Russia Resurgent - A TL
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
No idea if the Purple Revolution will prevail in Portugal, but Brazil is more susceptible. The last Emperor of Brazil is considered a hero and founding father of the country, and was deposed (coup) despite being very popular.
That if, if Brazil restores its monarchy, it is likely that Portugal will too. Because if our neighbor (Spain) and our old colony (Brazil) have their own monarchs, why can't they have theirs.
The Americans (8%) who supported a monarchy surely did so following this logic, if they can have a monarch, we can too !!
You would be surprised how many people in the world think that way.
That if, if Brazil restores its monarchy, it is likely that Portugal will too. Because if our neighbor (Spain) and our old colony (Brazil) have their own monarchs, why can't they have theirs.
The Americans (8%) who supported a monarchy surely did so following this logic, if they can have a monarch, we can too !!
You would be surprised how many people in the world think that way.
Chapter 41: Assessment of War.
Chapter 41: Assessment of War.
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Note: This chapter is very text heavy and is 10,000 words long, so bewarned!
Some Acronyms:-
LIC - Limited Intensity Conflict
RMA - Revolution in Military Affairs.
***
Beijing Institute of the People’s Liberation Army (北京解放军学院)
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Introduction
The 2007 War between Lebanon, Syria, Hezbollah, Palestine and Israel can be traced back to the 2006 Lebanon war in all essentiality. The poor Israeli performance in the war made tensions in the region unable to dissipate as the enemies of the Jewish state continued to plot against the government based in Tel Aliv. The Lebanese people, and government as such also became inflamed by the massive amounts of Lebanese casualties that the IDF had claimed in the process of trying to eliminate Hezbollah, and many in Lebanon called the 2006 war an infringement on Lebanese sovereignty.
All of this of course leads to another fact. The Egyptian Civil War. Under Hosni Mubarak, the country of Egypt has remained a one man dictatorship without many standing in the way of the government from what they wanted. As such political dissidents have been mysteriously disappearing for years, and the cyber-attacks in Egypt, simply ignited what as already an ember of discontent in Egypt. As the economy plummeted and hundreds of people, some without connection to politics as well, were imprisoned under the government, the country erupted into protests, protests that without being addressed, and with a response that left hundreds dead, and many widowed, the people took up arms against the Egyptian government, and formed the so called Egyptian Army of Liberty, which is now embroiled in a state of civil war with the Egyptian Armed Forces and the Egyptian government.
This, combined with popular dissatisfaction from the 2006 war, and the mobilization of Israeli forces, for perhaps a pre-emptive strike into the Sinai, which would threaten the Syrian positions, and create a trade flux with Lebanon, both governments warned Israel that mobilization would not be accepted by the powers of large in the area. And of course, as history has shown us, the artillery strikes led to the conflict. This conflict has led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese, and an unknown, probably in the thousands again, amount of casualties both in the Hezbollah group and Palestine. The war was a limited success for Syria, as it saw the majority of the Golan Heights reclaimed by the Syrians, which has made President Bashar Al-Assad extremely popular in the Arab region for liberating a portion of his state and nation that has been under unpopular occupation from the Israeli armed forces for the past 40 years or so, which has been subject to much condemnation from many governments and nations throughout the world.
In this work that has been compiled by our spy intelligence, espionage, and critical analysis of the events, beforehand, we will provide the paramount leader with a clear picture of what happened, and how it happened, and how Israel blundered in the war.
Syrian Economic Preparations
Syria wasn’t in particular prepared for a war in the sense that they wanted one. However, Hafeez Al-Assad, was the dictator of Syria, and a man who detested Israel with all of his fiber, according to the data of what we know of the man. Consequently he participated in multiple Arab wars against Israel, only to be defeated in battle, by the Israelis, and have the Golan heights occupied, which is a huge blemish under his reign. However, despite this, the man remained popular with the average Syrian, and the upsurge of Syrian prosperity in terms of economics in the 1980s made his position secure.
Hafez Al-Assad.
However in the late 1980s, as the Eastern Block of the Cold War began to disintegrate, the economic block that Al-Assad had made for himself under the guidance of the Soviet Union, and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. The economic situation worsened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This was perhaps the deathblow to the perhaps prosperous economic stability that Syria had managed to gain in the 1980s. Agricultural production declined by 28% in 1992, and the country experienced a lack of proper food. Unemployment ran rampant, and for the moment, Al-Assad himself wasn’t much better as he tried to find a successor for himself after his imminent death.
However as the position of his son, Bashar Al-Assad became secure, in the latter half of 1996, Hafeez Al-Assad decided that it was perhaps time to turn the Syrian economic position around, and to make gains on the economic position in Syria, and by extension, the military situation as well. In December 1996, Al-Assad contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting bilateral talks between the two nations, which could in theory allow both sides to start trading with each other on a more open platform, and through hard work create a better Syrian economy. In December, 1996, Grigory Yavlisnky had just been able to make sure that the economy of Russia would be able to resist the downfall of the Soviet Economic Structure, and had introduced a market economy in Russia, and back then, the Russian nation wasn’t interested in propping the Syrian nation up. However, still, recognizing the strategic location of Syria, most importantly its, province of Latakia, which could be a gamechanger in Russo geopolitical interests in the eastern Mediterranean. However, Russia was in no condition to fund Syrian economic interests, when its own interests weren’t being covered in the full. So in order to compensate, in late December, 1996, economical supervisors, and economical assistants were sent to Syria on part of Russia, most importantly of whom was Yury Boldyrev, who became the leader of the Russian Economic Mission in Syria.
Yury Boldyrev.
Yury Boldyrev was an astute economist, and alongside Yavlinsky had planned the continued growth of the Russian economy, and he clearly imprinted it in Syria as well. Economic liberalization in Syria had been conducted in 1991, however had been done in a half-hearted manner with the liberalization being more or less an extremely mixed affair that showed no particular success either. Boldyrev and the Russian team managed to analyze the entirety of the liberalization program, and instead offered Hafeez Al-Assad a new economic program that mirrored the Russian economic progress on many levels.
The 1997 Syrian Economic Plan made by the Russian Economic Mission in Syria consisted of the following measures:-
1. A governmental supervision body akin to GOSPLAN, to be accountable for investment in and around Syrian companies and the Syrian economy.
2. The creation of a National Investment Board to make sure that the economic measures taken by the GOSPLAN equivalent in Syria will be accountable, and sufficiently done in an equivalent manner.
3. The rationalization of multiple smaller companies into larger companies to make sure efficiency is secured in the economy.
4. An investment plan of around $300 Million to be secured from the Russian Federation.
5. The creation of special economic zones in the region.
6. To reduce the rate of poverty from 60% of the population to around 25% in 2005 through massive economic innovation plans, and vocational training to increase productivity in the sector.
This basic outline and plan was adopted by Hafeez Al-Assad quickly, and the Syrian National Economic Board or the SNEB, quickly became the GOSPLAN equivalent in Syria, and in tandem with the National Investment Board of Syria (NIBS) quickly started to re-direct funds and create a measure of liberalization that had been unable to be fully implemented in 1991.
This was good for the Syria leader, as a lot of previously wasted efficiency and wasted potential in the Syrian economy was highlighted and brought to the centerpiece, and rationalized Syrian industries gave more economic productivity and manufacturing capability in the nation, which in the end, allowed for greater flow of money into the Syrian coffers.
However the Syrian economy continued to run into a single problem throughout the remainders of Hafeez Al-Assad’s reigns and tenure as President of Syria, which Boldyrev continued to speak about. The Corruption present in the Syrian Economy made it hard for the Syrian economy to flourish, and whilst 1989 levels had been achieved by the end of 1998, the corruption present in the Syrian economy made it extremely hard for the Syrian economy to cope with the burden of liberalization.
This basic outline and plan was adopted by Hafeez Al-Assad quickly, and the Syrian National Economic Board or the SNEB, quickly became the GOSPLAN equivalent in Syria, and in tandem with the National Investment Board of Syria (NIBS) quickly started to re-direct funds and create a measure of liberalization that had been unable to be fully implemented in 1991.
This was good for the Syria leader, as a lot of previously wasted efficiency and wasted potential in the Syrian economy was highlighted and brought to the centerpiece, and rationalized Syrian industries gave more economic productivity and manufacturing capability in the nation, which in the end, allowed for greater flow of money into the Syrian coffers. However the Syrian economy continued to run into a single problem throughout the remainders of Hafeez Al-Assad’s reigns and tenure as President of Syria, which Boldyrev continued to speak about. The Corruption present in the Syrian Economy made it hard for the Syrian economy to flourish, and whilst 1989 levels had been achieved by the end of 1998, the corruption present in the Syrian economy made it extremely hard for the Syrian economy to cope with the burden of liberalization.
In 1997, the Syrian economy grew at a rate of 3.4%, in 1998 by 3.9%, in 1999 by 4.6% and in 2000 it recorded a high economic growth rate of 7.8%, a huge leap which shows the end progress of the Syrian economy.
In terms of the military, that portion of the government took a largely back seat in the progress of the Syrian nation under Hafeez Al-Assad during his last years with us, however despite that he didn’t neglect that portion of the government either. The Chechen Conflict in Russia had opened a lot of eyes on the effectiveness of small marauding groups of soldiers, and small bands of units, and the importance of cohesion of units as shown later by the Russian High Command was noted directly by the Syrian High Command, and the improvement that the Russian involvement in the Chechen War had after the scrapping of multiple obsolete weapons was also regarded by the Syrian Armed Forces. In this measure, Hafeez Al-Assad cut around 10% of the Military Budget of the nation, scrapping the obsolete weapons in the Syrian Armed Forces, and using the money needed to maintain them to stimulate the economy. However despite how this may sound, the cut of the budget was in fact a proper incentive for the Syrian Armed Forces to slowly get into a more quality over quantity doctrine in their armed forces, and the smaller amount of troops were trained more rigorously, and Russian training methods were imported from Russia, with supervisors being mostly Russian, and members of the CSTO also sent various military advisors to Syria, in which case led to a rapid professionalization of the Syrian Military.
When Bashar Al-Assad took command of the Syrian Nation in 2000, he was determined to continue the good progress in the military and the economy, and would continue to seek Russian help and the help of the CSTO in his endeavor. In October, 2000, Bashar Al-Assad opened his nation to full investment from both East and West, which did make his coffers grow full, and the Syrian economy was massively stimulated in this event, and the Russians, and the CSTO became the largest investors in the region, however closely followed by the UK, Italy and Greece in the region. The country also experienced a boom in population growth due to the good fortunes of the country briefly before the economic realities of the economic growth such as women employment made the growth rate slow down to a normal level. Al-Assad’s progressiveness, for an Arab dictator at least, was good for the economy and by the end of 2000, the massive economic growth rate of the nation in that year is attributed to him.
Bashar Al-Assad.
He became involved with the Russian government’s schemes of economical and agricultural development and mirrored the Russian schemes within his own nation, and passed the Syrian Economic Improvement Act of 2001 in the government, which was simply a copy pasted version of the Russian 3 year plans designed for Syrian economic problems. On the large scale, the 2001 Economic Act in Syria was largely successful, and poverty was largely cut down, and the Al-Assad regime enjoyed a lot of popular support in the country. The economy flourished even more, when Russo-Ukrainian investment entered the ports in the Latakia province to make increase the viability and importance of the port, and the ports saw an increase in trade and commerce by 18% by the end of 2001, which was a massive increase.
Under the act of 2001, the Syrian economy also needed to be diversified from their reliance on petroleum products, and in order to end this dependence, Assad emphasized the service sector, and provided improvised schemes in the private and service sector, which allowed the economy to become even more stimulated, and the subsequent projects that Syria embarked on saw Syrian agriculture flourish as well, and the revenues of the nation started to improve as well. By 2004, when the Economic Act of 2001 had expired in Syria, the Syrian economy had grown by 6.1% in 2001, 5.7% in 2002, 7.1% in 2003 and 6.9% in 2004 making sure that the first four years of Bashar Al-Assad’s rule were economically prosperous for the nation. In early 2004, around 43% of the Syrian population was impoverished, which was much better than the 57% he had inherited in 2000.
On the ground level, Bashar Al-Assad was more realistic in his economic goals than his father. Al-Assad the younger was more focused on uplifting the Syrian peoples from poverty and increasing the purchasing power parity of the Syrian economy, which even if he had a small economy, would enable him to buy more than what people may expect and be able to afford it. Such goals were realistic, and the fast drop in poverty in Syria is often attributed to Al-Assad’s realistic economic goals. Whom many think was influenced by Grigory Yavlinsky himself and his book The Economics of Day to Day Life which was published in 2001, which provides an extremely insightful insight into the Russian economic recovery from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Bashar Al-Assad also kept realistic goals for himself, and the Syrian economy as well. He sent students on scholarships made by the Syrian government on lucky draws in schools to western schools and universities in Russia to become more learned in the topics, and when the returned to Syria, these students found their starting jobs and occupations within the Syrian government itself where they would put their knowledge to use for the benefit of the economy. In particular, the Russian School of Economics, was a most popular destination for Syrian economical students to pursue, and when they returned, they also created more productivity in the economy by in turn increasing the innovativeness of the economy.
The transportation sector of the economy was also aggressively attacked by the Syrian government to improve it, and the following goals were kept in place:-
To be sure, Bashar Al-Assad is a dictator. Anyone even entertaining the thoughts of taking the man out of power suddenly dies or disappears without an explanation over the country is absolute and sometimes this can be a hindrance to the development of the economy, however despite this, the country, with aid from CSTO, continues its economic expansion and goodwill. Along with Iran, and Pakistan, Syria became the third Muslim nation in 2004 that was designated as Russia’s preferred investor locations, which aided the continued growth of the overall economy as well. The Syrians also continued to develop their civilian dockyard capabilities and started to make some improvements on their already pre-existing dockyards to make trade with the outside world even easier, and to increase employment. By the start of 2007, the Syrian economy had the following statistics:-
GDP (nominal): $58 billion
GDP (PPP): $174 billion
GDP per capita: $2917
Unemployment: 12%
Exports by proportion: Petroleum – 34%, Bituminous distillates – 9%, Agriculture – 15%, minerals – 8%, cotton – 5%, live animals – 5%, products manufactured – 5%, dockyard output – 4%, others – 15%.
Exports by money: $8 billion
Imports by money: $7.4 billion
Revenue: $0.600 billion (sent into reserve funds and poverty alleviation programs)
In comparison to the dismal state that Syria had been in 1996, the Syrian economy was flourishing in comparison to that and the Purchasing Power of Syria had risen exponentially. Their reducing of their dependence on oil and petroleum products was also massively beneficial to the Syrian economy in terms of competition and production as well as innovation on the long run.
Syrian Military Preparations?
The Syrian military in 2000 was a small but professional force, and a one that could hold its own weight in battle, however it was still mainly an ill-equipped force, mainly in the area of the technology. The consequent military reforms passed by the Syrian High Command mirrored the 1999 Russian military reforms, as well as the military reforms being conducted by Iran and Israel at the time. This in turn meant that Syria would have a small, but professional pool of NCOs, and new military academies were funded by the Syrian government. In a measure of reducing unemployment, the Syrian government also encouraged unemployed men to join up in the military to serve the country and unemployed women to join up in non-combat roles in the military, which allowed the military to slowly start to rise again in terms of numbers, and as this was done in an orderly fashion, the Syrian military remained a highly professional force, in terms of training. The Syrian military at this point, only had two real opponents to face, and the Syrian high command recognized Israel, and Islamic militants as the opponents of Syria, and the Syrian military was trained specifically to counter both of these, in mountain warfare (aimed at against the Israelis) and in desert warfare (aimed at the Islamic militants in the region).
In 2002, the Syrian military was also reorganized into Brigades and a proper divisional form, and the nation was divided into:-
1. Southern Command (facing Israel and Jordan)
4th Infantry Division
1st Armored Division
6th Territorial Division (reserve)
9th Territorial Division (reserve)
2. Northern Command (facing Turkey)
3rd Armored Division
7th Infantry Division
10th Territorial Division (reserve)
11th Territorial Division (reserve)
3. Eastern Command (facing Iraq)
5th Infantry Division
2nd infantry Division
3rd Territorial Division (reserve)
5th Special Operations Brigade
4. Western Command (facing the eastern Mediterranean)
1st Marine Brigade
2nd Marine Brigade
15th Territorial Division (reserve)
These reorganizations meant that the former haphazard manner in which the Syrian military was organized into was no more, and it gave clear and concise ideas of what the Syrian military was aiming for. In Damascus itself, 4 more divisions, of which 2 were armored divisions were kept in reserve as well. This reform, with the divisions including multiple brigades, made the Syrian army much more mobile, and capable of working independently on the field.
In terms of equipment, the Syrian army of 1996 was ill-equipped, and using obsolete weapons. The Syrian army of 2000 was in a much better shape than in 1996, however it was still lacking in many areas. In November 26th, 2000, Syria signed a memorandum and deal with the CSTO in which they sold a vast majority of their old obsolete weapons back to the Russian companies, which had once been Soviet companies which had produced vast amounts of said obsolete weapons, and using the money generated in the selling, plus extra money, the Syrians bought just enough weapons to equip their military with new weapons, modern and state of the art. However as the Arabs showed multiple times in Israel, having the weapon, and using it are two different things, and the Syrian High Command by this point having lost three wars knew this abundantly well, and instead started to use their new weapons in training as well, making the men and soldiers more accustomed to these weapons and making them capable of using these weapons.
In terms of equipment, by early 2007, the Ground Forces of the Syrian Military had the following weapons on themselves individually:-
1. Gsh-18 (small arms)
2. AK-74M (assault rifle)
3. OSV-96 (sniper)
4. Sayyad-2 (anti-material rifle)
5. RPD and RPK (Light Machine Guns)
6. Kord (general purpose machine gun)
7. RG-6 Grenade Launcher
8. MILAN Anti Tank missile
9. 9M119 Svir Anti Tank Missile
10. 9M113 Kornet Anti Tank Missile
11. Toophan Anti Tank Missile
The Special operatives of the Syrian ground forces were also equipped with the Ratnik system, which was a serious pluspoint for the Syrian army as well. In terms of heavy weapons, the Syrian army knew that they couldn’t match the Turkish one or the Israeli one, and instead chose to 2 armored divisions only in active service with 2 reserve armored divisions. The active armored divisions of the Syrian Armed Forces in early 2007 consisted of 325 tanks each in one single division, making the Syrian army have a total of 650 tanks in active service. Out of the 650 tanks, around 150 of these tanks were T-72 tanks, and around 400 of these tanks were T-90 tanks. The remainder 90 or so tanks were the Black Eagle Main Battle Tank, which had been sold by Russia since the beginning of 2006, and had been scooped up Syria as soon as it was announced.
Speaking generally, the T-72 tank is a mediocre tank, however the T-90 Tank and the Black Eagle both are excellent tanks that rank among the best in the world, however the Syrian maintenance level of these tanks were suspect. Nonetheless, the tank force of Syria, was mediocre in comparison to Israel or Turkey, however for its size, the Syrians employed a large Tank force that was surprisingly mostly modern. According to the data released, the Syrians managed to gain this by selling the vast majority of the T-62 tanks and T-54 tanks that they had stored up over a vast period of time. Tank exercises in 2005 also show that the Syrian military was largely adept at using the tanks presented to them.
Syrian T-90 Tanks.
The infantry battalions and infantry brigades that Syria uses consists of 5 battalions, of which three are infantry battalions, and one is Recon Battalion and the final one is a signal battalion. The Infantry battalions have been equipped each with one company of anti-tank missiles, which makes one Infantry Brigade itself an anti-tank drive. This was largely done with the massive amounts of Tanks in the command of the IDF and Turkish Army in mind, it seems.
In terms of the navy, the Syrian navy was perhaps the most looked over portion of the Syrian Armed Forces, however that doesn’t mean that developments did not occur there either. The Syrians have abandoned any thoughts about having a massive surface fleet or anything of the sort, however went with a pragmatic approach. Missile boats are cheap, and not expensive to man or buy, and the Syrians have constructed and bought a good amount of Missile boats as their primary equipment of naval warfare. At the start of the year 2007, the Syrian navy consisted of 26 missile boats, mostly of the Russian Osa class missile boat (17) and the Iranian Tir-II missile boats (9). The Syrian navy aside from these also had 8 patrol boats, and 7 minelayer and minesweeper boats
Apart from the Army, it was in the air that Syria made a lot of investment into. In 2001, it was decided that the old obsolete Soviet airplanes like the MiG-21 which was the majority of the Syrian Air Force would be demilitarized, deconstructed and sold to military complexes in need of them. Through this manner, the Syrian armed forces generated a good amount of revenue, mostly by selling MiG-21 parts to India, who still used a good portion of them, and began to shop for planes so to speak in Russia and the CSTO. It was decided that the MiG-29 would become the main warplane of the Syrian Airforce, alongside a smaller number of Su-27s. In early 2007, the Syrian Airforce consisted of 122 MiG-29s and 67 Su-27s divided into 15 squadrons of effective strength as their offensive airforce capable of interception and raiding. The Mi-24 was used as the premium attack helicopter and the Syrians had around 87 of them during 2007.
A Syrian Su-27 intercepting an Israeli McDonnell Douglas F-15
However despite this, the Syrians knew that effectively against Turkey or Israel, their air force would not be able to do much other than conduct hit and run attacks on enemy positions, and to counter this, anti-aircraft artillery was bought from Ukraine and Russia which made valleys and passes impenetrable for enemy aircrafts to wander into. In 2006 however Syria got the excuse it needed to buy heavy anti-aircraft weapons. The Lebanon War gave Syria good excuse to buy around 4 S-300s from Russia and get 2 on lease from the Russians as well, who were certainly not pleased with the actions of Israel. Israel who regarded the transfer as simply a business deal in response to their own attack in Lebanon, did not speak up against it, at least not in public. We have hints that the Israeli government may have protested lightly with the Russian government over the telephone however were rebuffed by the Russians.
It was however in terms of cyber warfare in which Syria would shine. Close military ties with Russia had made Syria acutely aware about the advantages of cyber warfare, and it was quickly adopted by the Syrians. In order to mask the cyber warfare technology that Syria was massing in case of confrontation with Turkey or Israel, or espionage in Syria reveals that Bashar Al-Assad instead created a fake computer firm stationed in Homs, Central Syria, which was then used to train Syrians in the art of cyberwarfare. This part of Syria’s military development would be phenomenal in the 2007 Golan War.
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Our Analysis of the War Itself.
On the early morning of May 20th, at around 5 am, the artillery shells on both sides of the border in Golan Heights began to attack each other as shells exploded, and destroyed each other’s position. The Syrians had mobilized the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, 5th Infantry Division, 5th Special Operations Brigade, 6th Territorial Division and 9th Territorial Division, most diverted from the Western Sector in a bid to reclaim the Golan Heights.
Around 400 Syrian Artillery pieces, and 250 Israeli artillery pieces opened fire at each other, and shelled each other’s positions. As this was going on, the Israelis launched an aerial attack into Syria to destroy their aerial capacity on the ground itself. The Israeli 109 Squadron and the 110 Squadrons took flight from the Ramat David Airbase and attacked key strategic assets in Syria, however found themselves under fire from the anti-aircraft artillery and the S-300s. The Syrians had massed their air defenses in positions they knew were key assets, and the operation that the Israelis undertook saw a maximum of 38% overall total losses of warplanes, as claimed by Syria or 27% total losses of the warplanes as claimed by Israel. The reality is probably 33% as claimed by the United Nations. Nonetheless, the loss of a third of the warplanes attacking Syria is a hefty blow that the Syrians were capable in hitting the Israelis with.
From Hader, the Syrian 8th Infantry Brigade from the 4th Infantry Division attacked the Israeli positions of at the outskirts of the town of Majdal Shams which was guarded by elements of the 91st Territorial Divisions of the Israeli Northern Command. The 8th Brigade was defeated by midday on May 20th, however they were partially successful in probing the Israeli defenses, and made it extremely hard for the Israelis to maneuver as the 3rd Infantry Brigade of the Syrians showed to make a slow flanking maneuver in the north of the town. As the 8th retreated, the 3rd retreated only partially and stayed put, making the 91st stay in position as well.
The central Merom Golan and Odem Plains in the Golan Heights had been chosen by the Syrians to be the position where the armored tanks would move through, and the 1st Armored Division began to move towards the area. Defending the area was the 36th Armored Division of the Israelis, which consisted of the 7th and 188th Armored Brigades which were extremely well equipped. However in the afternoon of that day, the Syrians sprung their trap. The Syrians at Homs began a massive cyber attack at Israeli lines and communications, and disrupted the electronic systems in Israel hacking into their server and destroying much of their communications, whilst taking as much information as they could. The destruction of communications for the time being made the orders being sent in the region disappear, and the decisions immediately passed to lower officers commanding the Division. However the loss of communication was too complete, and the confused commanders were unable to make a decision quick when the 1st Armored Division spearheaded by the Black Eagles entered Ein Zivan Area and started to attack Israeli positions. The 7th Israeli Armored Brigade was pushed back by the Syrians and the Syrians managed to capture the Avital Mountain Reserve, dangerously isolating the forward positions of the 1st Golani Infantry Brigade, forcing them to abandon the positions at Avital Mountain. The Syrians deployed the 3rd Motorized Brigade to conduct an encirclement of Golani Brigade, however whilst 1 company was successfully encircled by the motorized brigade the rest managed to escape successfully. The small Gideon Battalion was encircled, and however they up a brave fight fighting behind enemy lines, and would continue to do so.
By the time the Gideon Battalion was encircled, the 36th Armored Division had regrouped, and had started to take independent command after the full implications of the loss of communications had taken place.
members of the Gideon Battalion that were encircled.
However it is here that we become fully aware of the problem that Israel now faced. Many of the IDF’s weaknesses that were exposed during this war was derived from the fact that since late 1987, when the first Intifada broke out in the West Bank and Gaza, policing in the territories became the IDF’s main mission. Fighting a weak opponent for such a long time significantly weakened the IDF’s operational capability. In General Staff discussions during Yaalon’s tenure as Chief of Staff, at least two General Staff members, Major Generals Yishai Bar and Yiftach Ron-Tal, warned that as a result of the preoccupation with missions in the territories, the IDF had lost its maneuverability and capability to fight in mountainous terrain. In a meeting of senior IDF commanders in January 2007, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz admitted that as a result of years of police type operations in the territories, the IDF commanders had become accustomed to thinking that nothing was more important than saving the lives of the troops, even if it came at the expense of accomplishing their missions. Major General Yoram Yair, who came across this phenomenon whilst investigating the 91st Divisions functioning during the Second Lebanon War explained,
“We have not had a war for 24 years now. Commanders from the division level downwards have no war experience. They had a lot of tactical and operational experience in Gaza, Lebanon and Judea as well as Samaria, and were basing their action on that experience. They took it with them to the war, although they should have acted in a totally different manner. We used to say that in the territories a casualty rate of 1:0 was better than 3:1 in other words, that we had better kill only one terrorist instead of three, as long as none were killed on our side. In current security situations, this may be acceptable, as there is always a chance to re-confront terrorists at a latter stage, but in war there is no such chance. The luxury of the current security does not exist, and one should try to achieve battlefield decision as quickly as possible."
The Battalion commanders in the Gideon Battalion quickly dissembled into bickering with one another, trying to find a way through the battle whilst trying to spare as many of their men as possible, using tactics that would apply to only terrorists and not a professional army. Whilst the IDF soldiers defended with all of their capabilities, their commanders were rendered frozen with indecision on the issue. Finally as the IDF in the Gideon Battalion were unable to properly react to the encirclement, by the evening at 5 pm, the battalion had to surrender or else face complete destruction. It is evident from this action alone that the IDF was not in position to fight a force that had been doing the exact opposite of what the IDF had been doing for the past years.
We, the generals in the People’s Liberation Army can thus conclude, the many problems in the IDF that the Syrians exploited, like the one written above to win the war, at heavy cost to themselves, however still win the war. The problems present in the IDF which the Syrians exploited, with aid from Russia we believe are as follows:-
1. The Cult of Technology
RMA advocates argue that the combination of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; advanced command, control, communications, computers and intelligence and precision strike weapons can promise rapid decisive victory very low casualties, and collateral damage, and strategic results. Airpower proponents believe that it can save enemy lives through ‘use of precision to minimize noncombat deaths and fatalities’. In their LIC thinking, armed forces of highly technological countries often demonstrate naïve belief that their technological edge would enable them to cope effectively with the irregular challenges with low cost. They tend to put their faith in airborne systems, pointing out their qualitative and operational advantage, particularly their superior firepower, higher maneuverability, and greater flexibility comparison with ground counter insurgency forces. Airborne weapons are also believed to reduce the number of casualties inflicted, thereby gaining legitimacy for conducting LICs, which is particularly open to Western societies.
Only a decade ago Israeli senior commanders held a balanced approach, which reflected prudence regarding the impact of technology. On the one hand, they looked for the best weapons systems to be acquired in order to ensure the technological edge over the Arabs; while on the other hand, they understood the danger of over-reliance on technology at the expense of the human factor.
In recent years Israeli military thought has been following in the footsteps of the technology oriented RMA, being inspired by such concepts as ‘information dominance’, ‘dominant maneuver’, precision strikes, ‘focused logistics’, etc. The former director of the Research and Development (R&D) directorate at the Ministry of Defense, Major General Isaac Ben-Israel, advocated a technology-focused military doctrine, force design and military buildup for Israel, identifying military quality with high technology capabilities. ‘Here in Israel we have realized that our relative advantage in frustrating terrorist attempts is carried out mainly through technology. Our success rate is very high’, Ben-Israel explained.
Shmuel Gordon
Similar views have been expressed by other Israeli military experts. For example, Shmuel Gordon, an Israeli military analyst, presented technological sophistication as a state-of-the art substitute for Liddell Hart’s indirect approach, which unlike the traditional one is based on firepower rather than maneuver. The IDF’s new operational doctrine that was issued in April 2006, a year before the War, was heavily technology-oriented. Stressing the ascendancy of firepower over maneuver, it focused on achieving battlefield success via a combination of accurate, stand-off fire and limited operations on the ground; the need to affect the enemy’s consciousness; the central role played by airpower; and the diminishing role of large-scale and deep ground maneuvers. Whilst in comparison to 2006, the 2007 military of Israel was less focused on technological supremacy, this problem still remained at large, and was one of the flaws that led to Syrian asymmetric warfare succeeding against them.
The operational order issued by the General Staff on 19th May 2007, which still referred to the confrontation as a campaign (codenamed ‘Just Reward’), described the upcoming operation as a stand-off, firebased protracted offensive, reflecting the IDF’s technology-based approach. According to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, an IAF officer by origin, believed in obtaining decision via massive firepower, and never changed his mind until the end of the war. Halutz did not deny it, admitting that not preparing for a ground operation had been a mistake, affected by his failure to foresee that the operation would last 11 days instead of the supposed 7.
Experts have already pointed out that the cult of technology has had a weakening effect on traditional military capabilities such as close combat or combat intelligence. The war seems to have proved that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to destroy a sophisticated guerrilla force by a new type of RMA warfare. Paradoxically, in LICs a massive traditional army is necessary in order to capture the terrain from which guerrilla warfare is conducted. This is also the lesson learned from Iraq.
Conducting the war over plasma screens may have been compatible with the assumption that on a battlefield where enemy forces are destroyed by stand-off precision fire, optimal command and control is achieved from control centers. At the same time, however, ‘it may have changed the focus of our command’, Halutz admitted. Vilnai’s diagnosis was that what the IDF had lacked in that war was a simple command system. ‘You can run McDonald’s using plasma screens, not a battle’, he said. Major General (res.) Yossi Peled criticized the new state of mind that had permeated the IDF: ‘Something very bad has happened to the IDF in recent years. We have lost the balance between the arms, giving credit to the IAF’s ability to solve any problem. A golden calf was created and named technology; many believed it could win the war.’ Major General (res.) Amiran Levin, too, pointed to the over-reliance on precision technology as one of the major reasons for the IDF’s malfunctioning in the war, second only to the impact of the long occupation of the territories.
The assumption that due to the IDF’s ‘Ground Forces Digitalization’ program (ZAYAD, in Hebrew), ground forces would have access to much more precise intelligence, proved problematic, whether due to gaps in intelligence (which will always exist), outdated intelligence, or failure to distribute intelligence to troops on the battlefield in general or in real time. Forces often operated blindly, were occasionally surprised by enemy munitions (e.g., advanced Kornet and Fagot anti-tank missiles and the C-802 anti-ship missile), and fell victim to Syrian asymmetric tactics. To the credit of Israeli ground forces it must be said that their transformation into a digital Army has yet to be completed, but doubts regarding the expected effectiveness of this development already exist. Of particular concern was Syria’s success in playing on the technological playground against Israeli electronic warfare. The organization was eavesdropping on Israeli communications networks and mobile telephones, including Israeli soldiers’ conversations from inside Lebanon and the Golan Heights. According to the CSIS report, American electronic warfare (EW) experts came to Israel to find out how Syria’s Iranian and Russian systems neutralized Israeli EW. They were interested in four areas: (1) The Israeli EW systems’ failure to block Syria’s command and communications and the links between the Lebanese and Syrian command and the Syria-based Iranian headquarters; (2) How Iranian technicians helped Syria eavesdrop on Israel’s communications networks and mobile telephones; and (3) How Iranian and Russian EW installed in Lebanese Army and Russian Army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile system aboard Israeli warships, allowing Syria and Lebanon to hit the Israeli corvettes. Syria also had advanced night-vision systems, such as thermal imaging night-vision equipment, which made IDF troops movement transparent.
2. Reliance on Air Power (over-reliance)
For many years Israeli military doctrine considered the Army to be the backbone of any large-scale military operation, both in conventional/ symmetrical war against regular armies of state players as well as in asymmetrical war against nonstate players with irregular or semiregular forces. Airpower was considered a major factor in creating the necessary conditions for battlefield success, and the structure of the IDF’s force maintained a balance among its components that would guarantee the ability to achieve a variety of objectives and carry out a variety of missions. The ascendancy of firepower on the battlefield, strong post-heroic tendencies, and many years of airpower advocates preaching in favor of investing the bulk of available defense resources in airpower, which has been presented as the wisest thing to do in accordance with the principle of relative advantage, have accounted for the spreading of the flawed belief that airpower could decide the outcome of the war by itself. Although Chief of the Army, Major General Benny Gantz, denied that anyone in Israeli military leadership has really ever held the view that airpower alone can decide, the belief was not merely in the back of their minds. In a discussion at the National Defense College in January 2001 then IAF Chief Dan Halutz argued that:
Many air operations were generally implemented without a land force, based on a worldview of Western society’s sensitivity to losses. A land force is not sent into action as long as there is an effective alternative. Small forces, in commando format, have been utilized. The IAF is a partner in or decides wars. This obliges us to part with a number of anachronistic assumptions. First of all, that victory equals territory. Victory means achieving the strategic goal and not necessarily territory. I maintain that we also have to part with the concept of a land battle. We have to talk about the integrated battle and about the appropriate force activating it. Victory is a matter of consciousness. Airpower affects the adversary’s consciousness significantly.
In 2002, still as IAF Chief, Dan Halutz referred to the IAF’s capabilities: ‘Airpower alone can decide, and let alone be the senior partner to such decision.’ In his testimony before the Winograd Commission Halutz reiterated his belief that given the ascendancy of firepower on the battlefield, the Air Force, thanks to its outstanding fire capabilities, could play a dominant role on the modern battlefield. He was so confident that airpower could do the job alone, or almost alone, that he did not provide the government with any real alternative plan until the latest stage of the war.
Halutz either ignored or was not aware of the fact that battlefield decision at the strategic level has never been achieved from the air, only at the tactical level. Kosovo, which was so often referred to, was a grand-strategic decision, achieved by denying the Serbian society the ability to carry on the war – not that of the Serbian Army, which remained almost unharmed. Lebanon and Syria differed from Kosovo: the Americans would not let Israel target the democratically elected and relatively independent from Syrian influence fearing that Syrian influence and Russian influence would rise in Lebanon as a result, Lebanese government and the Israeli civilian rear, unlike that of the countries attacking Kosovo, was under attack throughout the war, with the IAF unable to stop it. Syria too was different in the sense that as a Russian Ally outside of CSTO, America feared that too much attack would see Russian retaliation or keeping their word on the ultimatum, which American did not wish seen, and as such reigned Israel in, leaving Israel without a proper coherent strategy in regards to air except ‘target key assets’ and the term remained as vague as ever that it wasn’t until pilots were in their planes that they were informed what to target. As a result of the priority given to airpower, army budgets were cut, one of the results being Israeli tanks lacking active protection systems, smoke obscuration equipment, etc.
As the war progressed, it became evident there was a great disproportion between the unprecedented number of combat sorties carried out by the IAF – 11,897, more than the number of sorties during the 1973 October War (11,223), and during the 1982 First Lebanon War (6,052)78 – and their impact on the achievements during the war and its outcomes, particularly on Syria’s capability to carry on the fight and to keep launching hundreds of rockets onto Israeli territory daily, despite improved hunting tactics applied by the IAF. After four days of war the IAF completed the attack of all the targets on its target list. Thousands of Syrian positions were left unharmed as the IDF’s intelligence did not know their exact location.
Counterfire by conventional artillery was marginally effective, too. 170,000 artillery shells were fired during the war – more than twice the number fired during the 1973 October War, which was waged against two regular armies, and 10 times the number fired against the Palestinian Liberation Organization during the 1978 Litani operation. This, too, should not have come as a surprise. In February 2004 Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the rocket threat from Lebanon, stressing that diminishing the rocket fire without operating on the ground might take weeks. Head of the Committee, Member of the Knesset Tzachi Hanegbi, informed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz of Yaalon’s briefing.In a discussion convened by Sharon, Chief of Military Intelligence Aharon Ze’eviFarkash warned the political echelon from being misled into believing that a complete solution existed for the problem of the rockets and missiles. In a publication of the Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies former IAF chief and former Deputy Chief of Staff Major General David Ivry wrote that airpower could not be victorious by itself in the war against terrorism.
It didn’t help the Israeli position that the Syrian Airforce itself, whilst small, was qualitatively on par with the Israelis, and they launched multiple hit and run tactics with the IAF, swooping in, destroying a good portion of their warplanes and then escaping into the cover of the Syrian air defenses, making warplane losses for the Israelis disproportionately higher.
3. Over-reliance on the notion of diffused warfare.
Israel has traditionally relied on strong and large ground forces for achieving battlefield success. Increased reliance on airpower, however, was soon accompanied by the cultivation of special units as another expression of a new, ‘small but smart’ military, within the framework of the transformation the IDF was supposed to undergo, that was along similar lines to the US armed forces’ transformation. Instead of capturing territory – the traditional role of ground forces – the special units were expected to operate as small, independent units, in cooperation with the IAF. As a central component of a network centric joint, but ‘defused’ warfare, they were supposed to shorten the sensor-to-shooter loop to near-real time, and create various kinds of ‘effects’.
The notion of diffused warfare, according to Yedidya Yaari and Haim Assa, is based on the assumption made by many RMA thinkers, that a fundamental shift is taking place from campaigns consisting of horizontal collisions between rival forces, breaking through the opponent’s layers of defense and conducted along distinct lines with distinct starting and end points – to diffused confrontation that takes place, simultaneously, on the entire battlespace, distributing the force’s mass to a multitude of separate pressure points, rather than concentrating it on assumed centers of gravity.
The cumulative effect of the special units during the War and their contribution to the war effort was very limited. Raids by Israeli commandos in the Baalbek area near the Lebanon–Syria border on 21–22 May, and assaults by special forces units on rocket launchers and command posts were marginally effective, too. Attacks on launchers by airpower were moderately effective inasmuch as they degraded the accuracy of the rocket launchers and pushed them out of the optimal launching zones against Haifa. Thus, downtown Haifa was not hit during the later phase of the conflict, except during the last day (30 May) when Hezbollah and Syria staged an extra effort for this purpose.
4. The Idea of Control rather than Capture.
With the increased emphasis on firepower, as opposed to maneuver, new concepts began to permeate Israeli military thought, among them that of ‘control’ – a theoretical concept that until recently was reserved for air and sea contexts where conquering territory is irrelevant. ‘Control’, however, is insufficient for purposes of destroying infrastructure or preventing the launching of missiles and rockets. According to the aforementioned operational plan ‘Country’s Shield’, which was prepared a few years before the outbreak of the war, IDF troops were supposed to refrain from capturing territory in Southern Lebanon and eastern Syria. Instead, they were to ‘take control’ over the area and to destroy the missiles and rockets via precision fire and raids by small units. There is no point in entering Bint Jbeil or any other town or village or running after each rocket and missile, the planners argued. The strategic importance of the town of Bint Jbeil in the central region of Southern Lebanon or anywhere in the Golan notwithstanding, Brigadier General Shuky Shachrur, the Northern Command’s chief of staff, said the Israeli troops never intended to conquer the town or the areas in the Golan and the neutral zone. Rather, he said, their goal was to ‘control the area from outside’ and raid specific targets based on intelligence. ‘We have complete control of the area’, 91st Division commander Brigadier General Gal Hirsch told a Cable News Network correspondent.‘[We can] direct precise fire at every point that is needed and to bring the forces to a situation of minimum risk’, an Israeli Colonel explained the notion of controlling the area. Golan was strongly associated with Syria’s military presence and status in the Levant. Not only was it a point of contention, it is also one of the most important areas in the region.
As such, it constituted a center of gravity, the defense of which would have been essential for physically harming Syria’s infrastructure in it and demoralizing its fighters and would have provided a boost for the Israeli war effort. ‘Defending the heights in every area has no tactical significance but it does have a symbolic meaning’, Chief of Staff Halutz explained on 26 June why it was necessary to attack the heights. When the IDF eventually managed to defend portions of the heights, however, it did so in a transparent and expected movement, with its troops easily being ambushed and surrounded, and eventually the fighting claimed the lives of some 17 soldiers. The IDF’s retreat from the Heights, a few days later, with the same belief that controlling the area was sufficient, was correctly interpreted by Syria as a great victory for the organization.
5. Re-organization of the Logistical Situation
During the mid-1960s the IDF underwent a major logistical reform, which was supposed to support its maneuver-based blitzkrieg-oriented operations. In the new decentralized system the division or the brigade was directly in charge of ‘pushing’ supplies to its own forces along the lines of operation. The motivation to do so was higher, the lines of communications were shorter, and personal acquaintances between the supplies’ providers and the fighting forces made the mission simpler. The system was put to test during the 1967 Six-Day War. The fact that spearhead tank battalions could advance continuously since they were sustained by the supply units that followed in their wake proved the efficiency of this ‘linear integration’ system. With the increased emphasis on firepower as opposed to maneuver since the 1980s, the IDF once again decided to reorganize logistically. The current system, based on modularly structured area logistic units, is meant to allow for the allocation of logistic resources to the combat units in accordance with operational planning and developments on the battlefield in real time, while their modular structure is supposed to provide availability, flexibility, and efficiency.100 In the War, in addition to missing equipment and supplies from depots, as well as old or inadequate equipment, there were also noticeable shortages of food, water and ammunition for units operating in Syria and the Golan Heights with one major reason probably being the centralized nature of the new system.
a Member of the Syrian Logistics Cell working near Homs.
It may have improved control over logistical resources, and ‘saved’ personnel and stocks, but it crippled the combat units’ logistical autonomy and went against strategic logic, which is different from non-military logic. ‘We have found ourselves operating without a logistical tail’, complained an IDF field commander. It is unclear whether the new logistic system would have met operational requirements had the war involved large-scale ground maneuvers. Israel also suffered from shortages in smart munitions, having to rely on airlifts from the US during the war. On the other side, Syria’s logistic system managed to provide munitions for the organization’s fighters, enabling it to sustain its war effort. As the CSIS report explains, ‘The lack of a rigid and hierarchical supply system, with a more decentralized system meant that dispersed weapons and supplies – the equivalent of ‘‘feed forward logistics’’ – accumulated over ten years [by Syria] ensured their ability to keep operating in spite of IDF attacks on supply facilities and resupply.’
6. Reserve Units
Only two decades ago some three-quarters of Israeli ground forces were comprised of reserve units. The emphasis on airpower and on small high-quality forces, the assumption that the era of traditional ground war is over and that ‘control’ can replace capturing territory, the reliance on the new logistical system to meet operational requirements, the IDF’s emphasis on policing missions in the territories, and budgetary constraints – have in recent years resulted in the creation of two armies within the IDF. There is the regular army, which is more professional, better equipped, and better – although not always sufficiently – trained; and the reserve units, which are less professional, not as well-trained and inadequately equipped. The IDF’s best infantry units hardly trained, and brigades and regiments hardly exercised. Armor and artillery units did not train at all and spent most of their time carrying out policing missions in the territories.
In the war, three out of the four divisions that were supposed to occupy parts of Lebanon and the Heights were reserve divisions, which were far from being ready for this mission. According to the CSIS report, reservists went to war without proper equipment, including such vital items as night sights for sniper rifles, and were missing basic supplies. Most reserve units required a refresher course in training, and many units complained of the lack of forward area supplies. As a result of these problems, the events of the recent war reopened the debate regarding the structure of the IDF’s forces.
7. Poor Professionalism in the Officer Corps
IDF officers have never been ‘intellectual soldiers’, let alone ‘military intellectuals’ – to use Morris Janowitz’s terminology. Instead, they have been ‘practical soldiers’, basing their professional performance on experience, intuition, flexibility, imagination, initiative, and audacity. Military history and military theory have been studied in Israeli military academies and colleges, but were not believed to have any direct practical dividend. This has worked well for many years, to the point of creating the impression that senior IDF commanders were really Liddell Hart’s best pupils, as the great thinker himself said having watched the IDF performance in 1948–49, 1956 and 1967. But, as already pointed out, since 1982 experience in conducting war or large-scale operations has hardly existed, as most of the IDF activity has long been of a policing nature in the territories.
To make matters worse, in recent years the IDF has undergone a process of superficial intellectualization, the manifestations of which have been a pretentious post-modern approach and a tendency to imitate American military thinking in an absorptive rather than competitive form. One of the outcomes of this process has been a weakening commitment to one of the cornerstones of Israel’s traditional defense doctrine – battlefield decision. According to former Chief of Staff Lieutenant General (res.) Dan Shomron, who investigated the military conduct of the War, had the IDF decided to revert to its traditional doctrine during the war, it would have been impossible, given the depth of the commitment to the new thinking.
8. Pretentious Post Modern Approach.
The IDF’s Operational Doctrine Research Institute, which was very influential in the training of the officer corps before the war, believed that delving into non-military post-modern theories would equip senior officers with the tools necessary for dealing with the complex and changing realities of war. According to the Institute’s director Brigadier General (res.) Shimon Naveh, ‘[. . .] We read Christopher Alexander, [. . .] John Forester, and other architects. We are reading Gregory Bateson; we are reading Clifford Geertz. Not myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of materials. We have established a school and developed a curriculum that trains ‘‘operational architects’’.’ In his lectures Naveh was using a diagram resembling a ‘square of opposition’ that plotted a set of logical relationships between certain propositions referring to military and guerrilla operations. Labeled with phrases such as ‘Difference and Repetition – The Dialectics of Structuring and Structure’, ‘Formless Rival Entities’, ‘Fractal Maneuver’, ‘Velocity vs. Rhythms’, ‘The Wahabi War Machine’, ‘Postmodern Anarchists’ and ‘Nomadic Terrorists’, Naveh and his team often referenced the work of Deleuze and Guattari. ‘War machines, according to these philosophers, are polymorphous; diffuse organizations characterized by their capacity for metamorphosis, made up of small groups that split up or merge with one another, depending on contingency and circumstances.’ Classic military thinkers became no more than names, whose sayings were occasionally cited, but whose writings were not read or studied in-depth. Inspired by this institute, IDF officers in military academies and colleges started learning the writings of great architects instead of the writings of the masters of war.
9. Absorptive Limitation of American Military Thinking
American military thinking has been received in the IDF enthusiastically with little skepticism, and has affected IDF commanders’ thinking and modus operandi. One major influence pertains to the notion of ‘effects-based operations’ (EBO). Not only is the idea of effects elusive by adopting it IDF senior commanders have distanced themselves from the old but simple notion of centers of gravity, which has united military thinkers for centuries, except for the dilemma where and against what it would be best to concentrate forces or power in order to achieve battlefield decision. One of the lessons learned from an exercise (‘Firestones-9’) carried out two years before the outbreak of the War was that in order to stop the launching of rockets onto Israeli territory it was necessary to affect the enemy’s capabilities rather than its ‘consciousness’. ‘Leverages and effects’ applied against Syria, and many organizations working against Israel proved ineffective in bringing the organization ‘to acknowledge’ its bad condition within a few days. The IDF nevertheless concluded that the ‘leverages and effects’ should merely be improved. The ambiguity of the language used in reference to EBO has been another problem. Major General (res.) Yoram Yair, who investigated the 91st Division’s functioning during the War, found out that using terms like ‘swarmed, multi-dimensional, simultaneous attack’ in orders issued by the division’s commander came at the expense of a simple and straightforward definition of objectives and missions.
10. The Weakening Commitment to Battlefield
Another military thinking deficiency pertains to a weakened commitment to battlefield decision on the part of IDF senior commanders in recent years. In October 2004 the IDF’s publishing house issued an edited volume whose title was Low-Intensity Conflict, in which senior military practitioners and researchers analyzed the phenomenon and recommended how to cope with the challenge more effectively. The volume reflects skepticism about the chances of achieving battlefield decision in LICs. Reflective of this new state of mind, which may have disseminated among IDF generals, were also the views expressed by Brigadier General Eyval Gil’adi from the IDF’s Planning Branch in an interview before retiring from service, less than three years before the War, that one would not expect to hear from a professional officer:
When I started my job, I found in the plans the term, ‘defeating the Palestinians and Arabs.’ I asked myself, what is that nonsense? Whom exactly are we supposed to defeat? What does defeat mean? We tried to think of alternatives to defeating the enemy. Initially I talked about a ‘victory image’, which is merely an appearance. It then became a matter of producing a victory show.
Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon himself expressed skepticism about the ability to land a decisive blow on an asymmetrical force that was of Syria, in the recent years that Syria had built up its military. Chief of Staff Halutz did not believe that a knockout score was an option in the War or that ‘defeating Syria in proper detail or holding onto Golan’ was achievable. He therefore thought battlefield decision was irrelevant. No wonder that when the War broke out, Chief of Operations Major General Gadi Eisenkot said that defeating Syria in detail was unattainable. ‘The military does not even pretend to achieve battlefield decision’, was Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s impression of the military’s state of mind during a Cabinet meeting held on 28th June.
In Conclusion:-
The PLA advises the government to think clearly on the issue. We have noted that Israel went in to the war with an image of near invincibility when in fact they were far from it. They have managed to defend Israel Proper from the Lebanese and the Syrians, however they failed to hold their forward positions in Southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights which has led to this defeat in detail. Extremely forward thinking behavior that has no place on the battlefield, and weak decisions, and unable to cope with Syrian attacks, which came more ferociously than they expected, and Hezbollah, Palestinian and Arab assistance, as well as the ethnic Syrians of the Golan Heights aiding the Syrians as spies, made it perhaps a foregone conclusion who would win the conflict, even if it may have been blind to us during the starting stages of the conflict.
Many of the problems that Israel faced, we also face, and the PLA would like to submit a memorandum on the reform of the PLA, the PLAN, and the PLAAF with due course of action to the party and the Paramount Leader.
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Author's Note:-
Israel's IDF was historically at an all time low from 2006-2009, with all of these problems, and with Russia taking a hardline stance against Terrorism after the Chechen Wars ITTL, the Hezbollah did not fare as successfully as they did in the 2006 Lebanon War, making much of their problems still hidden, which the Syrians exploited ITTL, along with their own economic and military modernization.
My sources for the chapter are:-
1. The Israel defense forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the poor performance? by Avi Kober
2. Transforming Israel's Security Establishment by Alon Paz
3. Military Capabilities for Hybrid War Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza by David E. Johnson
4. 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
5. War Diary: Lebanon 2006 by Rami Zurayk.
I have done a lot of research for this so comments would be appreciated.
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Note: This chapter is very text heavy and is 10,000 words long, so bewarned!
Some Acronyms:-
LIC - Limited Intensity Conflict
RMA - Revolution in Military Affairs.
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Beijing Institute of the People’s Liberation Army (北京解放军学院)
Document: Classified. Please note that should non-authorized personnel read, this document, it is liable to get you imprisoned for life. Please do not resist. (文件：分类。请注意，如果未经授权的人员阅读此文档，则有可能被判终身监禁。请不要抗拒)
Chinese Assessment of the 2007 Golan Conflict. (中国对2007年戈兰冲突的评估)
Introduction
The 2007 War between Lebanon, Syria, Hezbollah, Palestine and Israel can be traced back to the 2006 Lebanon war in all essentiality. The poor Israeli performance in the war made tensions in the region unable to dissipate as the enemies of the Jewish state continued to plot against the government based in Tel Aliv. The Lebanese people, and government as such also became inflamed by the massive amounts of Lebanese casualties that the IDF had claimed in the process of trying to eliminate Hezbollah, and many in Lebanon called the 2006 war an infringement on Lebanese sovereignty.
All of this of course leads to another fact. The Egyptian Civil War. Under Hosni Mubarak, the country of Egypt has remained a one man dictatorship without many standing in the way of the government from what they wanted. As such political dissidents have been mysteriously disappearing for years, and the cyber-attacks in Egypt, simply ignited what as already an ember of discontent in Egypt. As the economy plummeted and hundreds of people, some without connection to politics as well, were imprisoned under the government, the country erupted into protests, protests that without being addressed, and with a response that left hundreds dead, and many widowed, the people took up arms against the Egyptian government, and formed the so called Egyptian Army of Liberty, which is now embroiled in a state of civil war with the Egyptian Armed Forces and the Egyptian government.
This, combined with popular dissatisfaction from the 2006 war, and the mobilization of Israeli forces, for perhaps a pre-emptive strike into the Sinai, which would threaten the Syrian positions, and create a trade flux with Lebanon, both governments warned Israel that mobilization would not be accepted by the powers of large in the area. And of course, as history has shown us, the artillery strikes led to the conflict. This conflict has led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese, and an unknown, probably in the thousands again, amount of casualties both in the Hezbollah group and Palestine. The war was a limited success for Syria, as it saw the majority of the Golan Heights reclaimed by the Syrians, which has made President Bashar Al-Assad extremely popular in the Arab region for liberating a portion of his state and nation that has been under unpopular occupation from the Israeli armed forces for the past 40 years or so, which has been subject to much condemnation from many governments and nations throughout the world.
In this work that has been compiled by our spy intelligence, espionage, and critical analysis of the events, beforehand, we will provide the paramount leader with a clear picture of what happened, and how it happened, and how Israel blundered in the war.
Syrian Economic Preparations
Syria wasn’t in particular prepared for a war in the sense that they wanted one. However, Hafeez Al-Assad, was the dictator of Syria, and a man who detested Israel with all of his fiber, according to the data of what we know of the man. Consequently he participated in multiple Arab wars against Israel, only to be defeated in battle, by the Israelis, and have the Golan heights occupied, which is a huge blemish under his reign. However, despite this, the man remained popular with the average Syrian, and the upsurge of Syrian prosperity in terms of economics in the 1980s made his position secure.
Hafez Al-Assad.
However in the late 1980s, as the Eastern Block of the Cold War began to disintegrate, the economic block that Al-Assad had made for himself under the guidance of the Soviet Union, and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. The economic situation worsened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This was perhaps the deathblow to the perhaps prosperous economic stability that Syria had managed to gain in the 1980s. Agricultural production declined by 28% in 1992, and the country experienced a lack of proper food. Unemployment ran rampant, and for the moment, Al-Assad himself wasn’t much better as he tried to find a successor for himself after his imminent death.
However as the position of his son, Bashar Al-Assad became secure, in the latter half of 1996, Hafeez Al-Assad decided that it was perhaps time to turn the Syrian economic position around, and to make gains on the economic position in Syria, and by extension, the military situation as well. In December 1996, Al-Assad contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting bilateral talks between the two nations, which could in theory allow both sides to start trading with each other on a more open platform, and through hard work create a better Syrian economy. In December, 1996, Grigory Yavlisnky had just been able to make sure that the economy of Russia would be able to resist the downfall of the Soviet Economic Structure, and had introduced a market economy in Russia, and back then, the Russian nation wasn’t interested in propping the Syrian nation up. However, still, recognizing the strategic location of Syria, most importantly its, province of Latakia, which could be a gamechanger in Russo geopolitical interests in the eastern Mediterranean. However, Russia was in no condition to fund Syrian economic interests, when its own interests weren’t being covered in the full. So in order to compensate, in late December, 1996, economical supervisors, and economical assistants were sent to Syria on part of Russia, most importantly of whom was Yury Boldyrev, who became the leader of the Russian Economic Mission in Syria.
Yury Boldyrev.
Yury Boldyrev was an astute economist, and alongside Yavlinsky had planned the continued growth of the Russian economy, and he clearly imprinted it in Syria as well. Economic liberalization in Syria had been conducted in 1991, however had been done in a half-hearted manner with the liberalization being more or less an extremely mixed affair that showed no particular success either. Boldyrev and the Russian team managed to analyze the entirety of the liberalization program, and instead offered Hafeez Al-Assad a new economic program that mirrored the Russian economic progress on many levels.
The 1997 Syrian Economic Plan made by the Russian Economic Mission in Syria consisted of the following measures:-
1. A governmental supervision body akin to GOSPLAN, to be accountable for investment in and around Syrian companies and the Syrian economy.
2. The creation of a National Investment Board to make sure that the economic measures taken by the GOSPLAN equivalent in Syria will be accountable, and sufficiently done in an equivalent manner.
3. The rationalization of multiple smaller companies into larger companies to make sure efficiency is secured in the economy.
4. An investment plan of around $300 Million to be secured from the Russian Federation.
5. The creation of special economic zones in the region.
6. To reduce the rate of poverty from 60% of the population to around 25% in 2005 through massive economic innovation plans, and vocational training to increase productivity in the sector.
This basic outline and plan was adopted by Hafeez Al-Assad quickly, and the Syrian National Economic Board or the SNEB, quickly became the GOSPLAN equivalent in Syria, and in tandem with the National Investment Board of Syria (NIBS) quickly started to re-direct funds and create a measure of liberalization that had been unable to be fully implemented in 1991.
This was good for the Syria leader, as a lot of previously wasted efficiency and wasted potential in the Syrian economy was highlighted and brought to the centerpiece, and rationalized Syrian industries gave more economic productivity and manufacturing capability in the nation, which in the end, allowed for greater flow of money into the Syrian coffers.
However the Syrian economy continued to run into a single problem throughout the remainders of Hafeez Al-Assad’s reigns and tenure as President of Syria, which Boldyrev continued to speak about. The Corruption present in the Syrian Economy made it hard for the Syrian economy to flourish, and whilst 1989 levels had been achieved by the end of 1998, the corruption present in the Syrian economy made it extremely hard for the Syrian economy to cope with the burden of liberalization.
This basic outline and plan was adopted by Hafeez Al-Assad quickly, and the Syrian National Economic Board or the SNEB, quickly became the GOSPLAN equivalent in Syria, and in tandem with the National Investment Board of Syria (NIBS) quickly started to re-direct funds and create a measure of liberalization that had been unable to be fully implemented in 1991.
This was good for the Syria leader, as a lot of previously wasted efficiency and wasted potential in the Syrian economy was highlighted and brought to the centerpiece, and rationalized Syrian industries gave more economic productivity and manufacturing capability in the nation, which in the end, allowed for greater flow of money into the Syrian coffers. However the Syrian economy continued to run into a single problem throughout the remainders of Hafeez Al-Assad’s reigns and tenure as President of Syria, which Boldyrev continued to speak about. The Corruption present in the Syrian Economy made it hard for the Syrian economy to flourish, and whilst 1989 levels had been achieved by the end of 1998, the corruption present in the Syrian economy made it extremely hard for the Syrian economy to cope with the burden of liberalization.
In 1997, the Syrian economy grew at a rate of 3.4%, in 1998 by 3.9%, in 1999 by 4.6% and in 2000 it recorded a high economic growth rate of 7.8%, a huge leap which shows the end progress of the Syrian economy.
In terms of the military, that portion of the government took a largely back seat in the progress of the Syrian nation under Hafeez Al-Assad during his last years with us, however despite that he didn’t neglect that portion of the government either. The Chechen Conflict in Russia had opened a lot of eyes on the effectiveness of small marauding groups of soldiers, and small bands of units, and the importance of cohesion of units as shown later by the Russian High Command was noted directly by the Syrian High Command, and the improvement that the Russian involvement in the Chechen War had after the scrapping of multiple obsolete weapons was also regarded by the Syrian Armed Forces. In this measure, Hafeez Al-Assad cut around 10% of the Military Budget of the nation, scrapping the obsolete weapons in the Syrian Armed Forces, and using the money needed to maintain them to stimulate the economy. However despite how this may sound, the cut of the budget was in fact a proper incentive for the Syrian Armed Forces to slowly get into a more quality over quantity doctrine in their armed forces, and the smaller amount of troops were trained more rigorously, and Russian training methods were imported from Russia, with supervisors being mostly Russian, and members of the CSTO also sent various military advisors to Syria, in which case led to a rapid professionalization of the Syrian Military.
When Bashar Al-Assad took command of the Syrian Nation in 2000, he was determined to continue the good progress in the military and the economy, and would continue to seek Russian help and the help of the CSTO in his endeavor. In October, 2000, Bashar Al-Assad opened his nation to full investment from both East and West, which did make his coffers grow full, and the Syrian economy was massively stimulated in this event, and the Russians, and the CSTO became the largest investors in the region, however closely followed by the UK, Italy and Greece in the region. The country also experienced a boom in population growth due to the good fortunes of the country briefly before the economic realities of the economic growth such as women employment made the growth rate slow down to a normal level. Al-Assad’s progressiveness, for an Arab dictator at least, was good for the economy and by the end of 2000, the massive economic growth rate of the nation in that year is attributed to him.
Bashar Al-Assad.
He became involved with the Russian government’s schemes of economical and agricultural development and mirrored the Russian schemes within his own nation, and passed the Syrian Economic Improvement Act of 2001 in the government, which was simply a copy pasted version of the Russian 3 year plans designed for Syrian economic problems. On the large scale, the 2001 Economic Act in Syria was largely successful, and poverty was largely cut down, and the Al-Assad regime enjoyed a lot of popular support in the country. The economy flourished even more, when Russo-Ukrainian investment entered the ports in the Latakia province to make increase the viability and importance of the port, and the ports saw an increase in trade and commerce by 18% by the end of 2001, which was a massive increase.
Under the act of 2001, the Syrian economy also needed to be diversified from their reliance on petroleum products, and in order to end this dependence, Assad emphasized the service sector, and provided improvised schemes in the private and service sector, which allowed the economy to become even more stimulated, and the subsequent projects that Syria embarked on saw Syrian agriculture flourish as well, and the revenues of the nation started to improve as well. By 2004, when the Economic Act of 2001 had expired in Syria, the Syrian economy had grown by 6.1% in 2001, 5.7% in 2002, 7.1% in 2003 and 6.9% in 2004 making sure that the first four years of Bashar Al-Assad’s rule were economically prosperous for the nation. In early 2004, around 43% of the Syrian population was impoverished, which was much better than the 57% he had inherited in 2000.
On the ground level, Bashar Al-Assad was more realistic in his economic goals than his father. Al-Assad the younger was more focused on uplifting the Syrian peoples from poverty and increasing the purchasing power parity of the Syrian economy, which even if he had a small economy, would enable him to buy more than what people may expect and be able to afford it. Such goals were realistic, and the fast drop in poverty in Syria is often attributed to Al-Assad’s realistic economic goals. Whom many think was influenced by Grigory Yavlinsky himself and his book The Economics of Day to Day Life which was published in 2001, which provides an extremely insightful insight into the Russian economic recovery from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Bashar Al-Assad also kept realistic goals for himself, and the Syrian economy as well. He sent students on scholarships made by the Syrian government on lucky draws in schools to western schools and universities in Russia to become more learned in the topics, and when the returned to Syria, these students found their starting jobs and occupations within the Syrian government itself where they would put their knowledge to use for the benefit of the economy. In particular, the Russian School of Economics, was a most popular destination for Syrian economical students to pursue, and when they returned, they also created more productivity in the economy by in turn increasing the innovativeness of the economy.
The transportation sector of the economy was also aggressively attacked by the Syrian government to improve it, and the following goals were kept in place:-
- Development of underground metro in major urban areas linked to above ground rail in outskirts to ease congestion and smog which was becoming major issue.
- Expansion of the bus service both urban and rural to provide citizens with proper means of transportation.
- Development of National Road System connecting major economic and urban centers together. Assist provinces in developing provincial road system connected to national system as well as provide for local transportation needs.
- Expansion and rationalization of all rail services in country so that it serviced Syria’s needs first and foremost. Distinguish Syrian rail service from foreign rail service by establishing all internal rail service to use Syrian gauge.
- Expansion of Syrian ports and distinguish internal ports from external ports (import/export) with simplified rules and regulations as opposed to ports dealing with import and export out of country.
- Ease of transportation of people and goods between various provinces geographically apart.
- Development of air transportation infrastructure and technology to speed the movement of people and goods between various provinces.
To be sure, Bashar Al-Assad is a dictator. Anyone even entertaining the thoughts of taking the man out of power suddenly dies or disappears without an explanation over the country is absolute and sometimes this can be a hindrance to the development of the economy, however despite this, the country, with aid from CSTO, continues its economic expansion and goodwill. Along with Iran, and Pakistan, Syria became the third Muslim nation in 2004 that was designated as Russia’s preferred investor locations, which aided the continued growth of the overall economy as well. The Syrians also continued to develop their civilian dockyard capabilities and started to make some improvements on their already pre-existing dockyards to make trade with the outside world even easier, and to increase employment. By the start of 2007, the Syrian economy had the following statistics:-
GDP (nominal): $58 billion
GDP (PPP): $174 billion
GDP per capita: $2917
Unemployment: 12%
Exports by proportion: Petroleum – 34%, Bituminous distillates – 9%, Agriculture – 15%, minerals – 8%, cotton – 5%, live animals – 5%, products manufactured – 5%, dockyard output – 4%, others – 15%.
Exports by money: $8 billion
Imports by money: $7.4 billion
Revenue: $0.600 billion (sent into reserve funds and poverty alleviation programs)
In comparison to the dismal state that Syria had been in 1996, the Syrian economy was flourishing in comparison to that and the Purchasing Power of Syria had risen exponentially. Their reducing of their dependence on oil and petroleum products was also massively beneficial to the Syrian economy in terms of competition and production as well as innovation on the long run.
Syrian Military Preparations?
The Syrian military in 2000 was a small but professional force, and a one that could hold its own weight in battle, however it was still mainly an ill-equipped force, mainly in the area of the technology. The consequent military reforms passed by the Syrian High Command mirrored the 1999 Russian military reforms, as well as the military reforms being conducted by Iran and Israel at the time. This in turn meant that Syria would have a small, but professional pool of NCOs, and new military academies were funded by the Syrian government. In a measure of reducing unemployment, the Syrian government also encouraged unemployed men to join up in the military to serve the country and unemployed women to join up in non-combat roles in the military, which allowed the military to slowly start to rise again in terms of numbers, and as this was done in an orderly fashion, the Syrian military remained a highly professional force, in terms of training. The Syrian military at this point, only had two real opponents to face, and the Syrian high command recognized Israel, and Islamic militants as the opponents of Syria, and the Syrian military was trained specifically to counter both of these, in mountain warfare (aimed at against the Israelis) and in desert warfare (aimed at the Islamic militants in the region).
In 2002, the Syrian military was also reorganized into Brigades and a proper divisional form, and the nation was divided into:-
1. Southern Command (facing Israel and Jordan)
4th Infantry Division
1st Armored Division
6th Territorial Division (reserve)
9th Territorial Division (reserve)
2. Northern Command (facing Turkey)
3rd Armored Division
7th Infantry Division
10th Territorial Division (reserve)
11th Territorial Division (reserve)
3. Eastern Command (facing Iraq)
5th Infantry Division
2nd infantry Division
3rd Territorial Division (reserve)
5th Special Operations Brigade
4. Western Command (facing the eastern Mediterranean)
1st Marine Brigade
2nd Marine Brigade
15th Territorial Division (reserve)
These reorganizations meant that the former haphazard manner in which the Syrian military was organized into was no more, and it gave clear and concise ideas of what the Syrian military was aiming for. In Damascus itself, 4 more divisions, of which 2 were armored divisions were kept in reserve as well. This reform, with the divisions including multiple brigades, made the Syrian army much more mobile, and capable of working independently on the field.
In terms of equipment, the Syrian army of 1996 was ill-equipped, and using obsolete weapons. The Syrian army of 2000 was in a much better shape than in 1996, however it was still lacking in many areas. In November 26th, 2000, Syria signed a memorandum and deal with the CSTO in which they sold a vast majority of their old obsolete weapons back to the Russian companies, which had once been Soviet companies which had produced vast amounts of said obsolete weapons, and using the money generated in the selling, plus extra money, the Syrians bought just enough weapons to equip their military with new weapons, modern and state of the art. However as the Arabs showed multiple times in Israel, having the weapon, and using it are two different things, and the Syrian High Command by this point having lost three wars knew this abundantly well, and instead started to use their new weapons in training as well, making the men and soldiers more accustomed to these weapons and making them capable of using these weapons.
In terms of equipment, by early 2007, the Ground Forces of the Syrian Military had the following weapons on themselves individually:-
1. Gsh-18 (small arms)
2. AK-74M (assault rifle)
3. OSV-96 (sniper)
4. Sayyad-2 (anti-material rifle)
5. RPD and RPK (Light Machine Guns)
6. Kord (general purpose machine gun)
7. RG-6 Grenade Launcher
8. MILAN Anti Tank missile
9. 9M119 Svir Anti Tank Missile
10. 9M113 Kornet Anti Tank Missile
11. Toophan Anti Tank Missile
The Special operatives of the Syrian ground forces were also equipped with the Ratnik system, which was a serious pluspoint for the Syrian army as well. In terms of heavy weapons, the Syrian army knew that they couldn’t match the Turkish one or the Israeli one, and instead chose to 2 armored divisions only in active service with 2 reserve armored divisions. The active armored divisions of the Syrian Armed Forces in early 2007 consisted of 325 tanks each in one single division, making the Syrian army have a total of 650 tanks in active service. Out of the 650 tanks, around 150 of these tanks were T-72 tanks, and around 400 of these tanks were T-90 tanks. The remainder 90 or so tanks were the Black Eagle Main Battle Tank, which had been sold by Russia since the beginning of 2006, and had been scooped up Syria as soon as it was announced.
Speaking generally, the T-72 tank is a mediocre tank, however the T-90 Tank and the Black Eagle both are excellent tanks that rank among the best in the world, however the Syrian maintenance level of these tanks were suspect. Nonetheless, the tank force of Syria, was mediocre in comparison to Israel or Turkey, however for its size, the Syrians employed a large Tank force that was surprisingly mostly modern. According to the data released, the Syrians managed to gain this by selling the vast majority of the T-62 tanks and T-54 tanks that they had stored up over a vast period of time. Tank exercises in 2005 also show that the Syrian military was largely adept at using the tanks presented to them.
Syrian T-90 Tanks.
The infantry battalions and infantry brigades that Syria uses consists of 5 battalions, of which three are infantry battalions, and one is Recon Battalion and the final one is a signal battalion. The Infantry battalions have been equipped each with one company of anti-tank missiles, which makes one Infantry Brigade itself an anti-tank drive. This was largely done with the massive amounts of Tanks in the command of the IDF and Turkish Army in mind, it seems.
In terms of the navy, the Syrian navy was perhaps the most looked over portion of the Syrian Armed Forces, however that doesn’t mean that developments did not occur there either. The Syrians have abandoned any thoughts about having a massive surface fleet or anything of the sort, however went with a pragmatic approach. Missile boats are cheap, and not expensive to man or buy, and the Syrians have constructed and bought a good amount of Missile boats as their primary equipment of naval warfare. At the start of the year 2007, the Syrian navy consisted of 26 missile boats, mostly of the Russian Osa class missile boat (17) and the Iranian Tir-II missile boats (9). The Syrian navy aside from these also had 8 patrol boats, and 7 minelayer and minesweeper boats
Apart from the Army, it was in the air that Syria made a lot of investment into. In 2001, it was decided that the old obsolete Soviet airplanes like the MiG-21 which was the majority of the Syrian Air Force would be demilitarized, deconstructed and sold to military complexes in need of them. Through this manner, the Syrian armed forces generated a good amount of revenue, mostly by selling MiG-21 parts to India, who still used a good portion of them, and began to shop for planes so to speak in Russia and the CSTO. It was decided that the MiG-29 would become the main warplane of the Syrian Airforce, alongside a smaller number of Su-27s. In early 2007, the Syrian Airforce consisted of 122 MiG-29s and 67 Su-27s divided into 15 squadrons of effective strength as their offensive airforce capable of interception and raiding. The Mi-24 was used as the premium attack helicopter and the Syrians had around 87 of them during 2007.
A Syrian Su-27 intercepting an Israeli McDonnell Douglas F-15
However despite this, the Syrians knew that effectively against Turkey or Israel, their air force would not be able to do much other than conduct hit and run attacks on enemy positions, and to counter this, anti-aircraft artillery was bought from Ukraine and Russia which made valleys and passes impenetrable for enemy aircrafts to wander into. In 2006 however Syria got the excuse it needed to buy heavy anti-aircraft weapons. The Lebanon War gave Syria good excuse to buy around 4 S-300s from Russia and get 2 on lease from the Russians as well, who were certainly not pleased with the actions of Israel. Israel who regarded the transfer as simply a business deal in response to their own attack in Lebanon, did not speak up against it, at least not in public. We have hints that the Israeli government may have protested lightly with the Russian government over the telephone however were rebuffed by the Russians.
It was however in terms of cyber warfare in which Syria would shine. Close military ties with Russia had made Syria acutely aware about the advantages of cyber warfare, and it was quickly adopted by the Syrians. In order to mask the cyber warfare technology that Syria was massing in case of confrontation with Turkey or Israel, or espionage in Syria reveals that Bashar Al-Assad instead created a fake computer firm stationed in Homs, Central Syria, which was then used to train Syrians in the art of cyberwarfare. This part of Syria’s military development would be phenomenal in the 2007 Golan War.
***
Our Analysis of the War Itself.
On the early morning of May 20th, at around 5 am, the artillery shells on both sides of the border in Golan Heights began to attack each other as shells exploded, and destroyed each other’s position. The Syrians had mobilized the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, 5th Infantry Division, 5th Special Operations Brigade, 6th Territorial Division and 9th Territorial Division, most diverted from the Western Sector in a bid to reclaim the Golan Heights.
Around 400 Syrian Artillery pieces, and 250 Israeli artillery pieces opened fire at each other, and shelled each other’s positions. As this was going on, the Israelis launched an aerial attack into Syria to destroy their aerial capacity on the ground itself. The Israeli 109 Squadron and the 110 Squadrons took flight from the Ramat David Airbase and attacked key strategic assets in Syria, however found themselves under fire from the anti-aircraft artillery and the S-300s. The Syrians had massed their air defenses in positions they knew were key assets, and the operation that the Israelis undertook saw a maximum of 38% overall total losses of warplanes, as claimed by Syria or 27% total losses of the warplanes as claimed by Israel. The reality is probably 33% as claimed by the United Nations. Nonetheless, the loss of a third of the warplanes attacking Syria is a hefty blow that the Syrians were capable in hitting the Israelis with.
From Hader, the Syrian 8th Infantry Brigade from the 4th Infantry Division attacked the Israeli positions of at the outskirts of the town of Majdal Shams which was guarded by elements of the 91st Territorial Divisions of the Israeli Northern Command. The 8th Brigade was defeated by midday on May 20th, however they were partially successful in probing the Israeli defenses, and made it extremely hard for the Israelis to maneuver as the 3rd Infantry Brigade of the Syrians showed to make a slow flanking maneuver in the north of the town. As the 8th retreated, the 3rd retreated only partially and stayed put, making the 91st stay in position as well.
The central Merom Golan and Odem Plains in the Golan Heights had been chosen by the Syrians to be the position where the armored tanks would move through, and the 1st Armored Division began to move towards the area. Defending the area was the 36th Armored Division of the Israelis, which consisted of the 7th and 188th Armored Brigades which were extremely well equipped. However in the afternoon of that day, the Syrians sprung their trap. The Syrians at Homs began a massive cyber attack at Israeli lines and communications, and disrupted the electronic systems in Israel hacking into their server and destroying much of their communications, whilst taking as much information as they could. The destruction of communications for the time being made the orders being sent in the region disappear, and the decisions immediately passed to lower officers commanding the Division. However the loss of communication was too complete, and the confused commanders were unable to make a decision quick when the 1st Armored Division spearheaded by the Black Eagles entered Ein Zivan Area and started to attack Israeli positions. The 7th Israeli Armored Brigade was pushed back by the Syrians and the Syrians managed to capture the Avital Mountain Reserve, dangerously isolating the forward positions of the 1st Golani Infantry Brigade, forcing them to abandon the positions at Avital Mountain. The Syrians deployed the 3rd Motorized Brigade to conduct an encirclement of Golani Brigade, however whilst 1 company was successfully encircled by the motorized brigade the rest managed to escape successfully. The small Gideon Battalion was encircled, and however they up a brave fight fighting behind enemy lines, and would continue to do so.
By the time the Gideon Battalion was encircled, the 36th Armored Division had regrouped, and had started to take independent command after the full implications of the loss of communications had taken place.
members of the Gideon Battalion that were encircled.
However it is here that we become fully aware of the problem that Israel now faced. Many of the IDF’s weaknesses that were exposed during this war was derived from the fact that since late 1987, when the first Intifada broke out in the West Bank and Gaza, policing in the territories became the IDF’s main mission. Fighting a weak opponent for such a long time significantly weakened the IDF’s operational capability. In General Staff discussions during Yaalon’s tenure as Chief of Staff, at least two General Staff members, Major Generals Yishai Bar and Yiftach Ron-Tal, warned that as a result of the preoccupation with missions in the territories, the IDF had lost its maneuverability and capability to fight in mountainous terrain. In a meeting of senior IDF commanders in January 2007, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz admitted that as a result of years of police type operations in the territories, the IDF commanders had become accustomed to thinking that nothing was more important than saving the lives of the troops, even if it came at the expense of accomplishing their missions. Major General Yoram Yair, who came across this phenomenon whilst investigating the 91st Divisions functioning during the Second Lebanon War explained,
“We have not had a war for 24 years now. Commanders from the division level downwards have no war experience. They had a lot of tactical and operational experience in Gaza, Lebanon and Judea as well as Samaria, and were basing their action on that experience. They took it with them to the war, although they should have acted in a totally different manner. We used to say that in the territories a casualty rate of 1:0 was better than 3:1 in other words, that we had better kill only one terrorist instead of three, as long as none were killed on our side. In current security situations, this may be acceptable, as there is always a chance to re-confront terrorists at a latter stage, but in war there is no such chance. The luxury of the current security does not exist, and one should try to achieve battlefield decision as quickly as possible."
The Battalion commanders in the Gideon Battalion quickly dissembled into bickering with one another, trying to find a way through the battle whilst trying to spare as many of their men as possible, using tactics that would apply to only terrorists and not a professional army. Whilst the IDF soldiers defended with all of their capabilities, their commanders were rendered frozen with indecision on the issue. Finally as the IDF in the Gideon Battalion were unable to properly react to the encirclement, by the evening at 5 pm, the battalion had to surrender or else face complete destruction. It is evident from this action alone that the IDF was not in position to fight a force that had been doing the exact opposite of what the IDF had been doing for the past years.
We, the generals in the People’s Liberation Army can thus conclude, the many problems in the IDF that the Syrians exploited, like the one written above to win the war, at heavy cost to themselves, however still win the war. The problems present in the IDF which the Syrians exploited, with aid from Russia we believe are as follows:-
1. The Cult of Technology
RMA advocates argue that the combination of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; advanced command, control, communications, computers and intelligence and precision strike weapons can promise rapid decisive victory very low casualties, and collateral damage, and strategic results. Airpower proponents believe that it can save enemy lives through ‘use of precision to minimize noncombat deaths and fatalities’. In their LIC thinking, armed forces of highly technological countries often demonstrate naïve belief that their technological edge would enable them to cope effectively with the irregular challenges with low cost. They tend to put their faith in airborne systems, pointing out their qualitative and operational advantage, particularly their superior firepower, higher maneuverability, and greater flexibility comparison with ground counter insurgency forces. Airborne weapons are also believed to reduce the number of casualties inflicted, thereby gaining legitimacy for conducting LICs, which is particularly open to Western societies.
Only a decade ago Israeli senior commanders held a balanced approach, which reflected prudence regarding the impact of technology. On the one hand, they looked for the best weapons systems to be acquired in order to ensure the technological edge over the Arabs; while on the other hand, they understood the danger of over-reliance on technology at the expense of the human factor.
In recent years Israeli military thought has been following in the footsteps of the technology oriented RMA, being inspired by such concepts as ‘information dominance’, ‘dominant maneuver’, precision strikes, ‘focused logistics’, etc. The former director of the Research and Development (R&D) directorate at the Ministry of Defense, Major General Isaac Ben-Israel, advocated a technology-focused military doctrine, force design and military buildup for Israel, identifying military quality with high technology capabilities. ‘Here in Israel we have realized that our relative advantage in frustrating terrorist attempts is carried out mainly through technology. Our success rate is very high’, Ben-Israel explained.
Shmuel Gordon
Similar views have been expressed by other Israeli military experts. For example, Shmuel Gordon, an Israeli military analyst, presented technological sophistication as a state-of-the art substitute for Liddell Hart’s indirect approach, which unlike the traditional one is based on firepower rather than maneuver. The IDF’s new operational doctrine that was issued in April 2006, a year before the War, was heavily technology-oriented. Stressing the ascendancy of firepower over maneuver, it focused on achieving battlefield success via a combination of accurate, stand-off fire and limited operations on the ground; the need to affect the enemy’s consciousness; the central role played by airpower; and the diminishing role of large-scale and deep ground maneuvers. Whilst in comparison to 2006, the 2007 military of Israel was less focused on technological supremacy, this problem still remained at large, and was one of the flaws that led to Syrian asymmetric warfare succeeding against them.
The operational order issued by the General Staff on 19th May 2007, which still referred to the confrontation as a campaign (codenamed ‘Just Reward’), described the upcoming operation as a stand-off, firebased protracted offensive, reflecting the IDF’s technology-based approach. According to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, an IAF officer by origin, believed in obtaining decision via massive firepower, and never changed his mind until the end of the war. Halutz did not deny it, admitting that not preparing for a ground operation had been a mistake, affected by his failure to foresee that the operation would last 11 days instead of the supposed 7.
Experts have already pointed out that the cult of technology has had a weakening effect on traditional military capabilities such as close combat or combat intelligence. The war seems to have proved that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to destroy a sophisticated guerrilla force by a new type of RMA warfare. Paradoxically, in LICs a massive traditional army is necessary in order to capture the terrain from which guerrilla warfare is conducted. This is also the lesson learned from Iraq.
Conducting the war over plasma screens may have been compatible with the assumption that on a battlefield where enemy forces are destroyed by stand-off precision fire, optimal command and control is achieved from control centers. At the same time, however, ‘it may have changed the focus of our command’, Halutz admitted. Vilnai’s diagnosis was that what the IDF had lacked in that war was a simple command system. ‘You can run McDonald’s using plasma screens, not a battle’, he said. Major General (res.) Yossi Peled criticized the new state of mind that had permeated the IDF: ‘Something very bad has happened to the IDF in recent years. We have lost the balance between the arms, giving credit to the IAF’s ability to solve any problem. A golden calf was created and named technology; many believed it could win the war.’ Major General (res.) Amiran Levin, too, pointed to the over-reliance on precision technology as one of the major reasons for the IDF’s malfunctioning in the war, second only to the impact of the long occupation of the territories.
The assumption that due to the IDF’s ‘Ground Forces Digitalization’ program (ZAYAD, in Hebrew), ground forces would have access to much more precise intelligence, proved problematic, whether due to gaps in intelligence (which will always exist), outdated intelligence, or failure to distribute intelligence to troops on the battlefield in general or in real time. Forces often operated blindly, were occasionally surprised by enemy munitions (e.g., advanced Kornet and Fagot anti-tank missiles and the C-802 anti-ship missile), and fell victim to Syrian asymmetric tactics. To the credit of Israeli ground forces it must be said that their transformation into a digital Army has yet to be completed, but doubts regarding the expected effectiveness of this development already exist. Of particular concern was Syria’s success in playing on the technological playground against Israeli electronic warfare. The organization was eavesdropping on Israeli communications networks and mobile telephones, including Israeli soldiers’ conversations from inside Lebanon and the Golan Heights. According to the CSIS report, American electronic warfare (EW) experts came to Israel to find out how Syria’s Iranian and Russian systems neutralized Israeli EW. They were interested in four areas: (1) The Israeli EW systems’ failure to block Syria’s command and communications and the links between the Lebanese and Syrian command and the Syria-based Iranian headquarters; (2) How Iranian technicians helped Syria eavesdrop on Israel’s communications networks and mobile telephones; and (3) How Iranian and Russian EW installed in Lebanese Army and Russian Army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile system aboard Israeli warships, allowing Syria and Lebanon to hit the Israeli corvettes. Syria also had advanced night-vision systems, such as thermal imaging night-vision equipment, which made IDF troops movement transparent.
2. Reliance on Air Power (over-reliance)
For many years Israeli military doctrine considered the Army to be the backbone of any large-scale military operation, both in conventional/ symmetrical war against regular armies of state players as well as in asymmetrical war against nonstate players with irregular or semiregular forces. Airpower was considered a major factor in creating the necessary conditions for battlefield success, and the structure of the IDF’s force maintained a balance among its components that would guarantee the ability to achieve a variety of objectives and carry out a variety of missions. The ascendancy of firepower on the battlefield, strong post-heroic tendencies, and many years of airpower advocates preaching in favor of investing the bulk of available defense resources in airpower, which has been presented as the wisest thing to do in accordance with the principle of relative advantage, have accounted for the spreading of the flawed belief that airpower could decide the outcome of the war by itself. Although Chief of the Army, Major General Benny Gantz, denied that anyone in Israeli military leadership has really ever held the view that airpower alone can decide, the belief was not merely in the back of their minds. In a discussion at the National Defense College in January 2001 then IAF Chief Dan Halutz argued that:
Many air operations were generally implemented without a land force, based on a worldview of Western society’s sensitivity to losses. A land force is not sent into action as long as there is an effective alternative. Small forces, in commando format, have been utilized. The IAF is a partner in or decides wars. This obliges us to part with a number of anachronistic assumptions. First of all, that victory equals territory. Victory means achieving the strategic goal and not necessarily territory. I maintain that we also have to part with the concept of a land battle. We have to talk about the integrated battle and about the appropriate force activating it. Victory is a matter of consciousness. Airpower affects the adversary’s consciousness significantly.
In 2002, still as IAF Chief, Dan Halutz referred to the IAF’s capabilities: ‘Airpower alone can decide, and let alone be the senior partner to such decision.’ In his testimony before the Winograd Commission Halutz reiterated his belief that given the ascendancy of firepower on the battlefield, the Air Force, thanks to its outstanding fire capabilities, could play a dominant role on the modern battlefield. He was so confident that airpower could do the job alone, or almost alone, that he did not provide the government with any real alternative plan until the latest stage of the war.
Halutz either ignored or was not aware of the fact that battlefield decision at the strategic level has never been achieved from the air, only at the tactical level. Kosovo, which was so often referred to, was a grand-strategic decision, achieved by denying the Serbian society the ability to carry on the war – not that of the Serbian Army, which remained almost unharmed. Lebanon and Syria differed from Kosovo: the Americans would not let Israel target the democratically elected and relatively independent from Syrian influence fearing that Syrian influence and Russian influence would rise in Lebanon as a result, Lebanese government and the Israeli civilian rear, unlike that of the countries attacking Kosovo, was under attack throughout the war, with the IAF unable to stop it. Syria too was different in the sense that as a Russian Ally outside of CSTO, America feared that too much attack would see Russian retaliation or keeping their word on the ultimatum, which American did not wish seen, and as such reigned Israel in, leaving Israel without a proper coherent strategy in regards to air except ‘target key assets’ and the term remained as vague as ever that it wasn’t until pilots were in their planes that they were informed what to target. As a result of the priority given to airpower, army budgets were cut, one of the results being Israeli tanks lacking active protection systems, smoke obscuration equipment, etc.
As the war progressed, it became evident there was a great disproportion between the unprecedented number of combat sorties carried out by the IAF – 11,897, more than the number of sorties during the 1973 October War (11,223), and during the 1982 First Lebanon War (6,052)78 – and their impact on the achievements during the war and its outcomes, particularly on Syria’s capability to carry on the fight and to keep launching hundreds of rockets onto Israeli territory daily, despite improved hunting tactics applied by the IAF. After four days of war the IAF completed the attack of all the targets on its target list. Thousands of Syrian positions were left unharmed as the IDF’s intelligence did not know their exact location.
Counterfire by conventional artillery was marginally effective, too. 170,000 artillery shells were fired during the war – more than twice the number fired during the 1973 October War, which was waged against two regular armies, and 10 times the number fired against the Palestinian Liberation Organization during the 1978 Litani operation. This, too, should not have come as a surprise. In February 2004 Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the rocket threat from Lebanon, stressing that diminishing the rocket fire without operating on the ground might take weeks. Head of the Committee, Member of the Knesset Tzachi Hanegbi, informed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz of Yaalon’s briefing.In a discussion convened by Sharon, Chief of Military Intelligence Aharon Ze’eviFarkash warned the political echelon from being misled into believing that a complete solution existed for the problem of the rockets and missiles. In a publication of the Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies former IAF chief and former Deputy Chief of Staff Major General David Ivry wrote that airpower could not be victorious by itself in the war against terrorism.
It didn’t help the Israeli position that the Syrian Airforce itself, whilst small, was qualitatively on par with the Israelis, and they launched multiple hit and run tactics with the IAF, swooping in, destroying a good portion of their warplanes and then escaping into the cover of the Syrian air defenses, making warplane losses for the Israelis disproportionately higher.
3. Over-reliance on the notion of diffused warfare.
Israel has traditionally relied on strong and large ground forces for achieving battlefield success. Increased reliance on airpower, however, was soon accompanied by the cultivation of special units as another expression of a new, ‘small but smart’ military, within the framework of the transformation the IDF was supposed to undergo, that was along similar lines to the US armed forces’ transformation. Instead of capturing territory – the traditional role of ground forces – the special units were expected to operate as small, independent units, in cooperation with the IAF. As a central component of a network centric joint, but ‘defused’ warfare, they were supposed to shorten the sensor-to-shooter loop to near-real time, and create various kinds of ‘effects’.
The notion of diffused warfare, according to Yedidya Yaari and Haim Assa, is based on the assumption made by many RMA thinkers, that a fundamental shift is taking place from campaigns consisting of horizontal collisions between rival forces, breaking through the opponent’s layers of defense and conducted along distinct lines with distinct starting and end points – to diffused confrontation that takes place, simultaneously, on the entire battlespace, distributing the force’s mass to a multitude of separate pressure points, rather than concentrating it on assumed centers of gravity.
The cumulative effect of the special units during the War and their contribution to the war effort was very limited. Raids by Israeli commandos in the Baalbek area near the Lebanon–Syria border on 21–22 May, and assaults by special forces units on rocket launchers and command posts were marginally effective, too. Attacks on launchers by airpower were moderately effective inasmuch as they degraded the accuracy of the rocket launchers and pushed them out of the optimal launching zones against Haifa. Thus, downtown Haifa was not hit during the later phase of the conflict, except during the last day (30 May) when Hezbollah and Syria staged an extra effort for this purpose.
4. The Idea of Control rather than Capture.
With the increased emphasis on firepower, as opposed to maneuver, new concepts began to permeate Israeli military thought, among them that of ‘control’ – a theoretical concept that until recently was reserved for air and sea contexts where conquering territory is irrelevant. ‘Control’, however, is insufficient for purposes of destroying infrastructure or preventing the launching of missiles and rockets. According to the aforementioned operational plan ‘Country’s Shield’, which was prepared a few years before the outbreak of the war, IDF troops were supposed to refrain from capturing territory in Southern Lebanon and eastern Syria. Instead, they were to ‘take control’ over the area and to destroy the missiles and rockets via precision fire and raids by small units. There is no point in entering Bint Jbeil or any other town or village or running after each rocket and missile, the planners argued. The strategic importance of the town of Bint Jbeil in the central region of Southern Lebanon or anywhere in the Golan notwithstanding, Brigadier General Shuky Shachrur, the Northern Command’s chief of staff, said the Israeli troops never intended to conquer the town or the areas in the Golan and the neutral zone. Rather, he said, their goal was to ‘control the area from outside’ and raid specific targets based on intelligence. ‘We have complete control of the area’, 91st Division commander Brigadier General Gal Hirsch told a Cable News Network correspondent.‘[We can] direct precise fire at every point that is needed and to bring the forces to a situation of minimum risk’, an Israeli Colonel explained the notion of controlling the area. Golan was strongly associated with Syria’s military presence and status in the Levant. Not only was it a point of contention, it is also one of the most important areas in the region.
As such, it constituted a center of gravity, the defense of which would have been essential for physically harming Syria’s infrastructure in it and demoralizing its fighters and would have provided a boost for the Israeli war effort. ‘Defending the heights in every area has no tactical significance but it does have a symbolic meaning’, Chief of Staff Halutz explained on 26 June why it was necessary to attack the heights. When the IDF eventually managed to defend portions of the heights, however, it did so in a transparent and expected movement, with its troops easily being ambushed and surrounded, and eventually the fighting claimed the lives of some 17 soldiers. The IDF’s retreat from the Heights, a few days later, with the same belief that controlling the area was sufficient, was correctly interpreted by Syria as a great victory for the organization.
5. Re-organization of the Logistical Situation
During the mid-1960s the IDF underwent a major logistical reform, which was supposed to support its maneuver-based blitzkrieg-oriented operations. In the new decentralized system the division or the brigade was directly in charge of ‘pushing’ supplies to its own forces along the lines of operation. The motivation to do so was higher, the lines of communications were shorter, and personal acquaintances between the supplies’ providers and the fighting forces made the mission simpler. The system was put to test during the 1967 Six-Day War. The fact that spearhead tank battalions could advance continuously since they were sustained by the supply units that followed in their wake proved the efficiency of this ‘linear integration’ system. With the increased emphasis on firepower as opposed to maneuver since the 1980s, the IDF once again decided to reorganize logistically. The current system, based on modularly structured area logistic units, is meant to allow for the allocation of logistic resources to the combat units in accordance with operational planning and developments on the battlefield in real time, while their modular structure is supposed to provide availability, flexibility, and efficiency.100 In the War, in addition to missing equipment and supplies from depots, as well as old or inadequate equipment, there were also noticeable shortages of food, water and ammunition for units operating in Syria and the Golan Heights with one major reason probably being the centralized nature of the new system.
a Member of the Syrian Logistics Cell working near Homs.
It may have improved control over logistical resources, and ‘saved’ personnel and stocks, but it crippled the combat units’ logistical autonomy and went against strategic logic, which is different from non-military logic. ‘We have found ourselves operating without a logistical tail’, complained an IDF field commander. It is unclear whether the new logistic system would have met operational requirements had the war involved large-scale ground maneuvers. Israel also suffered from shortages in smart munitions, having to rely on airlifts from the US during the war. On the other side, Syria’s logistic system managed to provide munitions for the organization’s fighters, enabling it to sustain its war effort. As the CSIS report explains, ‘The lack of a rigid and hierarchical supply system, with a more decentralized system meant that dispersed weapons and supplies – the equivalent of ‘‘feed forward logistics’’ – accumulated over ten years [by Syria] ensured their ability to keep operating in spite of IDF attacks on supply facilities and resupply.’
6. Reserve Units
Only two decades ago some three-quarters of Israeli ground forces were comprised of reserve units. The emphasis on airpower and on small high-quality forces, the assumption that the era of traditional ground war is over and that ‘control’ can replace capturing territory, the reliance on the new logistical system to meet operational requirements, the IDF’s emphasis on policing missions in the territories, and budgetary constraints – have in recent years resulted in the creation of two armies within the IDF. There is the regular army, which is more professional, better equipped, and better – although not always sufficiently – trained; and the reserve units, which are less professional, not as well-trained and inadequately equipped. The IDF’s best infantry units hardly trained, and brigades and regiments hardly exercised. Armor and artillery units did not train at all and spent most of their time carrying out policing missions in the territories.
In the war, three out of the four divisions that were supposed to occupy parts of Lebanon and the Heights were reserve divisions, which were far from being ready for this mission. According to the CSIS report, reservists went to war without proper equipment, including such vital items as night sights for sniper rifles, and were missing basic supplies. Most reserve units required a refresher course in training, and many units complained of the lack of forward area supplies. As a result of these problems, the events of the recent war reopened the debate regarding the structure of the IDF’s forces.
7. Poor Professionalism in the Officer Corps
IDF officers have never been ‘intellectual soldiers’, let alone ‘military intellectuals’ – to use Morris Janowitz’s terminology. Instead, they have been ‘practical soldiers’, basing their professional performance on experience, intuition, flexibility, imagination, initiative, and audacity. Military history and military theory have been studied in Israeli military academies and colleges, but were not believed to have any direct practical dividend. This has worked well for many years, to the point of creating the impression that senior IDF commanders were really Liddell Hart’s best pupils, as the great thinker himself said having watched the IDF performance in 1948–49, 1956 and 1967. But, as already pointed out, since 1982 experience in conducting war or large-scale operations has hardly existed, as most of the IDF activity has long been of a policing nature in the territories.
To make matters worse, in recent years the IDF has undergone a process of superficial intellectualization, the manifestations of which have been a pretentious post-modern approach and a tendency to imitate American military thinking in an absorptive rather than competitive form. One of the outcomes of this process has been a weakening commitment to one of the cornerstones of Israel’s traditional defense doctrine – battlefield decision. According to former Chief of Staff Lieutenant General (res.) Dan Shomron, who investigated the military conduct of the War, had the IDF decided to revert to its traditional doctrine during the war, it would have been impossible, given the depth of the commitment to the new thinking.
8. Pretentious Post Modern Approach.
The IDF’s Operational Doctrine Research Institute, which was very influential in the training of the officer corps before the war, believed that delving into non-military post-modern theories would equip senior officers with the tools necessary for dealing with the complex and changing realities of war. According to the Institute’s director Brigadier General (res.) Shimon Naveh, ‘[. . .] We read Christopher Alexander, [. . .] John Forester, and other architects. We are reading Gregory Bateson; we are reading Clifford Geertz. Not myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of materials. We have established a school and developed a curriculum that trains ‘‘operational architects’’.’ In his lectures Naveh was using a diagram resembling a ‘square of opposition’ that plotted a set of logical relationships between certain propositions referring to military and guerrilla operations. Labeled with phrases such as ‘Difference and Repetition – The Dialectics of Structuring and Structure’, ‘Formless Rival Entities’, ‘Fractal Maneuver’, ‘Velocity vs. Rhythms’, ‘The Wahabi War Machine’, ‘Postmodern Anarchists’ and ‘Nomadic Terrorists’, Naveh and his team often referenced the work of Deleuze and Guattari. ‘War machines, according to these philosophers, are polymorphous; diffuse organizations characterized by their capacity for metamorphosis, made up of small groups that split up or merge with one another, depending on contingency and circumstances.’ Classic military thinkers became no more than names, whose sayings were occasionally cited, but whose writings were not read or studied in-depth. Inspired by this institute, IDF officers in military academies and colleges started learning the writings of great architects instead of the writings of the masters of war.
9. Absorptive Limitation of American Military Thinking
American military thinking has been received in the IDF enthusiastically with little skepticism, and has affected IDF commanders’ thinking and modus operandi. One major influence pertains to the notion of ‘effects-based operations’ (EBO). Not only is the idea of effects elusive by adopting it IDF senior commanders have distanced themselves from the old but simple notion of centers of gravity, which has united military thinkers for centuries, except for the dilemma where and against what it would be best to concentrate forces or power in order to achieve battlefield decision. One of the lessons learned from an exercise (‘Firestones-9’) carried out two years before the outbreak of the War was that in order to stop the launching of rockets onto Israeli territory it was necessary to affect the enemy’s capabilities rather than its ‘consciousness’. ‘Leverages and effects’ applied against Syria, and many organizations working against Israel proved ineffective in bringing the organization ‘to acknowledge’ its bad condition within a few days. The IDF nevertheless concluded that the ‘leverages and effects’ should merely be improved. The ambiguity of the language used in reference to EBO has been another problem. Major General (res.) Yoram Yair, who investigated the 91st Division’s functioning during the War, found out that using terms like ‘swarmed, multi-dimensional, simultaneous attack’ in orders issued by the division’s commander came at the expense of a simple and straightforward definition of objectives and missions.
10. The Weakening Commitment to Battlefield
Another military thinking deficiency pertains to a weakened commitment to battlefield decision on the part of IDF senior commanders in recent years. In October 2004 the IDF’s publishing house issued an edited volume whose title was Low-Intensity Conflict, in which senior military practitioners and researchers analyzed the phenomenon and recommended how to cope with the challenge more effectively. The volume reflects skepticism about the chances of achieving battlefield decision in LICs. Reflective of this new state of mind, which may have disseminated among IDF generals, were also the views expressed by Brigadier General Eyval Gil’adi from the IDF’s Planning Branch in an interview before retiring from service, less than three years before the War, that one would not expect to hear from a professional officer:
When I started my job, I found in the plans the term, ‘defeating the Palestinians and Arabs.’ I asked myself, what is that nonsense? Whom exactly are we supposed to defeat? What does defeat mean? We tried to think of alternatives to defeating the enemy. Initially I talked about a ‘victory image’, which is merely an appearance. It then became a matter of producing a victory show.
Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon himself expressed skepticism about the ability to land a decisive blow on an asymmetrical force that was of Syria, in the recent years that Syria had built up its military. Chief of Staff Halutz did not believe that a knockout score was an option in the War or that ‘defeating Syria in proper detail or holding onto Golan’ was achievable. He therefore thought battlefield decision was irrelevant. No wonder that when the War broke out, Chief of Operations Major General Gadi Eisenkot said that defeating Syria in detail was unattainable. ‘The military does not even pretend to achieve battlefield decision’, was Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s impression of the military’s state of mind during a Cabinet meeting held on 28th June.
In Conclusion:-
The PLA advises the government to think clearly on the issue. We have noted that Israel went in to the war with an image of near invincibility when in fact they were far from it. They have managed to defend Israel Proper from the Lebanese and the Syrians, however they failed to hold their forward positions in Southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights which has led to this defeat in detail. Extremely forward thinking behavior that has no place on the battlefield, and weak decisions, and unable to cope with Syrian attacks, which came more ferociously than they expected, and Hezbollah, Palestinian and Arab assistance, as well as the ethnic Syrians of the Golan Heights aiding the Syrians as spies, made it perhaps a foregone conclusion who would win the conflict, even if it may have been blind to us during the starting stages of the conflict.
Many of the problems that Israel faced, we also face, and the PLA would like to submit a memorandum on the reform of the PLA, the PLAN, and the PLAAF with due course of action to the party and the Paramount Leader.
***
Author's Note:-
Israel's IDF was historically at an all time low from 2006-2009, with all of these problems, and with Russia taking a hardline stance against Terrorism after the Chechen Wars ITTL, the Hezbollah did not fare as successfully as they did in the 2006 Lebanon War, making much of their problems still hidden, which the Syrians exploited ITTL, along with their own economic and military modernization.
My sources for the chapter are:-
1. The Israel defense forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the poor performance? by Avi Kober
2. Transforming Israel's Security Establishment by Alon Paz
3. Military Capabilities for Hybrid War Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza by David E. Johnson
4. 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
5. War Diary: Lebanon 2006 by Rami Zurayk.
I have done a lot of research for this so comments would be appreciated.
***
Author's Note:-
Israel's IDF was historically at an all time low from 2006-2009, with all of these problems, and with Russia taking a hardline stance against Terrorism after the Chechen Wars ITTL, the Hezbollah did not fare as successfully as they did in the 2006 Lebanon War, making much of their problems still hidden, which the Syrians exploited ITTL, along with their own economic and military modernization.
My sources for the chapter are:-
1. The Israel defense forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the poor performance? by Avi Kober
2. Transforming Israel's Security Establishment by Alon Paz
3. Military Capabilities for Hybrid War Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza by David E. Johnson
4. 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
5. War Diary: Lebanon 2006 by Rami Zurayk.
I have done a lot of research for this so comments would be appreciated.
Israel's IDF was historically at an all time low from 2006-2009, with all of these problems, and with Russia taking a hardline stance against Terrorism after the Chechen Wars ITTL, the Hezbollah did not fare as successfully as they did in the 2006 Lebanon War, making much of their problems still hidden, which the Syrians exploited ITTL, along with their own economic and military modernization.
My sources for the chapter are:-
1. The Israel defense forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the poor performance? by Avi Kober
2. Transforming Israel's Security Establishment by Alon Paz
3. Military Capabilities for Hybrid War Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza by David E. Johnson
4. 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
5. War Diary: Lebanon 2006 by Rami Zurayk.
I have done a lot of research for this so comments would be appreciated.
Hopefully we can get a look at how the events of the past decade changed people soon.
Well, I have appreciated your research. I am hoping to gain that enthusiasm and eagerness.
"It might be the Middle East sir."i can understand scholarly chapters aren't particularly interesting but no comments?
"So it can be a political minefield. As well as a real one." - Squire
So, a Chinese intelligence report on the war between Israel and Syria. Is this the first time Israel has lost a war since its founding?
Nice ch, btw what the situation with the kurdish and christian population in syria
I have to say that's one big wall-o-text in a good way. I can tell it's been researched a lot. It's quite amazing that you made an chapter like it. A POV from Chinese intelligence is quite unexpected.
Not everyone has time to read or think of what comments to make, don't worry about it. Just be patient about it.i can understand scholarly chapters aren't particularly interesting but no comments?