I have one for sale.
Posted on 07/21/2006 12:25:17 PM PDT by managusta
TEL AVIV — Israel's new chief of staff, an air force general, believed that most of Israel's future operations would be conducted from the air.
Military leaders were convinced that with superior communications and air power they did not even need new U.S. "bunker buster" munitions to root out terror leaders in underground hideaways.
Today, this vision of air power as a panacea has been shattered.
Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz and his advisers have been stunned by the failure of Israel's air war against Hizbullah, which has shrugged massive air bombings on its headquarters in Beirut to maintain the rocket war against the Jewish state.
"Air power is not the answer here," a senior officer said. 'You have to go from one Hizbullah [weapons] bunker to another. Some of these bunkers are seven meters deep and can't be destroyed by aircraft, even if you could find them."
The air force learned that lesson in Beirut as fighter-jets sought to destroy Hizbullah headquarters, Middle East Newsline reported. Officials acknowledged that 23 tons of munitions failed to penetrate the thick walls of the underground command headquarters constructed by Iran.
Indeed, the air force did not even deem the purchase of deep penetration munitions a priority. Earlier this year, Israel decided against purchasing U.S.-origin bunker-buster weapons regarded as a requirement for any air strike against Iran or Syria.
Military sources said Halutz was convinced that communications and air power rather than troops would rapidly win Israel's wars. They said the air force was surprised by its failure to halt or even reduce Hizbullah rocket strikes.
Only a month ago, Lt. Col. Itay Brun explained the concept of Israel's military. The concept envisioned an army based largely on special operations units and backed by air power.
As Brun described it, most of Israel's operations would be conducted from the air. Fighter-jets would destroy guerrilla strongholds, helicopters would pick off enemy combatants while unmanned aerial vehicles would select and track targets. Most of the tactics would also be used in a conventional war.
"The next challenge is to win the war against terrorism and guerrillas from the air," Brun, adviser to Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told a military conference.
But he General Staff quickly learned that Hizbullah was not a Shi'ite version of the Palestinian insurgency in the Gaza Strip. For years, the air force boasted of its ability to kill Palestinian insurgency leaders while glossing over the failure to halt missile strikes from Gaza towns only three kilometers from Israel.
"We are fighting a much more capable [Hizbullah] terror organization which practically holds a sword to our neck and has 12 percent of the Israeli population living in shelters and paralyzes the entire northern part of the country," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan said.
"As aggressive and effective as the air war has been, there is still a need for ground operations," Maj. Gen. Benny Ganz, chief of the Ground Forces Command, said.
As a result, the General Staff has approved the entry of at least 5,000 troops in Lebanon in a limited search-and-destroy mission for Hizbullah rockets in villages near the Israeli border. So far, about 3,000 soldiers have been deployed in southern Lebanon, where attack aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles failed to detect and battle Hizbullah fighters in the thick hilly underbrush.
On Friday, two AH-64A Apache attack helicopters crashed in northern Israel near the Lebanese border. The military said a pilot was killed and another four soldiers were injured as the helicopters sought to support troops in Lebanon.
As the air force received 60 percent of the military budget, army training was cut to the bone and the armored corps was significantly reduced.
Reservists forgot what the inside of a main battle tank looked like. Army supplies dwindled way past the danger point as military intelligence dismissed the prospect of a conventional war against Israel.
Over the last two years, the Ground Forces Command has been administering the Digital Army Program, a nearly $1 billion effort to link ground forces assets to ensure situational awareness as well as coordination with the air force and navy.
Today, Israel's advanced technology has been unable to detect, let alone stop Hizbullah assaults. Military sources said Hizbullah quickly developed methods to penetrate Israel's C4I [command, control, communications, computers and intelligence] border system, based on advanced sensors and heavy air surveillance.
Hizbullah, the sources said, learned how to disable cameras and exploit blind spots to cut through the border fence and attack Israeli military positions. They said this was how a small Hizbullah force attacked an Israeli border post on July 12 and abducted two soldiers.
The military acknowledged that for more than one hour commanders were unaware that soldiers had been taken to Lebanon. Commanders said they were caught off guard by Hizbullah's mastery of anti-tank weapons, mortars and platoon-sized maneuvers.
"It may be that we don't have our priorities straight," said [Res.] Maj. Gen. Yiftah Ron-Tal, who until 2005 headed the Ground Forces Command.
To some strategists, the Israeli concept of air power was doomed to failure. In a lecture at Tel Aviv University in March, [Res.] Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, a former head of military intelligence research, warned that ground forces and tanks have remained far more flexible and resilient than aircraft.
"The policymakers must understand the limitations of the air force," Amidror said. "My feeling is that the air force does not sufficiently stress its weaknesses."
In a report released on July 19 by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Amidror and co-author Dan Diker argued that Israel could be forced to convert its air war to a ground war in Lebanon. The report, entitled "A Strategic Assessment of the Hizbullah War: Defeating the Iranian-Syrian Axis in Lebanon," asserted that Israel underestimated the Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite militia, trained and equipped by Damascus and Teheran.
"This is a war in which Israel is acting primarily through its air force, which is a new approach," the report said. "However, if Israel's air force fails to stop Hizbullah rocket assaults, Israel may be forced to send in substantial ground forces to control the areas from which rockets are being launched. This real possibility would have far-reaching implications in terms of potential losses for the IDF and for the citizens of Lebanon."
Preferring to listen the US Air war college policy wonks, who stated. "The application of airpower for 78 days over 37,000 sorties without loss of life in combat and only the loss of two planes (not counting the pilots and helicopters lost in the ill-fated Task Force Hawk) was truly remarkable."
Here comes the Zinger " But we failed to destroy much of the fielded forces in Kosovo and instead destroyed civilian infrastructure in Serbia."
As Lt Gen Mike Short, USAF, Retired—has commented about the air war over Serbia, “This was little more than random bombing of military targets that achieved victory by happenstance.'
And as usual the Grunts will pay the price.
Not reliable.
WORLD TRIBUNE
Not reliable.
I have one for sale.
Panacea? This article smells like... fertilizer.
Sounds like propaganda to me.
I have one for sale.
First day of rocket attacks: 350
Today: 30.
World Tribune "not even reduced..."
Don't post World Tribune articles, especially while commenting that you agree with them, unless you really want to create the impression here that you're not very bright.
My already low opinion of the World Tribune has been further reduced. :-)
Oooh. A Mad Cat. Nice. But I don't think the heat sinks will be able to keep up with the brutal Lebanese summer.
Hmmmmm..... an obviously ignorant statement. The lessons learned from Kosovo have led to a large number of changes in tactics and weapons, which have been used very successfully in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
During the Serbian War ,NATO was claiming high levels of airpower military success that later turned out to be seriously overblown.
Nato claimed that during the offensive more than 300 tanks, were declared destroyed. Belgrade later put the figure at 13.
You may not like the source nor consider it accurate but a stopped watch is right at least twice a day.
I have never been charged with shining like a beacon but on this issue I am in full agreement with this article.
However,with your brilliant foresight you must be certain that the Israeli Air Force will pound the Hezbollah into submission within the next few months.
Unless of course by accident and to speed up the process Israeli infantry will cross into Southern Lebanon.
If it were a failure, why are they still showing jets hitting marked targets?
Actually, I've been arguing for several days that Israel will have to invade on the ground if it intends to create a permanent buffer zone.
What I don't agree with is the conclusion that Israel was stunned to come to the same conclusion. They're not idiots.
No competent Israeli Air Force officer is "stunned" that they can't aerial bomb small, self-contained terrorist cells that are mixed in with large, non-combatant populations, into submission.
The premise is absurd.
Sorry about the dupe in the other thread. I checked under 2006israel war, and tried bunkerbusters without luck.
Maybe that's because they bought so many last year but haven't used them. If the bomb racks are already full, where do you place extras?
That part of the world has so many underground bunkers. Bin Laden hid in them. Remember that we found saddam in an underground hole in the earth. Don't forget the image of him climbing out covered in filth. I am sure Israel can handle this.
Missile tests provided 'windfall of intelligence' to China's PLA
Today, Israel's advanced technology has been unable to detect, let alone stop Hizbullah assaults. Military sources said Hizbullah quickly developed methods to penetrate Israel's C4I [command, control, communications, computers and intelligence] border system, based on advanced sensors and heavy air surveillance.
Any code can be cracked. Any network can be hacked. (Some are just more difficult than others.) It's dangerous to believe that your C4I system will always be secure.
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