Inside Israel’s Elite Underwater Forces

One of Yaltam’s most important activities is rescue and recovery in all of Israel’s aquatic and underwater areas, including the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Sea of Galilee, rivers and more.

By Oren Cohen, JNS

One of Israel’s most hush-hush military units, the Navy’s Underwater Missions Unit (Yaltam), protects Israel’s maritime borders, performs complex rescue operations, and neutralizes underwater threats. Despite its critical role in national security, this unit remains largely unknown to the public.

“We are the Navy’s professional divers,” explains Cmdr. Oron Inbar, 47, the unit’s commander for the past five years, who completed his service this month after nearly three decades in the military.

“Professional diving is a complex field, very different from combat diving performed by Shayetet 13 [“Flotilla 13,” the equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs]. Our diving can be both shallow and very deep, with unit members diving to depths of 300 feet. We also have robotic equipment that can reach depths between 330 and 980 feet, which has been crucial during the current conflict.”

When asked about missions since Oct. 7, Inbar elaborates: “We mobilized very quickly when the war broke out, preparing for all scenarios, and were operational within hours.

“Since then, we’ve been doing what we do best in both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Our core wartime missions have involved neutralizing and removing devices and weaponry we’ve found along the southern coast, for instance, after attempted sea infiltrations.

“We’ve also located and removed unmanned underwater vehicles, along with other missions involving detection and mapping, often in cooperation with Shayetet 13 and Yahalom [the Combat Engineering Corps’ special operations unit].”

Yaltam also has offensive capabilities, which have been utilized in recent fighting.

“At the start of the war, missions were truly around the clock, and even now, there’s a lot of high-intensity activity. We’re carrying out complex operations in the maritime arena, mainly in the southern sector, but also in the north,” Inbar says.

The outgoing Yaltam commander is married with three children, and lives on Kibbutz Kfar HaMaccabi, east of Haifa. “The sea has always fascinated me,” he recounts. “My father was a Shayetet 13 fighter, and I enlisted in the Navy in 1997. I served on ships and then joined Yaltam, which I commanded for five years.”

Rescue and recovery

Yaltam is one of the best examples of women’s integration in the IDF. “We’ve been a mixed-gender unit for over 20 years, and for us, it’s the most natural thing in the world, a non-issue,” Inbar reports.

One of Yaltam’s most important activities is rescue and recovery in all of Israel’s aquatic and underwater areas, including the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Sea of Galilee, rivers and more.

Over the years, the unit has participated in numerous missions to locate missing persons. In many cases, this has involved recovering bodies from the water.

Unit members play a vital role in rescue operations following military accidents, often working in collaboration with the Air Force’s Unit 669 combat rescue force.

“Once it becomes an underwater incident, we lead it,” Inbar explains, “both in rescue and in collecting and extracting parts of crashed helicopters—for example, for accident investigations.”

In many cases, Yaltam works on civilian incidents in cooperation with the police. “It happens quite often that innocent civilians swimming in the sea or various bodies of water spot something, for example, various types of ordnance, weapon parts, or bombs,” says Inbar.

“The civilians call the police, and they call us. These parts end up in the water, among other reasons, as a result of criminal incidents.”

Another Yaltam specialization is explosives handling, removing bombs and weaponry found underwater. “It’s similar to what the Yahalom unit of the Combat Engineering Corps does,” says Inbar, “and we cooperate with them.”

“We perform any task or job you can imagine above water and underwater, and often the underwater execution is much more complex and dangerous,” Inbar explains. “We deal with underwater engineering, treating and rehabilitating infrastructure, systems, structures, and vessels, underwater welding and so on.”

Yaltam is composed of two combat companies and one logistical-technical company. All fighters undergo year-long training in professional diving. The explosives experts undergo training in the ground forces, followed by training for underwater explosives handling.

As providers of professional support and backup for certain cases that can occur far from shore, Yaltam fighters often join patrols on missile boats and submarines.

Yaltam, established under its current name in 1980, has made a name for itself by participating in special operations. Among other missions, unit fighters crossed the Suez Canal to rescue wounded soldiers during the Yom Kippur War.

The Yaltam insignia features an octopus, symbolizing the unit’s versatility in tackling diverse underwater challenges and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances during complex missions.