Analysis: Why Israel Downplayed One of Its Biggest Military Exercises
Amos Harel
Haaretz, June 21, 2019The military exercise in northern Israel this week was one of the largest of its kind in recent years. Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi spent most of his time there during the past few days. All the top brass from the General Staff also visited the units that were training. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was there on Wednesday for a few hours. Nonetheless, apart from one short video distributed following Netanyahu’s visit, the media coverage of the exercise was slight and the details about it officially released by the Israel Defense Forces were minimal.This was intentional. In recent years, the IDF would initiate extensive coverage of the exercises, with a double message – for domestic consumption and for outside consumption. The army wished to broadcast to the Israeli public that it had learned lessons from the Second Lebanon War and the rounds of conflict in the Gaza Strip, and the units had gone back to proper training. For the organizations in neighboring countries, the message was one of deterrence. This time, the intention was to ensure minimal leakage of information to the enemy. Therefore, it was not revealed which units participated in the exercise, how many reservists had been called up and what the parameters of the exercise were.What can be said is that there was a broad spectrum of forces participating, both from the standing army and the reserves, and it was integrated into the annual air force training exercise. The maneuvers practiced by the forces were drawn up in accordance with the major challenge the IDF will presumably face in the coming years: confrontation with what Kochavi calls “terror armies,” organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas that gradually acquire military capabilities, some of which are comparable to those of states in the region. A large amount of money was invested in the current exercise in an attempt to replicate combat scenarios insofar as possible, down to the smallest details.Netanyahu, according to his statement at the end of his visit, was encouraged by what he saw in the units – but that’s something all prime ministers and all defense ministers say whenever they observe a military exercise. There are two main questions at the conclusion of this exercise. The first is whether the capabilities that were demonstrated in a concentrated way, with of all of the army’s priorities at the fore, accurately reflect the level of all the divisions and brigades. The answer to this question is in the negative. There are many gaps between units – and at the moment it seems the chief of staff’s plans do not correspond with the resources the government and the Finance Ministry are prepared to allocate to them.
The second question is whether the government will feel sufficient confidence in itself to deploy the IDF ground forces in a broad, deep action inside enemy territory if a war breaks out. The answer to this question depends on the gravity of the war scenario. It is possible that in circumstances in which the Israeli home front is facing rocket barrages and destruction of an extent and ferocity it has never known in the past, the government will have no choice but to authorize the army to act, even if that entails the risk of heavy losses.
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Israeli Nuclear Deterrence in Context: Effects of the US-Russian Rivalry
Prof. Louis Rene Beres
BESA, June 20, 2019
Competent military assessments of any individual state’s nuclear deterrence posture must focus on pertinent weapons (both offensive and defensive) and corresponding issues of threat credibility. In the case of Israel, analytic focus has generally highlighted that country’s presumptive missile and anti-missile capabilities and expected “willingness to launch” under assorted circumstances. However, in order to suitably reinforce Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture, a substantially more comprehensive assessment is required.
This broader orientation should be laser-focused on the world system context. The single most revealing expression of world system context is easy to identify. In essence, it may be best described as “Cold War II.” This is not because the US-Russian rivalry is in any way more significant than the fundamentally anarchic system structure originally bequeathed at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 but because the current rivalry – unlike our historically underlying system of geopolitics or power balancing2 – is still remediable.
It can hardly be denied that the present system of world politics is coming to resemble or even replicate certain bifurcations exhibited during “Cold War I.” This transformation (or “retransformation”) applies to the two prevailing adversarial superpowers. A bipolar antagonism between the US and Russia is now easily recognizable amid 1) a steadily expanding nuclear arms race; 2) various points of more-or-less obvious geopolitical disagreement (e.g., Venezuela); and 3) expanding differences regarding worldwide human rights.3
For Israeli military planners and others who might be interested in Israel’s nuclear strategy, core US-Russian antagonisms must be studied together with Israel’s relevant weapons systems and presumptive nuclear threat credibility. These system-defining antagonisms are transient, in constant flux, and changing (simultaneously) in both foreseeable and unforeseeable ways. Going forward, critical superpower antagonisms could become increasingly vital or even determinative for Israeli nuclear deterrence. In this connection, a great deal will ultimately depend upon the precise manner in which this resurrected or reborn bipolar rivalry may affect critically underlying elements of Israel’s overall strategic posture.4
Reciprocally, this discoverable manner of impact could depend very considerably upon Jerusalem’s multiple and overlapping national nuclear power alignments with Russia or the US, or (at least conceivably) with both. Antecedent to any such starkly complex considerations, much will depend upon the expected rationality or non-rationality of each national nuclear power and on certain plausible interactions or “synergies” detectable between the core nuclear adversaries and their respective alliance partners/clients. Regarding the first concern, Israel’s planners will always need to bear in mind the timeless wisdom of German philosopher Karl Jaspers (Reason and Existence, 1935): “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Israeli Robots Will Accompany Soldiers into Battle in Future Wars
Seth Frantzman
Middle East Forum, June 6, 2019
Israeli robots from the companies General Robotics and Gahat Robotics could be man’s best friend in future battlefields.
General Robotics makes the DOGO tactical robot and Pitbull, a remote weapon that can be put on an unmanned vehicle, such as Gahat’s unmanned ground vehicles. Gahat robotics showcased several of its models at ISDEF on Wednesday, Israel’s largest defense and homeland security expo.
At first glance, the Gahat robots look like regular all-terrain vehicles. That is because the vehicle base and wheels are from the Canadian company Argo ATV. This is the kind of thing you could be driving through the woods of Quebec. But in Israel it has been transformed into an eight-wheeled model and a four-wheeled model. One model has a 7.62 mm. machine gun on it, part of the General Robotics Pitbull system. The other is just a flat surface.
Sharon de-Beer, CEO of Gahat, showed a video of how unmanned vehicles can perform a variety of tasks. These ATVs, for instance, are amphibious. They can go across streams and aid in search and rescue.
“The next generation of war will be more robots and less soldiers,” says de-Beer. That means when special forces or infantry need to go into a village, they could have vehicles driving alongside them that don’t require people to drive them. If the soldiers get to a point where they want to investigate what’s behind a house, they can send in the robots. If the robotic vehicle gets shot, it’s not like losing a human life. The vehicles are equipped with optics, sensors, and can be accessorized with cameras and even missiles.
“The next generation of war will be more robots and less soldiers.”
De-Beer says that the unmanned vehicles on display could carry equipment weighing between 450 kg. and 1.3 tons. That means soldiers could put ordnance, ammunition, food or other things on them. They could also transport wounded. For many soldiers on a long-distance mission over days, carrying water is a hassle. Here the soldiers can walk along with a robot by their side carrying their water, like horses would have done for Napoleon’s army.
But the robots can also be equipped to be “warriors” as well, to shoot and conduct intelligence missions. For instance, they could be dropped into a battlefield or inserted from the sea to conduct reconnaissance. A helicopter could bring them in at night, drop them off and let the vehicles go into a village before a raid takes place. While one of the robots was diesel, the other two vehicles use batteries, which may be a limitation as to how long they can operate.
Gahat says that its unmanned vehicles can be controlled from a satellite. It is already in operation assisting fire departments, but in several years, it could be used more by militaries. The DOGO, a portable, tactical combat robot produced by General Robotics, is already operational.
The DOGO, designed by General Robotics, is already operational. The small DOGO tactical robot has a Glock 9 mm. that is inserted into the vehicle before it is deployed. It weighs around 10 kg. and can help counterterrorism units avoid friendly fire incidents and also reduce casualties by letting the robot go into a terrorist situation first. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
