Closing Ranks
A series of critical reports points to the Israel Defense Forces failures in the second war in Lebanon, citing poor professional training, mistaken military philosophy and misguided values and principles.
(The Jerusalem Report. January 8, 2007)
From time to time raised voices could be heard in the corridor outside the conference room at the Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, where the General Staff was discussing a report on its performance during the recent Lebanon war. The report, by Maj. Gen. Udi Shani, was damning, starting with the charge that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz had gone into the war against Hizballah without a plan for the ground forces, with ill-defined war aims and poorly formulated orders of battle…
Devastating as it was, the Shani report did not deal with the IDF as such, but only with the way the generals conducted the war. A similar presentation the week before, by a former head of the Northern Command, Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amiram Levin, had touched on much deeper structural and conceptual issues. The military philosophy of the past five years, he declared, had been a resounding failure. The army had been lulled into over-reliance on high-tech firepower and information technology at the expense of classic fighting values, including those the IDF had once excelled at, like large-scale land maneuver and officers leading from the front.
The notion that wars could be won solely by long-distance firepower, particularly air power, had led to another misguided notion: that there was no longer any need for a large well-trained reserve army, Levin observed. He urged the IDF to quickly return to the tried and tested concept of the reserves as the main army, with the regular army seen as a production line for reservists and, in wartime, as a holding force until the reserves reach the front. Of the General Staff's exaggerated belief in firepower, he declared that "it's not a question of a better or worse military doctrine. It's a question of a totally wrongheaded one that could never work and on which the IDF should never have relied."
The reports by Levin and Shani were the outcome of two of the most important of a series of 11 inquiries ordered by the IDF to investigate key aspects of the 34-day war, during which the IDF failed to stop Hizballah from firing over 4,000 medium- and short- range Katyusha rockets at civilians in northern Israel. Another 30 committees were appointed to look into specific issues…
When the military does set about the work of redefining basic principles, reordering priorities and generally rebuilding the IDF, it may well be without Lt. Gen. Halutz. The former air force commander, who took over the top spot shortly before last year's disengagement, is widely expected to succumb to public pressure and resign soon as chief of staff.
When the military does set about the work of redefining basic principles, reordering priorities and generally rebuilding the IDF, it may well be without Lt. Gen. Halutz. The former air force commander, who took over the top spot shortly before last year's disengagement, is widely expected to succumb to public pressure and resign soon as chief of staff.
The turmoil doesn't stop with the army's own inquiries. The findings of a government-appointed commission under former Magistrate's Court president Eliyahu Winograd and six Knesset committees investigating the war could be even harsher. Moreover, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, who pulls no punches, is looking into the readiness of the home front in the face of the Katyusha threat and his report is likely to be as devastating as any. The comptroller has already added to the IDF's embarrassment with an early-December report on the professional training of senior officers. According to the report, 82 percent of major generals, 68 percent of brigadier generals and 76 percent of colonels had not even attended the National Defense College courses required for elevation to the top ranks…
The questions raised by the turmoil of the past half year go far beyond the conduct of the war in Lebanon. They include: How should the IDF build its force? How should it integrate technology and classical battle values? How much of the defense budget should it spend on armaments and technology and how much on training? And, bottom line, will it be ready for the next war which, some pundits are predicting, could break out as early as this coming summer?
Outspoken, battle-hardened ex-generals like Levin and former Intelligence chief Uri Sagui are convinced that the IDF should return to its roots, rebuilding its capacity for large-scale land maneuver and simplifying its doctrine and language. But some seasoned observers argue that that is easier said than done. Military historian Martin van Crefeld of the Hebrew University argues that the IDF's weaknesses have become ingrained over the 40 years of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. "It's very simple," he says. "If you fight the weak, you become weak."… "War is an imitative activity. You keep studying the other side and you tend to become like the other side." At the other end of the scale, van Crefeld argues that the IDF erred in blindly following the U.S. lead on digital or information warfare as a panacea for all military situations. The idea behind the "digital revolution" is the use of modern technology to obtain real-time battlefield information, which supposedly enables commanders to read the battle from a distance and to decide its outcome by launching accurate long-distance munitions at key areas, rather than committing troops…
The current vogue of Western armies trying to win battles without endangering troops, which military historians call "post-heroic warfare," is not uniquely Israeli. It is driven by two key principles, says Avi Kober, a senior researcher at Bar Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies and an expert on military affairs: minimizing casualties among your own troops and minimizing civilian losses on the enemy side. In Israel, Kober adds, post-heroic warfare has been gaining ground since the last major Israeli "low-tech operation," 1978's Operation Litani against the Palestinian Liberation Organization's stronghold in south Lebanon.
The rise of post-heroic warfare has been facilitated by the evolution of highly accurate long-range weaponry and information technology capable of pinpointing enemy positions. "If you have the precision-guided munitions and digital information, it becomes very tempting to believe that you can win wars from a distance. And if you fire from long-range, you don't get killed. And if you are accurate, you don't cause collateral damage," says Kober.
The post-heroic modus operandi has proved relatively successful against the Palestinians, particularly in the use of missiles fired from helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles in targeted killings of "ticking bomb" terrorists and terror operators, and partially against Hizballah in previous South Lebanese confrontations, like 1993's Operation Accountability and 1996's Grapes of Wrath, which relied heavily on aerial and artillery bombardments and in which few ground troops were committed. But in the war last summer, there was a need for early victory on the battlefield, to stop short-range Katyusha rockets raining down day after day on Israeli population centers. "But you can't have battlefield victory without maneuvering and engaging the enemy on the ground," says Kober. "No army, let alone a guerrilla organization, has ever been defeated by firepower alone. To stop the Katyushas, we needed to accompany firepower with a large-scale ground operation. But when the mind-set is to avoid casualties, you are loath to send in ground forces. In other words…the IDF kept fighting in the post-heroic mode when it should have shied away from it," he declares.
Kober bemoans the fact that what he calls the "cult of technology" has became part of IDF culture, with hugely detrimental results. It led to the illusion that wars can be won with minimal hand-to-hand combat, as commanders watch battles on plasma computer screens rather than "leading from the front"; and to units not gathering their own field intelligence, waiting instead for intelligence to be supplied through centralized technology by the General Staff. It also led to a lopsided structure of the armed forces. Since everything was focused on firepower and not maneuver, primacy was given to the air force, while infantry, artillery and armor reserves and logistics were neglected. "Over the past few years, the thinking has been that air power, along with special forces, could do everything in both high- and low-intensity conflict. The illusion that battlefield victory could be achieved by air power alone crept in," Kober argues.
The reliance on air power led to a number of wrongheaded derivatives. Generals spoke about "controlling" land areas without occupying them in the same way as planes might control the skies or ships might control the sea. But, says Kober, in classical land warfare, areas must be captured before they can be controlled—a lesson the IDF was taught in the war in the Hizballah town of Bint J'beil, which IDF troops entered and withdrew from several times, without ever rooting out the small Hizballah force dug in there. The IDF also spoke about using firepower to "achieve effects" that would ultimately break the enemy's will to fight. But in the Lebanon war, this never happened.
In Kober's view, remedying the flaws in the IDF and finding the best way to integrate technology and classical military theory should start with proper training of the officer corps. Not only do relatively few senior officers attend the National Defense College, as the state comptroller pointed out, but those who do are not taught the right things. According to Kober, "they don't teach military theory and military history, focusing instead on the political, social and economic aspects of national security. In other senior military programs, they put all kinds of weird ideas into their heads from non-military disciplines, instead of teaching classical strategy." What is needed, he declares, is a "revolution in the officer corps. We need more professional officers and an army that is attractive to young, talented people."
So far there is no sign of anything like that happening. Six years ago, Maj. Gen. (res.) Ya'akov Amidror, a past commander of the National Defense College, drafted a comprehensive plan for theoretical training of officers from basic officers' course all the way through to brigadier general. "Unfortunately," he says, "it was only partially implemented. Successive chiefs of staff put more emphasis on something they called "campaign doctrine," which proved disastrous for the IDF… “[C]ampaign doctrine” led to the introduction of vague language and unclear procedures which were not goal-oriented in classic military style.
Besides neglecting the teaching of military theory, Amidror believes that one of the biggest mistakes made by the IDF in recent years was the drastic cut in reserve service. In order to restructure the IDF in a more balanced way, he suggests canceling the recently adopted Reservists' Law, which exempts reservists from routine security service such as patrolling the Palestinian territories and reduces the number of days they would be called up to train…
Amidror, a political hawk, is optimistic about remedying the IDF's ills. He expresses great admiration for Israel's fighting men and argues that if the right steps are taken, the IDF can be restored to its former glory relatively quickly. But some former generals on the left take a more pessimistic view, arguing that the IDF's problems cannot be divorced from deep formative developments in Israeli society. Brig. Gen. (res.) Giora Furman, veteran pilot, economist and member of the left-leaning Council for Peace and Security, sees two underlying processes that have had a major impact on the IDF: the 39-year-long occupation of Palestinian territory and economic policies that have undermined social solidarity inside Israel. "The need to deal with the terrorism sparked by the occupation limited training and preparation for other types of warfare. It created a mentality of trying to avoid casualties, as soldiers asked whether this was something worth sacrificing their lives for… Worse, he says, it eroded the IDF's moral norms. The occupation "forced soldiers to turn a blind eye to persistent breaches of human rights, Israeli and international law. That created a sense that no law is really important, including the IDF's own internal norms, which left it without a moral compass, even for relations among its soldiers. In other words, the occupation helped to erode group solidarity and undermined readiness to sacrifice for common goals."… In Furman's view, therefore, fixing the IDF requires a new kind of national leadership, capable of following socioeconomic policies that unify and regional policies that lower the level of conflict.
It's clear, however, that even in a best-case scenario, such a change will take years. The IDF does not have that kind of time at its disposal and is currently making short-term preparations. The army's altered plans for 2007 will incorporate many of the suggested changes. One of the people expected to have some input is Maj. Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, the author of one of the devastating internal reports on the state of the army, who headed the Southern Command until as recently as 2003.
Almog disagrees vehemently with the thesis that obsession with technology was the root cause of the IDF's poor showing in Lebanon. He argues that the IDF needs the most advanced technology it can get, making his point with a telling comparison: "In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, we lost a quarter of our planes and a quarter of our pilots because we had no technological answer to enemy anti-aircraft missiles. But in 1982, in the first Lebanon war, when we did, the air force was able to destroy all the Syrian missiles and 100 Syrian planes without losing a single aircraft," he observes. "It's imperative that we stay at least a generation or two ahead of our enemies technologically." Almog rejects the notion that being able to watch battle developments on plasma screens holds commanders back from the front. "The plasma screen is not the problem. Commanders did not have to abandon classical command-and-control principles and stay in the rear. We need both things: technology and commanders who can inspire the men by leading from the front."
But, Almog acknowledges, over-reliance on technology did have something to do with what he sees as the biggest mistake of the past few years: the neglect of classical land warfare. "They didn't train as much as they should have because of new budgetary priorities. And because of the development of 'smart' firepower, they underestimated the need for maneuver. I think the war in Lebanon was a wake-up call that will help us remedy these problems and build a more balanced force," he says.
For Almog, balancing the force means no more cutting of ground forces and ground force commands, and training the infantry, armor and artillery to work together in large sweeping maneuvers, backed up by airpower, intelligence and logistics. And this, in turn, entails a readiness to conduct fast-moving, rolling warfare without holding back in the "post-heroic" mode. "War is a test of the readiness of the nation to put life and limb on the line. In some cases, there is no substitute for ground battles with the attendant loss of life. When air power failed to stop the Katyushas, you needed a ground maneuver," he says. Almog says he would make a special effort to train reserve officers, company, battalion and brigade commanders. And he would bring back some of the old-timers, the retired, experienced generals to help with the rebuilding…
Something like Almog's blueprint will probably be adopted. Already the IDF has dramatically increased training for reserves. "In 2007, we will train between 30-40 percent more than we had planned for 2006," a senior officer tells The Report. The training will emphasize joint maneuvers involving infantry, armor, artillery and air support…
The officer made it clear that the IDF does not accept the argument that the "digital revolution" has eroded traditional Israeli army values, like commanders leading the troops into battle. That, he said, was too simplistic a view, and there is absolutely no intention of scrapping the ground forces digitalization program, known as Digital Land Army. But there will almost certainly be a change in the budgetary balance, with relatively more going to training and less to technology…
The IDF is well aware that tactics it uses in the territories did not meet the needs of the war situation in Lebanon. The switch from the post-heroic to full-scale war mode is not easy in any circumstances, the officer concedes. And, making it even more difficult in Lebanon, he says, was the failure to define what was happening as war. "It's not just a semantic thing. It's a state of mind," he says. Nevertheless, he argues, it would be wrong to conclude that the IDF did not have the capacity to operate ground forces in Lebanon on a grand scale. It most certainly did, and anyone who thinks otherwise would be making a huge mistake. "If the war had been defined differently from the start and if the use of large-scale ground forces had been part of the original operational plan, the results would have been very different," he declares, noting that for the first time in years, the army is planning division-scale exercises involving thousands of men.
One thing is certain: Never in its history has the IDF undergone such a thorough self-examination. "We are putting everything on the table, sweeping nothing under the carpet," the officer declares. "If there is a way to remedy the flaws, and there is, we have taken the first necessary step."
The nation is depending on his being right.
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