SIBAT: The Israeli Ministry of Defense Office That Markets the Country's Weapons

SIBAT is the Defense Export and Cooperation Division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It is the office that coordinates Israel's defense export marketing, government-to-government weapons sales, trade-show presence, and the annual defense export data releases that have become the standing benchmark for the size of the Israeli defense industrial base. The $14.8 billion figure for 2024 defense exports — the record-high number — is a SIBAT release. The $13 billion 2023 figure was SIBAT. The annual pattern is SIBAT.

What SIBAT does and what SIBAT does not

SIBAT's mandate is defense export coordination and marketing. It is not the licensing body. The Defense Export Controls Agency — DECA — is the licensing body that approves or denies individual export transactions under the 2007 Defense Export Control Law. SIBAT promotes the sales. DECA approves the sales. The distinction is structural and consequential. A foreign country interested in buying Israeli defense equipment typically engages SIBAT first for marketing-and-coordination support and ends with DECA for licensing approval.

SIBAT also operates the government-to-government sales channel. Some Israeli defense exports are sold company-to-government — Rafael to Germany, for example — but others, particularly larger and more sensitive transactions, run through the Israeli MoD as a state-to-state transaction. The 2023 Arrow 3 deal with Germany included both formats. SIBAT coordinated the state-level architecture.

The annual export data

The most visible SIBAT output is the annual defense export data release. The numbers are reported in US dollars, broken out by region and by capability category, and timed for late spring or early summer. The 2024 release, published in May 2025, set the figure at $14.8 billion in signed defense export deals. The 2023 release set the figure at $13 billion. The pre-October-7 baseline was running closer to $11-12 billion.

The data releases have become the standing benchmark for the size of the Israeli defense industrial base. Foreign policy analysts, defense-industry researchers, and the Israeli financial press all cite SIBAT numbers as the canonical reference. The methodology — what counts as a signed deal, how multi-year contracts are recognized, how missile defense co-production is categorized — has been refined over the years and is broadly accepted as the authoritative read.

Regional breakdowns and the structural shift

The 2024 release was particularly significant for its regional breakdown. Europe absorbed the largest share of Israeli defense exports for the first time in recent memory — driven by the German Arrow 3 deal, expanded European Spike procurement, and broader European drone-and-radar acquisitions. The Abraham Accords countries — UAE, Bahrain, and post-normalization partners — appeared as a category in the SIBAT data for the first time in 2021 and have grown each year since.

The Asia-Pacific share, historically dominated by Indian procurement, remained large in absolute dollars. The shift in 2024 was that Europe overtook Asia-Pacific for the first time. The shift is structural, not transitional, and reflects the European post-Ukraine and post-October-7 procurement cycle.

Trade shows and the soft-power architecture

SIBAT operates Israel's national presence at major international defense trade shows — Eurosatory in Paris, DSEI in London, IDEX in Abu Dhabi, AeroIndia in Bengaluru, the Singapore Airshow, and others. The Israeli national pavilions at these shows function as both commercial showcase and diplomatic platform. SIBAT also runs the Israel Defense Expo when held domestically and coordinates with the IDF on classified demonstrations for invited delegations.

The soft-power architecture matters more than it appears. Defense procurement is relationship-driven. The procurement officers and program managers who make multi-billion-dollar decisions over five-to-ten year cycles build those relationships at trade shows, in classified briefing programs, and through sustained government-to-government dialogue. SIBAT runs the standing architecture that sustains those relationships across multiple ministerial cycles in Israel.

The structural place in the broader architecture

SIBAT sits inside the Israeli Ministry of Defense alongside DECA, the IDF's procurement and operational requirements offices, and the foreign-relations directorates. The integration matters. Promotion, licensing, end-use monitoring, and ongoing relationship management are all coordinated through the same ministerial structure. The model is more integrated than the equivalent US architecture, which spreads the equivalent functions across Defense, State, and Commerce.

The takeaway

SIBAT is the marketing and coordination spine of Israeli defense exports. The annual data releases set the benchmark numbers the rest of the global defense-trade analysis uses. The trade-show and government-to-government architecture runs the relationships that close the multi-decade procurement cycles. The 2024 record of $14.8 billion is a SIBAT number. The Europe-overtakes-Asia structural shift is a SIBAT observation. The growth of Abraham Accords trade is a SIBAT data point. The office is one of the most consequential and least covered in the broader Israeli defense architecture.

This profile is part of Olam's Defense pillar.