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Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies
The Dado Center Journal
for Operational Art
Volume 4
Defense and Home Front – A
Reconsideration
July 2015
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The Dado Journal for Operational Art
Volume 4 – July 2015
Defense and Home Front – A Reconsideration
Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies
Operations Directorate (GS/J3), Doctrine and Training Division Israel Defense Forces
Publication Commander and Editor in Chief: Col. Eran Ortal
Editors: LtC. Eli Michelson, Capt Lior Lebed and Mr. Saul Bronfeld
Hebrew Copy Editing: Mr Arieh Shavit
English Editor: Mr. Lazar Berman
Translation: Capt (res.) Benjamin Rutland
On the front cover: General Yitzhak Sadeh. Following the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, Sade developed the idea of going beyond the perimeter and altering the defensive concept. Sadeh established the “Mobile Units” as a defensive force acting beyond the perimeter, and later commanded “Field Companies,” which implemented the idea of defense beyond the perimeter in an organized and institutionalized manner. The photograph is courtesy of the Sadeh family.
Cover Design: Operations Directorate (GS/J3), Doctrine and Training Division, Publications and Terminology Desk, Graphic Design Team
Additional volumes of The Dado Center Journal are available online:
www.maarachot.idf.il
Editor’s Preface
“Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not
know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent
does not know what to attack.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has a complex history with
the concept of defense. The intensity of the debate over the
relationship between defense and offense within Israel’s security
concept and its military expression fluctuates. The IDF was born from
the Haganah, the underground defense organization created in the
1920s, and its idea of the “Iron Wall.”1 However, the IDF’s ethos was
“going beyond the wire,” and its heroes were aggressive
commanders like Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigal Allon and the legendary Unit
101, a IDF special forces unit created by Ariel Sharon in 1953. The
Agranat Commission, which investigated the failures that led up to
the 1973 war, described this ethos as “the cult of the offensive.”2
Today, the debate over the proper balance between IDF’s
offensive capabilities and the growing dominance of its defensive
forces has returned, turning into a stormy conceptual fight. As a
matter of fact, the era of wars based on standoff firepower and the
threat of terrorist incursions into Israel – the latest example being
Operation Protective Edge - sharpens the tension between the
importance of an effective defense that includes a layer of home
front defense (against rockets and missiles and a border protection
layer against raids via tunnels) and the vital importance of decisive
military power that can attack the enemy with speed and force in its
territory and shorten the duration of the conflict. The point of
departure of this debate is the assumption that there exists a bitter
1 The Iron Wall metaphor was used by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the essay he wrote in 1923, “The Iron Wall - We and the Arabs.” It describes the doctrine that later shaped David Ben-Gurion’s security concept. 2 The Agranat Commission was a National Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the circumstances leading to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the failings of the IDF.
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fight over resources between these two types of military power and
therefore the debate is concerned with the correct balance between
the two.
This issue of the Dado Center Journal is dedicated to the
subject of defense and its place within Israel’s new security concept
and its military force design. As always, we will approach the debate
in a systemic fashion in order to create the conditions for this deep
conceptual debate.
And what are the conditions for a fruitful systemic debate?
In the systemic learning approach that the Dado Center is
developing, one can identify principles and tools that create the
conditions for a systemic debate, some of which we used in this
issue. These include setting up diverse perspectives, in order to
create a holistic systemic explanation for the phenomenon under
investigation. Another tool is the exploration of the organizational
legacy (the past), to identify existing gaps within the organizational
doctrine in relation to changing reality, and to identify repetitive
patterns of behavior and recurring obstacles to learning. An
additional tool is studying the potential to identify available
opportunities that allow us to develop a new concept and to change
accordingly. The articles in this issue use these tools.
The legacy as a tool of critical introspection - By tracing the
design of Air Force ground-to-air missile capabilities and building the
Bar-Lev line, Mr. Saul Bronfeld demonstrates in his article how
defensive concepts emerge in the IDF. While offensive components
are born from a deep conceptual debate, defensive capabilities
emerge from specific needs and are seen as components of a
response to particular threats and are isolated from a broader
concept. Traces of this phenomenon - IDF involvement in defensive
capabilities as response to threats that endanger Israeli offensive
capabilities - are found in other articles of this issue.
The potential - At least three of the articles of this issue
discuss opportunities and potentials that are still in front of us. Ms.
Dana Preisler-Swery deals with the potential for regional stability
and a de-escalation in active defense systems. Brigagier General
Shachar Shohat, commander of the Air Defense Command, and Mr.
Yaniv Friedman raise the potential of missile interception
technologies used for defense, even in contexts that break the
conceptual dichotomy between “defensive” and “offensive”
capabilities. Lieutenant Colonel Eli Michelson and the late Colonel
Munir Amar, who passed away in March 2016, argued that there is
a conceptual omission that limits the effectiveness of home front
defense in times of crisis, an omission that stems from a
misunderstanding of the operational realm in the IDF defense
concept.
Looking at this question over time, this DCJ issue allows us
to identify the IDF tendency to consecrate its offensive capabilities
while suppressing the need for defense. It is possible that the roots
of this suppression can be traced to the “beyond the wire” concept,
which is perhaps the first defining conceptual idea that defined the
modern Jewish armed forces. Occasionally this suppression results
in a powerful counterreaction - the fortification line built along the
Suez Canal in the 1970s, and the fast-growing air defense array
today. The article by Brigadier General (res.) Meir Finkel, Dana
Preisler-Swery and Yaniv Friedman emphasizes this point and
argues that in the absence of proactive systemic thinking on this
issue, Israel is forced to adopt a defensive approach that may be
dominant, but is not part of a complete systemic concept.
The strength of a systemic debate lies in its ability to break
out of the borders of existing concepts which sit in unresolvable
tension with one another, and create from these tensions a new
conceptual knowledge. The current tension between the IDF
offensive tendencies on the one hand, and the enemy’s tangible
threats on Israel’s home front on the other hand, constitutes a
potential breakthrough for new conceptual realms. More than being
a dichotomous choice prioritizing offense over defense, the “beyond
the wire” principle of Yitzhak Sadeh, his field companies and Orde
Wingate’s Special Night Squads, was a new systemic interpretation
of the term defense in the strategic context of the Arab Revolt in
Palestine in the 1930s. Similarly, we may require a renewed
interpretation of the concept of defense, taking into consideration
today’s strategic context. Shachar Shohat points out in his article the
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potential of missile defense, outside the framework of the home
front defense concept as we know it today. Another potential that
arises from Preisler-Swery’s article and from Shohat and Friedman’s
article, is the potential for strategic cooperation that could develop
out of the joint defense needs of different states. As related in
Lieutenant Colonel Roni Katzir’s article, the cyber world represents
a realm where the dichotomy between defense and offense, our
territory and theirs, is clearly irrelevant to the debate.
Is it possible that these conceptual frameworks represent an
opportunity to change the decades old trend of increasingly
intensive rounds of conflicts between us and our enemies without
clear decision on the battlefield? Is it possible that the traditional
separation between defense and offense - the idea of territory - is
no longer sufficient and relevant to a discussion that takes place in a
world in which missiles, tunnels and cyber technology bypass border
demarcations and traditional military theaters to which we have
become accustomed in military thinking? Has the IDF learning
system improved itself enough compared to the past in the junction
between operational planning, conceptual thought and military
force design?
What is the appropriate way for the IDF to develop its
knowledge in order to allow the creation of the military concept, that
will provide both adequate defense for Israel and its citizens, as well
as a quick and convincing response that will put an end to the
exhausting rounds of conflicts? Who among us initiates this debate
and who leads it?
We hope that this issue will facilitate and encourage the
necessary debate.
With best wishes for fruitful and enjoyable reading,
Colonel Eran Ortal,
Head of Think Tank.
Contents
Saul Bronfeld Defense – The Other Face of Mars 9
Dana Preisler-Swery
The Last Missile War? The Influence of the “Iron Dome” on the Operational Concepts of
Hamas, Hezbollah and the IDF 49
Shachar Shohat and Yaniv Friedman
From Tactical Anti-Aircraft Defense to Systemic Aerial Defense
75
Munir Amar and Eli Michelson
The Campaign for the Home Front 95
Roni Katzir
By Land, by Sea, by Air. And by Cyber?
117
Meir Finkel, Yaniv Friedman
and Dana Preisler-Swery
Active Defense as the Fourth Pillar of the Israeli Security Concept – The Lesson from
Operation Protective Edge 137
About the Authors
157
The research, understandings and conclusions in this journal reflect the opinions
of the authors and do not represent the official positions of the IDF.
Readers who are interested in contributing to “The Dado Journal” are invited to send proposals for articles to the editors at the following email:
Defense – The Other Face of Mars
Saul Bronfeld
Introduction
The ancient Romans worshipped a two-faced deity, Janus,
the God of beginnings and ends. Perhaps Mars, their God of war,
should have also been depicted with two faces, representing offense
and defense.
The relationship between these two forms of warfare has
long been the subject of debate. “We must not shield ourselves to
death,” some have argued. Others have insisted that “the best
defense is a good offense.” In Israel, a common position is that the
country’s defensive doctrine manifests itself in offensive measures.
In practice, security concepts and warfare doctrines define the
relationship between the two and determine the level of resources
to be assigned to each.
This article will argue that military requirements, learning
and experience led the IDF, in two cases, to invest significant
resources in defensive systems. The case studies show that IDF
learning was flexible enough to allocate substantial resources to
defense, which was, in the past as well as today, “the fourth pillar”
of the classical security concept. This was a concept that advocated
offensive action in order to defend. It prioritized offensive
capabilities that would lead to decisive victory, preferably following
a preemptive strike. The concept was derived from the broad and
chronic asymmetry that existed between Israel and its enemies - in
geography and size of the regular army - and from the realization
that it is impossible to achieve a decisive victory through defense
alone. However, when the circumstances necessitated it, even in the
past, tremendous resources were invested in defensive capabilities.
The proper combination of defense and offense has been a
major question for security concepts from time immemorial, but this
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study will refrain from diving into this doctrinal sea. This article will
discuss two events during which the military leadership decided to
adopt new operational concepts that required a heavy investment in
defense. The first event, in the field of airpower, was the acquisition
of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the early 1960s, which competed
for resources with jet fighter procurement. The second event,
relating to ground warfare, was the establishment of a line of
reinforced fortifications on the western bank of the Suez Canal
during the War of Attrition.
Both events occurred against the backdrop of turning points
in Israel’s security reality, which compelled the IDF General Staff to
contend with a new type of war. This article will describe the
political, operational-economic and other considerations which
shaped both events as well as the sharp controversies that
accompanied the decisions to invest in defensive tools. Both events
involved symmetric warfare against regular Arab armies, but they
may provide us with insights and lessons on learning, and on dealing
with change, which is currently required in our warfare doctrines.1
Airpower: Defense Through Surface-to-Air Missiles
In September 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced his
willingness to provide Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Israel. Five
batteries were acquired prior to the 1967 Six Day War, at a cost of
$30 million. This was an unprecedented investment in a defensive
system designed to protect air force bases, the nuclear reactor in
Dimona, and the home front. Below I describe the arguments which
took place prior to the decision to procure these surface-to-air
1 The events described in this study can serve as historical background to studies dealing with
intellectual renewal. See: Eran Ortal, “Is the IDF Capable of an Intellectual Breakthrough?”, Ma’arachot, February 2013. [Hebrew] In order to emphasize the scope of this paper, I will point out that this study only deals with weapons systems that did not have a direct role in offensive action and the achievement of decisive victory. Also, this study does not deal with investments in home front protection, cyber defense, “second strike” capabilities and armored vehicle protection. Finally, investment in protecting combatants’ lives has always played a central role in security concepts, and is therefore outside the scope of the present study.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 11
missiles, which was a deviation from the classic concept that had
guided the Israeli Air Force (IAF) since the 1950s - achieving air
superiority - as well as the conclusion of the incident and the lessons
learned.2
1. The Operational-Economic Considerations
The combat doctrine of the IAF in the 1950s was based on a
combination of fighter aircraft squadrons (and air traffic control
units), three airfields and anti-aircraft artillery battalions - all
designed to protect the country's skies, to control airspace over the
battlefield and to participate in the ground battle. The IAF sought to
increase the size of its fighter jet force and to construct more
airfields. Improving air defense capabilities was its lowest priority.
However, toward the end of the decade, the General Staff began
considering reinforcement of Israel’s air defenses with surface-to-air
missiles. The motivation for this new thinking was the improvement
in the attack capabilities of the Arab air forces (Tupolev-16 bombers
and MIG-19 ground attack jets) and the assessment of the General
Staff’s Staff-Armaments Directorate regarding the severity of the
threat: “The worst-case scenario for the defense establishment is an
attack from the air instigated by the enemy on our airfields and
population centers. There is no way to completely hold back such an
2 This chapter relies to a large extent on Stuart Cohen's study: “Who Needs Ground-Air
Missiles? How Were the Hawk Missiles Acquired,” in Ze'ev Lachish and Meir Amitai (eds). Non-Peaceful Decade: Chapters in the History of the Air Force, 1956 - 1967. Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1995. [Hebrew] See also Chapter three of Saul Bronfeld. “From A-4 to F-4: The Beginning of an Aviational Friendship,” Fisher Institute of Strategic Air and Space Research, 2011. [Hebrew], or the summary of the book in the article Saul Bronfeld. “Wise Statesmanship: Levi Eshkol and Arms Procurement in the 60s,” Ma’arachot. No. 437 (Sivan 5771 - June 2011). [Hebrew] The threat to Dimona jumpstarted the IDF’s capabilities and not only in the SAM interception field. Between 1966 and 1967 the “Senator” initiative was established by the Unit 8200 unit in the IDF J2, assisted by Air Force Intelligence, which was designed “to supply an early warning of an Egyptian air force attack on Dimona.” The intelligence that was gathered was very helpful in planning the attacks on the Egyptian airfields in the Six Day War. See Amos Gilboa. “Mr. Intelligence - Ahara'le, General Aaron Yariv, Head of Military Intelligence,” Yediot Ahronot and Hemed books, 2013, pp. 185, 192-193, 214-215. [Hebrew]
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attack with aircraft only... Surface-to-air missiles are a better
defensive means against faster aircraft than interceptors.”3
The General Staff perception was spurred by an important
operational issue - the need to protect the Dimona reactor from low
altitude, hit-and-run incursions from Egyptian airfields in Sinai.
Operational considerations of time and space indicated that it would
be impossible to prevent such an attack only through aerial
interception of the MIGs, and economic considerations prevented
constant defensive air patrols.
The IAF commander, Maj. Gen. Ezer Weizman, objected to the
acquistion of surface-to-air missiles from the US for several reasons.
First, procurement of good air defense capabilities would stengthen
arguments against a preventive air strike. “I feared that when the
senior leadership would need to approve an air offensive,” Weizman
revealed, “the presence in Israel of Hawk missiles would actually
block a fast-affirmative decision [to strike first].”4
Second, he reasoned, surface-to-air missile batteries would use
a large slice of the IAF budget (even though the operational yield
would be higher than if the funds were invested to procure another
Mirage Squadron or build a fourth airfield). “One should not forget
that surface-to-air missiles are static and a missile is a single-use
weapon,” argued IAF headquarters, “while a jet fighter is flexible, it
3 A document from September 10, 1959, quoted by Stuart Cohen, “Who Needs Ground-Air
Missiles? How the Hawk Missiles Were Acquired,” pp. 255-256. Already during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, it had become clear that over time it is impossible defend land assets using interceptor patrols. The large contribution of the radar-detection network deployed by the Royal Air Force allowed the British Spitfires and Hurricanes to be launched just in time to intercept the German bombers, preventing the interception squadrons from having to perform grinding patrols. At that time, the United Kingdom's small air force was unable to continuously patrol its skies, but the radar network and the reporting and control system based on it, allowed the RAF to launch fighter planes just in time. The British made early use of a system that the Toyota vehicle manufacturing company brought into industry in the 1950s. See Edward Luttwak. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 235-236.
4 Ezer Weizman. On Eagles' Wings: The Personal Story of the Leading Commander of the Israeli Air Force. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., pp. 183-186.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 13
may continue attacking the enemy and is able to handle more than
one target in a single sortie.”5
Third, another important but implicit consideration is
identifiable in the Air Force position over the years. The
organizational culture of the Air Force was not enthusiastic about
weapons systems not operated by pilots. Weizman did not like
surface-to-air missiles, his replacement Maj. Gen. Moti Hod did not
like drones and their successors did not like military satellites or the
Iron Dome system.
In internal discussions, Israel never raised concerns about the
potential for escalation, in contrast to concerns raised by the US
State Department in objecting to the sale of the Hawks to Israel.
American diplomats argued that equipping the IDF with surface-to-
air missiles would lead the Soviets to supply Egypt with long range
surface-to-surface missiles (SSM), which would expose Israel to
significant threats.6 In Israel this consideration was not deemed
relevant, because in the 50s and 60s it was the Soviets who were
introducing advanced air and ground-based weapon systems into
the Middle East, and the prevailing Israeli opinion was that they
were leading the arms race, not reacting.
2. Political Considerations
From the mid-1950s, France was the IDF’s main weapons
supplier. Israel procured tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, various
types of missiles and a nuclear reactor from France. The love affair
between the defense establishments reached new heights in the
early 1960s after France began to supply modern Mirage fighters,
and continued to help in many other ways. The French billed Israel
heavily, but had no political inhibitions and gladly consented to any
purchase request. And the Americans “are inquisitive and
5 A document from September 23rd, 1959, quoted in Stuart Cohen, “Who Needs Ground-Air Missiles? How the Hawk Missiles Were Acquired,” in Lachish Ze'ev and Amitai, Meir (eds). Non-Peaceful Decade: Chapters in the History of the Air Force, 1956 - 1967. Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1995, p. 255. [Hebrew]
6 Ibid, pp. 269-270.
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garrulous,” reflected Ezer Weizman. “The French never questioned
us this way, and we had a feeling that if we asked to buy 300 Mirages
instead of 72, they would have complied after merely clarifying the
terms of payment. And here [in Washington, when presenting the
shopping list for the Air Force in October 1965] there are cross-
examinations and intricate inquiries.”7
At the end of the 1950s, the United States produced the Hawk,
a surface-to-air missile, considered by the IAF “the most
sophisticated of its kind,” as well as other weapon systems that
Israel longed to acquire (primarily tanks and fighter-bomber jets).
But the Americans refused to provide the IDF with weapons of any
kind. To their credit, the Americans were aware of the threats to
Israel, but limited themselves to financial assistance, facilitating the
procurement of weapons systems from France and Britain. Prime
Minister Levi Eshkol called the American policy an “elegant
embargo,” and the policy could be referred to as “the IDF are moving
up a class, but not in the American school.” Accordingly, the debate
on the operational need and effectiveness of surface-to-air missiles
(in cost-benefit terms) was intertwined with what is known in Israeli
historiography as the debate between the “European school” and
the “American school.”8
Weizman, supported by Shimon Peres, then the Deputy Minister
of Defense, preferred to procure another Mirage squadron instead
of the Hawk batteries. This position stemmed from both the
operational-economic considerations described above, and from
the rationale that the acquisition of the additional Mirages would
strengthen Israel's status as an important client of the French
industries, thus intensifying the collaboration between France and
the Israeli defense establishments.
7 Weizman, On Eagles' Wings: The Personal Story of the Leading Commander of the Israeli Air
Force?” p. 302. His comments described the enormous political difficulty in purchasing weapons in the US, compared to the political ease of purchasing from France (and the economic difficulties in funding the acquisition).
8 Bronfeld, “From A-4 to F-4: The Beginning of an Aviational Friendship,” Fisher Institute of Strategic Air and Space Research, pp. 15-16; Cohen, “Who Needs Ground-Air Missiles? How Were the Hawk Missiles Aquired,” pp. 264-267.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 15
Their opponents, Generals Haim Laskov, Tzvi Tzur and Yitzhak
Rabin, as well as David Ben Gurion, and later Golda Meir and Levi
Eshkol, believed that with resolute and ongoing political efforts,
Israel could break into the coveted American arsenal. The tactic
chosen by the prime ministers and chiefs of staff at the time
advocated applying pressure to obtain approvals for purchasing
defensive weapon systems to be followed by aircraft and armored
vehicles. The initial stage was successful in 1960, when President
Dwight Eisenhower consented to Ben Gurion's request to provide
the IAF with advanced air control and command (non-firing)
systems, followed by requests to procure the Hawk (a defensive fire
system), and later by requests to purchase aircraft and tanks
(offensive fire systems).
The complexity of the web of arguments of the various parties
is also reflected in the difficulty in separating relevant considerations
(operational, political and economic) from ones driven by
personality/organizational rivalries and interests. It's hard to believe
that the strained relationships between Golda Meir and Shimon
Peres, and between Rabin and Peres, did not influence the debate,
since purchasing more in France, instead of purchasing the Hawk
from the US, would have strengthened Peres position vis-à-vis the
Israeli Foreign Ministry as well as the General Staff.
Yitzhak Rabin described Peres' 1982 objection to the arms
purchases in the US, from the air control systems to the Hawks:
“Of course, Peres argued [in 1960] that there was no need to go
to the Americans, but in the end, Ben Gurion decided and returned
with Eisenhower's approval to purchase the aerial warning systems.
Then Peres, influenced by Weizman, who commanded the air force,
tried to torpedo it. We already had approval to make the purchase,
but nothing was done in order to advance the acquisition, because
Peres claimed that there was an up-to-date radar system in France,
better than that of the Americans, and they appointed a Committee.
In short, they dragged the matter on for a year or a year and a half
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before actually starting, and miraculously we reached the Six Day
War with one fully functioning warning station, and on Mt. Canaan
only an improvised one, because we did not manage, since we had
wasted time. But it [the American system] is, to this day, in fact, the
backbone of all our aerial warning and control systems. Later, in the
second stage, the issue of the Hawk missiles arose, and Tsera [Tzvi
Tzur], the Chief of Staff, and I were in favor, and once again Weizman
and Peres nearly tried to torpedo it. Weitzman argued in principle
that it was not necessary, that it was a waste of money. But Eshkol
and Golda, as soon as Eshkol entered office, they made the radical
shift to the American issue.”9
Similar claims were raised by Yoash Sidon, Chief of the
Armaments and Planning Division at Air Force Headquarters (Air
Group 2) in the early 1960s, who accused Peres and Weizman of fully
identifying with Marcel Dassault, owner of the big French aircraft
manufacturing company, and of consequently introducing
erroneous considerations into the purchase of fighter jets.10
It does not matter here how accurately Rabin's and Sidon's
memories reflect Peres's and Weizman's considerations. Obviously,
personal alliances on the one hand, and sour personal relationships
on the other, lead to mistakes.
9 Avi Shlaim, “Interview with Yitzhak Rabin,” Iyunim Bitkumat Israel (Studies in Israeli and
Modern Jewish society). Vol. 8, Sde Boker: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 1998, pp. 688-681. [Hebrew] Rabin “forgot” to mention that after Israel made the decision to request the Hawk, Peres acted energetically to persuade President Kennedy's administration of the vitality of the missiles to Israel's security.
10 Sidon, Joash. Day and Night in Fog. Jerusalem: Ma'ariv Library, 1995 pp. 350-367. [Hebrew] Yaakov Hefetz, who was financial advisor to the Chief of Staff, said in an interview with Sidon: “There were ‘transactions’ between Ezer [Weizman] and Shimon Peres, then between Ezer and Keshet [Moshe, Director of the Ministry of Defense]. You support this and we shall support here... [Weizman and Hod who replaced him] were in direct contact with the Ministry of Defense and all sorts of partnerships in crime... unknown to the IDF Chief of Staff.” Quoted in Yitzhak Greenberg. Accounting and Power: The Defense Budget from War to War. Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1997, p. 113. [Hebrew]
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 17
3. Organizational Considerations
In the 1950s, direct responsibility for anti-aircraft systems was
entrusted to the Artillery Corps, and the beginning of the missile era
sharpened the organizational dispute between the two services.
Initially, the dispute was over surface-to-surface missiles which were
developed in France for the IDF, and later over locally developed Luz
missiles. When the decision was made to purchase the Hawk
missiles, Weizman demanded responsibility for those batteries. The
Air Force arguments related, initially, to the operational need to
coordinate the employment of the anti-aircraft systems with fighter
jets, an issue which was always important, and which became critical
in the era of surface-to-air missiles. Furthermore, the technological
infrastructure required to run and maintain a SAM array was very
advanced, much greater than that at the disposal of the anti-aircraft
cannons. The Artillery Corps objected, of course, with professional
and morale-based arguments, but at the end of a long debate the
IAF carried the day.11
Chief of Staff Tzur’s decision to entrust the Air Force with the
surface-to-air missiles was an important step in transferring
responsibility for the whole air defense array from the Artillery
Corps to the IAF, as part of an operational-organizational concept
that later concentrated under Air Force wings “anything that flies” -
jets, helicopters, drones, anti-aircraft guns, missile defense systems,
surface-to-air missiles and rocket and mortar defense systems (the
anti-aircraft units were transferred in November 1970). At the
General Staff meetings where the organizational implications of the
Hawk’s acquisition were discussed, other options arose. Rabin (then
Deputy Chief of staff), for example, supported the establishment of
a missile command, directly under the Chief of Staff. Other concerns
were that transferring the surface-to-air missiles to the Air Force’s
11 Cohen, “Who Needs Ground-Air Missiles? How Were the Hawk Missiles Aquired,” pp. 275-
281.
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responsibility would deprive the artillery corps and other entities in
the IDF, and would further augment the importance of the Air Force.
In debates about purchasing expensive weapon systems like the
Hawk, the first question that arises is always from which budget
would the funding be drawn.12 It is not surprising that a service that
desired a certain weapon’s platform would plot to finance the
purchase at someone else’s expense. The best option was a special
allowance from the USA. Otherwise, through increases to the
defense budget, and as a last resort, at the expense of one’s
colleagues on the General Staff. The worst-case scenario for a
service was cutbacks in one’s budget. Commanders throughout the
ages, in the IDF and other armies, would demonstrate great
creativity to avoid encountering a worst-case scenario.13
Weizman understood that the $30 million invested in the Hawks
(although spread over several years) would come at the expense of
purchasing aircraft. He feared that the many requirements of the
ground forces - especially tanks, armored personnel carriers and
modern artillery - would prevent an increase in the Air Force’s share
of the defense budget, and that a serious shortage of foreign
currency for procurement needs would also be a problem.14
4. Epilogue - Purchase of the Hawk Surface-to-Air Missile
The decision to purchase the Hawks despite IAF opposition
stemmed primarily from an immediate operational need, which
could not be fulfilled in any other way. Anti-aircraft guns and fighter
12 In another example, during the discussion of the “Goshen” multi-year plan, in 1968 and 1969, Maj. Gen. Hod opposed financing the procurement of the many helicopters required for vertical flanking “at his expense.” 13 I will limit myself to pointing out the tactic known as “the Cheech Method” named after its
creator Maj. Gen. (ret.) Shlomo (Cheech) Lahat, Mayor of Tel Aviv 1974-1993. General Lahat commanded the Sinai Division during the War of Attrition, but the method was given its nickname when he served as Mayor, developing it greatly while creating large budget deficits. When Lahat was required to cut back on expenses, he would agree immediately, and then announce that the cutbacks would be achieved by closing down services provided to the elderly in distress. “Cheech” had many imitators in the civil and defense sectors, as is evidenced by recent threats to cut back on training for combat forces, following the refusal of the Ministry of Finance to increase the defense budget.
14 Greenberg, “Accounting and Power: The Defense Budget from War to War,” p. 112.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 19
jet patrols and even an additional airfield could not guarantee the
continuous functioning of the Air Force bases and the defense of the
Dimona reactor (nor the home front). Weizman suppressed the
operational problem, whereas Chiefs of Staff Laskov and Tzur (and
Deputy Chief of Staff Rabin) identified the new need and were even
prepared to invest significant resources in a defensive response.
Weizman's resistance to purchasing the Hawks rested on two levels,
related to the IDF’s decisive defeat doctrine. At the strategic level,
there was an apprehension that the defensive capability would
augment the political echelon’s tendency towards containment,
which would likely refuse authorization for a preemptive airstrike.
At the operational level, there was a fear that purchasing the
missiles would come at the expense of purchasing fighter jets
designed to achieve air superiority, according to classical combat
doctrine. Weizmann regarded the purchase of the surface-to-air
missiles - defensive by nature - as an impairment of the ability to
attain a decisive defeat, and he therefore opposed it (gaining the
support of Peres, who wanted to increase procurement from
France). Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir on the other hand, alongside
the chiefs of staff, decided in favor of the Hawks, both on
operational grounds and from a political desire to break into the
American arsenal.
Hindsight suggests that Weizman had neither operational nor
organizational reasons to lament that his position was rejected. His
fear that defensive improvements would prevent the political
echelon from approving a preemptive strike against the Egyptian
airfields in the Six Day War was proven wrong. In June 1967 approval
was indeed granted for Operation Moked, which was a resounding
success. Moreover, the willingness to take risks and leave only a few
Mirages to defend Israel's skies in the morning of Operation Focus
was influenced by the existence of the Hawk batteries. Weizman's
budgetary concern was also proven wrong. In 1965 Eshkol approved
the procurement of an additional 50 Mirages and 48 Skyhawks,
concurrent with the procurement of 250 Centurions and 150 M-48s,
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and after the Six Day War, there was effectively no budgetary limit
on the procurement of jet fighters.
Furthermore, the Air Force succeeded in developing a combat
doctrine for the anti-aircraft missiles, integrating them with the
fighter jets, as was demonstrated during the War of Attrition and the
1973 Yom Kippur (Ramadan) War. Affirming this fact was Brig. Gen.
Benny Peled, the Head of the Air Division during the War of Attrition,
who complained that the Air Force had insufficient Hawk batteries.15
Introducing the Hawks to the IDF’s order of battle in the mid-1960s
was the first step in establishing a modern air defense array - anti-
aircraft systems and later anti-missile and anti-rocket systems -
whose importance grew from the 1990s onwards. Furthermore, the
Hawk array was very technologically advanced, and it helped the Air
Force advance in rocket, air traffic control and radar capabilities.
Finally, the Chief of Staff accepted Weizman's demand to
subordinate the surface-to-air missiles to the Air Force which
intensified Air Force control over “anything that flies.”
Image 1: Postcard of the IDF parade in honor of the purchase of the
Hawk missiles
15 The need for sophisticated air defense measures in the War of Attrition was due to the
proximity of Israeli forces in Western Sinai to the Egyptian airfields, inviting air incursions that the Mirages were unable to intercept.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 21
On the political front, it became apparent that were no reasons
to lament the rejection of Weizman's position against the
procurement of the Hawks. Later came the M-48 and M-60 tanks,
Skyhawk aircraft, Sikorsky CH-53 helicopters, F-4 phantom aircraft
and missiles of various types and from the late 1960s the US became
Israel's main weapons supplier. The many reasons for the gradual
reversal in US policy are complex, but it is clear that the transition
from stingy American consent for the sale of recoilless cannons in
1959 to the supply of the F-4s late in 1968 had to be gradual and
that the sale of the Hawks was an important stop along this long and
winding road. Finally, the embargo imposed by the French president
following the Six Day War proved that Israel's important status vis-
à-vis the French defense industry rested on shifting sands. The
purchase, before the Six Day War, of a few additional Mirage
squadrons from the French would not have changed the scope of
the damage they inflicted.
5. What Can Be Learned?
First, don't put all your eggs in one basket. During the events in
question, Chiefs of Staff Laskov and Tzur decided not to rely on
fighter jets alone for air defense, meaning that air warfare would
have to be conducted using an integrated combat approach in which
both aircraft and sophisticated air defense systems would
participate. Ostensibly, this principle goes without saying in the
development of military doctrine, in investment management and
in other fields. But history teaches us that there is always a strong
temptation to ignore it.16
Second, the event highlights a problem inherent in the IDF
General Staff (and beyond), exacerbated in the context of
technological issues in general and aviation in particular. “In our
twisted organizational structure, the Air Force commander is the
16 The relevancy of this lesson can also be learnt from the fighting in the Sinai during the first
days of the Yom Kippur War. The shortages in artillery, mortars, modern armored infantry carriers and tank transports are a painful example of a deviation from the principle.
22 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
only source of knowledge to the Chief of Staff, and through him to
the Government, in everything relating to military aviation,” Sidon
described the situation in the years when he headed Air Branch 2,
under Weizman as Air Force commander. “He is service commander
and staff officer at once... A definite conflict of interests that is
worsening as the level of specialization in the service is deepening,
making things more difficult for the uninitiated to understand.”17
The technological leaps in various types of weapon systems since the
1960s exacerbated the need for General Staff planning entities,
headed by commanders with technological and operational
knowledge, and able to cope with the demands of the services.
The need for such professional entities was prominent in other
events related to the Air Force, characterized by a bias against
systems not operated by a human pilot. The resistance of the Air
Force to drone development in the 1970s, to the development of
military satellites in the 1980s and to the development of the Iron
Dome in 2000s is no secret. Less widely known is the unsophisticated
use of drones during the Yom Kippur war and the resistance to the
development of surface-to-surface missiles for use by the ground
forces.
The need to develop General Staff capabilities to handle
complex technological issues exists not only in relation to the Air
Force. It also especially concerns cyber warfare, command and
control systems, intelligence, unmanned systems and robotics and
many other issues that have developed over the last generation.
One hopes that today, with senior Air Force officers filling key
positions in the General Staff directorates, matters had improved in
comparison to the 1960s. However, the American experience
teaches us that even following the Goldwater-Nichols Act revolution
in 1986, which, inter alia, improved integration between
headquarters and the commands, it is not easy to uproot narrow
thought patterns and allegiance to one’s own corps.
17 Sidon, “Day and Night in Fog,” p. 352.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 23
Land Warfare: Defense Through Fortified Outposts ("Strongholds")
On September 8, 1968, Egypt launched a war of a type
entirely new to the IDF - a war of attrition. The Egyptians shelled the
Israeli line along the Suez Canal, leaving dozens of soldiers killed and
wounded. At the same time, under the cover of darkness and
shelling, Egyptian commando units successfully crossed the canal,
planted mines, set ambushes and even attacked IDF positions,
causing additional casualties. The novelty in the War of Attrition was
the deadly combination, the likes of which the IDF had never
encountered before - fierce artillery fire and commando raids
conducted by a state army - determined and properly equipped. The
scope was infinitely larger than that of the incidents which took
place on the Jordanian and Syrian borders prior to the Six Day War,
and in the Jordan and Beit Shean Valleys after the war.
For political and military considerations, Israel decided to
keep a military presence along the Suez Canal’s eastern bank, and
not to retreat eastward. This meant that IDF forces would remain
within range of Egyptian artillery. For the same reasons, Israel
decided against pushing Egyptian artillery back by seizing the
western bank of the canal. Furthermore, retaliatory actions carried
out by the IDF, initially the destruction of Egyptian cities along the
canal and deep raids inside Egypt later, did not deter Nasser nor put
an end to the fire (though they did cause him much embarrassment).
As time went by, it became clear that this was a costly type of
warfare, which would last for a long time - several months, perhaps
even years - and that it was impossible to end it in one stroke.
The shelling and commando raids were an important
element in the strategy to drive the IDF from the Sinai Peninsula.
They were part of the Soviet-Arab effort to force Israel's retreat by
constantly igniting the theater, designed to secure US support for a
retreat, as had happened after the 1956 Sinai War. In addition, the
losses caused by the attrition, in blood and money, were meant to
soften Israel's opposition to retreating. The attrition was also seen
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in Egypt as a stage that would prepare their armed forces for an all-
out war and the reoccupation of the Sinai, if international pressures
failed, as well as serving the Egyptian government on the domestic
front. It came as a response to a craving for revenge by the army and
the people, wishing to erase the shame of defeat from the Six Day
War.
Until September 1968, the IDF was deployed in western Sinai in
a thin green line, with few troops and minimal fortifications. As soon
as the shelling began, the General Staff took emergency measures,
including sending reinforcements, distancing some of them beyond
the range of the Egyptian artillery, new combat procedures and
fortifying the outposts with additional layers of earth. On October
26, the Egyptians launched another round of shelling, again causing
dozens of casualties. After the second bombardment, the General
Staff understood that the steps already taken were insufficient and
the IDF must prepare for a new type of war. This study limits itself
to the learning processes and the formation of the IDF's response
during the first, formative, phase of the War of Attrition until July
1969, when the Air Force joined the campaign.
The changes in the political and military circumstances after the
Six Day War forced the General Staff to revise its security concept
and to adapt to the new reality. The transition from an offensive
mindset, at the heart of the military discourse for many decades, to
trench warfare in the autumn of 1968, was not easy and was
accompanied by pointed debates, not always presented accurately
in the historiography of the period.18
1. Political Considerations
In the period immediately following the Six Day War, political
considerations played an important role in decisions around plans to
defend the Sinai Peninsula, and the necessary investments. On
policy issues, there were no real differences of opinion between the
government and the General Staff, which perceived a great deal of
18 Here we shall mainly use sources from the period, and refrain from using insights generated after the Yom Kippur War.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 25
military logic in the political directives. The first directive was to not
retreat from the canal unless a political agreement was achieved.
This was accepted by the General Staff, which felt comfortable in
deploying behind a water barrier, 180 meters wide.
Similarly, there was hardly any protest against the second
directive, to maintain the status quo on the canal while not pushing
the fire back by seizing territory to the west of the canal. This
directive came from the fear of intervention by Soviet forces should
the IDF endanger the Nasser regime, and the fear that igniting the
canal would cool relations with the US, which was deterred from
confronting the Soviets because of the Vietnam quagmire. The
American consideration had another aspect, a fear that the US
would not supply the F-4s and Skyhawks, leading to a decision to
refrain from employing the Air Force to suppress Egyptian fire until
July 1969. The Israeli government and the General Staff also agreed
on the necessity to avoid endangering the acquisition of more
fighter jets.
In addition, the government and the IDF had to consider the
effect on national morale a new war would have. After the elation
brought about by the victory in the Six Day War, the Israeli public
descended into a sort of depression, not having expected another
war and so many casualties on the eastern and canal fronts. The
public was frustrated that they couldn’t enjoy quiet for even forty
days, and the persistence of the War of Attrition and the
accumulation of casualties on both fronts created a painful
atmosphere. The need to do everything possible to minimize
casualties increased. On both fronts, the IDF patrolled with armored
vehicles only, converted tanks to evacuate casualties, placed
physicians in the strongholds, and acquired bulletproof vests.
2. The Operational-Economic Considerations
The operational significance of the policy directives was that the
IDF was stuck on the banks of the Suez, exposed to the Egyptians. It
was not allowed to (nor did it necessarily want to) cross the canal,
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nor withdraw to the east. Moreover, the IDF artillery order of battle
was smaller, by an order of magnitude, than that of the Egyptians,
and was unable to silence the shelling.19 The General Staff
understood that this difficult situation was expected to persist.
Therefore, the IDF prepared for an extended stay on the Suez, while
readying itself for two types of threats - an all-out war started by
Egyptian initiative aiming to reconquer the Sinai, and a limited war,
a “war of attrition” in Nasser’s parlance, in the form of heavy shelling
and commando raids on the eastern bank, which could develop into
a land grab.20
This section will describe the considerations of the IDF in
defending the canal line in the first six months of the War of
Attrition, from early September 1968 (when the first shell fell) to
early March 1969 (when the war entered its intensive, continuous
phase).21 There is a special interest in the learning processes and
dilemmas of this period, and in the gradual disengagement of the
General Staff from the memories of the Six Day War and classical
security concepts.
In addition to the emergency measures taken from September
1968, the General Staff quickly prepared along several lines of effort
for the new type of warfare. A cross-service planning team headed
by Brig. Gen. Avraham Adan, Deputy Commander of the Armored
Corps, prepared a comprehensive new program to defend the Sinai
- the “Stronghold” Plan - which was implemented immediately, even
before its final approval, in December 1968. The prompt
construction of fortifications was spurred by an intelligence report
that Egypt was about to launch a full-scale war in the spring of 1969,
19 According to Haim Bar-Lev, the ratio between their barrels and ours was 1:20 or 1:30, and no one proposed to change that by acquiring more artillery pieces. 20 The IDF also prepared for intermediate scenarios, such as a seizure of Sharm-al-Sheikh or Northen Sinai, but due to space limitations, we will not discuss them here. 21 From November 1968 to early March 1969, the fire was temporarily halted since Egypt was
forced to organize its rear defense, following a successful raid by the Israeli Paratroopers Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit on the relay stations and bridges in the area of Nag-Hammadi (Operation “Shock”). In this article, as in the literature of the period and its historiography, the limited war which took place on the banks of the Suez Canal is referred to as the “War of Attrition,” and also occasionally as routine security activity.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 27
and by the contribution ascribed to the strongholds in successfully
parrying an expected crossing.22 In early March 1969, construction
of the first phase of the Bar Lev Line was completed. An array of 32
well-protected outposts stood ready, some intended for actual
combat, others for early warning and observation. The outposts,
nicknamed strongholds, boasted effective protection against
artillery, were surrounded by fences and mines, and came with
access roads and firing positions for tanks protecting the line. The
strongholds were constructed to provide reasonable amenities to
the soldiers manning them, not an easy achievement in the Sinai
desert. This represented an investment of approximately 52 million
Israeli Lira on the canal line, not an overwhelming sum, comparable
to the cost of three F-4s or a hundred upgraded Patton tanks, but
more than the IDF had ever spent on fortifications.23 The cost of the
strongholds themselves only amounted to approximately 12 million
IL, and the remaining sums were invested in paving roads and other
infrastructure required for a defensive line.
The Southern Command’s Stronghold Program was an
operational plan for the defense of the Sinai during an all-out war as
well as in routine operations, integrated within the General Staff’s
“Sela” (Rock) plan, and included deployment and warfare methods,
assignment of troops and construction of operational infrastructure.
22 See the General Staff meeting, 21/11/1968, IDF archives 10/10/2013. 23 The retrospective pricing of the stronghold line at the beginning of the War of Attrition is
not simple. On the one hand, the figures cited do not include the full economic cost (not even the budgetary) of the many military personnel and heavy construction equipment involved in the construction project. On the other hand, the stronghold line’s budget contains sums, which would have been spent anyway by the IDF, even if an alternative defensive method were chosen. It is important to note that the heaviest expenditures on the Bar Lev Line were invested after the ceasefire in August 1970, when 150 million IL were spent in strengthening the line, bringing about the “infamous enrichment of the contractors.” These figures are rough estimates - 250 million IL according to Haim Laskov testifying at the Agranat Commission meeting of January 10, 1974, or 300 million as stated by Abraham Zohar in his book - of the costs of constructing the line. In any case, these figures are smaller by an order of magnitude than the refuted figures presented by David Arbel and Uri Neeman, approximately the equivalent of 100 fighter jets and 1,000 tanks, i.e. above 2,000 million IL. See Arbel and Neeman, “Unforgivable Delusion,” Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 2005. p. 150. [Hebrew]; Ami Shamir, “History of the Army Engineering Corps,” Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1978, pp. 79-91. [Hebrew]
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It was prepared under two constraints - preventing any Egyptian
achievements, political or military, both in a limited and in an all-out
war, and avoiding casualties and costs as much as possible
(manpower, engine hours, fuel, spare parts, etc.).
There was a close link between the two constraints. After the Six
Day War, the IDF was required to deal with a limited but intense
conflict, while preparing for all-out war. Therefore, the need to
conserve power in the canal zone became a major guideline.
Moreover, the IDF was burdened with many more demanding tasks
- combat on the eastern front, controlling and managing the
territories occupied during the Six Day War, fighting terrorism within
the Green Line and overseas, increasing and improving the order of
battle, developing new capabilities (helicopter-borne attacks in
depth, water crossings, intelligence gathering, defense against non-
conventional threats), organizational changes, establishing an
operational infrastructure for road construction, and the
establishment of defense industries. The General Staff realized that
intensive attrition could last far longer than in the past, and
demanded that ongoing routine defense not curtail training, nor
wear down the order of battle designated for an all-out war.
In his memoirs, Adan described the constraint guiding the
Stronghold plan as the desire to invest in “operational employment
the minimum number of troops,” in order to “train the maximum
troops uninterruptedly, wearing down fewer tanks and artillery
pieces [and half-tracks, of which there was a critical shortage] while
conserving the troops.” The chosen solution consisted of static
strongholds and deterrence - and not a mobile and reinforced
warning screen - with the addition of ambushes.24
Adan phrased his argument in military terms, but with his
degree in economics, he could have done so in economic ones as
well. Establishment of the line was performed using a type of
“production actor” of which, relatively, there was no shortage:
24 Avraham Adan. On the Banks of the Suez: An Israeli General's Personal Account of the Yom Kippur War. Jerusalem: Presidio Press, 1980, pp. 54-68.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 29
construction and civil engineering entities and a non-professional
workforce (new recruits and reservists). In addition, necessary
special warning systems could be purchased abroad or developed in
the country. This one-time investment in fortifications was designed
to conserve the resources employed in routine security patrols, and
primarily to conserve the two “production actors” of which acute
shortages were felt after the Six Day War, combat forces and
armored vehicles. Combat forces - the strongholds and warning
measures - made it possible to hold the line with less regular and
reserve personnel. And for the armored vehicles (engine hours,
spare parts and tracks), the strongholds helped reduce the scope of
patrols and operational movements required.
The lack of routine security resources was largely “real,” and not
merely financial. That is, because of the multiplicity of tasks imposed
on the IDF after the Six Day War, there was a severe lack of combat
forces, rather than budgetary resources. This is despite Israel
extending mandatory service to 36 months, and recruiting reservists
for 30 to 60 days a year. But many of those days were sucked into
routine security activities, thus curtailing training and exercises of
both regular and reserve units, constantly impacting the readiness
of armored vehicles and the equipment in the emergency supply
depots (while the Six Day War generated extensive operational
experience, as time passed the need to return to an investment in
training increased).
In the minutes of the General Staff meetings in the autumn of
1968, we find broad agreement that attrition warfare required
proper fortification of the existing outposts and an increase in their
number. Even Maj. Gen. Israel Tal and Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon said
that for the purpose of the routine security patrols, “it [the
Stronghold plan] is very good,” and that “a very thorough job had
been done.”25
25 General Staff meeting, December 19, 1968, quoted in Amnon Reshef, We Will Never Cease!
The 14th Brigade in the Yom Kippur War. Dvir Publishers, 2013, pp. 33-34 [Hebrew].
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In the learning processes, the Generals were dealing not only
with defense, but also with developing offensive responses to
incidents initiated by the Egyptians. In keeping with its classical
security concept, the IDF carried out retaliatory acts designed to
dissuade Nasser - shelling and destroying high value targets in the
cities near the Suez, raids and ambushes across the canal, deep raids
into the heart of Egypt and more. But the General Staff had no
illusion that these would stop the shelling, nor did it consider
increasing the artillery order of battle, nor an attempt to stop the
shelling by firing at the Egyptian batteries.
A dispute between the generals broke out concerning the
multiplicity of missions inherent in the investment in the Bar Lev
Line, missions that were designed for two substantially different
types of warfare - the ongoing limited war, which might last a long
time, and a future all-out war, in which the IDF would have to
contain the enemy using only the regular troops deployed in the
Sinai, before attacking and achieving a decisive victory with reserve
divisions.
The first round of the opposing stance taken by Tal and Sharon
dealt with these two types of combat and was heard during the
discussions immediately after the first round of shelling in
September 1968. Sharon proposed to evacuate the outposts on the
Suez and to construct a new line at a distance of 30 km to the east,
beyond the range of the Egyptian artillery. He proposed to perform
routine security activities using tanks, a minority on the bank of the
canal, and mostly in the rear at a distance of 10-20 km to the east.
Sharon would have used the infantry to only defend the
bottlenecks behind the line, at the Mitla and Gidi passes. Bar-Lev
reported Sharon's proposal to Moshe Dayan, saying that he and the
rest of the General Staff opposed it (he said Sharon was “in splendid
isolation”). Dayan accepted Bar-Lev's opinion, noting that infantry
According to Emmanuel Sakal: “The literature dealing with the debate at the General Staff on the defense system augmented the differences of opinions and underrated the agreements.” Emmanuel Sakal, Soldier in the Sinai: A General's Account of the Yom Kippur War. University Press of Kentucky, 2014, pp. 20-31.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 31
posts on the canal were important for routine security activity,
adding that their evacuation would have “a negative demonstrative
effect.” However, he did not rule out the possibility that in an all-out
war it would be preferable to evacuate the outposts and conduct a
destructive battle using the armored divisions.26
The second stage in the dispute took place in November 1968,
after a deadly bombardment in October, when the General Staff
ordered Adan and the planning team to maintain a continuous
presence on the canal and to properly fortify the posts. At the same
time the controversy focused on the contribution of the strongholds
to preventing a crossing in an all-out war, but it also had
repercussions on defensive investment for routine security. At this
stage, Tal and Sharon praised the strongholds for their expected
contribution to routine security, but they added that they would
contribute nothing in the holding action phase of an all-out war.
They presented dangerous scenarios in which even the well-
defended strongholds would not withstand the destructive fire likely
to precede a crossing. Furthermore, they indicated that the
firepower provided by the strongholds towards the canal area would
be too weak to stop a crossing.
Bar-Lev rejected their opinion (and was joined by Adan and
Yeshayahu Gavish, head of the Southern Command) and explained
that the scenarios presented by Tal and Sharon about the
destruction of the strongholds in the initial shelling were
exaggerated. He added that stopping the crossing would be done by
tanks deployed on three lines, and fighter jets, assisted by fire from
the clusters of strongholds constructed on the six entry axes into the
Sinai. In other words, according to Bar-Lev’s concept, although the
strongholds would contribute to stopping the Egyptian crossing,
most of the work would be done by the tanks and aircraft.
26 See Reshef, We Will Never Cease! The 14th Brigade in the Yom Kippur War, Dvir Publishers,
2013. [Hebrew]
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Although there was already no disagreement regarding the
benefits of well-fortified strongholds during the War of Attrition, Tal
and Sharon's opinion was that it was unnecessary to invest a lot of
money in their fortification. They claimed that for the purposes of
routine security, strongholds made up of two bunkers should suffice
(not four, as suggested by the planning team), or bunkers placed as
“rear positions” (behind, not in the front of a rampart). They also
believed that observation towers were not necessary, nor were
heavy investment in mines and fencing. Their position was that even
“thin” strongholds would meet the needs of routine security and
that large and expensive strongholds would not contribute to
preventing a crossing; that would be done by tanks placed on the
first line and those in the reserve. Tal's and Sharon's position was
supported by the Brigadier Generals, Rafael Eitan, Chief
Paratroopers Officer, Asher Levy, Head of the Southern Command
and Isaac Hofi, Deputy Chief of Operations.27
Bar-Lev rejected these objections due to a combination of
economic and operational considerations. He calculated that
constructing thin strongholds, as proposed by the objectors, would
only save a small percentage of the budget, because most of the
expenses were not directly related to the number of bunkers in a
stronghold, but to the logistics infrastructure of the strongholds,
roads to be paved, and the communications and observation
systems. Furthermore, it was important to maintain the possibility
of preparations for war, and to deploy larger infantry forces in the
posts along the line, because in his opinion the strongholds located
on the access roads into the heart of the Sinai would play an
important role - both in deterring the Egyptians and in blocking the
crossing should deterrence fail (he did not believe that the
strongholds should serve as an assembly area from which to cross
into Egypt). The intelligence assessments at the time were that, in
an all-out war, the Egyptians would seek to occupy the Sinai, at least
27 The meager and cheap strongholds, “pillboxes,” proposed by Sharon, were also rejected
because their shielding was based on pouring concrete which was impossible to construct in such a short time while under fire.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 33
the area between the canal and the line between the Mitla and Gidi
passes. Thus, the combat outposts along the roads leading into Sinai
were designed to play an important role in its defense.
Bar-Lev's approach was practical. He believed that the
strongholds would provide a good response during the War of
Attrition and could also offer a greater range of courses of action for
Israeli troops in an all-out war. In his opinion, the strongholds would
effectively resolve the acute problem of routine security operations
and in case of an all-out war, which was not expected soon, would
likely assist the tanks and aircraft in intercepting the enemy.
Moreover, until an all-out war broke out, it would be possible to
address the vulnerabilities of the strongholds by special measures of
various kinds, and to increase their fire power.28
Bar-Lev's intellectual flexibility was especially apparent in the
middle of the War of Attrition, about six months after the
establishment of the strongholds. The Southern Command
requested to add strongholds at a distance of 1,000 meters from the
canal, to deepen the line. Bar-Lev rejected the request. He said that
depth would not serve routine security operations, nor would
additional strongholds contribute to the holding action phase in an
all-out war, depth would be provided by tanks, not by more
strongholds. One could justify the construction of more strongholds
only for observation purposes or in areas inaccessible by tanks. In
his opinion, the establishment of additional strongholds, especially
under fire, was unjustified, given the limited benefits anticipated
from them.29
There were important conclusions about the order of battle that
arose in the discussion about the defense of Sinai by the regular
forces. The new and distant frontiers of the period following the Six
Day War, and the accumulation of Egyptian divisions along the
28 The “Strongholds” file, General staff preliminary debate, November 4, 7, 1968, IDF archives
file 315-717/1977. 29 Summary of the debate of General Staff, September 19, 1969, IDF archives file 34-829/1971.
34 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
Canal, required an increase in the regular forces deployed opposite
the Egyptians. The regular armored force prior to the Six Day War
was primarily the 7th Brigade, to which were gradually added, after
the war, the 14th and 401st brigades, deployed in western Sinai. At
the outbreak of the War of Attrition, the 7th Brigade was deployed
on the Golan Heights, and the immediate reinforcement of western
Sinai with regular troops was supposed to be supplied by battalions
from the Armor School (later the 460th Brigade) which could deploy
within 12-14 hours. During the Stronghold Plan discussions, General
Tal argued that for the holding action phase, all regular tanks would
be required, about 300 in all, while the reserve tank formations
should be employed only to carry out a counteroffensive against
forces that penetrated the defensive lineups of the 14th and 401st
Brigades. Only thus would it be possible to prevent any significant
achievements by the Egyptians before the arrival of the reserve
brigades. Thus, was born, in late 1968 and early 1969, the magic
number of 300 tanks that accompanied IDF planning and war games
until the Yom Kippur War.30
3. Epilogue - The Establishment of the Bar Lev Line
At the beginning of the War of Attrition the IDF was a rapid
learning organization - finding a response to the challenges posed by
the Egyptians, while setting correct priorities, at a time when a large
gap had opened between its many considerable tasks and the
resources at its disposal. The General Staff judged correctly that an
all-out war against Egypt was not expected in the near future, and
therefore allocated considerable resources to routine security on
both fronts, while making an effort to continue training and prepare
the forces for all-out war, while minimizing wear and tear on
armaments and weapons systems. The Bar Lev stronghold line
30 See “Stronghold” file, operational debate in the Situation Room, December 19, 1968, IDF
Archive, file 560/381-73. Tal's position was only gradually accepted, because it meant shifting the 7th Armored Brigade from the North to Central Israel, and the establishment of a regular tank formation in the North, which later became the 188th division. In addition, it was necessary to add to the Armor School’s battalions a support and logistics layer which would enable them in wartime to completely operate as a brigade, and to establish a brigade emergency storage unit in Bir-el-Thamada (Sinai).
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 35
enabled the army to maintain a presence on the Suez while investing
relatively few resources. Also, the timing of the deployment on the
canal was consistent with the principle of economy of force - the line
was reinforced and fortified only after it became clear, in the fall of
1968, that the Egyptians could and wished to engage in a land grab
on the eastern bank, and that the green line deployed on the canal
was too thin.
The development of the War of Attrition, following the renewal
of the Egyptian bombardments in March 1969 until the ceasefire in
August 1970, is another fascinating example of learning
competition. The long duration of the war brought about an
intellectual and operational dynamic on both sides of the canal,
which is deserving of a broader and separate review. It is sufficient
to mention here the following stages of the war: in July 1969, the
IDF began to employ the Air Force as air artillery, after it became
clear that holding the line had become very difficult despite the
significant reinforcement of the strongholds. In the second half of
1969, the IAF systematically destroyed the Egyptian air defense
array, and gradually crushed the Egyptian artillery near the Canal,
while simultaneously conducting successful raids in Egypt.
In January 1970, Israel intensified the fighting and began
strategic bombing of the Egyptian hinterland. These were small scale
raids, but their political significance was great, because the US
opposed them and the Egyptians presented them as grounds to
deploy the Soviet Air Defense Division (advanced ground-to-air
missile units and MIG squadrons) on the Egyptian side. Following the
Soviet entry, the IDF stopped the attacks deep in Egypt, but the
rollout eastward of the Soviet-Egyptian air defense system
continued until the ceasefire. During the final stage, Israeli F-4s were
shot down by the air defense and MIGS, and Soviet pilots were shot
down by the IAF.
On August 8, 1970, both sides responded positively to the
ceasefire initiative from the American Secretary of State, William
36 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
Rogers. The night the ceasefire went into effect, the Egyptians
violated it by deploying surface-to-air missile batteries in the Canal
area. Israel decided to ignore the violation, and the US government
compensated the IDF with modern ground and air weapons.
In the War of Attrition, the IDF won the race of determination
and learning in the operational domain. “The Egyptians didn't
achieve any goal in the War of Attrition,” argued Bar-Lev as he
painted a picture of an Israeli victory. “They received neither land,
nor the political support which would have brought them the
desired result. They were forced to accept a ceasefire after
seventeen months of warfare [March 1969 to August 1970] while
Israel had achieved all its goals. It succeeded in preventing the
Egyptian goals and in ending the war with the minimum casualties.
The Egyptians wanted to push the IDF out of the Suez, but it
remained under our control.”31
However, political assessments of the situation were
problematic. Israel was mistaken in its assessment of Soviet-
Egyptian determination to act in the aftermath of the crushing of
Egypt’s air defenses and the subsequent air raids deep into Egypt.32
The government and the General Staff did not believe that the Soviet
Union would send combat troops (as opposed to advisors) to Egypt,
which would not hesitate to clash with the Israel Air Force and
neutralize its capabilities. This mistaken assessment stemmed from
there being no precedent of the Soviets employing forces outside of
the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Israel discovered that what the
31 Haim Bar-Lev, “The War and Its Goals in Light of the IDF’s Wars,” Ma’arachot. No. 266,
November 1978 [Hebrew]. These are the remarks that Bar-Lev made to students at the Staff and Command College, 1978. Gen. Tal saw things differently, arguing that in the War of Attrition the ground forces failed to cope with the Egyptian army, and thus the Air Force was called upon to come to their aid. He claimed that the result of this “original sin” was the establishment of a heavy Air Defense Command by the Egyptians, which wore down the IAF at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War. Israel Tal. National Security: The Israeli Experience. Praeger Security International, 2000, pp. 173-180.
32 Dima Adamsky. Operation Caucasus - The Soviet Involvement and the Israeli Surprise in the War of Attrition. Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot Press and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, 2006, pp. 34-47 [Hebrew]. The research shows that the Soviet decision to intervene had already been taken by the end of 1969, before the bombing raids deep in Egypt which began in January 1970.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 37
Soviet Union was unwilling to do in Korea and North Vietnam against
American attacks, it was ready to do in Egypt in response to Israeli
raids. This mistaken political assessment did not bring Israel to the
brink of the abyss, for, as pointed out by Bar-Lev, the IDF succeded
in wearing down the Egyptians, and in August 1970 a ceasefire
agreement was signed when both sides were well exhausted and
after the Soviet Union and the United States applied pressure on its
own ally to agree to a ceasefire.
However, it appears that during the ceasefire period until the
outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, the learning competition favored
the Egyptian side, which derived the strategic, operational and
tactical lessons from the War of Attrition and was properly prepared
for the 1973 War, in comparison to the IDF, which increased and
improved its order of battle, but did not do its homework properly.
Maj. Gen. Amnon Reshef described the IDF planning deadlock.
“The only obvious conclusion is that the operational orders
'Dovecote' and 'Rock' were not defensive plans in the deep and
broad meaning of an operational plan,” he lamented. “These were
vague orders, shallow and lacking in real content. They lacked the
basic elements that constitute an integral part of a defensive plan.
The enemy's modus operandi was known and clear, and against this
background, the plans did not include a thorough professional
analysis of the combat zone, and consequently no 'critical areas,'
'key terrain,' 'kill zones,' etc., were defined. They had no depth, to
allow management of the defense. They did not have any definition
of what the 'end state' is. There was no counterattack plan, and
worst of all - they were not practical!”33
Some believe that Reshef's judgment, which represented the
opinion of many, was overly harsh, and that the main reasons for
the failures in the Sinai at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War are
different (the intelligence failure and surprise, the Air Force
problem, structure of the order of battle, the functioning of senior
33 Reshef, We Will Never Cease! - The 14th Brigade in the Yom Kippur War, p. 56.
38 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
commanders, the scope of the deployed forces). Between the end
of the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War three whole years
passed, a period long enough to properly re-examine the Sinai
defensive plans for an all-out war, and to detach oneself from
concepts intended for a limited war. In particular, it was important
to reexamine the detailed plan for the holding action phase by
regular units, which was not done properly, as noted by the Agranat
Commission and by many thereafter.
4. What can we learn?
The first lesson is positive: The General Staff determined the
correct priorities during a very tense period, and quickly formulated
and implemented the Stronghold Plan. Following the Six Day War, a
new kind of situation was created, requiring the IDF to engage in
attrition warfare on two fronts, while preparing for all-out war of a
new kind (new from temporal and spatial considerations, and
political restrictions).
Based on this description, Chief of Staff Bar-Lev's priorities were
correct. His first priority was routine security at the Suez, and under
his leadership a fortified line was established, within a surprisingly
short time, providing reasonable protection to the troops and
deterring the Egyptians from attempting to take over outposts on
the eastern bank of the canal. The new deployment included, in
addition to the strongholds and the infrastructure, the
establishment and deployment of regular forces in western Sinai, at
a level appropriate to the new situation.
At the same time, he made sure to improve preparations for an
all-out war: To pursue training and exercises, to increase the order
of battle, to develop and improve weapons systems, to develop new
combat tactics (for water crossings, covering fire and deep
incursions, and even protection from non-conventional weapons).
All of these issues cannot be produced with a stroke of a pen. Bar-
Lev saw the stronghold line as a dual-purpose system, necessary for
attrition and useful in an all-out war. He did not accept Sharon and
Tal's views that the strongholds would not contribute to holding the
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 39
enemy, arguing that a proper deployment, integrating mobile
armored forces, fighter jets and infantry in the strongholds, would
definitely thwart an Egyptian attempt to cross the canal.
IDF plans and exercises indeed focused on crossing the canal
into Egypt and subduing its army west of it. But Bar-Lev and Adan
are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, assuming that the neglect
of defensive plans at the time expressed primarily an assumption
that an all-out war was not expected in the near future (it is hard to
argue that neither general understood the benefits of a mobile
defense). According to this hypothesis, the critical defensive needs
during the War of Attrition focused the General Staff's attention on
the establishment of the Bar Lev Line and its employment in deep
raids (and from July 1969 employment of the air force), while
delaying the preparation of detailed plans for the employment of
the line during an all-out war. This hypothesis facilitates a
rationalization for why detailed plans for an all-out war were not
prepared until August 1970, although it cannot explain why these
were not prepared in the three years until the outbreak of the Yom
Kippur War.34
This criticism is intensified due to the fact that the IDF was well
prepared materially for an all-out war. The order of battle had grown
tremendously, the troops were properly trained and weapons were
34 See the description of the war games “Strike” in January 1971 and “Battering Ram,” July -
August 1972 and the “Dovecote” and “Rock” plans, in Reshef, We Will Never Cease! - The 14th Brigade in the Yom Kippur War, pp. 62, 74; Sakal: Soldier in the Sinai: A General's Account of the Yom Kippur War, pp. 54-78. Meir Finkel researched in depth the harmful impact of combat patterns learnt during routine security operations on capabilities for an all-out war, and concluded that as far as combat training and increasing and improving the order of battle “routine security activities [after the Six Day War] did not influence the preparations for [all-out] war.” However, he too (like the Agranat Commission and many others) indicates a doctrinal regression as a factor affecting the functioning of the IDF in the Yom Kippur War. See Meir Finkel, “The Tension Between Success in Routine Security Operations and the Risk of Assuming them to be War Capabilities” in Meir Finkel, Challenges and Tensions in Force Generation. Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 2013, pp. 79-98 [Hebrew]. Note that in the three years prior to the Yom Kippur War, Israel enjoyed “quiet” (relatively), on both the Eastern and Western fronts, and routine security operations did not dominate the General Staff’s focus.
40 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
substantially improved, mainly due to the US “compensation” to
Israel following the forward deployment of Egyptian air defenses.
The only thing missing was a doctrinal effort to reexamine the
defensive plans and adapt them to the new Egyptian warfare
doctrine, especially in anti-tank and air defense - an effort that
wouldn’t have cost money and was not limited by political,
economic or other constraints.
The second lesson relates to the need to periodically challenge
conventions and to discover whether there is still a need for
investments previously made in systems and doctrines. The painful
issue of the fighting on and around the strongholds at the beginning
of the Yom Kippur War is testimony to that. Many see this issue as
one of the major failures of the war, and there is a systematic
intellectual bias that could lead to similar failures in the future.35
Experience in many fields suggests that the human psyche has
difficulty moving on from sunk costs, because in doing so there is a
certain admission of past mistakes and despair that the investment
will never justify itself. In the military world, an argument is
occasionally heard that “it is unthinkable to withdraw from an area
whose occupation cost so much blood” (for example, the Gallipoli
Peninsula in World War I). Similarly, investors are often hesitant to
sell a stock which was purchased for a lot of money, even though the
company is in deep trouble.36
The strongholds functioned well during the War of Attrition, and
immediately after the ceasefire large sums were invested in
preparing them to withstand renewed shelling. The attrition did not
resume, but prior to 1973, fears of an all-out war increased. How
should the operational plans have been updated after August 1970,
and especially after the clouds of war gathered over the Sinai?
35 Sakal dedicated a substantial part of his study to “the contribution” of the strongholds to
the erosion of most of the 252nd Division in the first days of the war: Soldier in the Sinai: A General's Account of the Yom Kippur War, pp. 169-175.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 41
In a 2013 article, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Meir Finkel describes the
contrasting defensive plans of Sharon and Gonen and highlighted
the unfortunate timing, with the Egyptians catching the IDF
dithering between the different plans in 1973. Finkel also proposed
lessons to be learned from such situations. In his opinion, an
alternative plan to “Dovecote” should have been formulated and
exercised, because the friction with an alternative plan would have
created insights about points of failure inherent in the existing
operational concept.37
Therefore, it is possible that serious friction with alternative
plans of various kinds would have emphasized the gap between the
existing plans and the air force's ability to participate in repelling the
Egyptian crossing, as well as emphasizing other failures which were
exposed during the Yom Kippur War.
This approach would have also generated friction with the
holding action plans that presumed there would be no combat
strongholds, only those used for observation and warning. This
would have been in effect a conceptual write-off of the investment
in the strongholds, and a drafting of an alternative defense plan.
The third lesson concerns the human tendency to rest on ones’
laurels after a substantial achievement, which can be dangerous in
the multi-round wars waged by Israel (and the Jewish population in
Mandatory Palestine before that) against Arab forces for more than
a hundred years.
The classic security concept holds that in the absence of a
political settlement a round of war is to be expected periodically.
The period leading up to the Yom Kippur War proved that one should
not rest between rounds, even if we believe that we were victorious
in an important round. The IDF won the War of Attrition due to rapid
and effective learning, but was not sufficiently prepared for the next
37 “The outbreak of war during a conceptual disagreement,” wrote Finkel in “Challenges and Tensions in Force Generation,” p. 178.
42 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
round (with the exception of the Navy), while the Egyptians did
wonders in their preparations for the Ramadan War.
The incident is underscores two important truths. First, one has
to assume that the enemy will learn, therefore the IDF must too.
Second, victory in a specific round does not guarantee a victory in
the next one. This was true when the IDF fought the Arab armies,
and is no less true in the warfare against the Hamas and Hezbollah.
This might seem obvious, not to mention trivial, but perhaps
because of this, there is a tendency to forget the lesson.
The fourth lesson is also not new - never underestimate the
enemy. Throughout the War of Attrition and in the period after, IDF
senior officers regularly dismissed Arab armies in meetings,
debriefings, lectures and reports to the Government. There is not
enough space here to describe all of these, but it is enough to say
that there was overwhelming consensus regarding the inferiority of
the Arab armies. Even Bar-Lev and Gen. Aharon Yariv, Head of
Military Intelligence, who were generally cool-headed, joined in.
Plans to defend Sinai, approved after the Six Day War, during the
War of Attrition and afterwards, were all based on the presumed
pitiful state of the Egyptian army and the superiority of the IDF, both
during the holding action phase and in counterattacking. Therefore,
a significant portion of the criticism of the IDF concerns the result of
this contempt for the enemy from which many planning failures
issued.
Although IDF learning patterns following the Six Day War and
during the first stage of the War of Attrition were prompt and
effective, subsequent events raise questions about the political-
military strategy that escalated the fighting from July 1969 to August
1970, and much more about what happened in the three years
between the ceasefire and the Yom Kippur War. These important
questions are unresolved to this day.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 43
Conclusion
Two events of different types were described above. But
they have much in common as both deal with the IDF responses to
a substantial change of circumstances, requiring a greater
investment in defensive measures, in addition to the reinforcement
of offensive capabilities. The lack of a satisfying offensive response
to the increasing threat of the Arab air forces in the early 1960s, and
the political directives and military thinking that bound the IDF to
the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition, required creative learning
and a search for solutions which deviated from the classical
offensive security concept.
Decisions in both events were affected by a complex web of
political, operational-economic, organizational and personal
considerations, and in hindsight we may say that these were good
decisions.
In purchasing surface-to-air missiles, military
professionalism carried the day. Determined chiefs of staff, backed
up by staff work, overwhelmed the parochial interests of the IAF
chief, while contributing to the effort to convert the United States
into an important weapons supplier. The chiefs of staff were aided
by the prime minister and foreign minister, who saw political
advantages in purchasing a modern weapons system from the
United States.
The establishment of the Bar Lev Line is harder to evaluate,
largely because of the link between the War of Attrition and the Yom
Kippur War. The historiography of both wars - from the 1974
Agranat Commission report, to Amnon Reshef's 2013 book -
analyzed the establishment of the Bar Lev Line in hindsight, in the
wake of the Yom Kippur War, and a large part of it was written by
those who managed the war or commanded troops, or were
otherwise linked to it. This work is not intended to deal with the
important question of the strongholds’ contribution to the crisis of
the early days of the Yom Kippur War, or whether it was possible to
44 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
more effectively plan the defense of the Sinai against an Egyptian
offensive. It is sufficient here to conclude that the Bar Lev Line was
an effective solution in the War of Attrition, and that from the war’s
end to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, there was more than
enough time to properly plan the defense of the Sinai in an all-out
war, based on a realistic estimate of the strengths and weaknesses
of the strongholds, and of the enemy’s plans and capabilities.
BRONFELD | THE OTHER FACE OF MARS | 45
Bibliography • Adamsky, Dima. Operation Caucasus - The Soviet Involvement and the
Israeli Surprise in the War of Attrition. Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot Press and
the Israeli Ministry of Defense, 5766-2006. [Hebrew]
• Adan, Avraham. On the Banks of the Suez: An Israeli General's Personal
Account of the Yom Kippur War. Jerusalem: Presideo Press, 1980.
• Arbel, David and Uri Neeman. Unforgivable Delusion. Tel Aviv: Yediot
Ahronot, 2005. [Hebrew]
• Bronfeld, Saul. From A-4 to F-4: The Beginning of an Aviational
Friendship. Fisher Institute of Strategic Air and Space Research, 2011.
[Hebrew]
• Bronfeld, Saul. “Wise Statesmanship: Levi Eshkol and Arms
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[Hebrew]
• Bar-Lev, Chaim. “The War and its Goals in Light of the IDF’s Wars.”
Ma’arachot. No. 266, November 1978. [Hebrew]
• Cohen, Stuart. “Who Needs Ground-Air Missiles? How the Hawk
Missiles Were Acquired,” in Lachish Ze'ev and Amitai, Meir (eds). Non-
Peaceful Decade: Chapters in the History of the Air Force, 1956-1967.
Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1995. [Hebrew]
• Finkel, Meir. “The Tension Between Success in Routine Security
Operations and the Risk of Assuming Them to Be War Capabilities,” in
Finkel, Meir. Challenges and Tensions in Force Generation. Tel Aviv:
Ma’arachot, 2013. [Hebrew]
• Finkel, Meir. “The Outbreak of War During a Conceptual
Disagreement,” in Finkel, Meir. Challenges and Tensions in Force
Generation. Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 2013. [Hebrew]
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Military Intelligence. Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot and Hemed books, 2013.
[Hebrew]
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War to War. Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1997. [Hebrew]
• Luttwak, Edward. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard
University Press, 2002.
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• Ortal, Eran. “Is the IDF Capable of an Intellectual Breakthrough?”
Ma’arachot, February 2013. [Hebrew]
• Reshef, Amnon. We Will Never Cease! - The 14th Brigade in the Yom
Kippur War. Dvir Publishers, 2013. [Hebrew]
• Sakal, Emmanuel. Soldier in the Sinai: A General's Account of the Yom
Kippur War. University Press of Kentucky, 2014.
• Shamir, Ami. History of the Army Engineering Corps. Tel Aviv: The
Ministry of Defense, 1978.
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Archival Documents from the Ministry of Defense and IDF:
o The “Stronghold” file, General Staff preliminary discussion, 4 and 7 in
November 1968, IDF archives file 315-717/1977.
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case IDF archives 34-829/1971.
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19, 1968, M"A 381-73/560.
The Last Missile War? The Influence of the “Iron Dome” on the
Operational Concepts of Hamas, Hezbollah and the IDF
Dana Preisler-Swery
Introduction The first operational uses of the Iron Dome system during
Operation Pillar of Defense (OPD) in 2012 and more intensively
during Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in 2014, established the
IDF’s missile defense capability1 as equal to and even better than
other military capabilities. This is evident in the budget allocated to
the system and in the personnel assigned to it. In addition, the high
regard in which decision-makers and the public hold this capability
has significantly influenced the Israeli security concept and the IDF
operational concept.
Meanwhile, Israeli missile defense capabilities have led to
changes in the operational and force design concepts of Israel's
adversaries, who saw their strategic missile capabilities contained
and their expected achievements from striking the Israeli home front
fail to materialize.
In response, Israel’s opponents are racing to adapt to Israel's
defensive capabilities both during and between operations. They
study the defensive systems, try to identify vulnerabilities and strive
to bypass and penetrate them.
Consequently, a ballistic arms race2 is evolving between the
Israel and its rivals, which presents threats alongside opportunities.
1 Missile warfare against Israel includes steep trajectory weapons of the rocket type (no
guidance system), and missiles (rocket propulsion capability with a guidance system allowing precise targeting). Missile defense includes defense against short, medium, and long-range rockets and missiles. Air Defense is defense against enemy aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.
2 “Ballistic arms race” - both sides are developing missile capabilities, the one offensive, the other defensive (interception). Either way, it appears that no missile defense capabilities will put an end to the missile warfare between Israel and its enemies anytime soon, but rather will bring about its continuation and refinement.
50 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
Most of the threats arise from the development of a destructive
arms race, in which Israel would continue developing missile
defenses, and its opponents would successfully develop more
precise and lethal offensive capabilities. Such a reality could
undermine Israeli deterrence, force it to invest in expensive defense
systems, while continuing to erode the “decisive victory” (hachra'a)
pillar of IDF strategy. At the same time, a continuation of the arms
race will encourage the other side to adopt new ‘combat capabilities’
in order to bypass Israeli defensive capabilities.
Nevertheless, a reality in which a ballistic arms race takes
place has an inherent opportunity - the possibility of bringing both
sides to an understanding about limiting the missile arms race, a
reality in which both sides can inflict enormous damage on one
another. An all-out missile war scenario, where the expected gains
for both sides dwindle, could also encourage restraint, promote rules
of the game in missile warfare and even prevent such conflicts in the
future.
This article will examine the impact of Israel's ability to
defend itself from missiles on the operational concepts and force
design of Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as the IDF’s operational
concept, with the assumption that it is possible to exploit the
contemporary ballistic arms race to promote understandings and
rules of the game between Israel and its key rivals.
Background
The subject of defense has gained momentum in Israel in
recent years, since being institutionalized in 2006 with the
publication of the report of the Committee on Israel's Defense
Doctrine, a civil-military project headed by former minister Dan
Meridor and submitted to defense minister Shaul Mofaz. In the
report, defense was defined as the fourth pillar of Israel’s security
concept, alongside the traditional and familiar pillars: deterrence,
early warning and decisive defeat of the enemy (hachra'a).
However, it seems that the Meridor Committee only
institutionalized a reality that already existed in Israel for many
years. It began with the First Gulf War (1991) and the damage
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 51
inflicted on the home front; continued with the establishment of the
Home Front Command (1992) and with the development of
defensive military concepts spearheaded by the development of the
Arrow anti-missile system, the construction of the West Bank
security fence, the development of the Iron Dome and Magic Wand
- David’s Sling, and the institutionalization of the IDF Air Defense
Division.
The Second Lebanon War (2006) and the intensified rocket
fire after the disengagement from the Gaza Strip brought the
security establishment in Israel, led at the time by Defense Minister
Amir Peretz, to promote the development of the Iron Dome system
as part of a home front defense concept against short-range rockets.
Currently, the lineup also includes the Magic Wand against medium-
range missiles (not yet in use) and the Arrow system against long-
range and non-conventional missiles.
The development of the Iron Dome system began at Rafael
and MAFAT (the Administration for the Development of Weapons
and Technological Infrastructure) and gained the support of defense
ministers Amir Peretz and Ehud Barak. This occurred over the IDF's
objections to the process, which stemmed from the fear that
defensive force design might come at the expense of critical
offensive elements. However, the decision of then-defense minister
Ehud Barak to increase the number of batteries and interceptors in
the system transformed the missile defense system into a fait
accompli and a strategic-operational capability for Israel.
The Iron Dome system was first deployed some months
before Operation Pillar of Defense and its first operational use
occurred during that operation. During Operation Protective Edge
the system was already fully operational with an intercept rate of
approximately 90 percent.3
3 Yoav Zeytun, “IDF: Iron Dome Intercepted 90% of Rockets,” Ynet, August 13, 2014.
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Image 1: Iron Dome launcher4
The Development of the Missile Defense Concept, From the Cold
War to the Present
Missile defense capabilities (BMD - Ballistic Missile Defense)
were first developed in the early 1970s, but in the reality of the Cold
War and the nuclear arms race, the world powers signed an
agreement to refrain from using such systems on the battlefield
(ABM treaties, 1972). They reasoned that the ability to intercept
nuclear weapons would undermine nuclear stability, which was
based on the mutually assured destructive capability of both world
powers.5
4 Photography: Nehemia Gershoni, Cc-by-sa-3.0. 5 The ABM treaty was signed in 1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union, and
limited both states from developing missile defense systems (limiting the number of systems and interceptors), in order to stop the arms race and to avoid a first strike, in the reality of
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 53
In the early 1980s, the US promoted the Strategic Defense
Initiative, also known as “Star Wars.” The initiative was supposed to
provide missile defense capabilities in the air and space as part of
the confrontation between the Western and Eastern blocs. It never
reached operational feasibility, but its importance was in identifying
the economic and technological weaknesses of the Soviet Union,
while integrating many psychological warfare elements.6
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s,
the United States began developing a global defense program, based
on parts of Star Wars, mainly as a response to the North Korean
threat (US Global Missile Defense). In addition, the United States
supported the Israeli Arrow venture, which began to take shape after
the First Gulf War with the increased missile threat to the Israeli
home front.
In 2002, President Bush decided that the United States
would unilaterally withdraw from the ABM agreements. This was
due to a new national security concept that did not see Russia as the
main threat, but rather rogue countries and terrorist organizations,
and the risk of them acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The
new American concept argued that it was impossible to deter such
enemies, only to attack or defend against them. President Bush's
decision led to the collapse of the concept that attempted to prevent
the development of missile defense capabilities, which was based on
the assumption that these capabilities would harm global stability.7
In 2010, NATO decided to join the US anti-missile initiative,
changing the rules of the game that had been shaped in Europe in
the Cold War, which was based on nuclear deterrence and mutual assured destruction - MAD. (www.state.gov).
6 SDI influences on the Soviet Union are questionable. Some in the USSR doubted the credibility of the initiative, others saw it as an attempt to destroy the economy of the Soviet Union. Some understood it as a learning competition, even supporting the development of asymmetric responses to it. The initiative, as noted, was finally cancelled due to American economic reasons, and due to the waning of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
7 Russia objected to Bush’s decision, regarding it as harmful to its national security, its deterrence and its relations with the USA. At the same time, Russia began developing missile defense capabilities of its own. Avnish Patel. “NATO's New Strategic Concept and Missile Defense,” RUSI Analysis, 2/11/2012 (www.rusi.org).
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the context of a nuclear deterrent without missile defense
capabilities. Russia, which had also developed missile defense
capabilities, saw the decision as a direct threat to its deterrence and
to stability in Europe. According to the plan, European and Russian
defense systems were expected to follow the principles of
transparency and reporting, but this collaboration did not actually
take place. In the background, states like China, Japan, South Korea,
India, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are each in different stages of
development, acquisition or upgrading of missile defense
capabilities.8
As a result of the spread of missile defense systems around
the world, there has also been conceptual development. At the
international level, there is a linkage between missile defense
systems, stability and deterrence. In the US, missile defense
capabilities are regarded as a core element of power-projection,
defending friends and strategic deterrence, in addition to their use
to protect combat troops and national strategic sites. The main
conceptual development can be summarized as a transition from the
“deterrence without defense” model (the Cold War), to a “defense
without deterrence” model (Star Wars), and finally to the current
model of “deterrence and defense” (deterrence strategies include a
reliance on missile defense systems).9
In the background, there is also apprehension over the
dispersal of accurate and sophisticated surface-to-surface missile,
drones and unconventional weapons to terrorist organizations and
rogue states. This reality that threatens the civilian home front in
many countries and freedom of action of American forces in
particular. There is also an effort to prevent the distribution of
surface-to-surface missiles, which includes advocacy, denunciation
and arms control initiatives (ACI).
8 American Missile Defense Agency website: www.mda.mil. 9 Address by Paul Schulte, “Conceptual Approaches: The Defense, Deterrence, Disarmament
Triangle” at the “Missile Defense: Asset or Liability for Regional and International Stability Conference”, INSS, January 15, 2014; “Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020,” US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 55
The worldwide ballistic arms race has created two parallel
reactions. There is an attempt to prevent the proliferation of missiles
and encourage the dismantling of non-conventional capabilities, as
well as an understanding that in the current reality there is no escape
from equipping oneself with defensive systems against such
threats.10
The Israeli Missile Defense Perspective
The experience accumulated during and after OPD - and all
the more so during OPE- as well as the technological advances in
missile defense capabilities, including the integration of the various
systems, turned the Israel Air Force’s (IAF) Air Defense Division into
a key player. The division's responsibility is to provide a defensive
response, multi-tiered and multi-dimensional, for detecting,
identifying and intercepting threats against Israel’s territory and its
territorial waters.
It should be noted that the IDF's response to the missile
threat does not include the interception phase only. Active defense
is only one phase among many, centering on deterring enemy missile
attacks, capabilities to attack launch systems and to thwart the
enemy’s force design, an effective warning and detection system,
including classification of threats and point of impact evaluation, and
a variety of defense, rescue and reconstruction measures.
Underlying this array sits the assumption that since the volume of
missiles threatening the Israeli home front will always be greater
than the number of interceptors, the system should function by
classifying threat levels, defense priorities and red lines.11
10 Emily Landau and Azriel Bermant. “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program: Caught Between Missile
Defense and a Comprehensive Deal,” INSS Insight, No. 558 (June 8, 2014); Michael T Flynn, James Sisco and David C. Ellis, “Left of Bang - The Value of Socio Cultural Analysis in Today's Environment,” Prism, Vol. 3, No. 4.
11 Doron Gavish, “Aerial Defense Array: From a Tactical Force to a National Strategic Array,”
Ma’arachot 444, August 2012.
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The Relationship Between Missile Defense and the Other Security
Concept Components: Deterrence, Detection and Decisive Defeat
The Israeli missile defense array was developed gradually,
and the pace of technological progress often overtook Israel’s ability
to formulate a concept anchoring the role of missile defense as a key
pillar of the national security concept. Furthermore, it is necessary
to clarify the interactions between the missile defense pillar and the
concept’s other pillars, and whether the defensive pillar affects or
alters the other pillars, particularly deterrence and early warning.
First, regarding deterrence, a multi-year debate took place
about whether missile defense capabilities would contribute or
harm it. Opponents argued that defensive capabilities encourage the
breaking of red lines, and in a reality where the number of
interceptors is always smaller than the number of missiles, there is
neither absolute defense nor stability, only an incentive to launch
more missiles in an attempt to penetrate the defensive system.12
Supporters argued that in a reality of missile proliferation,
terror organizations and instability, a missile defense system is a
necessity. This argument was augmented by the assertion that
interception is cost effective (compared to the damage caused by a
missile), and particularly by the assumption that defensive
capabilities would become an important component of the state’s
strategic deterrence and contribute to its technological superiority
and regional status. This debate is now resolved and the very
existence of a defensive capability projects a message to adversaries
that the expected gains from firing missiles are bound to decline,
diverting their future efforts from missiles to other channels that
Israel may find more comfortable to deal with.13
Second, detection underwent modifications as well after the
acquisition of missile defense capabilities. If, in the past, detection
relied on the need to identify enemy intentions, in the current
reality, missile defense contributes to a tactical warning, but with
12 Reuven Pedatzur, “The Fallibility of Iron Dome Missile Defense," Haaretz, November 10,
2013. 13 For further discussion of the topic, see another article in this issue: Finkel, “Active Defense
as the Fourth Pillar of the Security Concept.”
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 57
similar strategic significance. The advanced detection and
identification capabilities of missile defense systems allow
interception, and provide the critical time needed for civil defense.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, a heated debate arose
in the IDF regarding the decisive defeat pillar, or hachra'a. On the
one hand, missile defense is supposed to support the offensive
military effort, protecting the military and the civilian rear (partially,
or fully, depending on the scenario) and providing latitude for
decision makers in Israel. On the other hand, a concern arises that
the very existence of missile defense capabilities would negate the
legitimacy of launching an offensive, the will to engage in an
offensive, the conservation of resources and the force design needed
for it.
Hence, missile defense capabilities which are supposed to
discourage the opponent also deter the party that possesses them.
As the scope of defensive systems grows - in research, development,
workforce, budgetary investment and their use in practice - other
military capabilities are affected (consciously or unconsciously).
Previous experience shows that a lack of balance between defensive
and offensive components can lead to strategic failures. This is what
happened with the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line, the Hawk
transaction and the establishment of the Bar Lev Line in the period
preceding the Yom Kippur War. These cases show that defensive
capabilities do not prevent the opponent from trying to break
through the protective walls, while armies and states that heavily
rely on defensive capabilities usually tend to adopt a dichotomous
viewpoint that separates defense from offense in force employment,
and find it difficult to combine the two.14
The Enemy Ballistics “Muqawamah” (Resistance Doctrine)15
Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran were the primary actors
with which Israel's missile defense was designed to engage. These
14 Saul Bronfeld, “Defense - The Other Side of Mars,” in the present issue. 15 Yossi Beidatz and Dima Adamsky, “The Evolution of the Israeli Approach to Deterrence - A
Critical Discussion of the Theoretical and Practical Aspects.” Eshtonot. No. 8. The Research Center of the National Defense Colpillare (Tishrei, 5775 - October 2014). [Hebrew]
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agents represent the most tangible threats to the Israeli home front
in terms of capabilities and scope, and have actually used them
against Israel.
At the head of the rival camp stands Iran, which became the
regional ballistic production facility, providing rockets, missiles and
launchers to its clients, Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria.
Over the years, Iran has also transferred significant quantities of
weaponry to armed groups in Gaza, primarily Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ). This process was part of an Iranian attempt to
encircle Israel with hostile entities that would attack it and damage
its home front when the need arose.16
The shift to the use of missiles against Israel began in the last
few decades, following the superiority displayed by Israel in
conventional confrontations with Arab States between 1956 and
1982, and the corresponding military technological gap that opened.
In response, Israel's adversaries chose to adopt asymmetric
capabilities, using terror organizations and guerrilla warfare. Since
the mid-1990s the availability of technology and Iranian sponsorship
allowed Hamas and Hezbollah to develop cheap and simple aerial
capabilities with the potential to harm the Israeli home front, first in
the form of rockets and later advanced missiles currently in the
hands of Hezbollah.17
Changes in Hezbollah’s Operational Concept
Hezbollah has been threatening Israel since the late 1980s.
Sponsored by Iran, the organization acted against the IDF presence
in South Lebanon and as part of the international terror arm of Iran.
The withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon (2000) and the criticism of
Iran in the wake of the terror attacks in which it was involved, forced
the organization to develop new capabilities to allow it to continue
challenging Israel. In the years preceding the Second Lebanon War,
16 Roi Kais, “Hezbollah Shows Off Its Tunnels, Claims It Is Prepared for War with Israel,” Ynet,
May 22, 2015; Roi Kais, “Iran Exposed Cruise Missiles and an American UAV Model,” Ynet, May 11, 2014. [Hebrew]
17 Itai Brun and Carmit Valensi. “The Revolution in the Military Affairs of the Radical Axis,” Ma’arachot. No. 432 (Sivan 5771-June 2010). [Hebrew].
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 59
Hezbollah built up an impressive military capability, including a large
rocket array. These were fired at the Israeli home front, causing
considerable damage and providing Hezbollah with important
propaganda achievements during the war.18
After the Second Lebanon War, under the cover of the quiet
prevailing on the northern border and influenced by Israeli
deterrence, Hezbollah built an array of rockets, missiles and UAVs
that were dramatically larger than before, in size, quality and variety.
As of today, Hezbollah possesses approximately 100,000 short,
medium and long-range rockets, precision missiles, shore-to-sea
missiles and advanced UAVs.19
In recent years, the organization has developed a new
operational concept, influenced by its accumulated fire capabilities
and the combat experience in Syria. The principles of the concept
are a transition from attrition to a proactive concept in order to
conduct a short and intensive conflict with Israel, made possible by
the organization's rocket and missile arrays, which can strike a
painful blow at the Israeli home front. At the same time a new
ground warfare concept was developed, which includes attack
tunnels to enable command and control, combat and incursions into
Israeli territory in order to “conquer the Galilee.” The organization is
relying on the expected backing of President Assad, rooted in their
cooperation in the fighting in Syria. All of these are supplemented by
the learning ability of the organization, which has been watching the
confrontations between the Hamas and Israel and reached its own
conclusions regarding how to deal with the Iron Dome system.20
18 An expression of the operational concept against the Israeli home front can be found in the
“Spiders Web Speech,” delivered by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, May 26, 2000. For more about the “Ballistic Muqawamah,” see Yossi Beidatz and Dima Adamsky, op.cit. p. 19.
19 Yossi Yehoshua. “A Ticking Bomb Awaits Israel on Its Northern Border,” Ynet. April 26, 2015. 20 Yagil Henkin, “And what if we did not deter Hezbollah?” Military and Strategic Affairs, INSS.
Vol. 6, No. 3 (5775 - December 2014); Lieutenant Colonel N., “The Third Lebanon War,” Ma’arachot, December 2014.
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Changes in Hamas’ Operational Concept
Significant rocket capabilities also exist in the Gaza Strip, in
the hands of Hamas and PIJ. They are rooted in the Second Intifada
and the shift from suicide bombings to rockets. The increased
difficulty in continuing to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel led
Hamas and PIJ officials to develop an independent rocket wing. The
“sporadic” Qassam rocket fire from the Gaza Strip in the early 2000s,
became a genuine ballistic branch, with its own production
capabilities, and with Iranian assistance, through which Hamas and
PIJ initially managed to disrupt the lives of residents in the area
around the Gaza Strip and later to threaten almost all of Israel’s
territory. Rocket fire from Gaza has to date led to three military
operations: Cast Lead (2008), Pillar of Defense (2012), and Protective
Edge (2014), and many rounds of fighting in between.
Hamas, like Hezbollah, adopted a proactive approach based
on the rocket arrays it had accumulated, and used this approach at
the beginning of OPE. The operational concept of the organization
was not greatly influenced by the Israeli defense capability, and its
goal remained to disrupt life on the Israeli home front, which it
managed to do, despite the presence of the Iron Dome system. The
experience gained by the organization in dealing with the Iron Dome
was reflected in adjustments made to its rocket array and the way it
was employed during the operation, while in parallel to the rocket
arm, the primary effort was invested in the further development of
additional capabilities, in particular in the underground realm,
special commando units and a UAV array.
Following OPE, Hamas began to restock its rocket array,
including mortars, short and medium range rockets, and some
unmanned aerial vehicles alongside the capability to launch large
salvos.21
21 Elior Levy. “Hamas Military Chief Deif is Alive, Laying Groundwork for Next War with Israel,”
Ynet, April 29, 2015; Gabi Siboni, “Military Lessons for Hamas from Operation Protective Edge,” INSS Insight, No. 700 (Sivan 5775-May 2015).
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 61
Image 2: Qassam rocket launchers
The Influence of the Iron Dome System on the Operational
Concepts of Hamas and Hezbollah: Efforts in the Operational
Concept and Force Design Domain
The experience gained by Hamas in OPD and OPE vis-à-vis
the Iron Dome system, led it to draw conclusions and to engage in a
two-phase learning process. In the first phase, which took place
during the operations themselves, the organization adjusted quickly
to Iron Dome. In the second, a parallel learning process took place in
both Hamas and Hezbollah which was reflected in changes to their
operational concepts and future force design channels. It should be
noted that Hezbollah, while it has not yet faced the Iron Dome in
direct combat, is learning and drawing conclusions from the
successes and failures of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, by virtue of its
observation capabilities, and the many resources at its disposal.22
22 On Hezbollah's learning from Operation “Protective Edge” see Hassan Nasrallah's
statement: “ ‘We have the capability to strike anywhere in Israel…’ Nasrallah continued to threaten that Israel would be cut off from the world, and Hezbollah would paralyze Ben-
Gurion Airport and all of Israel’s maritime ports” (IDF Army Radio website, November 4,
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Hamas attempted to cope with Israeli defensive systems
primarily through saturation attempts. Saturation of the system was
mainly attempted by launching dozens of rockets from multiple
locations toward one target, or by launching from one location to
several targets.
Furthermore, it is possible to identify Hamas attempts to
locate gaps in the defensive array, seen in mortar fire at targets near
the border. It also seems that some of the fire was meant to achieve
psychological warfare goals, especially the salvos launched by Hamas
in the evening, during the main news broadcasts, which were even
announced in advance. Furthermore, during OPE, Hamas first
introduced additional strategic capabilities it had acquired, featuring
the extensive use of the underground realm, land and naval
commando forces, a concept of launching raids into Israeli territory,
and the use of UAVs, thus achieving important propaganda effect.
In the force design field, it seems that the most important
revolution that the other side is undergoing (particularly Hezbollah
at this stage) is the transition to precision fires. Previously, Israel did
not face precision missiles that could accurately strike military and
civilian targets and the defensive systems themselves. Despite the
great challenge posed by precision capabilities, it is likely that the
extent of the barrages will decrease due to cost considerations and
to the accuracy which obviates the need to fire large salvos.23
As for future force design, it is not clear whether Israel's
adversaries, mainly Iran, see the missile defense systems as a real
threat. Iranian threat analyses do not focus exclusively on Israel, but
also on the American presence in the region and American defensive
systems in the Persian Gulf. Facing these threats, Iran continues to
research and develop missiles in order to enlarge its missile array and
2011). We are likely to see substantial changes in operational concepts only in an all-out missile war between Israel and Hezbollah. However, we already can see changes in both the operational concept and force design plans of Israel’s enemies. It is known that Hezbollah is learning a lot from the Hamas's experience in recent clashes with the IDF, as well learning from its mistakes. See also Siboni, Ibid.
23 Haim Rosenberg, “The Truth about the Missile Threat,” Ma’arachot, No. 437 (Sivan 5771- June 2011). [Hebrew]
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 63
to achieve cruise, homing, stealth and maneuver capabilities,
alongside the development of a satellite array and UAVs.24
Arms Race - The Gap and the Opportunity
It is important to note that given the emerging capabilities
possessed by Israel's adversaries, the Israeli missile defense concept
is developing too. Israel has not yet unveiled the Magic Wand system
designed to cope with the precision missiles in Hezbollah’s hands,
and its introduction in coming years is expected to intensify the
presence of missiles and rockets in the region’s skies.
As a result, in practice, a ballistic arms race is developing
between Israel and its enemies led by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Each side presents a new and threatening capability, requiring the
other to present a counter capability. At the same time, gaps may
open between the concept guiding Israel and the emerging
capabilities among its adversaries, their concepts and future force
design.
As noted above, Israel's missile defense concept was
designed in light of the political echelon's demand to remove the
missile threat to Israel's home front, allowing Israelis to maintain a
normal routine.25 However, Israel's enemies have also persisted and
built large rockets and missile arrays with precise and deadly
capabilities, and have begun to study Israeli defense systems, their
advantages and disadvantages, in order to break through them.
It is possible that two gaps have opened between the Israeli
missile defense concept and the reality of the emerging trends. The
first gap comes from the fact that the development of defensive
24 The Iranian missile program was developed to deal with various threats, aside from Israel.
The program was put on the agenda of the great powers during the negotiations on the nuclear issue, but has been pushed to the sidelines, with Iran claiming that the program is not nuclear and was developed for conventional security purposes. Iran had a painful experience in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. It fears the missile programs of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and is very apprehensive about the American presence in the Persian Gulf. The missile plan is also closely associated with the Iranian space program. See Landau and Bermant, op. cit.
25 On the position of decision-makers see Amir Peretz: “...the system is not perfect, but it will soon provide security to the residents in the south.” Morning News, Voice of Israel, 27 March 2011.
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capabilities affects the adversary's behavior, which is developing
counter capabilities to bypass the Israeli defense systems. The
second gap stems from the success of Israel’s defensive capabilities
and its impact on the IDF operational concept, and the relations
between its various elements (especially the relationship between
defense, decisive defeat and deterrence). In practice, missile defense
is gaining momentum within the IDF in parallel to the missile
development on the other side, and this reality is leading to an
evolving arms race between Israel and its adversaries with
implications for force employment, force design and the evolution of
the conflict. This arms race represents a threat, but also an
opportunity.26
The Threat: The Continuation of a Lethal and Costly Ballistic Arms
Race
The continuation of the current trend towards a ballistic
arms race between Israel and its adversaries could lead to the
dominance of defensive capabilities within the Israeli security
concept, which in turn could harm the balance with offensive
capabilities and other elements within the IDF operational concept.
In such a reality, Israel could find itself not only under a
destructive attack on the home front, but also in a position of
inferiority on the battle field. Furthermore, facing Israeli defensive
capabilities, the enemy may change its ballistic operational concept
in such a way that the Israeli defensive systems would no longer be
relevant.
There are many examples of weapon systems undergoing
similar modifications due to counter measures activated against
them. Examples include the changes in air warfare with the
transition from air-to-air battles to air strikes, in armored warfare
26 An arms race is a competitive mode where two rivals arm themselves, one following the
other. This situation can quickly deteriorate to war, but equally can prevent war by creating a balance of power. (Yehoshafat Harkabi, War and Strategy, Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 5767-2007, p. 300. [Hebrew]). From this point in the article, most of the analysis will focus on the reality between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah possesses advanced and accurate missile capabilities, thus creating a kind of “balance of terror” between itself and Israel in an all-out war scenario.
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 65
with the transition from armored battles to new maneuvers, or in
chemical warfare with the transition from strategic armaments to
tactical uses.27
A continuation of this arms race might also lead to the
integration of new measures alongside missiles, such as the
increasing use of the underground realm, and a desire to move the
fighting into Israeli territory in order to challenge Israel’s other
vulnerabilities.28
The Opportunity: Regimentation of the Arms Race and Even the
Abandonment of Missile Development
The high price that an all-out missile war between Israel and
Hezbollah is expected to exact from both sides could be used as a
catalyst to stabilize the current situation. On the one hand,
Hezbollah knows that the cost of using missiles will be high, and will
rise with the use of precision weapons (both economically and in
terms of the Israeli response). At the same time, the benefits it can
expect from firing at the well-defended Israeli home front will
decrease. This stands in addition to the understanding that an all-out
missile war, in the reality of capabilities and countermeasures, would
be devastating to both sides. Such an understanding could create a
reality of a non-nuclear MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).
However, in the case of Israel-Hezbollah, it is necessary to
examine to what extent an adversary like Hezbollah is likely to
demonstrate sensitivity to the destruction of infrastructure and
human life, and responsibility for the local population. Furthermore,
27 Many weapons have succeeded in “surviving” the changes in warfare categories, mainly
because of changes in their mode of employment. For example, the large armored battles of the Second World War, the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, in which tanks were a focal element in breaking through and fighting in the open, have passed from the world. However, the use of tanks has not stopped and they have become an important element in urban warfare, supporting infantry etc. Similar changes occurred in aerial and chemical warfare. In this context see also Edward Luttwak: “A Known Paradox Is that Sometimes the Less Successful Measures Maintained Their Modest Effectiveness, While Sophisticated Means Lost Their Ability Due to the Development of Countermeasures” (Edward Luttwak. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 42-49).
28 Luttwak, Ibid. Also, Interview of Dr. Dima Adamsky of the Israel National Defense Colpillare, February 4, 2015.
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it is not clear how the dramatic changes currently transpiring in Syria
will affect the decision-making process of the organization when
considering an all-out war against Israel, nor whether Iran would
approve a further employment of Hezbollah’s missile array against
Israel.29
Further development of Israel’s missile defensive
capabilities would also augment Israel's military freedom of action,
which may serve as an incentive to Hezbollah to agree to the
formulation of rules of the game in the missile domain. Iran, too,
which is accountable for the Hezbollah missile program (and Hamas
to a certain extent), is a responsible state, open to negotiations. It
should also be remembered that the Iranian missile program is
designed not only to fight Israel, but also, perhaps primarily, for the
United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other powers in the region.30
Therefore, as with the great powers’ experience during the
Cold War, missile defense capabilities could serve as a catalyst for
stabilizing processes, as well as a first step in confidence and
security-building measures, leading later to other understandings
and even agreements.
The hope that Israel's enemies will abandon their missile
programs is perhaps overly ambitious. Rather, there could be
changes in its force employment concept, and new measures are
likely to be integrated. One way or another, a question arises
whether such changes will occur without another all-out missile war,
29 In the context of Hezbollah, many questions arise as to whether a non-state and religious
organization, that has in the past demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to the loss of human life and to the destruction of infrastructure in Lebanon, could indeed be affected by such considerations. However, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, has already said in the past that “If I had known there was a 1 in 100 chance that the kidnapping of the soldiers would lead us to war, I would not have done it.” (IDF Radio, August 27, 2006).
30 Even though Iran rejected outright the attempt to discuss its missile program in the framework of the talks with world powers on its nuclear program, in the above case we are referring to a discussion of the Hezbollah missile program in relation to Israel, where it may be possible to reach understandings regarding the designation of the missile array and the circumstances under which it could be used, especially in light of the changes in the Syrian theater, the threat of ISIS and in relation to the negotiations between Iran and the USA. See Landau and Bermant op. cit.; Kais, “Iran Exposed Cruise Missiles and American UAV Model” op. cit., On the dynamics that could evolve as a result of an arms race see Harkabi, op.cit., pp. 300-307, and Lutwack, op.cit.
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 67
or perhaps two or three more rounds of warfare against Hamas and
Hezbollah - including a very costly contest between the adversary's
precision missiles and the combined Israeli defensive systems (i.e.,
following the integration of the Magic Wand system) - which might
expedite a significant abandonment of missiles, or a formulation of
rules of the game in the domain, bringing an end to the missile wars
between Israel and its rivals.
During the Arab-Israeli conflict, a number of changes in the
character of the warfare took place, where one side of the conflict
understood that there was no benefit from continuing to fight with
the current weapons of the day, and turned to new measures. The
chart below follows the dynamics of changes in the character of
warfare between Israel and its rivals, from 1948 to the present.
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The future of missile warfare and missile defense is closely
tied to issues of competitive strategies in force design. In an era of
technological revolution, when both sides possess accurate and
lethal fire capabilities, intelligence penetration capabilities for the
generation of targets and advanced command and control
capabilities, a dynamic of competing strategies evolves rapidly.
These strategies demand high expenditures in research and
development, in producing new weapons, and ultimately, in human
life. The essence of the competition is in understanding the
categorical stage where both sides currently are, given that each
“combat category” has its own lifespan, from its development to its
peak, after which it wanes (but does not necessarily disappear).
When, in conjunction with the decline of one category, new
categories arise, not all of which will mature into the “next
challenge,” but some will mature and become the threats of
tomorrow. It is important to pay attention to signs indicating that a
category has culminated repetitive failures, indicating that there is
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 69
no point in continuing the competition due to its high price or small
benefits, while at the same time, sporadic events can crystallize into
trends which may become the next category.31
In missile warfare, the question arises whether we will reach
a peak from which their advantages diminish. And if so, when? At
the same time, we need to examine which of the new measures that
serve our rivals - the underground realm, cyberspace, commando
forces or the aerial domain - will mature into the next threat,
whether as a substitute for missiles or alongside them.
It is crucial to not only identify the decline in the relevance
of missiles, but also the potential of missile defense, in addition to
standard defense. This is in order to translate this strategic capability
into deterrence, decisive defeat and primarily to create rules of the
game for missile wars, before the category disappears altogether
and with it its inherent opportunities.32
Conclusion
This article examined the effect of Israel's missile defense
capabilities on its rivals, but mainly on the IDF. Examination of the
missile defense issue in the IDF illustrates that these strategic
capabilities are not only defensive or military in nature. Missile
defense capabilities are a major component of IDF deterrence- they
are influential and must be integrated as a part of an offensive-
decisive defeat capability. They are also part of the strategic
deterrence and the regional status of the State of Israel, as a tool to
demonstrate military capabilities and superiority. Besides, they are
an asset for international collaborations, to defend and assist allies,
as well as a central component of the strategic alliance between
Israel and the USA. It is therefore imperative to formulate a broad
concept for missile defense, integrating military-operational and
31 Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1962;
Dima Adamsky. The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel, Stanford University Press, 2010.
32 “Effects of the second order.” Unexpected and sometimes undesirable effects, brought about by crossing the peak point of deterrence, i.e., the point meant to serve us with the desired effect (the cessation of hostilities and achievement of deterrence), thus creating effects other than those planned. See Luttwak, op. cit.
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strategic-political elements.33 This will enable rigorous thinking
about missile defense capabilities as an asset for creating
understandings, to prevent conflicts, as well as a first step toward
broader regional agreements.
33 See in this context the statement by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S.
Armed Forces, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in the “Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense, Vision 2020” Document: “The effectiveness with which we field competent Joint IAMD capabilities will help prevent catastrophic attacks on the U.S. Homeland; secure the U.S. economy and the global economic system; and build secure, confident, and reliable allies and partners.”
PREISLER-SWERY | THE LAST MISSILE WAR? | 71
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Next War with Israel,” Ynet, April 29, 2015.
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OF STAFF, 5 December 2013.
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74 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
• Adamsky, Dima, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of
Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US,
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University Press, 2002.
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Ahronot, 5767 - 2007. [Hebrew]
Conferences
• The Forum for Military and Security Issues, Dado Center, December 14,
2014.
• Missile Defense: Asset or Liability for Regional and International
Stability, INSS Arms Control & Regional Security Program, 15/1/2014.
Interviews
• Dr. Dima Adamsky, Interdisciplinary Center and the National Defense
College.
• Mr. Goor Tsalalyachin, Kings College, London.
• Officers and Commanders in the IDF and from the defense
establishment.
From Tactical Anti-Aircraft Defense to Systemic Aerial Defense
Shachar Shohat and Yaniv Friedman
Introduction
In January 2011, after the conclusion of thorough staff work,
during which the anti-aircraft roles of the air force were studied and
defined, the name of the IDF’s anti-aircraft array was changed to the
“Air Defense Division.” This change was the culmination of a
comprehensive transformation process of the whole array. The
changing role of the Air Defense Division, which is reflected in its new
name, provides us a glimpse not only into the world of air defense in
the IDF, but in many ways, also into the formation of a new Israeli
security concept.
This article will examine the development of IDF air defenses
from its beginning as a tactical anti-aircraft system, to an array with
operational and even strategic importance. We shall present this
evolutionary process, while examining current challenges, relevant
responses and the future outlook for active defense systems.
The IDF’s anti-aircraft array was established in the 1950s.
The army at that time lacked military superiority, especially air
superiority, of the type that it enjoyed in the years after 1967. This
affected its self-image as well. Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who
single-handedly designed the principles of the Israeli defense
concept, had personally experienced the horrors of the German
aerial blitz on London in World War II, and this experience had a
decisive influence on his understanding of the strategic aerial threat
to the State of Israel.1 The aerial might of the Arab armies, as
reflected in the bombardment of Tel Aviv during the War of
Independence, and the deployment of a French squadron in Israel as
1 Michael Bar Zohar. Ben Gurion: A Biography (Centennial Edition). New York: Adama Books, 1986, pp. 426-431. Despite the description above, Ben-Gurion did not integrate a defensive leg into his national security concept.
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a precursor to the 1956 Sinai War,2 was perceived as stronger than
the young Israel Air Force (IAF), and anti-aircraft defense was
therefore a natural element of his concept.
The threat of strategic bombardment demanded a response
in the form of a Strategic Command. According to the concept at that
time, the Command was professionally subordinate to the Artillery
Corps, and operationally to the IAF, and was divided into northern
and southern sub-commands. The Anti-Aircraft Command mainly
operated 20 mm guns during the Sinai War and was perceived as
vital to the defense of Israel. Its very definition as a Command (even
though subordinate to the Air Force during the war) reflects to its
role as a key component of Israeli strategy - defense of the home
front enabled offense at the front.
The roots of the second chapter in the history of Israeli air
defense lie in the era that followed the Six Day War, when the Arab
air threat was no longer perceived as a strategic one. The anti-
aircraft array changed, and became committed to defense in the
tactical and operational contexts - defending the maneuvering
ground forces as well as IAF bases, which were perceived as the
center of gravity of the IDF's strength. The process was completed
with the integration of the anti-aircraft array into the IAF in the early
1970s, resulting in a two-headed array - tactical anti-aircraft defense.
It provided defense for the ground forces, which could not rely solely
on the aerial cover provided by the Air Force within Israel’s territory,
alongside heavier and stationary batteries, which defended the IDF’s
main operational assets - the Air Force bases and the nuclear reactor
in Dimona. This changed the anti-aircraft array from a strategic
command into a tactical force supporting the operations of other
offensive centers of gravity - the IAF on the one hand and the IDF's
maneuver formations on the other.
Israeli citizens have been threatened by rockets since the
1960s, when Palestinian terror organizations first attacked
population centers in the Beit Shean Valley with Katyusha rockets
2 This was Ben-Gurion’s condition for launching the joint Israeli-French-British campaign, a condition that arose from his great fear of an aerial “blitz” by the Arab armies on the State of Israel, such as he experienced in London during the Second World War.
SHOHAT & FRIEDMAN | FROM TACTICAL ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENSE TO SYSTEMIC AERIAL DEFENSE | 77
from Jordanian territory, and later attacked northern communities
and Kiryat Shmona from Lebanon. The First Gulf War and the
deployment of Patriot missiles in 1991 greatly contributed to the
formulation of a new concept for Israel, which regarded missile wars
as a new strategic threat to the state.
One can identify two major stages in the formulation of the
new operational concept.3 The first stage, the wake-up call,
originated as we mentioned earlier, in 1991 during the Gulf War and
the Al-Hussein missile attacks. The second stage, originated during
the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which featured extensive short-range
rocket fire. In the interim, Israel began to seek a strategic response
to these threats. This began with the establishment of the Arrow
system directed at long-term threats, and in the last decade the Iron
Dome was added as a response to the seemingly tactical threat of
short-range rockets, which has turned into the main type of threat
facing Israel.
The rise of standoff fire wars, whether long-range (with the
threat of non-conventional weapons), or short-range, restored the
air defense array to a strategic place in Israel’s security concept. Past
wars were mainly conducted at the front, while the home front
almost always remained unharmed and uninvolved. The anti-aircraft
array, then served as a supportive element to the primary forces -
land and air. The missile threat has changed this reality, turning the
home front into a real combat theater, and the importance of its
defense reverted to becoming a major component in Israel’s security
concept.
The aerial defense array, therefore, is today in the midst of
another jolt in its short history. In this article, we will examine the
challenges and dilemmas that characterize an array experiencing
3 The technological development began in the United States in the 1980s with the Reagan administration’s Star Wars initiative and in Israel at the end of the 1980s with the approval to develop the Arrow 1. The first signs of defense appearing in the Israeli security concept could be seen in the Meridor Commission in 1987. An important impact on the Israeli consciousness can be attributed to the Iran-Iraq war, especially the firing of Scud missiles at Tehran.
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dramatic changes in such a short time; how defense is perceived as
an element in the broader IDF concept; and how to stabilize the array
as it has swung between the tactical and strategic ends since its
establishment.
Image 1: Arrow launcher
Active Defense's Place in the IDF’s Strategy and Operational
Concept
A major factor that significantly influences the decision to
develop active defense systems is Israeli society, or more precisely,
the values held by Israeli society. The importance of human life is a
basic, central and concrete value within Israeli society, deriving from
its democratic and Jewish values. From the end of the 1980s and the
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beginning of the 1990s, the desire to avoid loss of human life and
limb became a dominant factor in the public discourse, naturally
affecting decision makers.
But the sanctity of human life does not relate only to the
lives of our soldiers and civilians. The desire to avoid loss of human
life relates also to the innocent civilians on the other side, that is, a
desire to conduct a campaign or a war in the “cleanest” manner
possible. In many ways, this, alongside technology, is the main factor
contributing to the decrease in the popularity of ground maneuver
within the IDF, at least as reflected in its operations in recent
decades, and to the rise of precision fires. The combination of the
sanctity of human life, and the rising threat of standoff fire wars, has
brought about an understanding of the need to generate strategic
defense arrays. This tendency was generally led by civilian policy
makers, not by the military. Consequently, when a new strategic
array came into being within the IDF, pushed by the statesmen, its
operational implications were only gradually revealed.
The relationship between the defensive pillar and the IDF’s
broader operational concept has several key aspects. First, the time
dimension - active defense changes the perception of time during a
confrontation and may even dictate the length of a campaign. The
ability of the system to prevent significant damage to the home
front, although not absolute, produces a relatively longer window
for decision-making, thanks to the knowledge that large salvos will
not take a heavy toll on the citizens of Israel. These capabilities
enable decision makers to conduct the combat in a calculated and
measured manner, avoiding the pressure that would come from
harm to the home front. In both of the recent campaigns, Pillar of
Defense and Protective Edge, the defensive array had a dramatic
impact on the duration of each operation, each in a different and
unique manner.
Second, active defense systems also affect the employment
of offensive forces. Israel’s geographical dimensions and absence of
strategic depth are well known factors. In response to this, Israel has
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viewed deterrence, detection, and achieving a decisive victory as the
cornerstones of its security concept. Decisive victories are viewed as
charging the Israeli deterrence batteries. Offensive action is the
outcome of this concept and generally dictates the shape of military
force generation.
In the era of standoff fire wars a drastic change was created,
whose implications are not yet fully understood. The enemy,
employing missile systems, has bypassed the main form of warfare
for which we prepared in the past - warfare at the front. The enemies
threatening us with high trajectory fire are in one of two categories
- either too far, in regions and states very distant from the Israeli
borders, thus making it difficult to employ large offensive forces
against them, or concentrated on the borders of Israel, but within
complex built-up areas, making it very difficult to conduct
conventional offensive warfare. Within this new space, the defensive
pillar can provide a response to this challenge by neutralizing the
enemy's capabilities. Therefore, the combination of defense and
offense creates flexibility for force employment, and enables the
decisive defeat of the enemy.
However, in these conditions, a concern arises that the
presence of the defensive pillar within the framework of Israeli
capabilities will allow decision makers to avoid solving the truly
difficult puzzle - how to adapt the offensive and decisive defeat
capabilities of the IDF to the new circumstances described above.
Third, the legitimacy of warfare has been greatly influenced
by the entry of active defense systems into operational service.
There is a basic tension between Israel's desire to defend itself and
the international norms demanding that it restrict its activities.
International legitimacy is mainly measured by the just war principle
which includes moral and legal justifications that validate war. The
main argument is that due to the ability of the system to prevent
harm to the citizens of Israel, there is less justification for military
action.
However, in-depth analysis leads to the opposite conclusion.
Active defense systems allow decision makers legitimacy to act,
since, successful as they may be, active defense systems cannot fully
SHOHAT & FRIEDMAN | FROM TACTICAL ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENSE TO SYSTEMIC AERIAL DEFENSE | 81
prevent harm and, of course, cannot prevent the actual firing. They
do indeed prevent casualties on the Israeli home front, but do not
provide a hermetic defense. The existence of a defensive capability
strengthens Israeli claims of a desire to avoid casualties, allowing the
same flexibility mentioned above regarding the type of military
action, its timing and intensity.4
Fourth, there are extensive economic implications resulting
from the employment of active defense systems. War causes
genuine harm to the economic activity of the Israeli economy. The
threat of missiles and rockets on the Israeli home front augments
this harm. The development of the Iron Dome system and other
active defense systems, and their use during a confrontation,
significantly sharpens the economic motive. The cost of developing
and employing the Iron Dome interception system is an important
component that should be added to the economic equation.
But this is not the complete equation. The benefits involved
in employing the Iron Dome system exceed the cost. Foremost, the
preservation of human life is an important component provided by
active defense systems. Reducing the number of the casualties on
the home front, apart from the obvious human side, carries a huge
economic benefit. The researcher, Uzi Rubin, examined the number
of compensation claims due to rocket damage.5 His research
emphasizes the economic importance of active defense systems.
Following the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when the systems did
not yet exist, 26,653 claims for compensation were submitted. The
number of rockets fired was 4,200. Total compensation paid, stood
at NIS 478,950,000.
On the other hand, following Operation Protective Edge in
2014, when the active defense system was in use, and 4,500 rockets
4 Liram Stenzler-Koblent, “Iron Dome’s Impact on the Military and Political Arena: Moral Justifications for Israel to Launch a Military Operation Against Terrorist and Guerrilla Organizations,” Military and Strategic Affairs, Volume 6, No. 1, March 2014, pp. 73-80. 5 Rubin, Uzi. “Israel’s Air and Missile Defense During the 2014 Gaza War,” Mideast Security and Policy Studies, No. 111 (Ramat Gan: Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, January 2015). pp. 27-28.
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were fired, 4,525 claims were filed and the compensation paid
amounted to NIS 89,563,000. Prevention of damage to property and
the continuation of normal economic life is another key component,
influencing both economic and social resilience of the state during
wartime.
The pioneering role that Israel took upon itself in the active
defense domain, the uniqueness of our strategic situation, and our
special relationship with the United States, have also resulted in an
additional unique contribution of the defense array to the Israeli
security concept. The active defense systems were jointly developed,
with the generous support of our most important ally, the US, which
not only lightened the economic burden of our security enterprise,
but added to it an important deterrence factor, which will be
discussed below.
To summarize, active defense systems generate wide
economic leverage. They permit the continuation of economic life in
the Israeli home-front, with some restrictions, and they are in fact
an important strategic tool, whose economic usefulness is several
magnitudes higher than the cost.
An examination of the role of active defense within IDF
strategy sharpens our understanding of its importance. Given that
the process of establishing its strategic status took place in direct
coordination with the political echelon, and considering the values
shared by Israeli society, and its impact on the combat theater, this
process is bound to deepen.
Challenges
The deployment of active defense systems brought to the
surface old and new challenges, stemming from the integration, for
the first time in history, of the innovative interception of missiles and
rockets with an ongoing process of dealing with classic defense
dilemmas.
Offensive action is a central element of the traditional Israeli
security concept. From this perspective, active defense is like a
soccer goalie. The importance of the goalie as a part of the team is
clear to all. Without him preventing the other team from scoring, the
SHOHAT & FRIEDMAN | FROM TACTICAL ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENSE TO SYSTEMIC AERIAL DEFENSE | 83
possibility of victory diminishes. His role is to thwart the opponents’
intentions to achieve a victory. He allows the team’s strikers to score
goals and thus jointly attain victory on the soccer field.
If we compare this with the military dimension, the role of
the active defense systems is to prevent goals from being scored by
the rival team. They do this by negating the ability of missiles and
rockets to cause damage, thus allowing, as mentioned above, other
IDF bodies to carry out their offensive missions and to win. Without
the ability of the active defense systems to intercept enemy attacks,
the task of other units to achieve a decisive defeat through offensive
action would become even more difficult. A collaboration between
the different units, both active defense and the offensive, is the
basis, today and in the future, for IDF success on the battlefield.6
There is another challenge on the technological level. The
technological struggle between armies is not a new phenomenon.
The development of a new weapon or the refinement of another
always creates learning and adaptation within the enemy. In other
words, the appearance of a new weapon generates a clear
advantage to the side operating it, and together with this, after an
adjustment and learning period, the opposing side develops a
response to that challenge.
The advantage of the attacker in this struggle is twofold.
First, operationally, the attacker determines the timing of the action,
its scope and place. Second, strategically, the challenge for the
defender and defense is to develop defensive systems against a non-
existent technology. The development of defensive measures
against an existing offensive system is an important step, but limited.
The challenge is in developing defense systems that will cope
successfully with future offensive technologies, not yet developed,
or in their final stages of development. This is an arms race, a familiar
phenomenon since the beginning of military history.
6 Doron Gavish, “The Air Defense Array - From a Tactical to a National Strategic Array,” Ma’arachot, 444, August 2012, p. 6. [Hebrew]
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The technological struggle has not skipped active defense
systems. It is reasonable to assume that Israel’s enemies are not
ignoring its active defense capabilities and are concurrently
developing various courses of action to cope with these capabilities.
The more effective a new technology, the faster it is challenged.
Active defense systems will be required to address these challenges,
understanding that this technological race is a long process in which
each side challenges the opponent each time anew.7 Therefore, we
must constantly improve our preparedness to face the enemy's
repeated attempts to improve the type of threat at its disposal, its
scope and its range.
The last challenge is related to the human dimension. The
soldiers serving in active defense systems are required to cope with
a wide range of issues, incorporating unique elements, both new and
familiar. The soldier operating a defense system is a new type of
soldier, a fighter-defender. A combatant operating such a system is
required, in field conditions and for a long time, to be prepared to
shift immediately from routine to action and even interception.
In active defense systems, there are no benefits to
conventional military education, which promotes initiative and
aggressiveness on the battlefield. This is indeed an important
organizational value, central to the way we educate, but active
defense combatants do not initiate at the tactical-operational level.
Their basic working assumption is that the enemy will take the
initiative. Continued uncertainty is fundamental to their existence.
This is a complicated tactical reality in its human dimension.
Another aspect is the moral standard of the task. Iron Dome
soldiers and other defense systems personnel are required to carry
on their shoulders the critical implications of their actions. Failure to
intercept a rocket or missile is accompanied by a genuine and
tangible possibility of civilian casualties or real damage to a strategic
facility. The mental strength required of such a soldier is immense.
The challenge of intercepting missiles and rockets is
augmented by the fact that these are the first efforts to perform
7 Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 48-50.
SHOHAT & FRIEDMAN | FROM TACTICAL ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENSE TO SYSTEMIC AERIAL DEFENSE | 85
interceptions of this type. The lack of historical examples and
experience increases the importance of the operators.
The human challenge expands because of the Israeli
approach to the operation of the air defense array. The Israeli school
maintains that it should be manually operated. Most air defense
arrays in foreign armies are activated automatically, and human
judgment is very limited. In Israel, the operation of these systems is
done manually, with the goal of generating flexibility, margin of
maneuverability and security for other aircraft.8
This is new, challenging and fraught with operational and
tactical challenges. It requires expertise and broad professional
knowledge, enabling the consideration of all interception and safety
margins. The fighter-defender must be alert, steadfast and
disciplined. The combination of a complex technological challenge,
stemming from the very sophistication of the active defense
weapons systems, and the tactical and human challenge requires
appropriate selection and training processes, and the integration of
people with unique quality and characteristics within the Air Defense
Division.
Examination of these challenges and responses leads to a
broader insight into the Air Defense Division. It must cope with many
dilemmas directly related to the combat environment and to the
dimensions that surround it, both economic and human. The
response must be inclusive and multi-layered. The first layer includes
the creation of a mutual and overlapping defense array, addressing
the dual threats of high trajectory weapons and aircraft, i.e. ABT - air
breathing targets. This includes the threat of aircraft and helicopters
and that of missiles and rockets. An appropriate response to the
second layer, which includes the human and economic elements in
the military field, includes more intensive training of the human
resources and a comprehensive economic approach to the active
defense systems.
8 An example of this is the rocket which hit the Israeli town of Yehud and was not intercepted due to an operator's decision.
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Active Defense - More Than “Another Interception”
Active defense systems give Israel advantages in some areas,
of which just a few have been exhausted. While the tactical
advantages associated with rocket interception and protection of the
home front are clear, as demonstrated during Operation Protective
Edge, there is a tactical potential not yet realized. This applies mainly
to a possible integration of the interception systems with
maneuvering ground forces. Furthermore, there appears to be more
space to develop and leverage the benefits of these systems at the
operational and strategic levels. In what follows, we will review these
opportunities, from the strategic to the operational and tactical
potentials.
The potential at the strategic level
Active defense systems embody the potential to strengthen
political ties. Cooperation at different levels, up to alliances, is an
important element of the toolbox within the framework of the
international system. Cooperation or alliances can be formal or
informal, defensive or offensive. The broad base of most military
cooperation efforts leans on three main pillars: common interests,
common values and the capability for military cooperation. To these
three factors one must add the overriding element, a common
enemy.9
Earlier we mentioned the assistance of the US in the
development and maintenance of these systems. The development
and procurement of defense systems are a relatively comfortable
ground for strengthening the deep relationship between the two
states and demonstrating it in the region. It is no coincidence that
the legacy of the deep military relationship between the two states
began with the Hawk missiles transaction in 1962.10 The rocket and
missile threat to Israel provided (in an exceptional manner, even for
a relationship that was intimate from the outset) a fertile ground for
a wide range of technological, conceptual and resource cooperation.
9 Daniel Byman, “Remaking Alliances for the War on Terrorism.” Journal of Strategic Studies, 29:5 (2006), p. 773. 10 See Saul Bronfeld, “Defense - The Other Side of Mars,” in this volume.
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This joint activity is not limited to financial assistance or mutual
development, but includes joint exercises of air defense systems.
Joint exercises are held, which are designed to coordinate the air
defense systems of both states, representing a high level of
collaboration, knowledge sharing and a joint vision of future
challenges. The two states project their combined might to their
enemies and exhibit the strength of their connection to the region.
As mentioned previously, the Air Defense Division goes
beyond the narrow dimension of high trajectory weapons
interception and defending Israel, and is in fact a significant part of
the strategic cooperation with the United States. The joint
development and exercises demonstrate that both states foresee an
integrated future, both at the political and military levels, and are
ready to invest effort, time and money in long-term and joint
programs. The experience acquired in Israel in operational anti-
ballistic warfare is a valuable asset for the United States, whose
forces can be sent to conflict areas around the world, most of which
are exposed to rocket and missile threats. This collaboration
encourages additional cooperation between Israel and the USA, in
intelligence and technology, and is a locomotive pulling the entirety
of the security relationship between the two states behind it.
Another strategic potential inherent in the active defense
systems is related to possibilities for regional cooperation. Alliances
and partnerships are not new to Israeli policy. From its early days,
the State of Israel understood its position in the Middle East and
sought partners and allies to advance common interests and deny
achievements to its enemies. The Peripheral States Alliance and
various assistance activities to African states in the 1960s and to
oppressed minorities such as the Kurds in the 1970s were part of
Israel’s strategy for many years. Political processes, including the
peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, created a different
regional setting. Peace agreements and softer partnerships promote
new frameworks for collaboration between Israel and the states in
the surrounding region.
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But negative processes also occurred. The Islamic revolution
in Iran, the rise of terror organizations and the establishment of sub-
state entities within state territories are serious challenges. The
threats arising from these players are partly directed against Israel,
i.e. the firing of rockets and missiles from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip
into Israel. These destabilizing players not only threaten Israel, but
its neighbors as well, challenging, to a large extent, the existing
regimes in some states. Iran's missile capability is not directed
exclusively at Israel, but can reach many other states in the region.
Israel’s active defense capability enters this space. There is
huge potential in the mere existence of such systems. Developed and
manufactured jointly with the United States, they generate an
extensive and strong appeal to regional players, who see the
attractiveness of joining a global power and ally. The reputation
created is of tremendous importance.
Furthermore, active defense systems could enable, under
certain conditions, interception capabilities for other actors aside
from Israel and could provide them with a certain interception
umbrella. In certain contexts, it may even be possible to equip
friendly states with their own defense systems, with necessary
limitations. This variable is an important attractive factor, which
could be used as a proactive regional foreign policy engine, at the
public and covert levels. Under the auspices of regional defense
options, it will be much easier to mobilize regional players having
common interests, and more important - common enemies - into
broad coalitions and to establish regional security systems, beyond
the narrow scope of interception. The active defense systems are in
effect an initial enticement, allowing the generation of initial
interest, which could be developed into regional security
arrangements. Moreover, the Iron Dome success in intercepting
missiles and rockets, besides augmenting the Israeli deterrent
aspect, offers an economic aspect. The technological success which
was observed and viewed around the world, is stirring up the
interest of other states sharing Israel’s defensive needs, thus offering
many economic opportunities for the Israeli defense industries.
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The potential at the operational and tactical levels
Although Israel has a technological advantage over its
enemies, non-state adversaries have succeeded in reducing (or at
least blurring) this gap due to the growing proliferation of military
technologies and their reduced cost. This has enabled Israel’s
enemies to acquire precision firepower and advanced intelligence
capabilities. Interception technologies, however, are still a field in
which only a few states have a clear technological advantage over
non-state adversaries.
Israel is a leader among them. It is possible, and from our
perspective it would be wise, to integrate the potential of this
interception technology not only for defensive uses, but for offensive
purposes as well, and to develop interception capabilities that can
suppress, for example, anti-tank missile systems, surface-to-air
missiles, and the threat from UAVs of all kinds that the enemy is
expected to develop. If we take this path, air defense warfighters
could once again participate in tactical combat, defending the
maneuvering forces on land and in the air, in the same manner as
was done in the past by tactical anti-aircraft units against traditional
aerial threats.
Our last fundamental-conceptual argument uses two
examples of existing weapons systems and their potential
integration into the IDF. The first is the American Centurion system,
based on the naval Phalanx Close-in Weapon System, used by the US
military in Iraq to protect its bases. The Centurion fires 20mm shells
and is designed to intercept short range rockets and mortars. It is
operated from three main platforms - on ships and aircraft carriers,
stationary ground systems and mobile systems on trucks. The
Centurion protected, among others, the Green Zone, the heart of the
US administration in urban Baghdad. The second system is the
American anti-missile system that was supposed to be deployed on
Czech and Polish soil (EIS).11 Its radar was slated to be stationed in
11 Patricia Sandres, “Missile Defense Program Overview for the European Union,” (Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Security and Defense. Missile Defense Agency, 2007), pp.
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Czechoslovakia, while the launchers and missile interceptors were to
be placed on Polish territory. This integrated system is meant to be
an American solution, protecting Europe and America against an
intercontinental missile threat from the Middle East.12
At a conceptual level, these two systems represent a
different approach than that of Israel's active defense. The
Centurion-Phalanx is a tactical defense system. Through the
development of the Centurion-Phalanx concept using more
advanced technologies, it may be possible to create spatial
defensive-offensive cover for maneuvering forces in areas saturated
by missiles (such as anti-tank missiles, surface-to-air missiles, shore
to sea missiles or high trajectory fire), thus restoring to conventional
military forces their freedom of movement, which has been
considerably limited in recent years. In a reality in which our forces
can move more securely through enemy saturated areas, even
without being dependent on tank and APC protection, the possibility
of offensive operations in enemy territory would be seen more
positively. It is therefore a tactical idea, but with serious operational
significance on IDF offensive moves in enemy territory.
The EIS idea, in contrast, is not tactical, but involves the
forward deployment of an interception system. Instead of long-
range ballistic missile interception over Western Europe or the
United States itself, the system is intended to intercept incoming
missiles far away from their targets, and high above the
atmosphere.13 In this way, not only will the threat be removed from
its target, but a second interception opportunity would remain,
closer to home, if the first interception were to fail.
Israel's challenge is different. Long-range missiles are not
new, but given the presence of short range missiles, this challenge
has unique characteristics. From bordering states, we deal with
missiles and rockets whose flight range and flying time is much
13-15. This program was formulated during the Bush Jr. administration, and frozen by the Obama administration. Today, similar missile defense programs are being discussed. 12 Tali Goldstein. “American Weapons to Be Deployed in Poland, the Russians Are Outraged,” Walla (August 20, 2008), news.walla.co.il/item/1333479. [Hebrew] 13 Avi Bitzur, “The Home Front in Israel's Security Concept,” Ma’arachot, 426, August 2009, p. 18. [Hebrew]
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shorter. However, conceptually the development of a forward
interception capability would likely afford the IDF more than one
interception opportunity for each threat, and possibly reduce the
number of alarms and alerts on the home front. Intercepting enemy
missiles in their initial flight stages, might also provide the enemy
with a more frustrating combat experience, thus contributing to
persuading the enemy of the futility of the war from its own
perspective.
That being the case, these two foreign examples provide us
with conceptual inspiration for ways that technologies and advanced
defense and interception capabilities might change the defensive
equation. These could transform combat interception systems into
an important part of the IDF’s offensive concept, both in securing the
movement of our forces in enemy territory, and by taking advantage
of the proximity of our forces to the launchers, in order to improve
the overall interception capabilities of the IDF while undermining the
enemy's expectations from war.
Future Potential and Conclusions
In this article, we have reviewed the active defense arrays
that are a part of the Air Defense Division. The predecessor of the
division was established in the early days of the State, and is a key
operational service within the IDF's capabilities. The active defense
arrays are the young children of this network. The first interception
of the Iron Dome occurred only in April 2011, and the system was
fully operational for Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012.
During Operation Protective Edge, in July-August 2014, the active
defense system was employed extensively, registering considerable
successes. In this article, we analyzed the effect of the active defense
systems on the duration of hostilities, on the economy and
legitimacy. Further, we reviewed the challenges facing active defense
systems, and finally, we demonstrated the further, offensive
potential of missile interception.
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In conclusion, we can point to the important evolutionary
process that has taken place within the Air Defense Division. This
process occurred simultaneously with the growth in challenges to
the security of the State of Israel, and it is still developing. This
process gave the division a highly important role, as part of the
overall IDF response to these challenges. The process has
contributed to a change in the status of the Aerial Defense Division
and the active defense systems, from marginal status to a central
strategic position - within the military might of the State of Israel.
Today, the Air Defense Division integrates both the logic of
decisive victory and the logic of defense. It serves as the main
defensive wall preventing enemy attacks, as well as enabling the
offensive element to find expression in the IDF’s concept. The
division exists in the tension between being reactive and taking the
initiative. It links the three pillars of the Israeli security concept -
deterrence, early warning and decisive victory. On the one hand, by
virtue of being a defensive system, it responds to enemy action. Still,
as we have shown, it has the potential for initiative, which may
develop in the future beyond the tactical realm of preventing enemy
fire.
It is important to note two other issues, relevant to the
future vision of the Air Defense Division. The first issue is related to
the optional technological development of non-kinetic interception.
Iron Dome is based on the “Iron on Iron” principle. An interceptor
missile hits an incoming rocket. In recent years, a new interception
approach has been developing, based on electrical laser beams.
Such systems use a beam produced by electrical power and are
designed to intercept targets at short ranges. There are three types
of laser interceptors: fiber, panel fiber and free-electron laser. Fiber
laser is the most advanced, having the greatest potential of all,
whereas the other systems are based on it. Many advantages are
expected of laser systems, low interception cost, a never-ending
magazine, automatic battle management capability and relatively
easy operation. A future integration of systems of this type in the
framework of the air defense array, would augment Israel's defensive
SHOHAT & FRIEDMAN | FROM TACTICAL ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENSE TO SYSTEMIC AERIAL DEFENSE | 93
capabilities, enabling it to better cope with current and future
threats.14
The second issue relates to a future vision of regional
realities. If Iran succeeds in achieving nuclear capability, with or
without an agreement, it will be important to regard active defense
systems as a tie-breaker, which would bring to such a campaign a
weapons system that Iran does not possess. Israel's interception
capabilities, especially the Arrow system, would enable it, in a
complex, difficult and extremely dangerous balance of power, to
employ a response that would thwart the nuclear missile threat, and
assist in maintaining its strategic superiority.
In conclusion, for as long as Israel is faced with security
challenges, a strong and professional defensive arm will be required,
providing responses to all levels of warfare. The untapped potential
of the Air Defense Division and its technologies, should be developed
to play a significant role in the offensive lineup of the IDF. Thus,
through a balanced development and deployment of interception
systems, it will be able to offer a proper response in coping with the
challenges forming in our environment.
A professional, flexible system that nurtures its personnel,
understands future challenges and is adept at adjusting itself to rapid
changes in the environment, is the key to victory in the next
campaign. From our familiarity with the Air Defense Division and the
active defense systems, assuming proper and timely procurement,
we are certain that they will cope successfully with any challenge at
their doorstep, and continue to provide Israel with the protective
wall that is so necessary for its existence.
14 Itamar Shushan, “On the Way to a Laser Weapon,” Israel Defense, 11 February 2013. [Hebrew]
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Bibliography • Bar Zohar, Michael. Ben Gurion: A Biography (centennial edition), New
York: Adama Books, 1986.
• Bitzur, Avi. “The Home Front in Israel's Security Concept,” Ma’arachot,
426, August 2009, pp. 13-19 [Hebrew]
• Bronfeld, Saul. “Defense - The Other Side of Mars,” Bein Haktavim, Vol.
4, Dado Center, June 2015.
• Byman, Daniel. “Remaking Alliances for the War on Terrorism,” Journal
of Strategic Studies, 29:5 (2006), pp. 767-811.
• Gavish, Doron. “The Air Defense Array - From a Tactical to a National
Strategic Array,” Ma’arachot, 444, August 2012), pp. 4-11. [Hebrew]
• Goldstein, Tali. “American Weapons to Be Deployed in Poland, the
Russians Are Outraged,” Walla (August 20, 2008),
news.walla.co.il/item/1333479 [Hebrew]
• IDF Operations Directorate - Training and Doctrine Division. The A to Z
of Human Resources Combat Doctrine Terms, 2013 [Hebrew]
• Luttwak, Edward. Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard
University Press, 2002.
• Rubin, Uzi. “Israel’s Air and Missile Defense During the 2014 Gaza War,”
Mideast Security and Policy Studies, No. 111 (Ramat Gan: Begin-Sadat
Center for Strategic Studies, January 2015).
• Sandres, Patricia. “Missile Defense Program Overview for the European
Union,” (Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Security and
Defense. Missile Defense Agency, 2007), pp. 1-33.
• Shushan, Itamar. “On the Way to a Laser Weapon,” Israel Defense, 11
February 2013 [Hebrew]
• Stenzler-Koblent, Liram. “Iron Dome’s Impact on the Military and
Political Arena: Moral Justifications for Israel to Launch a Military
Operation Against Terrorist and Guerrilla Organizations,” Military and
Strategic Affairs, Volume 6, No. 1, March 2014, pp. 69-85.
The Campaign for the Home Front
Munir Amar and Eli Michelson
Introduction
On the night of July 22, 2014, Sergeant Sean Carmeli, who
was killed during Operation Protective Edge, was laid to rest in Haifa.
Sean hailed from Texas, and immigrated to Israel without his family
to serve in the IDF. The announcement of Sean's death in combat in
Gaza as a lone soldier provoked strong public emotions, and more
than 20,000 people attend the funeral.1
A mass event of this kind, during an emergency and within
the range of enemy missiles, should not be taken lightly. It raises
many questions regarding daily routine on the Israeli home front. For
example, what tools enable those in charge of safety on the home
front to exercise their responsibility? What could assist them in
providing safety during such an event? What is the equilibrium
between the desire to maintain normal daily routine and the duty to
protect the public from possible mass casualties?
We must sharpen our focus on these questions, and
investigate the appropriate calculations in providing protection
during this type of event from the anticipated threats (mainly high
trajectory fire), to determine what would allow us to act
appropriately to meet the challenge.
Many dilemmas emerge in times of war, especially around
the tension between a desire for full protection on the home front
and the desire to maintain the fabric of daily life. Should we allow
the opening of supermarkets and for what hours? Should schools
open, and under which conditions? Should concerts be held? Should
we allow cafés and pubs to operate? Should soccer games be held?
Should sea ports operate? These dilemmas land on a commander's
desk at the Home Front Command during emergencies, requiring
him to deal with the challenge of maintaining the public’s daily
1 Moshe David-Ahikam, “20 Thousand People at Lone Soldier Sean Carmeli's Funeral,” Walla news (July 22, 2012), news.walla.co.il/item/2767842 [Hebrew]
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routine alongside the challenge of saving life. These dilemmas
become more acute as an operation continues and the pressure and
need build to go about one’s routine as much as possible.
Conflicts in recent years have been characterized by changes
in the combat environment and by fire on the home front during
relatively long periods of combat. The combination of this type of
conflict and missile defense systems (and their future development)
created a situation in which it is possible to identify the potential for
a different policy. The gap between the intensity of conflicts (which
is dropping) and the quality of defense (which is rising) now enables
a continuation of daily routine during emergencies. In this context,
different ways of coping and decision-making are required. This
article will discuss the effect of this phenomenon, which enables us
to operate differently when defending the home front, the
opportunities that arise, and the accompanying challenges and
expected future trends. The changing nature of conflicts, as reflected
in recent years, and the development of active defense, are the basis
of the following discussion.
Since the 1990s Israel’s enemies have employed a strategy
that focuses on causing civilian casualties and paralyzing the Israeli
home front. They continue to invest considerable effort in these
attempts. In recent conflicts, and likely in future ones, success is
measured by an accumulation of achievements (in points), not by a
quick and unambiguous decisive defeat (a knockout). Therefore, the
need is growing to succeed on several levels of simultaneous direct
and indirect struggle - at the frontlines, in contact with the enemy,
at the home front, in the media and in cyberspace. At the home
front, there is a growing necessity to prevent casualties, while
allowing the continuity of the populations’ daily routine and the
functioning of the national and civil systems in a manner as close to
normal as possible.
Although the importance of successful management of the
home front during a security crisis is obvious, there are no clear
definitions and metrics for such success. Some home front objectives
are defined, like support for the war effort, providing maneuvering
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 97
room for decision-makers and saving lives,2 but they do not define
success clearly and unambiguously. For example, great value is
ascribed to the uninterrupted activity of the Israeli economy during
emergencies. Damage to the Israeli economy during a confrontation
can be measured in several respects, such as loss of gross national
product (GDP) due to a decrease in productivity (absence from work
by reservists, parents remaining at home with their children), a
decline in labor productivity (business’ closing), reduction in demand
(domestic and foreign tourism, dining and entertainment services),
damage to infrastructure and buildings etc.3
Alongside the economic damage from the impact of rockets
and missiles on property and human lives, there are great benefits
to a campaign from continued economic activity. It benefits the
prevailing narrative adopted by the public and the national security.
Most noticeable is that public resilience depends largely on the
ability to maintain a reasonable daily routine during a crisis, while
enabling the public systems to function and provide the necessities
of life - food, water and medicine and the full functioning of the
economy. Thus, we may understand Isaac Ben-Israel’s argument that
Israel's defense leadership failed to understand during the Second
Lebanon War (2006), that the main damage caused to the home
front was social and economic, and not human life or property.4
Achieving a high level of protection requires a shutdown of
the civilian and public systems, and the evacuation of the population
into protected spaces. In contrast, the desire to maintain routine
activities and the need to enable the functioning of various systems
entails risks during emergencies. It should be emphasized that
success on the home front has a considerable influence which may
contribute to the overall achievements in a campaign. This success is
measured in two respects - seemingly contradictory but in fact
2 Reut Institute, Civil Resilience Network - Conceptual Framework for Israel's Local & National Resilience (Version B), Reut Institute, August 2009. 3 Yashiv, Eran, “Operation Protective Edge: Economic Summary,” in Kurtz, Anat and Brom, Shlomo (eds). The Lessons of Operation Protective Edge, INSS, November 2014, pp. 127-130. 4 Isaac Ben-Israel, Israel’s Defense Doctrine, Modan and the Ministry of Defense, 2013, pp. 71-73. [Hebrew]
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complementary - in preventing casualties and in allowing civilian
systems to function “normally,” even routinely.
Currently, the understanding is growing that due to changes
in the reality of war, both in terms of the challenge and response,
the importance of the local dimension to the success of the home
front is increasing. In this article, we wish to refine and emphasize
this argument: there is a necessity to manage the tension between
protection levels and the maintenance of routine activities by
strengthening and providing tools to the local echelon of the Home
Front Command (District level). These tools do not yet exist. This is
based on the understanding that this is the level that bridges the
national context and interests, and the tactical challenges.
We will discuss this on two levels - at the operational level -
the challenge and potential in developing the operational level of
home front defense, and at the strategic level - the link between
defending the home front and the national security concept, and
possible achievements in future conflicts. We will deal with this issue
while looking at several aspects of home front defense. We will
discuss the current and developing challenges to the home front,
present the tensions between protection and maintaining routine,
evaluate which institutional level within the home front would
enable the management of these tensions, and finally discuss the
growing context between defending the home front, and Israel’s
national security concept.
The Israeli Home Front as an Element in the Enemy’s Combat
Concept
Attacking the home front is not a new phenomenon in the
history of war in general, and Israel isn’t an exception. During the
War of Independence (1948), aircraft from Iraq, Syria, and primarily
Egypt, attacked the Israeli home front. Many cities were attacked,
including Haifa, Jerusalem, Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv. In total, 172
soldiers and civilians were killed on the home front and 321 were
injured.5 Attacks on the home front continued, such as the firing of
5 Moshe Naor, Social Mobilization in the Arab/Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front, Routledge, 1st edition (April 16, 2013), pp. 161-162. It is important to note that many
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 99
Katyusha rockets at Kiryat Shmona from 1969, but in Israel’s
campaigns, from the 1956 Sinai War to the 1982 Operation Peace for
Galilee, this type of fire was relatively insignificant. The main
objective of attacking the home front was to motivate the civilian
population to influence decision-makers. Nevertheless, during the
War of Independence and in the other wars, attacking the home
front was relatively a secondary objective, and the enemies’ main
efforts focused on combat at the front.
In recent years, we have seen the development of a reverse
situation, turning the home front into a major target. An analysis of
the approaches to confronting Israel demonstrates that the
fundamental principle is winning by not losing. In practical terms,
these approaches have led to a focus on two key combat elements -
continuous rocket fire and systematic holding actions which cause
the attrition of our forces.6 These approaches are based largely on
the understanding that the Israeli home front encompasses national
assets, like every state, coupled with the understanding that Israel is
sensitive to casualties.7 A central element in the other side’s concept
is the prolongation of the fighting while paralyzing basic services,
thus influencing decision-makers by causing civilian unrest. The
combination of these elements - damaging national assets on the
home front, alongside our sensitivity to casualties and the
prolongation of the conflict - allows our opponents to produce a
“victory image,” which serves them in the construction of a general
narrative about their achievements during the campaign.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, described in 2003 the
way that this conceptual change occurred:
“The first time we shot at the Israeli settlements was the day
that our Secretary General, Abbas al-Moussawi was killed [16
settlements near the confrontation lines, among them Jerusalem, were under artillery fire for a long time. 6 Itai Brun, “The Development of the Combat Concept of the ‘Other Side’ (1979-2009)” Tatzpit 50, IDF Operations Directorate - Doctrine and Training Division, 2010, p. 58. [Hebrew] 7 Michael Milstein, “Muqawama: The Challenge of Resistance to Israel's National Security Concept,” Memorandum No. 102, Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, December 2009. [Hebrew]
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February 1992]. The first blow we landed on them was very painful,
because it was a surprise to the Israelis. On our part, we discovered
that after launching Katyusha rockets at the settlements, the enemy
stopped attacking us and from that day we understood the lesson of
that event…”8
The firing of rockets at the home front and the integration of
new offensive elements9 in the opponent's strategy, are designed to
serve several possible concepts, such as an accumulation of
achievements by taking a toll in life and property, disrupting the
fabric of life by damaging societal life (for instance the closure of
learning institutions), disruption of the economy, damage to
strategic assets, etc. Furthermore, one can identify in recent years
and conflicts a prolongation of the fighting, thus exhausting Israel in
general (attrition) and the home front in particular.10 This
combination of a threat to the home front and the prolongation of
hostilities creates a real challenge to the home front and to national
security. As the campaign continues, the need to return to routine
becomes stronger, although the conflict is continuing.
Tensions in Home Front Defense
The underlying imperative behind the Israeli home front civil
defense effort is saving lives. The idea is to minimize the damage
caused by enemy attacks on the population, based on a multi-tiered
response whose main components are preventing assaults by
8 Interview with Hassan Nasrallah, Al-Jazeera, 27 May 2003, quoted in Brun, op. cit. p. 70. The effect of the fire on the home front was already a point of discussion in 1981 among the PLO in Lebanon, when it recognized the significant impact the fire had on the Israeli population. See also: Isaac Ben-Israel, op. cit., p. 71. 9 LTC N., “Third Lebanon War - Toward a Change in the Systemic Concept of Hezbollah,” Ma’arachot, 454, April 2014, pp. 4-8. The combat during operation Operation “Protective Edge” demonstrated that Hamas has intensified the basic elements of the strategy - firing of rockets and holding actions - while developing an additional offensive element, an offensive array whose purpose was to achieve psychological warfare achievements and which focused on raids whose objectives were not to seize territory, but rather to cause damage and casualties. It is discernible that Hezbollah has undergone similar changes, leading to the development of offensive elements. 10 “Attrition” has been the subject of many debates: whether it is a tactic of the strong or the weak side to a conflict. It worth noting that attrition in campaigns of this kind, is not solely a tactic used by our opponents, but it could also serve IDF strategy.
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 101
attacking threat sources, active defense, and personal protection.
Concurrently, efforts are made to maintain an “emergency routine,”
the essence of which is to allow a basic daily routine for civil society
during conflicts. This effort contributes to the national strength by
“augmenting the resilience of the economy locally and nationally,
and by creating a functional continuity…”11
These efforts create a tension whose essence is in risk-taking
- between conservation of life (defense and avoidance) and
maintaining the fabric of daily life. As the level of protection
decreases, restrictions on the functioning of the home front
increase. As shown in the diagram below, two opposing forces
influence the functional range of possibilities during emergencies.
On the one hand (the green arrow) the desire to protect and
safeguard life calls for “taking cover,” and on the other hand (the
purple arrow) the desire for freedom of action and daily routine
encourages a continuation of normal life and the taking of risks.
Figure 1: Home front efforts - Protecting oneself vs functioning
This range of possibilities includes all the normal activities of
daily life - from medical services to entertainment and leisure. Of
course, there can be no comparison between various normal
activities and the proper functioning of the health system, which is
immeasurably more important than the broadcasting of reality
11 Home Front Command, Basic Concept, IDF internal document, p. 93. [Hebrew]
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programs (such as the television show Big Brother during Operation
Protective Edge). However, one should not underestimate any of the
public activities because together they comprise the complete
package known as societal resilience. The Israeli home front’s
steadfastness during Operation Protective Edge was characterized
by societal resilience allowing it to effectively cope with a long
attrition campaign.12 Societal resilience was reflected in the ability to
“respond flexibly to serious disturbances (...), to allow a proportional
and temporary functional withdrawal, to bring about a quick, with
local changes and occasional adaptations, functional recovery to the
original level of societal identity and conduct.”13
Facing the fire on the home front, active defense systems
were developed, reducing damage to the home front, but
exacerbating the tension between routine and protection due to
their ability to reduce the likelihood of damages to the home front.
As the level of defense increases the sense grows among the public
that it is possible to maintain daily routine life during an emergency.
Defensive systems indeed reduce the risk, thereby increasing the
need to enable routine activities and the taking of calculated risks.
These defensive systems, which, as noted, serve as a protective layer
in the effort to save lives, affect the decision-makers and the public
on both sides. The influence of the defensive systems is in increasing
the leeway and calculated risks that can be taken to enable daily
routine life and civilian activities, in addition to those necessitated
during war.14
12Meir Elran and Alex Altshuler. “Lessons from the Civilian Front - Interim Summary,” INSS Insight 581, July 31, 2014. 13 Meir Elran and Alex Altshuler. “The Civilian Front in Operation Protective Edge,” in Anat Kurtz and Shlomo Brom (eds). The Lessons of Operation Protective Edge, INSS, November 2014. 14 On the potential of defensive systems, read the article by Brig. Gen. Shahar Shohat, Commander of the Air Defense Division and Yaniv Friedman, a researcher at the Dado Center in this volume.
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 103
Figure 2: The relationship between the quality of defense and the
intensity of the conflict
During ongoing conflicts, whose essence is attrition,
decision-making becomes more complicated, and a dilemma arises
between preserving life and maintaining the fabric of life. As the
conflict continues and the level of the home front protection rises,
the tension between saving lives and efforts to preserve routine life
increases. This intensifies the need to grapple with a relatively new
type of dilemma, requiring decisions that will contribute to success
in both aspects, while understanding the interest and the national
context, as well as the tactical challenge of this type of defense.
This tension between self-protection and the enabling of the
fabric of daily life allows an escape from the rigid framework of self-
protection (which is in essence unambiguous and apparently
presents no dilemmas), and allows a dialogue about the space where
one can maintain the fabric of daily life. A discussion of the latter
type requires an understanding of the broader context - the enemy’s
will, our own will and the circumstances - and of what it can
contribute to national resilience, therefore leading to a freedom of
action and to promoting our own interests, as well as to an
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adaptation to local needs and challenges - this will be discussed
below.
The Operational Level of Home Front Defense
Success in preserving daily routine alongside reducing injury
to life and property may lead to an important achievement for Israel,
by removing the sting from enemy actions. Operation Protective
Edge, which lasted 50 days, demonstrated (with reservations and
limitations) success in home front defense, whose strategic
significance was in neutralizing the central element of the
opponent's strategy - causing injury to the home front.15
Active defense systems played a crucial role in this
achievement. But this impressive achievement is not the essence.
Alongside defense, the ability to function in emergencies and
perform routine activities is another major factor that should be
given consideration. In conflicts where achievements are cumulative
(points) and not a decisive defeat (knockout), reducing the enemy's
achievements is highly valuable. Prevention of damage on the home
front is one important motive, but it is not the only one. Preventing
the obstruction of daily life is a supplementary one. The ability to
maintain a relatively reasonable daily routine is a genuine force
multiplier, gaining “points” in this type of campaign. Another
important fact to keep in mind is that failure on the home front,
measured in casualties and dysfunction, may cause the whole
campaign to be considered a failure, regardless of the successes at
the front.
The ability to maintain a relatively reasonable daily life, as
was evident during Operation Protective Edge, was based on a
differential defense policy setting (distinct and tailored to the
threat), on the exercises and implementation of defensive
procedures, on increasing the number of warning areas and
improving warning capabilities through additional measures (such as
cellular phones). This practice reduces the frequency of disturbances
to citizens’ lives and harm to the economy, as well as contributing to
15 Meir Elran and Alex Altshuler. “The Civilian Front in Operation Protective Edge,” op. cit., pp. 110-111.
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 105
overall conduct during the emergency.16 The combination of physical
protection and the contribution of active defense systems generated
a reality that allowed the maintenance of almost routine activity.
This combination neutralized the central operational element of the
enemy’s campaign - causing injury to the home front by firing
missiles and rockets.
Decision-makers engaged with the home front should
discuss the challenges and unique local needs of each district. These
requirements vary per region and the nature of the campaign, with
defensive steps needing to be adjusted to a region’s character.
At the local level, it is possible to provide an appropriate
response to the tension between the need to protect in order to
safeguard lives and the need for routine activities and the
functioning of the system. The local level of the Home Front
Command (District) can best provide an interpretation of the
national interest whose essence is the success of two efforts -
preserving life and maintaining the daily routine - by understanding
both local challenges and opportunities. As with any operational
entity, influenced by the unique-strategic context and concrete
circumstances, each sub-command must act in accord with its
unique conditions, which vary with the type of conflict and the
circumstances. In this context, the head of each Home Front District
is required to act in the space between the national (strategic) and
the local (tactical) contexts, bridging the levels and the requirements
of each.
In the 1991 Gulf War, only two levels of control were
identified for managing challenges on the home front - the strategic
level, where decisions were made on a nationwide scale (defense
rules, institutions closures, evacuation etc.) and the tactical level,
where the troops acted to save lives. This was apparently also the
case in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The changes, manifested
during the Second Lebanon War in the intensity of the threat to the
home front, alongside other developments that have taken place in
16 Ibid.
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recent years in active defense capabilities, necessitate the
development of another layer of thinking to cope with the challenge.
Such a layer level should combine national needs with local
challenges, leading to the achievement of local successes, with
implications for national achievement.
The operational-local home front defense level is the
appropriate one for managing the tension between lifesaving and
routine maintenance. In emergencies, the strategic level can work
towards achieving maximum protection. However, without
understanding unique local challenges and variables, it will struggle
to even meet this one-dimensional challenge. Adding the need to
maintain daily routine and the dilemmas which arise from it
necessarily leads to the development of the local level, which can
understand the wider context and the need to maintain daily routine
alongside the capability to maneuver defensively.
In order to realize this, implementable and practical tools are
required to protect the home front. These tools for the local level,
that is the district commander, are analytical - providing a good
understanding of the context- as well as practical - enabling the
improvement of defensive actions, and a concentration of effort to
deal with a developing threat or a local event (such as an inevitable
mass gathering similar to the funeral mentioned in the introduction
to this article).
Despite all this, it is important to clarify that currently district
commanders lack tools which would enable them to influence the
defense of their sector. The defense situation changes constantly and
a district commander is required to influence all the defensive
elements in their sector, but they are limited in their capabilities and
therefore cannot implement their significant insights about
defensive needs. This limitation stands out especially in relation to
the ability to influence air defense in terms of time and space, and
the ability to affect actions on the front which may improve the
home front defense (to be further discussed below).
The local point of view, as reflected in the perspective of the
district commander, is relatively broad (more than one city or several
communities). This broad perspective allows the tackling of
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 107
defensive challenges in the district, through an integrated
examination of all the threats and needs, as well as through
differential actions. For example, within a single district one might
define several different protection levels, in relation to different
threat levels and the need to maintain daily routine. The District
Command can analyze the defensive needs of different sub-districts,
assigning each one an appropriate defense level, while maintaining
routine in less threatened sub-sectors. Within a district, one can
analyze the concrete threats to each sub-district, in relation to the
complexity of its population and the means of protection at its
disposal, the strength of the local leadership, etc. This analysis is
made possible by the deep personal familiarity, formal and informal,
of the commander with his district. A district commander may
concentrate his efforts on a certain sub-district, thus reducing the
personal protection level, while increasing the freedom of action of
his residents. This situation might not only permit some residents to
return to their daily routine, but it might also positively affect the
whole district.
Sometimes, in tactical defensive operations, a community is
defined as so vital as to be held at all costs. If evacuated by its
residents, it would no longer be defined as crucial. In an analogy to
home front defense, a distinct thinking may lead to defining certain
areas as vital, thus determining the levels of protection and defense
assigned to them. As appropriate in each situation, the District
Command might change these levels, for example, following the
departure of residents or their evacuation, or following the removal
of a dangerous industrial component.
The operational level dealing with home front defense has
another channel of influence, a channel that should be further
developed, which influences the discourse about military action at
the front. Strengthening the relationship between action taken at
the front and defensive measures on the home front is vital to both
sides, because it may reduce threats to the home front while
promoting operations at the front, achieving significant influence
over the opponent and their achievements. This can be achieved by
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converting threats that accurately target certain home front sectors
into military objectives at the front. An example occurred during the
Second Lebanon War, when the Galilee Division under the command
of Gal Hirsch employed the elite Maglan unit to silence the fire from
the Tyre area towards the Western Galilee. The Maglan unit
succeeded in neutralizing about 70 Hezbollah targets.17
Defense of the Home Front and Its Contribution to the Overall
Achievements in a Conflict
In this part of the article we will present another perspective
on this issue. We will argue that success in defending the home front
- preventing casualties and maintaining daily routine - contributes
directly to success in the conflict. Consequently, defense in general
and home front defense in particular, must be integrated within the
security concept discourse.
Events on the home front in the War of Independence,
especially the bombing of Tel Aviv, deeply affected the founder of
the Israeli national security concept, David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion
feared that attacks on the home front, to which he was personally
exposed, would lead to the abandonment of settlements, and saw
them as an “enormous danger.”18 The problem as he saw it was
related to national, social, and personal strength, and the solutions
he proposed were not necessarily military, but social and economic,
similar to other elements in his security concept. In Ben-Gurion's
view, the physical damage to the home front (life and property) was
not the main issue, and could not subdue Israel. The primary damage
was collateral, to the economy and morale.
In the development of the Israeli security concept over the
years, and in accord with its relevance during the different
confrontations (from the Sinai War to the 1982 Lebanon War), it is
apparent that defending the home front was not central to the
17 Amos Harel and Avi Isacharoff. 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; Chen Kotas-Bar. “You See the Launcher Fire Ten Rockets - And You Blow It Up,” Maariv, September 12, 2007. 18 David Ben Gurion. "Security Review," Ma’arachot, 279-280, May 1981, p. 11. [Hebrew] The review was originally written in October 1953 and published in 1981.
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 109
security concept and discourse.19 In fact, until the early 1990s, the
front was hit only in an extremely limited way, as a secondary
objective only. But in 1992, in the wake of the First Gulf War, during
which the home front was hit and the threat intensified, the Home
Front Command was established.
The call to address the threat to the home front and
understand its importance to national security was formalized in
2006. In its report on Israeli defense doctrine, the Meridor
Committee argued that the element of defense should be added to
the Israeli national security concept. Today, it is clear that the
outcomes of the struggle between Israel and its enemies will also be
determined to a large extent in the home front theater, and that
“success on the home front is essential for a national victory in future
conflicts.”20 This success will be measured in casualties, but in other
respects as well, such as economic, including damage to national
infrastructure, to the Israeli economy, to the gross national product
(GDP), to tourism and to other determinants of success. It is clear
that extensive injury to life has a significant impact on success or
failure in the home front theater, and on the public narrative that
develops after a war. The effort to save lives is the central one, but a
paralysis of civilian systems and various other damage can
undermine success, both inwardly and outwardly.
Recently we have witnessed an increase in the importance
of home front defense, and its impact on confrontation outcomes is
increasing. In an era where clear-cut victories at the front are not
achieved, and Israel must deal with non-state organizations firing at
the home front, every aspect of civil activity has a great value.
Efficient management, functioning civil systems and “business as
usual,” may well forestall enemy achievements.
19 It is important to qualify this statement and note that in Ben-Gurion's view, perhaps because of his personal experiences in London during WW II, defending the home front loomed large, therefore he demanded that during the Sinai War the French deploy a squadron of aircraft in Israel, and prior to the Six Day war, he was angry at the Chief of Staff Rabin for neglecting the home front. 20 Reut Institute, op. cit., p. 20.
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The Second Lebanon War was a major turning point in our
understanding of the importance of home front defense. In that war,
which lasted 34 days, 160 Israelis were killed, including 41 civilians,
thousands were injured, hundreds of houses were damaged, and
hundreds of thousands of citizens were forced to leave their homes.
Many were required to stay in shelters and protected areas for long
periods of time and found it difficult to maintain a normal daily
routine. Economic activity was disrupted and affected, small and
medium businesses collapsed and daily activity in northern Israel
was substantially reduced. About 300,000 inhabitants of the north
left their homes and moved temporarily to the south. The State
Comptroller, who investigated in depth the functioning of home
front defense during the war, pointed to numerous flaws in the
functioning of the home front authorities during the emergency.21
Local initiatives led by individuals, such as the tent city set
up by (then) Israeli businessman Arcadi Gaydamak, testified to the
loss of control by the authorities, and to their being situated on the
lowest rung of the hierarchy of needs in the home front - security
and a desire to survive.22 At the end of 2006, when rockets were fired
from the Gaza Strip towards the South, and another civilian initiative
to evacuate residents was put on the table, Defense Minister Amir
Peretz attacked the initiative, explaining that: “We should prepare
an orderly program to assist residents, so that they won’t need to
knock on the doors of philanthropists.”23
Furthermore, in May 2007, in response to Gaydamak’s
request to establish a tent city in Tel Aviv, the Deputy Defense
Minister, Efraim Sneh, retorted: “Gaydamak is serving Israel's worst
enemies with his actions.”24 It seems that these statements reflect
lessons learnt from the conduct of the home front in the Second
21 Israel State Comptroller, Preparations of the Home Front and Its Functioning in the Second Lebanon War (Summary), 2007. [Hebrew] 22 Eli Bernstein, “Gaydamak Establishes Another Tent City,” Maariv, July 24, 2006. [Hebrew] 23 Michael Greenberg. “Tent City? Arcadi Gaydamak Takes the Residents of Sderot for a Weekend in Eilat as a Result of the Increased Rocket Attacks on the City.” The Marker, November 16, 2006. [Hebrew] 24 IDF Radio quoted in “Gaydamak's Tent City Moves to Tel Aviv,” Globes, May 22, 2007. [Hebrew]
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 111
Lebanon War, and an internalization by the authorities of their
responsibility to the home front.
The ability to navigate crises on the home front and to deal
with them successfully adds to Israel's national security in general
and to its deterrence in particular. Success of this kind generates
social resilience, projecting to the public and the civil systems that it
is possible to cope with the challenge. Such success radiates
outwards as well, to the enemy, emphasizing that we have the ability
to get through the crisis, and that their attacks on the home front
have a negligible effect, despite their increasing and growing
investment in attempts to strike at it.
Success on the home front has several levels. At the basic
level is the prevention of human casualties. Furthermore, the basic
civilian system must continue to function properly in the fields of law
enforcement, medicine, energy, food, water and other services. The
upper level includes the functioning of the economy and all civilian
systems in a manner close to normal. A functioning of all systems
and success on all levels would contribute significantly to the general
success of a campaign.
These levels may be described as a pyramid analogous to
Maslow’s pyramid of needs, representing the aspiration during
emergencies for a restoration of all systems, and to their return to
normal activity. In a military campaign, we wish to position ourselves
as close as possible to the top of the pyramid, symbolizing greater
achievement. Greater success on the home front means that we are
positioned at a higher level. Each level of the pyramid rests on its
predecessor, and it is difficult (although sometimes possible) to skip
levels. Each home front district has its own pyramid, which
corresponds to its ability to function, and each one should aspire to
a full recovery of all systems. The pyramid may represent, post
factum, each district’s success in maintaining routine.
For example, during the Gulf War learning institutions were
closed in many areas of the country, people were evacuated from
their residences and cultural and leisure events were canceled. Thus,
we may understand that during that conflict, the engagement was
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primarily at the first level of needs, and the second functioned
because the threat was limited. However, in examining Operation
Protective Edge, for example, we can distinguish between conflict
areas where the realization of the needs was mainly at the first level,
and others where activities were close to the topmost level.
Figure 3: The pyramid of needs on the home front
It is important to emphasize that the scenario involving an
attrition campaign as part of a long conflict, in which the rate and
effectiveness of fire on the home front are declining, is not the only
conceivable one. It is possible to imagine campaigns with intense
fire, having a widespread impact over a short timeframe. Such
situations would produce a sharp and clear challenge to the home
front, primarily around the saving of lives. Such cases present no
dilemma for the defensive forces at the home front: all their energy,
and efforts, would be invested in the immediate challenge.
These are complex situations, especially in terms of the
physical challenge, requiring a capability to deal with multiple strikes
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 113
within a short time. Dealing with these situations is very similar to
coping with a natural disaster (a blizzard or huge fires), where the
struggle is mainly physical in facing the immediate challenge
(rescuing the injured, maintaining open rescue routes, etc.). During
national challenges of this type (an existential threat or another
major threat), the steadfastness of the Israeli home front, which is
based on a general mobilization, cohesion, and a faith in the
righteousness of our path, is realized in a clear and admirable
manner.
Conclusions and a View to the Future
Due to the changes in warfare - from total to limited wars,
involving smaller forces, from wars involving decisive victories to
wars of attrition - the importance of the home front has changed.
Today, due to the nature of war and the conversion of the home front
into a central objective for our enemies, defending the home front
requires saving life, while simultaneously allowing the civilian system
to function at various levels - social, economic, and more. The
functioning of the civilian system at all levels, in a manner allowing
routine daily activities to take place, is an important achievement,
neutralizing the operational purpose of our enemies.
In conclusion, we understand that in order to bridge the
tension between the need for protection and the saving of lives, and
the need to conduct routine activities, a local level is required, in the
person of the District Commander, who must mediate between
these tensions while managing risks and continuously exploring
what can possibly be maintained of daily routine. The challenge at
each level of home front defense is in saving life (the basic level of
the hierarchy of needs), but also in climbing the pyramid of needs to
reach the higher levels of functioning. It is important to understand
that the challenges vary between the geographical districts, and for
each an appropriate response is required. Alongside the
understanding that the district commander is able to best integrate
strategic insights together with local challenges and to optimally
implement both in his sector, we also appreciate that they lack the
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tools to influence the defense of their sector, especially in the
context of the fighting at the front and air defenses.
AMAR & MICHELSON | THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE HOME FRONT | 115
Bibliography • Ahikam, Moshe David. “20 Thousand People at Lone Soldier Sean
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Protective Edge, INSS, November 2014.
By Land, by Sea, by Air. And by Cyber?
Roni Katzir
Introduction
“I have decided to establish a national authority for cyber
affairs, which will take care of the cyber defense of Israel. Not only
for the defense of important installations and defense facilities, but
also to protect the citizens of Israel from attacks. This is a new
authority; it is, in effect, the establishment of an Israeli Air Force
against new threats… We are in a new world, preparing ourselves
with new forces.”1
With these words, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu opened the cabinet meeting at which he announced his
intention to establish a “National Cyber Defense Authority,” which
would serve as the executive arm of the National Cyber Bureau.
A few months later, the government passed the decision
establishing the Authority. The Authority’s role, once established,
will be to defend Israel’s national realm within cyberspace. This will
include formulating national situation assessments in the field,
identifying threats and attacks, and dealing with attacks and
incidents in real time. All this will take place in coordination with the
relevant security entities. 2
This decision puts an end (for now) to the ongoing dispute
between the Israel Security Agency (also known as the Shabak/Shin
Bet) and the National Cyber Bureau over which of the two bodies
would be entrusted with defending the civil sector from cyber
threats.
Curiously, the voice of the IDF was absent from the debate.
The decision makes it clear that the IDF will not bear responsibility
(or authority) for defending Israel from threats in cyberspace. “A
1 Excerpts from the Government meeting of September 21, 2014. See: Moti Bassok, “Netanyahu: National Cyber Defense Authority to be Established,” The Marker, September 21, 2014. [Hebrew] 2 Government of Israel, Cabinet Decision 2444, February 15, 2015.
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cyber force” will be established, but unlike the air, sea and land
forces - it will be established and exist outside the IDF.
This article will discuss the practical implications of Israel's
decision to establish a National Cyber Defense Authority and the
IDF’s role in this field. It will critically examine the decision to snatch
the responsibility for national defense in cyberspace from the IDF
and place it in the hands of a new entity, which is to be entrusted
with defending civilian interests in cyberspace.
To examine this issue, I will begin by examining the meaning
of the term “cyber warfare,” and attempt to understand the type of
threat facing Israel. I will also review the development of the Israeli
institutions engaged in this field. This will serve us as the background
for discussing the appropriate entity to bear responsibility for cyber
defense, and I will relate, among others, to the role definition and
function of the IDF, and to the difficulties inherent in the
employment of the IDF by a civilian entity.
What Is Cyber Warfare?
The cyber threat is a multifaceted phenomenon, but to pose
a strategic threat to a state like Israel with advanced cyber
infrastructure, an attacker needs a combination of intent and means.
Regardless of the intent, and assuming it exists, today the tools for
action against an advanced state are primarily in the hands of world
powers. However, these tools are likely to be obtained by terror
organizations and states supporting terrorism against Israel in the
future. Therefore, the main threat, even in cyberspace, is still the
security threat, or more precisely the threat of cyber warfare.
The relationship between the development of the
technology world and the evolution of the modern battlefield is
clear. The flood of information and technologies that have
penetrated the battlefield, and the accessibility of cyber-attack
capabilities to anyone who has access to a personal computer, have
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led to a fundamental change in the characteristics of war3 and gave
birth to the term “cyber warfare.”
In the 1990s, the concept of “information warfare” was first
developed.4 Military thinkers and scholars led by Alvin and Heidi
Toffler discussed the importance of information and the control of
information on the battlefield. At the time, the prevailing
assumption was that information warfare and cyber warfare were
one phenomenon.5 A conceptual debate arose when Arquilla and
Ronfeldt, political scientists from the Rand Corporation, published an
article with the ominous title, “Cyberwar is Coming!”6 which foresaw
a deep change in the structure of military organizations in view of
the expected frequent occurrence of cyber warfare based entirely on
electronically transmitted information.
From that moment on, the world has been divided into two
groups - “the alarmists,” pessimists who predict that the
development of cyber capabilities could bring down a modern state;
and the skeptics, who understand that a cyber threat exists which
may harm civilian or national infrastructure, but regard it as a mere
nuisance, not a national threat.7 Over the years, a debate has
evolved along this axis relating to American policy for dealing with
cyber threats. However, the experience gained in recent years has
led to one general consensus: contrary to the concept espoused by
Arquilla and Ronfeldt, most experts currently tend to accept the
assertion that the cyber dimension is not an independent battlefield.
Just as it is unlikely that on the modern battlefield warfare will take
3 See, for example: Rex Hughes, “Towards a Global Regime for Cyber Warfare,” in Christian Czosseck and Kenneth Geers (eds.), The Virtual Battlefield: Perspectives on Cyber Warfare, 2009, pp. 106-117. 4To analyze the implications of information warfare from the perspective of the end of the 1990’s, see: Yitzhak Ben-Israel. “Information Warfare,” Ma’arachot, 369 (2000), p. 18. [Hebrew] 5 See, for example: Gil Baram, “Cyber war preparedness,” Ma’arachot, 456 (2014), pp. 22-27. [Hebrew] 6 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “Cyberwar is coming,” Comparative Studies, 12: (1993), pp. 141-165. 7 See: Jean-Loup Sammaan, “Cyber Command, The Rift in US Cyber Training Strategy,” RUSI Journal, 155: 16-21 (2010); Ryan Singel, “White House Cyber Czar: There Is No Cyberwar,” Wired.com, 4 March 2010.
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place in one dimension only - air, sea or land - so it is unlikely that
warfare will occur in the cyber dimension only.
The attack on Iran, known as Stuxnet, strengthened this
approach. This attack is considered one of the most advanced in
history, and it was the first to cause substantial physical damage.8
However, though great efforts were clearly invested in the attack, its
result was, at best, a slight bump in the road for the Iranian nuclear
program. 9
Therefore, in the military context, cyber capabilities are a
sophisticated addition to the tools of the combat forces, as were the
airplane, the submarine, and the nuclear bomb. This understanding
of the cyber threat should underlie the debate about how to defend
against it.
The Development of Cyber Defense Institutions in Israel
Israel was among the first states to identify the emerging
challenges presented by cyberspace. In 1997, The Tehila Project
(Government Infrastructure for the Internet Age) was established to
secure government ministry links to the Internet. In 2002, the
Information Security National Authority was established within the
Israel Security Agency (ISA).10 It supplies professional guidance on
computer infrastructure security to entities of national importance,
against threats of terrorism, espionage and exposure.11
With increasing threats in cyberspace,12 a special team was
established in November 2010 to engage in formulating a national
8See, for example: David Kushner, “The Real Story of Stuxnet,” IEEE Spectrum (26 February 2013), downloaded from Spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet. 9 Jon R. Lindsay, “Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare,” Security Studies, 22 (2013), pp. 365-404. 10 Ministerial Committee for Security Affairs Decision B/84 of 11 December 2002. 11 The powers of the ISA in this regard are derived from the “Law Regulating Security in Public Institutions – 1998.” 12 Since 2007 the world has witnessed several attacks in cyberspace during disputes between
states, such as Russia’s attacks on Estonia and Georgia, attacks by China on the United States and the Stuxnet attack in Iran that was mentioned above. Recently, Kaspersky Labs released documentation of attacks performed against states involved in the search for the Malaysian plane which went missing, which were immediately responded to by one of the states attacked. Costin Raiu and Maxim Golovkin. “The Chronicles of the Hellsing APT: The Empire Strikes Back,” Securelist (15 April 2015). For an in-depth overview of attacks that have been
KATZIR | BY LAND, BY SEA, BY AIR. AND BY CYBER? | 121
program aimed at placing Israel among the five leading states in
terms of activity in cyberspace.
Following its work, which was titled “The National Cyber
Initiative,” the government decided on August 2011 to establish a
National Cyber Bureau in the Prime Minister’s Office. The mission of
the Bureau is to formulate Israel’s defensive concept in cyberspace
and to promote cooperation among government entities, academia,
industry and the private sector. The Bureau is also entrusted with
establishing a program for the development of cyber infrastructure
technologies and research.13 The Cyber Bureau was established on
the recommendation of a team headed by the Chairman of the
National Council for Research and Development, Maj. Gen. (res.)
Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel. The establishment of the headquarters
was meant to create a “strategic roof” for all operational units
providing cyber defense (ISA, IDF, Israel Police etc.).14
The next step in the development of the national cyber
defense infrastructure was the establishment of the National
Cyberspace Defense Authority. Following the declaration of the
Prime Minister quoted at the beginning of this article, on February
15, 2015, the Cabinet approved a comprehensive plan for national
readiness in cyberspace. The decision stipulates that a National
Cyber Defense Authority will be established within the Prime
Minister’s Office which will have overall national responsibility for
cyber defense. The Authority’s primary role is to “direct, operate,
and execute as needed all defensive and operational efforts at the
national level in cyberspace, based on a systemic approach, to allow
a full and ongoing defensive response to cyber-attacks, including the
handling of cyberspace threats and cyber events in real time…”15
publicized see: Sharon Afek, “Breaking the Rules and Joining in - on the Encounter between Cyberspace and International Law,” Bein Haktavim, Vol. 3 (2014), pp. 45-75.
13 A broad overview on the development of the Israeli engagement the cyber research area appears in an internal study conducted by the IDF. 14 See also: Shmuel Even and David Siman-Tov, “Cyber Warfare: Concepts and Strategic Trends,” Memorandum 117, Institute for National Security Studies, May 2012, p. 79. 15 Government of Israel, Cabinet Decision 2444, February 15, 2015 (author’s emphasis).
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It was also decided that the Authority will operate a
Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT-IL), whose functions
will be similar to equivalent entities around the world - coordinate
relevant cyber defense information, and share it with all parties in
the economy (including civilian) in a manner that will improve
national preparedness for dealing with cyber-attacks. The Authority
is also entrusted with the design, implementation, and integration of
a national cyber defense doctrine; with the preparation and
readiness of the Israel economy for cyberspace activity; and with the
promulgation of regulations which enable the direction of the
economy and of the cyber defense services market.
The significance of this decision is that alongside the Cyber
Bureau, an operational arm will be established, bearing
responsibility, authority and the capabilities to carry out proactive
activities in cyberspace for the benefit of the national defense. The
responsibility of the Authority will encompass all defense efforts in
cyberspace, and it emerges from the decision that all other agencies
operating in this field, even though they will retain their
independence in specific fields, will operate according to the
guidelines and doctrine as decided by the Authority.
Alongside the national bodies, the IDF has also established
cyber entities. The IDF Cyber Bureau is subordinate to IDF SIGINT
Unit 8200 and is primarily entrusted with the operational aspects of
cyber warfare.16 Another entity is the Cyber Defense Department,
within the C4I Directorate. The main task of this department is to
thwart intelligence attacks and prevent disruptions and damage to
components of the IDF’s computing systems, in order to ensure the
continuous operation, availability and integrity of the IDF’s
computing processes. The Department employs the most advanced
technological capabilities, and has developed groundbreaking
warfare concepts. However, the Department’s mission indicates that
its main tasks are those doctrinally defined as “security,” comparable
to the securing of IDF bases. It does not deal with operational or
16 Sagi Cohen, “8200: Not Only Looking for Geeks with Eyeglasses,” Ynet, 23 October 2012.
KATZIR | BY LAND, BY SEA, BY AIR. AND BY CYBER? | 123
national defense, meaning the defense of the borders of the state
and the security of its citizens from enemy threats.17
Defense in Cyberspace Versus Defense From Cyber Warfare
There are many definitions of the term cyberspace, whose
common denominator is that it is a complex and evolving dimension,
and any attempt to define it is almost doomed to failure from the
start. Therefore, I will not discuss a definition of cyberspace.
However, I will try to evaluate what kind of defense is required in this
dimension, and to distinguish between threats to cyberspace and
threats originating from cyber warfare.
One of the main shapers of state strategy in cyberspace is
the recognition that, on the one hand, this is a crucial space for the
ongoing functioning of the modern state and on the other, it is
exposed to varied threats, some of which are different from the
classical threats to state entities. For example, a single anonymous
attacker in cyberspace striking at civil institutions (such as banks) for
criminal motives, can cause strategic and even tangible security
damage to a state lacking proper defenses. Consequently,
appropriate cyber defense preparation by a state requires the
integration of governmental and civilian systems to establish
defensive systems, gather information and deal with threats in real
time.
One can distinguish between three cyberspace defense
areas. The defense of critical infrastructure (with which the ISA is
currently entrusted);18 the government - civil arena, currently
defended by the government’s ICT Authority; and the
17 For example, “defensive operations” are defined as “blocking enemy attacks and preventing
the capture of the defended area...” (Operations Division, Basic Operational Doctrine, p. 77). A defensive battle is defined as “a tactical form of battle, intended to block enemy attacks and to prevent the capture of the defended area, or to prevent injury to people and equipment found in the area being defended and for who’s safety the defender is responsible.” (Ground Forces, Ground Forces Operations, vol. 3, defensive operations, p. 3).
18 The Government decision states that the responsibility for cyberspace will be transferred within three years from the ISA to the “National Cyber Defense Authority.”
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defense/security arena, in which each organization defends its own
sector.
In addition, it is imperative to prepare a dedicated cross-
sector defense. For example, in the criminal field a comprehensive
package is required, including prevention, investigation, and
enforcement of cybercrimes, currently entrusted to the Israel Police.
However, cross-sectorial defense requires intelligence gathering for
warning and interception, and a national center to identify,
investigate and manage the campaign. The intelligence-gathering
tasks should be consolidated through a special department to be
established at the National Cyber Bureau.
As for a national center to manage such a campaign, a Cyber
Command should be established within the IDF, which would serve
as the cyber operational arm in emergencies. The reasons for this
are mainly practical. Cyberspace is a dimension of war and the IDF is
the only organization able to respond rapidly and effectively to
developing threats, while utilizing the existing budgetary resources
and personnel at its disposal. Also, the IDF has the operational
flexibility to act in all areas of warfare. At the same time, an
understanding that responsibility for defending the civil sector
should be in the hands of a civilian entity operating under the
National Cyber Bureau is reflected in government decisions.19
The establishment of a National Cyber Defense Authority,
whose functions were described above, shows that the concept
adopted by the Israeli government is a unified response to civilian
and security threats, through a civilian authority, which will also
direct the activities of the security forces. The Authority will be
required “to manage, operate and perform” all defense operations
in cyberspace. It seems that the Authority is intended to spread its
wings over all the defense circles, and will even lead the cross-
sectorial defense - both in terms of intelligence collection and the
management aspects of the campaign.20
The proposed response requires a holistic approach to the
threats in cyberspace and to Israeli infrastructure, and is consistent
19 Internal IDF research. 20 Internal IDF research.
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with the approach that considers cyberspace a new warfare
dimension, requiring a unique response.
The Israel Defense Forces - Also Defending in Cyberspace
One of the main reasons for establishing a civil Cyber
Defense Authority is that a substantial proportion of the threats
involve civilian targets. Consequently, and considering the nature of
the cyber warfare dimension, exercising responsibility in this field
necessarily involves exercising of authority over civilian entities.
My understanding of the term cyber warfare, as noted,
subverts these insights. If we perceive cyberspace as a unique and
holistic warfare theater, the claim that it requires a unique response
makes sense. But if we accept that cyber warfare is not a stand-alone
concept, but an extension of the existing battlefield, then dealing
with this threat should form a part of dealing with the entire network
of threats leveled against the State. This concept returns military
issues to center stage.
In Israel, the IDF is the entity entrusted with defending the
state’s borders from external threats. Its status is anchored in the
Basic Law: The Army, which states that “the IDF is the State’s army.”21
The Law and Administration Ordinance stipulates that the army
“shall have authority to do all lawful and necessary acts for the
defense of the State.”22 The IDF's mission is also derived from this
Ordinance which states that: “Subject to the competent authorities
of the State of Israel and its decisions, the IDF is designated (…) to
defend the State of Israel as founded, its territorial integrity and the
borders of its territory (…), the safety of its citizens (…), and any other
national interest (…) against any enemy or threat, external and
internal.”
There is no dispute that as part of its purpose and function,
the IDF is also responsible for defending civilian institutions, such as
the electric and water companies and the banks, from external
21 State of Israel, Israeli Basic Law: The Army, 1976. 22 State of Israel, Law and Administration Ordinance, 1948.
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threats. It is clear to all that the IDF is responsible for intercepting
attacks from the air, sea and land, even when they are directed at
civilians. If so, what is different about the cyber dimension? An
understanding of cyber warfare as a part of classic warfare supports
the conclusion that the overall responsibility for defending from
cyber threats should be entrusted to the IDF.
Furthermore, to fulfill its responsibilities, the IDF was given
the authority to act in the civilian sector during emergencies. The IDF
still has powers originating from the Defense Regulations which
allow, for example, the closure of areas within the state (which is
activated routinely), the removal of people from certain areas, the
closure of roads, and even the directing of civilians. Therefore, there
is no impediment in principle to entrusting the army with the
authority necessary to fulfill its responsibilities in cyberspace, even
if its implementation would involve certain violations of individual
freedoms.23
The law regulating the establishment of the IDF as the sole
armed force in the State of Israel enshrines the basic democratic
principle that on the one hand, the state is entitled to defend its
existence, including through force, and on the other hand, the armed
forces are concentrated in the hands of one entity and are limited
solely to performing the necessary actions in defense of the country.
Also, the Basic Law: The Army, specifies that “no armed forces should
be established or maintained, outside the Israel Defense Forces,
except by law.” Therefore, it seems that the intention to establish a
new operational entity, requiring powers involving the use of force
against foreign entities, raises fundamental constitutional
difficulties.
23 It is understood that this would involve the implementation of a constitutional balancing between the purpose for which the authority was given and its impact on the individual. However, this balancing is the same whether the authority is military or civilian. In any case, the exercise of authority should be made for proper purposes and to no greater extent than required.
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Unity of Command: Between Cyber and the Home Front
I argued above that the cyber threat is a part of the military
campaign, therefore it is appropriate to entrust the IDF with the
response. Some claim that the unique characteristics of cyber
warfare, including the anonymity of the attackers, the possibility that
anyone with a computer can carry out an attack, and the virtual
outcomes of an attack, justify the establishment of a civil authority,
while retaining the operational capabilities and the power to use
force, in the hands of the IDF, to be applied if necessary by the
Authority.24
This option could undermine the fundamental principle of
unity of command, under which each office holder in the IDF is
responsible to the authority of a single commander. This splitting of
command would undermine military discipline. According to this
principle, no civilian authority should be given jurisdiction over IDF
soldiers, who are concurrently subject to military command.25 We
may illustrate this difficulty by two possible scenarios.
One such scenario is the threat of an arbitrary cyber-attack
against critical civil infrastructure. In response, the Authority might
order immediate action to be taken by a military unit. Of course, as
long as the unit is subject to military command, this instruction raises
a difficulty. How will the unit choose between tasks imposed on it by
its military command and the civilian mission? Who will prioritize
among the missions and resource allocation?
It can be argued that this difficulty would be resolved if the
military unit was completely subjugated to the Authority. However,
this solution leads to a second scenario, the integration of a cyber
threat within a total war. A cyber-attack could be, for example, a
preliminary attack to a kinetic one. In this case, which entity will lead
the management of the event? The Authority - responsible for cyber
24 It is reasonable to assume that this was one of the courses of action examined prior to implementing the decision to establish the authority, if only for the practical reasons mentioned above. 25 All of this is relevant, even without a discussion of the source of the civilian authority to give orders to a soldier, and the consequences of failure to comply with the order in this case.
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defense, or the IDF - responsible for defending from other theaters
of war? How would the two “armed forces” be integrated? Who
would decide whether the cyber warriors, under the command of
the Authority, will be employed in defense or offense?
A similar attempt was recently made in the home front
domain. With the establishment of the Ministry of Home Front
Defense, an attempt was made to endow it with authority to directly
employ the Home Front Command. The IDF’s position on this issue
was firm and unequivocal: The Head of the Home Front Command
has a single commander - the IDF Chief of Staff. The IDF also insisted
that in an emergency, it is impossible to separate the front from the
rear, and that the Ministry of Defense and the IDF should be granted
full authority to manage emergency incidents. As for the Ministry of
Home Front Defense, it was proposed that it would focus mainly on
coordination between the government and additional entities and
local authorities and on the preparation of local authorities for
emergencies.
The analogy to the tasks of the Home Front Command leads
to two important conclusions. One conclusion concerns the issue of
responsibility. The rationale, according to which the IDF should be
given complete responsibility for the management of emergency
incidents, is also valid for emergencies in cyberspace, all the more so
when concerning integrated warfare events. This is also true
regarding instructions to the population at the home front. The IDF
was given responsibility in this field, due to an understanding that it
would have the most up-to-date information about the nature of the
latest threats, the chances of their occurrence and the proper way
to defend against them. Likewise, the army has the ability to
determine, subject to political guidance, which actions of the
population would best serve the objectives of the entire campaign.
It is quite possible that in future wars, involving cyber warfare, it will
be necessary to guide the population on how to behave in
cyberspace (such as guidelines restricting Internet or computer use).
Recognition that the cyber and kinetic campaigns are one and the
same supports the conclusion that this responsibility should also be
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entrusted to the entity dealing with the entire management of the
campaign, the IDF.
The second conclusion concerns the issue of authority. If it
was found to be possible to give the IDF the authority required to
engage in the emergency management of the home front, a task
which by its nature involves exercising authority over civilians,26
there is no impediment in principle to granting the IDF similar
powers to deal with the threat of cyber warfare.
The Palmach and Cyberspace
Finally, I would like to present a slightly different angle on
the issue. Dr. Alexander Vacca, an expert in information systems
security and Director of Strategy at the Northrop Grumman
Corporation, claims that the manner in which a combat doctrine is
formed is strongly influenced by the culture of the organization
forming it.27 Organizational culture is reflected in the unique
language common to all members of the organization; in the system
of analogies and metaphors which allow us to understand what
motivates the members of an organization; and the causal contexts
that explain phenomena and traditions within the organization; and
especially, shape the way that new information is processed.
According to Vacca's approach, it is too early to define the
nature of the cyber threat and consequently, too early to decide on
the correct way to deal with it. Therefore, he proposes a “cultural
tool” to predict how combat doctrine would evolve in the cyber
world, according to the entity responsible for its implementation.
Using this tool, he tries to predict the development of the cyber
warfare concept of the US Navy’s Cyber Command, in contrast to its
development by the US Air Force Cyber Command.
The combat culture of the American Navy is based largely on
the writings of Alfred Mahan, an admiral in the American Navy, a
26 The powers of the home front are primarily defined in the Civil Defense Act, 1951. 27 W. Alexander Vacca, “Military Culture and Cyber Security,” Survival (53 (6)), (2011-12), pp. 159-176.
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military historian and thinker, termed “the most important American
strategist of the 19th century.” Mahan argued that the Navy was
crucial to maintaining global trade and the ability to deploy forces
from one place to another, in a manner permitting intervention in
military conflicts, thereby increasing the armed force’s influence
beyond their actual power. Thus, he developed the military doctrine
of the US Navy, based in part on powerful vessels balancing offense
and defense - capable of defeating any enemy at sea and difficult to
defeat; on a proactive approach, rather than the passive concept of
creating deterrence; and based on the concept that defeating the
enemy at sea would indirectly bring victory in the war. Vacca claims
that these characteristics would also shape the combat doctrine of
the Cyber Command, which would be based on securing cyberspace
and its maintenance as a means of trade and the transmission of
military information.
Compared to the Navy, the Air Force's combat doctrine is
influenced by the writings of the military thinker Giulio Douhet, one
of the first thinkers in the field of exercising airpower, at the
beginning of the 20th century. Douhet believed that the best defense
is offense, and saw in the Air Force an offensive machine, whose
enormous power would produce deterrence, but which could also
decide wars by itself, not least through the considerable moral
influence of the offensive. Within this culture, the Air Force has
evolved, as expected, a concept of cyber warfare based on a
powerful offensive capability, synchronized with existing kinetic
capabilities, and capable of producing real psychological effects that
could help to defeat the enemy.
This cultural tool may also be helpful in demarcating the
boundaries of responsibility for cyberspace defense in Israel. Indeed,
unlike the situation in the United States, the number of entities
dealing with the subject is not large, and it would presumably be
difficult to trace the military reasoning underlying the establishment
of the IDF Cyber Bureau, or the thinking underlying the
establishment of the National Cyber Defense Authority, which is
currently underway.
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However, it is certainly possible to try predicting through the
cultural tool the benefits (and drawbacks) that would be derived
from entrusting the IDF with the responsibility for cyber defense.
There is not enough space here to fully discuss the possible
influences of the IDF’s culture on the development of cyber warfare
doctrine. One can only assume that the fighting spirit of the IDF, its
combat principles and doctrine, rooted in the spirit of the Etzel since
the days of the Palmach pre-state paramilitary organization, would
all be revealed in a cyber warfare doctrine. In the changing cyber
environment, where it is difficult to determine what will develop and
when the next attack will occur or how, it seems that the strong
values of the IDF would certainly help to rapidly develop the required
capabilities in cyberspace.
Conclusion
The national threats in cyberspace are many and varied.
They range from an independent hacker breaking into a bank's
computers and stealing a database of credit card numbers; through
organized groups operating across the network to achieve global
objectives; to state or quasi-state organizations using the cyber
world as a weapon for all intents and purposes. The Government of
Israel recently decided that the operational response to these
threats should be provided by a civilian cyber force - an operational
authority which will operate under the National Cyber Bureau,
whose function will be to perform and manage all operational tasks
to defend cyberspace. This is based on a recognition of the need to
provide a uniform and comprehensive response to the unique
threats directed against Israel in cyberspace.
This article introduced another viewpoint, which sees the
mission to defend cyberspace from within the primary security
threat, that of a cyberwar. This threat does not exist on its own, but
is another tier in the network of threats arising from the conflict in
which the State of Israel has found itself since its foundation.
This understanding of the cyber threat casts doubt on the
argument that it should be dealt with by a civilian authority. Just as
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the invention of the airplane, the nuclear weapon and the
development of submarines required a realignment of existing
armed forces - including the defensive systems which protected
civilian installations - but did not lead to the establishment of civilian
armies, the cyber threat should be treated similarly, and all the more
so in Israel’s case. Unlike the states for whom cyberwar is a modern
form of the Cold War between superpowers with no physical
confrontation between them,28 for Israel, the cyber security threat
originates primarily from states and terror organizations with whom
we are in an ongoing armed conflict.
Therefore, it is appropriate that the response to cyberwar be
given in the same manner as the responses to other security threats,
i.e., through the IDF’s might. Entrusting responsibility and authority
to the IDF is in line with the democratic principles underlying the
establishment of the IDF as a single armed force in the state, it
implements correctly the IDF’s mission and vision, while preventing
a conflict with the basic principle of unity of command. Aside from
these arguments, there is also the military tradition - bringing with it
a legacy, combat doctrines and crystallized concepts which may also
contribute to the faster development of capabilities in cyberspace.
There are other benefits, which due to the limitations of space were
not reviewed here, such as the advantages of the IDF in recruiting
and developing human resources, and the structural and
technological advantages of the IDF.
The decision to establish a National Cyber Defense Authority
is another expression of Israel’s responsibility, as a world leader in
this field over years. However, it does not absolve us from asking: is
this indeed the most suitable response to a future cyberwar, would
it not be more appropriate to entrust the IDF - as defender of the
state’s borders in the air, on land and at sea - with this in cyberspace
too?
28 For example, the confrontation between the United States and China and Russia.
KATZIR | BY LAND, BY SEA, BY AIR. AND BY CYBER? | 133
Epilogue
Shortly before the publication of this article, the decision of
the IDF’s Chief of Staff to establish a cyber arm was made public.29 It
seems that this decision reflects an understanding among military
leaders of the IDF's role, among others, in defending Israel from
cyberwar threats. However, it seems that this decision is inconsistent
with the Government's decision. It may create a struggle over
authority between the civilian cyber branch, which “will have overall
national responsibility for cyber defense, and will oversee cyber
defense activities,” in the operational space and the military cyber
branch. It seems that to fulfill the Chief of Staff’s vision, it will be
necessary to re-examine the functions and responsibilities of the
recently established Cyber Defense Authority.
29 Yoav Zitun, “IDF establishes new cyber branch,” Ynet, 15 June 2015. [Hebrew]
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• Sammaan, Jean-Loup. “Cyber Command, The Rift in US Cyber Training
Strategy.” RUSI Journal 155, 2010, pp. 16-21.
• Singel, Ryan. “White House Cyber Czar: There Is No Cyberwar.”
Wired.com, 4 March 2010.
• State of Israel, Basic Law: The Army, 1976.
• State of Israel, Law and Administration Ordinance, 1948.
KATZIR | BY LAND, BY SEA, BY AIR. AND BY CYBER? | 135
• Vacca, W. Alexander. “Military Culture and Cyber Security.” Survival Vol
53, N. 6, 2011-12, pp. 159-176.
• Zitun, Yoav. “IDF establishes new cyber branch.” Ynet, 15 June 2015.
[Hebrew]
Active Defense as the Fourth Pillar of the Israeli Security Concept – The Lesson from Operation
Protective Edge
Meir Finkel, Yaniv Friedman, Dana Preisler-Swery
Introduction
The traditional Israeli security concept proposed three pillars
- deterrence, early warning and decisive defeat (hachra’a) - as the
basis for Israel’s ability to cope with the security challenges
surrounding the country.1 This concept, which had served as the
basis for Israeli thinking in the early years of the State, was found to
be lacking in the 1980s and 1990s. The missile threat on the Israeli
home front in the first Gulf War in 1991, and more so during the
Second Lebanon War in 1996, informally led to the addition, through
the Meridor Committee on Israel’s Defense Doctrine in 2007, of a
fourth, defensive pillar.2 Operations Pillar of Defense in 2012 and
Protective Edge in 2014 further demonstrated the centrality of
defense to Israel’s future security challenges.
However, a conceptual debate about the centrality of
defense within the security concept has yet to be carried out.
Despite the centrality of defense to the new concept, the requisite
combination of defense with the other components of the security
concept - deterrence, early warning, and decisive defeat - has not
yet been deeply examined. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis
of the existing tensions and the required balance between defense
and offense and its implications has been lacking.
Operation Protective Edge will serve as the basis for our
discussion of the status of defense in the Israeli security concept.
During the operation, an active defense system was widely
employed, and we shall use this experience to examine the status of
1 Israel Tal, National Security: The Israeli Experience, Praeger Security International, 2000, pp. 67-88. 2 Dan Meridor, “Civil Defense as Part of the Israeli Security Concept,” in Elran Meir (Ed.) The Civil Front, INSS Memorandum No. 99, June 2009, pp. 15-16. [Hebrew]
138 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
active defense within the wider concept of the defensive pillar of the
security concept.
This article will focus on these two key issues. First, we will
examine the balance between defense and offense within the
security concept, followed by an analysis of the debate between the
political and military echelons over the role of defense. Both issues
will be examined for contrast and comparison, over two-time
periods - before and during Protective Edge.
We will offer two main arguments. The first concerns the
relationship and balance between defense and offense. Operation
Protective Edge was a defensive strategy where the defensive
element was dominant, unlike the military concepts prior to the
Operation that favored the dominance of protection. The second
argument deals with the role of defense in the eyes of the political
and military echelons, following an examination of differences
between politicians who regarded defense as external to the IDF and
equal in value to offense and the IDF which regards defense as an
integral component of its role.
This article is divided into four parts. In the first we will
discuss the dilemmas arising from the addition of the defensive pillar
to the Israeli security concept; in the second we will examine prior
concepts about the relation between defense and offense versus the
reality during Protective Edge; in the third part, we will delve into the
gaps between the political and military echelons, prior to and during
Protective Edge; and in the fourth we will summarize and propose
several operational conclusions.
A methodological note - In this article, we will discuss two
aspects of defense. One is the “defensive pillar” as a new component
of the Israeli security concept, meaning defense of the home front
from all threats. The other deals with active defense - the air defense
array and active defense systems which are concerned with
thwarting the enemy’s rocket and missile capabilities and not with
repulsing enemy forces attempting to enter our territory.
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 139
Dilemmas in Force Design Due to the Addition of a Defensive
Element to the Israeli Security Concept
An understanding that Israel’s security concept needed to
change led to the addition of the defensive pillar. This addition
generated a number of dilemmas due to a clash between the
defensive element and the other elements of the security concept,
as well as the normal tensions underlying any system undergoing
change and reorganization.
Organizationally, as with any system whose resources are
limited, the addition of defensive systems directly reduces other
units' budgets. Since the struggle over resources underlies any
organization or system, the decision to develop, produce, employ,
and maintain defensive systems was met with opposition from the
proponents of an offensive approach within the IDF, who were
apprehensive about budgetary issues as well as the shift in focus to
the new systems.
Conceptually, a debate developed among decision makers,
both politicians and military officers, about the influence of
defensive systems on the decisive defeat concept and its derivative
tool - offense - on the broader IDF security concept. Opponents of
the defensive pillar raised serious arguments concerning the
problematic nature of relying on defense. They argued that “a
defensive line is bound to break,”3 and that real damage would be
sustained to the decisive defeat and offensive principles. These
might well become secondary within the security concept, due to
the creation of a defensive capacity able to neutralize the offensive
capabilities of the opponent.4
An additional conceptual debate centered around the link
between deterrence and the defensive systems. A defensive
capability does contribute to Israel’s deterrence. However, a tension
3 IDF Ground Forces Command, Ground Forces Operations, January 2012, p. 5. [Hebrew] 4 Yiftah S. Shapir. “Lessons from the Iron Dome,” Military and Strategic Affairs, Volume 5, No. 1, May 2013, pp. 87-88.
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exists between deterrence and defense. Investing in defense5 may
be perceived by the other side as an attempt to avoid confrontation,
as an Israeli vulnerability. The proponents of this approach argue
that Israeli deterrence will always provide the best defense, and
investing in defensive means is a waste of resources.6
A third, difficult dilemma that stems from the addition of a
defensive pillar to the security concept is related to the flexibility of
the force. For a long time, the IDF preferred to invest in flexible
weapons systems, with both offensive and defensive characteristics.
The clearest example is the fighter jet, capable of carrying out both
offensive action - bombing enemy targets; and defensive missions -
intercepting enemy aircraft in Israel airspace. Israeli armored forces
are another good example. The anti-aircraft array is a defensive
weapon, while tanks, according to IDF doctrine, are an offensive one.
However, already in the 1950s, the IDF preferred to rely on tanks for
defensive purposes and not only for offensive ones, and thus
consolidated the idea of flexibility.7
Defensive and active defensive systems do not realize this
conceptual idea, since they normally lack the required flexibility to
balance between offense and defense.8 A large budgetary,
operational, and conceptual investment in a non-multifunctional
system required - and still requires - a fundamental change in
attitude to force design concepts and in the willingness of decision
makers to adopt such systems.
These dilemmas, which are related to the role of defensive
systems within force design continue to accompany decision makers
who must create the required balance between budgetary
5 See, for example, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s pronouncement: “A State cannot protect itself ad-infinitum,” in Ahia Rabed. “Olmert: A State cannot protect itself ad-infinitum,” Ynet, June 28, 2007, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3418874,00.html [Hebrew] 6 Meir Elran and David Friedman. “Gas Masks: Toward the End of the Line?” INSS Insight, No. 487, November 24, 2013. 7 Zeev Elron. “The Armored threat and the IDF’s anti-tank array, prior to the Sinai War,” in Hagai Golan and Shaul Shai (eds). The Engines Thunder: 50 years to the Sinai War, Tel Aviv, Ma’arachot, 2006, p. 149. [Hebrew] 8 One can interpret the employment of the Vulcan cannon in the First Lebanon War as an exception.
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 141
constraints, the different elements of the security concept and
flexibility for the military force. In the article’s next section, we will
examine the balance between offense and defense in earlier
concepts, as compared to the reality of Operation Protective Edge.
The Balance Between Defense and Offense in the IDF’s Operational
Concept Compared to Its Execution During Operation Protective
Edge
In this section, we will review the IDF’s official approach9
when dealing with the defensive pillar, and compare it to the orders
which were written and distributed during Operation Protective
Edge.
The IDF’s approach, as it was developed prior to Protective
Edge, reveals the crystallization of an understanding of the role of
9 The “IDF approach” mentioned here is a summation of the conceptual papers written over the last decade, in addition to the conclusions of the Meridor Committee on Israel’s Defense Doctrine.
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defense in relation to the security challenges. It supports the
centrality of defense in the changing battlefield and the need to
augment this element. On the other hand, this approach emphasizes
the importance of a balanced security concept, while doubly
emphasizing the roles of deterrence and decisive defeat. It
concludes that the defensive pillar accompanies offensive action and
in fact enables its implementation, therefore a necessary balance
must be maintained between offensive and defensive responses.
This approach makes clear the (current) need to continue
examining the defensive pillar’s influence on the other three pillars
of the concept - deterrence, early warning and decisive defeat. This
examination, which has not been satisfactorily performed, exists in
the shadow of the presumption that the role of defense is to enable
the realization of the offensive concept.
Furthermore, the secondary role of defense as a supporting
element to the offensive effort is perceived by some of the shapers
of this approach as not only secondary to the other components of
the security concept, but as a component which could actually
become a heavy burden. They fear that it could prevent further
development of the other components and damage, even weaken,
Israel’s offensive response.
In conclusion, underlying the IDF’s approach is the
assumption that the defensive pillar plays a lesser role than the role
it actually played during Protective Edge (as we will show below).
This approach even views the defensive pillar as a “stepson” of the
security concept, which was born to live in the shadow of its two
dominant brothers - deterrence and decisive defeat.
In reality, during Protective Edge, defense received a very
different type of treatment. The massive aerial bombardment and
limited ground maneuver which specifically targeted the offensive
tunnels gave the fighting the appearance of an offensive operation.
However, Protective Edge’s rationale was conservatively defensive,
with limited objectives, focused on returning calm to the south of
Israel and removing threats. Examination of the General Staff’s
operational idea demonstrates the same rationale - the defensive
effort as the priority, even during the offensive stage of the ground
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 143
maneuver. This rational was also shared by the political echelon,
prior to and during the operation, whose main objective was to
thwart and prevent injury to the Israeli home front.
This examination exposes a growing gap concerning the
defensive element between the IDF’s concept and attitudes prior to
the operation and the actual approach adopted during Protective
Edge. Prior to the operation, the prevailing concept in the IDF viewed
the defensive pillar, in the best case, as an element supporting the
offensive, which was supposed to assist the other three pillars,
primarily the offensive (decisive defeat) one; or in the worst case as
a delaying factor which would hinder the proper employment of the
other elements. In fact, it is clear that during Protective Edge, the
defensive pillar acquired a central importance, even gaining
dominance over the other elements of the classic security concept.
Why was such a wide gap created between perceptions of
defense prior to the operation (as well as during other operations)
and its actual implementation?
There are three possible reasons, which in combination
created this gap. First, the lack of study of the influence of the
defensive pillar, a pillar that has strengthened over the years, on the
other security concept elements. Second, the hostilities that led to
the writing of the General Staff and conceptual position papers were
major operations, in which the offense was the primary component,
while defense played only a supporting role. An operation directed
at achieving limited objectives, such as Protective Edge, was not
mentioned in these position papers, and therefore the defensive
element, which was central to the operation, did not find expression
in them. The third reason relates to the IDF’s ethos. The offensive
ethos of the IDF is clearly expressed in these conceptual papers, as
part of an outlook that emphasizes the centrality of offensive force
design. In the current reality, this is not the sole consideration and
other non-military considerations play a significant role too.
Despite the gap between the defense concept and its
implementation, it seems that the centrality of defense within the
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Israeli security concept, and in the totality of its practical tools, is not
in doubt. Still, the question remains, why not develop defense to the
maximum?
A partial answer to this question was presented in the first
part of the present article, which noted the struggle over resources,
the balance among the security concept components, and flexibility
of force design, as considerable and counterbalancing factors against
the desire to invest greater resources in defense. However, it is
important to note two points within the IDF discourse, which hint at
dilemmas arising from apprehension about an over-reliance on the
defensive pillar.
The first is linked to the psychological-cognitive
characteristic associated with defensive capabilities and to a possible
failure of defense. We have already mentioned the basic tenet of
ground warfare that “a defensive line is bound to break,”10 as a basic
principle of defense. This accurate observation has one more
implication that is directly connected to the Israeli active defense
systems. Israeli expectations, both military and civil, as were
reflected in Operations Pillar of Defense and Protective Edge, are for
a perfect defense.
However, we should remember that there is a technological
aspect to Israel’s struggle with its opponents.11 It is entirely
conceivable that Israel’s enemies are working on a response to its
defensive advantage, and by finding a way to breach the defensive
systems, will strike, even partially, at its home front. Such a strike
may considerably reduce the effectiveness of Israel’s defensive
systems. There is an apprehension that an over-reliance on defensive
systems exposes Israel, given the sense that each blow to the home
front, even if only amounting to a few rockets and casualties, would
be considered a major failure.
A good demonstration of this was the media's attitude about
the closure of Ben Gurion Airport following the landing of a single
10 IDF Ground Forces Command, op. cit. 11 Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard University Press, 2002.
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 145
rocket in a nearby town,12 and the resentment of the residents of the
Gaza border towns due to the IDF’s failure to intercept mortar
shells.13 Such a concept, which relies on the dominance of the
defense, may create an unachievable benchmark during a conflict,
thus generating public, psychological and operational
disappointment.
The second point is associated with the required balance
between defense, offense and decisive defeat in relation to the
length of a campaign. The success of the active defense systems in
Protective Edge, both the Iron Dome interceptions and the early
warning, identification and location system, provided political and
military decision makers with a longer period to make decisions, due
to the reduced impact on the Israeli home front. Massive damage to
the Israeli home front would have forced a shortening of the
campaign, involving a ground maneuver, a massive employment of
aerial strikes and wide collateral damage to civilians on the other
side.
This breathing room, unlike the situation in the Second
Lebanon War, had a real impact on the campaign’s length. An
examination of the strategic objectives of the operation raises an
essential question about the role of the defensive system in
influencing the operational rationale of the campaign. The limited
strategic objectives which did not seek to achieve a decisive defeat
pushed the offensive effort into second place and considerably
eroded the prevailing understanding of the need for a short
campaign. The apprehension that arises is connected to a desire to
balance defense and offense when determining the strategic
objectives of future operations, and with the need to conduct a
systemic analysis of the influences of all defensive systems on all
types of IDF operations.
12 Yiftah Shapir, “Rocket warfare in Protective Edge,” in Kurz, Anat and Brom, Shlomo, (Eds) The Lessons of Operation Protective Edge, INSS, November 2014, p. 45. 13 Oded Bar Meir, “In the Eshkol Regional Council: ‘Feeling like sitting ducks’,” Mynet, 21 August 2011, http://www.mynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4111775,00.html. [Hebrew]
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The Gap Between the Earlier Attitude and the Operation’s Conduct
What we learn from this gap leads us to two complementary
conclusions. The first relates to the importance of integrating the
defensive pillar in Israel’s security challenges, the other tries to
balance the dominance of defense, as seen in Protective Edge, with
future challenges.
Assuming that operations such as Protective Edge - with
limited objectives, lacking a clear foundation for achieving decisive
defeat, and a goal of restoring calm - will continue to form a key part
of the totality of security challenges facing Israel in the near future,
then focusing on defense in general and on active defense in
particular is both vital and proper. Planning such a campaign (of
limited objectives) and its conduct will necessitate regarding this
pillar as a key component, alongside the other security concept
elements.
That said, it is important to look forward, beyond the last
campaign. Despite the success of the active defense systems, history
teaches us that over-reliance on defensive systems is dangerous. Our
opponents’ ability to breach these systems means that over-reliance
is problematic at best, and grossly irresponsible at worst.
The challenge is twofold. From the technological-
operational perspective, we must continue to maintain Israel’s
qualitative advantage and to increase it, to be ready for any new
challenge. From the conceptual-psychological perspective, we must
not be drawn into feeling that such operations (of limited objectives)
are the only challenge. We must continue discussing both all-out and
limited war doctrines in order to develop and strengthen them. We
must examine how, in such a scenario, offense can be turned into the
main element in the decision makers’ toolbox, in order not to
unsettle the important balance between offense and defense. This
challenge is not limited to the understanding of the military echelon.
It is validated by the need to explain these insights to the political
echelon and to emphasize the complexity and problematic nature of
over-reliance on defense.
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 147
The Dispute Between the Political and Military Echelons Over Air-
Defense
Our primary argument here is about the existence of deep
conceptual gaps concerning defensive systems between the political
echelon and the IDF. While politicians regard the defensive element
as external to the IDF, a parallel track to the military-offensive and
political elements, the IDF regards defense as an integral component
of its function, to be employed in a similar manner to other
components of the military system, and devoid of any specific
importance justifying special treatment. These gaps create tensions
between the political and military echelons, regarding the type of
force design and employment to be adopted.
Even prior to Protective Edge, the political echelon placed
defense high on its list of priorities. The political echelon was the
motivating force behind the development of this capability, due to
its understanding of future challenges. It therefore gained a sense of
ownership over the system. In the statements of several defense
ministers during the years 2001-2010, and in an interview with Amir
Peretz, defense minister from 2005-2006, their perception of
defense as an important and central element is apparent: “We must
not be satisfied with offense only, but must create an integrated
defense… passive… plus Iron Dome which will guarantee the military
and political echelons completely new maneuvering space...”14 This
perception was also clearly reflected in actual force design and in the
political echelon’s will to emphasize defensive, especially active
defense systems, as significant element deserving of special
attention.15
14 Amir Peretz, an interview on the Knesset Channel, March 12, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3LJsqI5F9k. 15 According to Amir Rapaport, in the IDF’s Multi-Year Plan Teuza, active defense is assigned the third priority (together with the Air Force) after cyberwarfare and intelligence. The ground forces are accorded the forth priority. Amir Rapaport, “The IDF’s Multi-Year Plan: force design or the dismantling of the ground forces,” in “The IDF’s Force design”, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Colloquia on Strategy and Diplomacy, No. 28, Bar Ilan University, 2014, p. 24. [Hebrew]
148 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
Throughout the operation one may identify the deep
involvement of the political echelon in decisions regarding active
defense and defense in general. The winds blowing in from the
political echelon regarding defense in previous years did not subside
with the beginning of Protective Edge. The importance ascribed by
the political echelon to defense and its different appreciation of
defense’s role was expressed in their involvement in decisions
regarding the employment of active defenses. The high regard and
priority given to defense was reflected in the association between
the successful employment of active defense systems in intercepting
Hamas’s rockets and missiles on the one hand, and with the political
echelon regarding this success as strategically thwarting Hamas’
objectives on the other. The strategic importance ascribed to these
interceptions became an attractive factor and greatly contributed to
the political echelon’s perspective of the defensive systems as being
external to the IDF.
The key point is connected to the political echelon’s position
on the balancing of offense and defense (as noted). The political
echelon regards defense as enabling a reduction in the need to take
the offensive and thus defense belongs to the political, not the
military, toolbox.
On the other hand, the IDF regards defense as an internal
element, similar to the other elements in its toolbox and to be
employed in the same manner. This IDF approach in not only
conceptual, but is reflected at the other military levels. This does not
relate solely to the technical-organizational level, dealing with
question of who employs the defense system and to whom it
belongs, but touches on a broader perspective of the system and
military action.
From the army’s viewpoint, since defensive tools belong to
the military, they are part of the military toolbox, not the political
echelon’s. Active defense is not a tool to be directly controlled by the
political echelon and decision makers, but a military one. The role of
defense from this perspective, is to support the offense and in effect
to enable it.
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 149
This issue is associated with an operational issue of the
highest priority: “What is to be defended?” There is a built-in tension
between the natural political inclination to defend the population in
the home front and the military-professional inclination, which is
natural as well, to protect installations of strategic importance to the
military campaign. Assuming that overall resources are limited, and
that this is a practical, not a theoretical, dilemma, we are witnessing
here another aspect of the gap between the two perceptions.16
16 Yossi Arazi and Gal Perel quote Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who stated as Head of the IDF Northern Command that: “The Iron Dome must be directed first and foremost at preserving the IDF’s offensive capability and not at defending civilians… it should protect Israel’s critical infrastructure, IDF bases, and military forces’ gathering points,” Yossi Arazi and Gal Perel. “Integrating Technologies to Protect the Home Front against Ballistic Threats and Cruise Missiles,” Military and Strategic Affairs, Volume 5, No. 3, December 2013, p. 94.
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Two questions arise from the gap between the positions and
perceptions of the political and military echelons: Why does the
political echelon aspire to directly control the active defense
systems? Why does the IDF ignore the dissonance between itself and
the political echelon?
As for direct control, there are some possible answers. First,
regarding the ownership aspect, the political echelon regards itself
as directly responsible for the very existence of active defense
systems, having forced them upon the army, having obtained the
funding from abroad and having pushed for their employment. This
bestows upon them, in their opinion, the right to control a tool that
they promoted. Second, this aspiration is associated with changes in
the nature of war. In the past, the IDF stood between the home front
and the enemy, but currently, in the age of missile and rocket wars,
this separation has disappeared. The defense array is what separates
citizens from rockets. Therefore, this array, brought to the army by
the political echelon, should be under the latter’s control.
This point is associated with the meaning of failure. If, in the
past, a tactical, even an operational, failure on the battlefield did not
immediately affect the home front, currently, a tactical failure in
intercepting a missile or a rocket leads directly to civilian casualties.
The direct link between the success or failure of the active defense
systems and citizens' lives has major political importance, and
politicians therefore wish to control these systems, which they
assume are easier to control than offensive systems. The offensive,
decisive defeat effort draws international shockwaves, e.g. the
Goldstone Report; it may entail heavy casualties; and may critically
undermine regional stability. Therefore, the political echelon wishes
to minimize it, preferring limited campaigns of a primarily defensive
nature. Such campaigns offer better control and supervision, and
politicians believe that they should be entrusted with these.
There are several possible answers to why the IDF ignores
this dissonance between itself and the political echelon. First, the
IDF’s offensive ethos is incompatible with the spirit of this defensive
approach of limited operations. Conflicting ethos are not only a
methodological problem, they also give rise to a cognitive
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 151
dissonance that prevents one or both sides from understanding the
gap.
Second, the IDF’s force design and its major capabilities -
military units, weaponry and training- are all directed at an offensive
scenario. These existing capabilities directly address the existing
concept and prevent an understanding of the existing tension.
The third answer stems from an issue mentioned above, the
multifunctional nature of the force. The active defense array is an
anomaly in force design. It is not flexible, it cannot be employed for
both offensive and defensive purposes as most of the force
generated by the IDF.
The last reason is directly linked to the first, the offensive
ethos. The IDF does not believe in the possibility of achieving victory
in a war, campaign or a limited conflict through the defense. A victory
always entails an offensive. This cognitive gap, alongside the other
points raised above, feeds the existing dissonance between the IDF
and the political echelon.
How Can These Gaps Be Narrowed?
The response to these gaps should, first and foremost, be a
dialogue between the political and military echelons. Exposing these
dilemmas is a necessary condition for their resolution, but is not
sufficient. As noted, the military echelon should clarify to the
politicians the problematic character of an over-reliance on defense.
Both echelons should jointly study the characteristics of active
defense systems employment, especially the built-in tension
between defending critical national and military infrastructures,
which on the one hand is essential to the offense and on the other,
defending the home front and population centers.
Another issue to be clarified is the significance of overusing
defense during limited operations on the readiness for an all-out war
which may break out during such an operation. An overly intensive
employment of active defense systems, disregarding the proper
balance between these systems, during a limited operation, may
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hinder the tactical-operational as well as cognitive readiness for
more intense warfare. Clarifying this issue is critical to coping with
possible future situations in which a limited campaign on one front
may escalate into an all-out war on several fronts. At that point, all
basic concepts - from the readiness to embark on such a campaign
to the level of supplies and armaments, would require a complete
rethink.
Conclusion
Operation Protective Edge was the second operation, after
Pillar of Defense, in which active defense system were widely
employed. Despite the offensive employment of the air and ground
forces, the prevailing concept throughout the operation regarded
defense as the dominant element of the security concept. In fact, we
witnessed a new IDF concept that regarded preventing enemy
achievements as the first priority, no less than achieving our own
objectives. Using soccer terminology, we may say that the IDF
preferred a 1-0 win over a 5-1 victory.
Two major conceptual gaps were discussed in this article.
The first dealt with the relation between offense and defense.
Protective Edge had a defensive operational rationale. Preserving
the status quo, seeking to achieve victory by forestalling enemy
achievements, became the main operational idea. In such a
campaign, the defensive element gained dominance over the other
security concept elements, mainly offense and decisive defeat. This
was a totally different situation from the previous national-military
concept, which was aware of the importance of the defensive pillar,
but never granted it leadership, certainly not dominance, over the
other pillars.
The other gap is related to the role of defense in the eyes of
the political and military echelons. Due to the reasons noted above
- ownership of the defensive systems, the changing characteristics of
warfare, and the will to control these systems directly - the political
echelon regards the defensive element as being somewhat external
to the IDF and on the same level as the military-offensive and the
political elements. The IDF, on the other hand, regards defense as an
FINKEL, FRIEDMAN & PREISLER-SWERY | THE FOURTH LEG OF THE SECURITY CONCEPT | 153
internal element and therefore as part and parcel of the totality of
force design and employment. This gap creates many tensions in
force design and employment.
The main significance of the operation was in fact related to
the success of the defensive pillar. In contrast to previous experience
which demanded a rethink or a genuine process of drawing of
conclusions following a failure, the positive results of the active
defense systems encouraged us, and rightly so, to examine future
influences.
We can predict, with a certain degree of caution, that its
success will position defense as an equal, or perhaps as dominant,
among the security concept’s pillars. Therefore, we expect to see it
gaining influence among military and political decision makers.
However, due to the dangers of an over-reliance on defense, whose
risks were first exposed during the last operation, it is important to
preserve the dominance of the IDF’s offensive capabilities and to
further develop them.
The debate over the development and influence of the
active defense array, was until now focused on the capability itself. It
is our duty to develop an operational analysis of the totality of the
IDF’s capabilities, hand in hand with the political echelon, in order to
balance all of these elements, and to be prepared to optimally cope
with all the challenges waiting at the IDF and Israel’s door.
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About the Authors
• Mr. Saul Bronfeld is a research fellow at the Dado Center. He was
CEO and chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange from 1996-
2003, and is a former member of the Bank of Israel's
administration. Bronfeld holds an MA in Security Studies from
Tel Aviv University, and teaches in the Executive MBA program at
Tel Aviv University.
• Brigadier General (Res.) Dr. Meir Finkel heads the Dado Center.
He is the former director of the IDF's Ground Forces Concept
Development and Doctrine Department. As a Colonel in the IDF,
Finkel commanded armored units up to brigade level. He holds
a PhD in Evolutionary Biology and a PhD in Political Science.
• Mr. Yaniv Friedman is a researcher at the Dado Center. He was a
researcher at the Center for National Security Studies at the
Haifa University. Friedman holds an MA in International
Relations and History.
• Mrs. Dana Preisler-Swery is a researcher at the Dado Center. She
led the political-security branch and studied the Israeli security
concept at the Reut Institute. Preisler Swery holds an MA in
Security Studies from Tel Aviv University.
• Brigadier General Shachar Shohat heads the Air Defense
Command, including during Operation Pillar of Defense and
Operation Protective Edge. He commanded Air Wings 167 and
168. Shohat holds a BA in Human Resources Management and
Business Management from Ben Gurion University, and an MA
in Political Studies from Haifa University. He is a graduate of
Israel’s National Security College.
• Colonel Munir Amar, of blessed memory (1968-2016), was Head
Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. He
commanded the Haifa District of the Home Front Command and
was commander of the Mount Hermon Brigade, 2009-2012. He
graduated from the National Security College.
• Lieutenant Colonel Eli Michelson heads the Knowledge
Development Department at the Dado Center. He served in a
range of command positions in the Armored Corps, and also
158 | THE DADO CENTER JOURNAL | VOL. 4
served in the Ground Forces Command. Michelson holds an MA
in Business Management from Ben-Gurion University, and wrote
a thesis about the IDF’s force design prior to the Six Day War. He
is a PhD student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
• Lieutenant Colonel Roni Katzir is the Head of the Legislation and
Consultancy Branch in the Military Advocate General Office. He
has served in a range of positions in the Military Advocate
General Office. Katzir holds an MA from the Law Faculty, and a
BA in Legal Studies and Accounting at Tel Aviv University. He is
currently a PhD student at Tel Aviv University's Law Faculty.