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Choosing the next IDF chief of staff may have been reason enough
to regain Israel's deterrence policy against the growing threat
from its surrounding Arab and Islamic foes. However, without
making some long overdue changes in its military infrastructure,
even the best candidate, whoever defense minister Amir Peretz
and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may have chosen, cannot improve
the the effectiveness of Israel's armed forces.
A major inherent mistake in Israel's military command structure,
which had grave bearing on last summer's Lebanon fiasco was
already "in the cards" long before the firing started
on July 12 2006.
 Lieutenant
General Dan Halutz, alone, was hardly to blame over this. He
only tried to implement, what the IDF brass had accepted as
its new warfighting doctrine: Asymmetric warfare, in other words,
"Low intensive Conflict", or, "diffused warfare",
both adopted as Israel's new defense concept, foreseen as the
preferred modus operandi against lower tier threats, such as
full scale high intensive warfare scenarios, regarded lesser
threat contingencies.
Fighting largely anti-insurgency or anti-terror policing actions,
combined with the newly adopted "accelerated kill chain"
procedure had achieved significant success in subduing Palestinian
suicide terror acts, which having caused over a thousand Israeli
deaths during the first years of the second Intifada, was considered
as the prime national predicament.
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| General
Dan Halutz, as former air force commander and later chief of
Operations at GHQ became the main proponent of this new kind
of warfare and under his leadership, the ground forces, reduced
in the new modus operandi, became secondary in counter-terrorist
fighting, especially in the Gaza Strip. Suffering significantly
less casualties as result, became marked national morale raiser
in itself.
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In contrast to the growth and sophistication of the
air force, Israel's ground forces, suffering from severe
cuts in national funding priorities, deteriorated in
training standards, equipment and doctrinal procedures,
all affecting its warfighting capabilities as demonstrated
in the 2nd lebanon war
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But unavoidably, Halutz' highly
successful counter-insurgency doctrine failed miserably
in the summer of 2006, when the IDF Land Forces were called
upon to fight more intensive battles in Lebanon. The question
why this mishap happened to an excellent army like the
IDF requires in-depth understand into the underlying reasons,
which unfortunately became inherent in the development
of the its ground forces' command infrastructure throughout
the last three decades. |
According to its traditional structure, the IDF chief of staff
directly controls all aspects of the Land forces as its primary
commander. The air force and navy chiefs are largely independent
service branches, regarded until lately, as supporting arms
to the Land battle. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Israeli rear
zone, came for the first time under threat from long-range ballistic
missiles. As result, the strategic importance of the air force,
became a decisive weapon and accordingly, a large part of the
national defense budget priorities was re-allocated to air force
requirements and long-range strategic weapons.
As the IDF became more and more embroiled in the Lebanon quagmire,
with Hezbollah fighting the static ground forces virtually to
a standstill, the air force came to the rescue, with a newly
introduced and highly effective combination of real-time intelligence
and rapid response targeting, with air assets pin-pointing Hezbollah
hideouts. Following a similar trend in the Second Intifada,
particularly in the Gaza strip area, the air force became the
star player in a new tactical sphere of counter-terrorist warfighting,
which saw unprecedented close co-operation between Shin-Bet
(general security service), military intelligence, special forces,
manned and unmanned air assets. Perfecting the techniques of
precision strikes against time-critical targets (procedures
called 'targeted killing'), this winning combination virtually
destroyed the entire Hamas leadership. Unfortunately the price
was high, as the ground forces, suffering from severe cuts in
national funding priorities, deteriorated in training standards,
equipment modernization and doctrinal procedures, all affecting
its warfighting capabilities. The result of this short-sighted
drastic decision, marked the Second Lebanon war fiasco, in which
only the air force achieved significant achievement.
Halutz' surprising appointment to chief of staff, in Spring
2005, the first air force officer to attain such high office
in the IDF, may not have been an unvary political failure, when
regarding the growing strategic threats, which the political
and military leadership presumed at the time as prime existential
dangers to Israel's survival. With his excellent performance,
an air force officer becoming IDF chief seemed only natural
under the circumstances. Moreover, the decisive showing of the
US air force in two Iraq wars only gave further credence to
this unprecedented choice.
In fact, General Halutz as chief of operations, later deputy
and finally chief of staff brought about a new concept in the
restructuring process of the IDF chain of command, which envisaged
strategic vision against long-range threats as Israel's top
defense priority and as result, made the air arm its primary
force to counter this looming threat. Although the new structure
was not fully implemented before the 2006 war, its conceptual
trend became already dominant throughout the IDF, with air force
officers holding top jobs, such as Military Intelligence and
Planning branches, posts that "Blue Coats" never held
before.
Unfortunately for General Halutz and Israel as a whole, this
concept backfired immediately as a "real" war started
last July. Under his leadership, the air force performed brilliantly
during the first days of the war and in unprecedented precision
attacks, destroyed the entire Hezbollah strategic missile infrastructure
in Lebanon. Tehran had painstakingly deployed these missiles
as deterrent against a potential Israeli attack on its nuclear
facilities. Now, in one stroke, billions of dollars invested
into Iran's strategic forward base went up in smoke.
However, when the short range rockets kept raining relentlessly
down on Israel's north it was time to act on the ground and
it was precisely in this domain that Halutz' professional experience
hampered his leadership. In order to be able to direct land
warfighting, a commander must be intimately versed with the
nature of the fire saturated battlefield. To rightly apprehend
the needs and morale pressure of the tactical commander, the
supreme leadership must have personally experienced the horrors
of combat -- which naturally a pilot, fighting high in the sky
and far detached from the noise of battle, cannot understand.
This psychological phenomena, was the precursor of Halutz' major
mistakes in conducting the war once the ground battle started,
which became especially evident during the last 48 hours, when
a mistaken apprehension of operational timing, brought about
a series of questionable operations and the later repercussions,
ending finally with last week's painful resignation.
As mentioned, the IDF Chief of Staff is traditionally, the
direct commander of Israel's ground forces. He is assisted in
his command function by a professional staff and by the Army
Land Forces HQ (ALF HQ) which is only responsible for building,
training and equipping the IDF land forces -- but has no command
function over these forces. The next in line are the three territorial
commands, which are responsible for operational implementation
of the GHQ directives. In contrast to ALF HQ, the air force
and navy, where the respective chiefs have full building, training
and operational command over their forces.
With the Chief of Staff (COS) being the direct commander of
army operations and with ALF HQ having no command function-
such an infrastructure actually prohibits any COS coming from
other than land forces. An air or naval officer, lacking professional
background or combat experience cannot hope to gain full confidence
of his subordinate ground commanders. In creating this strangely
incomplete model of a Land Forces Headquarters, without operational
command functions, the IDF leadership went only half way towards
a viable solution of its land battle warfighting doctrine. This
shortsighted failure was certainly the major cause for the Lebanon
debacle.
However, in order to meet Israel's future threat contingencies,
it may become necessary to appoint a Commanding General Staff
(CGS) who is well versed in strategic operations, depending
primarily on deployment of long-range air, naval and strategic
forces. For such a contingency a veteran air force officer could
be excellent choice, directing a complex strategic campaign.
By restructuring the ALF HQ into a separate service arm, on
the same level to air ground and possibly strategic commands
such an arrangement can be achieved. But under such a structure,
the ALF HQ must be given full command power over all land forces
operations, i.e. full command of territorial headquarters.
While operating under the strategic directive of the CGS staff,
directing all operations within the strategic overall warfighting
framework- ALF HQ will carry out the territorial operations
under its command. By streamlining and restructuring such a
clear command doctrine, it would in future become possible to
appoint any officer from either Army, Navy or air force to the
post of CGS to meet whatever contingencies necessary.
Still, restructuring the IDF General Staff alone, would not
solve the problem entirely in order to prevent future recurrences,
as happened during the Second Lebanon War. In order to conduct
an effective wartime crisis management, the political establishment
must have an independent security advisory board, functioning
on a fully legal foundation to perform its duties within the
framework of the national defense community. Unfortunately the
Israeli version of a National Security Council (NSC) has sofar
not been implemented and was sorely missed during the recent
crisis.
According to the findings of the National Comptroller, published
last September, the NSC was not involved in handling central
issues of national security, such as the management of the conflict
with the Palestinians, the withdrawal from Gaza, large scale
defense projects and most importantly, the Lebanon War 2006.
Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset State Control
Committee that in his view, the National Security Council should
be charged with coordinating Israel's campaign against Iran's
nuclear weapons program, but the body established by his government
in 1999 existed unfortunately only on paper. In contrast to
foreign nations, which ably use their professional security
advisory teams to reach crucial decisions of national security,
the prime ministers of Israel have preferred to have their own
intimate consultants forum for decision making rather than a
special body that would be responsible for providing orderly
staff work for making critical decisions. Under political leaders,
having prior experience in defense issues, such a method could
perhaps be tolerated. But with a leadership of "civilian
politicians", like Amir Peretz and Ehud Olmert, both totally
devoid of any military and strategic experience, this combination
became catastrophic, as was proven by Israel's recent predicament
in Lebanon.
Read David Eshel's past commentary here
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