Israel Defense Prize

The Israel Defense Prize (Hebrew: פרס בטחון ישראל‬), also known as the Israel Defense Award is an award presented annually by the President of Israel to people and organizations who made significant contributions to the defense of the State of Israel.

Israel Defense Prize
פרס בטחון ישראל
Awarded for	Significant contributions to the defense of the State of Israel
Country	Israel
Presented by	President of the State of Israel
First award	1958; 67 years ago (1958)

The prize was first awarded in 1958 and it is awarded each year by the President of Israel.^[1] Three to Four prizes are awarded each year. One is a lifetime achievement award, and two or three go to individuals or units whose efforts contributed to an operational field.

Notable Recipients

Year	Recipient(s)	Notes
1958	Uziel Gal	Inventor of the Uzi Submachine Gun
1959	Yevgeny Ratner	Improvements on the Bazooka
1960	A rocket unit from Rafael	Development of the Luz Missile
1961	Israel Tal
1962	An electromechanical unit from Rafael	Development of a proximity fuze
1963	A team from unit 515	For their dedicated work which has led to significant successes
1964	David Laskov
1965	Manes Pratt	Founding the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center
1966	Ori Even-Tov
1967	Pinchas Dagan
1968	Shlomo Bashan, Sammy Harel, Moshe Meir, Ephraim Ashkenazi	A development that improved the gunsight of Air Force aircraft and enhanced the operational capabilities of the Mirage aircraft.
1969	Avraham Makob	Development of a runway penetration bomb
1970	Israel Orieli and Yair Bar On	On the improvement of radar for naval vessels
1971	A development team at Rafael, including Nahum Shapira, Ben-Zion Naveh, Dan Tzioni, Naftali Amit, Erwin Reiter, Yitzhak Nudleman, and Uzi Rav	Development of the 'Tal 1' cluster bomb against soft targets
1972	Sasson Yitzhayek	Impressive achievements in the field of codebreaking in Unit 8200
1973	Yisrael Galili and Yacov Leor	Development of the 'Galil' rifle
1974	Avner Avkin, Gedalia Aharoni, Shmuel Elad, Mordechai Chen, Chaim Prion, and David Raz from Israel Military Industries (IMI)	Commendation for their contribution to the development of artillery weapons
1975	A team from Unit 8200 of the Intelligence Corps (Sergio Hart, Micha Sharir, and Nathan Zimmerman)
1976	Captain Amihud Rabin from the Aeronautical Engineering Branch of the Air Force.	Increasing the takeoff weight of Skyhawk aircraft, which improved their range and weapons-carrying capability.
1977	Caesarea Unit led by Mike Harari	A commendation from the Prize Committee for special activity
1978	An intelligence corps team (including Israel Radomski for the second time)
1979	Shmuel Shtrikman
1980	A team from the Intelligence Corps (including Shay Pilpel, Yaakov Yeshua, Ron Shamir, Chaim Wolfson, Nathan Zimmerman, Ora Hadas, Yehuda Hartman, Yonatan Stern, Hanokh Wexler, Doron Edelman, Naftali Tashbi, Mordechai Tenenhaus, and Chaim Held)	Impressive achievements in a field vital to the security of the state
1981
1982