hurricanes or tornadoes? Not so fast. An Israeli Ministry of Defense spokesperson told The Media Line that, “the Ministry of Defense, as a rule, does not comment on matters related to exports.”