The Israeli military’s digital command system identified an average of 1,000 potential targets per day during the first two years of its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, according to a presentation by Elbit Systems, a figure that raises grave questions about civilian protection and the legality of targeting decisions.
The data, presented at a Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) land warfare conference in London last week, revealed that between October 7, 2023, and the end of 2025, the Israeli Tzayad (Hunter) digital army programme detected a total of 850,000 “real-time intel targets” across all fronts of the recent wars “Israel” waged.
The slide, shown by Miki Edelstein, an Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) reservist major general and executive vice-president of Elbit, highlighted the system’s role in enabling “high-tempo operations” and generating more than 20,000 battle plans.
The 850,000 figure encompassed people, vehicles, and other objects detected in real time for potential follow-up strikes from land, sea, or air.
Concerns over assessment capacity
Military and legal experts have reacted with alarm to the scale of the data. Wes Bryant, a former senior targeting advisor and policy analyst at the U.S. Pentagon who specialized in civilian harm assessments, told The Guardian that the number was “highly concerning”.
Noting that Gaza’s population stood at approximately 2.2 million people and housed 300,000 buildings before the war, Bryant suggested the IOF had at one point or another targeted “up to or over half the entire population and infrastructure” of the territory.
“I will say, definitively, that there is no way each and every one of the 1,000 targets a day—let alone 850,000 targets in aggregate, are thoroughly and effectively characterized in terms of collateral damage analysis and assessed risk to civilian populations,” Bryant said.
Even characterising 50 a day is hard enough (but possible).
His concerns were echoed by Sophia Goodfriend, a research fellow at Cambridge University specialising in AI and warfare, who told The Guardian that no military could thoroughly vet 1,000 daily targets without heavy reliance on automated systems.
“Any military would struggle to do so without outsourcing verification to other automated systems, which raises questions of accountability and concern about shrinking amounts of human oversight,” Goodfriend said.
System speeds up strikes, raises legal questions
According to Edelstein, the Elbit-run Tzayad programme slashed the time required for external fire support, artillery, naval, or air strikes, from “40 to 50 minutes to one to seven minutes.” He stressed that a “man in the loop” always decided whether fire support missions proceeded, calling it “the right thing to do.”
However, a subsequent line on the Elbit slide, not directly addressed by the speaker, noted more than 46,000 “joint strikes and closing fire on real-time intel,” equivalent to just over 50 strikes per day.
Elbit Systems, in a response to The Guardian, denied that the 850,000 figure referred to enemy targets, despite the slide’s explicit wording. A spokesperson said it reflected “aggregated system activity and operational data” and represented the volume of information processed,
rather than the number of enemy targets or actual strikes.
AI and the 20-second assessment
The IOF also employ two other AI-powered databases, Lavender and Hasbora (the Gospel), to accelerate targeting. Lavender at one stage identified 37,000 individuals as potential militants based on algorithmic assessments of their links to Hamas, while Hasbora generated up to 100 building targets per day, according to 2023 reports.
An Israeli intelligence officer previously told the media that human operators assessed Lavender-flagged targets for “20 seconds a time” due to the sheer volume generated. Two intelligence officers also acknowledged that during the early stages of the Gaza war, it was permitted to kill 15 to 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking Resistance fighters.
The RUSI panel was notable for its high-ranking NATO attendees. Britain’s Air Chief Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, NATO’s second most senior military commander, sat alongside Edelstein, as did a British army brigadier. Edelstein’s presence had been listed only as “speaker to be announced” until the session commenced.
Military leaders across NATO have acknowledged that modern state-on-state or near-state conflicts are being conducted at a far faster pace than previous counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, where targeting decisions allowed for more deliberate legal review.
But critics argue that speed cannot come at the expense of fundamental principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law.
Elbit Systems, which supplies the Tzayad programme, recently won a contract to develop the system further using artificial intelligence to support tactical decision-making. The company has not commented on the specific legal or ethical implications of the targeting volumes disclosed.
As “Israel’s” military continues to operate across multiple fronts, the disclosure of 850,000 real-time detections over just two years is likely to intensify international scrutiny over the conduct of hostilities and the protection of civilians in one of the most densely populated conflict zones in the world.