Friday, April 29, 2011

Double or Nothing?

Israel has learned the lessons of getting beaten in 2006 by Hezbollah by reinvigorating their ability to attack fast and hard on the ground rather than relying on air power to deliver victory over ground opponents.

Israel's infantry has received much attention so that they can move and react fast to smash an enemy:

Since the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel has implemented many military reforms. One of the less noted areas of change is what happened to the infantry. Lots of little things, that all contributed to making the infantry faster, both for moving, planning and fighting. ...

Because of all these reforms, Israeli military commanders are anxious to go back into Gaza, feeling that they have new tactics and equipment that enable them to tear Hamas apart without losing many troops.
I'm not sure when that last sentence was written. Strategypage often updates older posts with additional  information, and this seems like pre-2008 wording. Later, of course. the post notes the success of the 2008-2009 Winter War, in winning with an extremely lopsided body count with friendly fire killing more Israelis than Hamas gunmen:

But the main weapon was speed. The Israeli troops were trained, under realistic conditions, before they went in. They developed combat drills that used the UAVs, robots, armored vehicles and missile weapons to outmaneuver and promptly attack Hamas fighters before the enemy could react. Speed kills, and the Israeli infantry have been retrained, reorganized and reequipped since 2006 to get more speed.

So this speed will be more of use should the Israelis have to fight in Lebanon again against Hezbollah (and possibly Syria, too). With growing bloodshed and unrest in Syria, I think there is a real possibility that the Syrians or their Iranian handlers will gamble on a foreign crisis in Lebanon against Israel to try and rally the Syrian people around the Assad regime.

While this ploy might have worked against the Israeli military of 2006, if the Syrians try it today they'll get their ass handed to them on a platter. And the Syrian people are unlikely to look kindly on a losing dictator who proves more capable of killing Syrian civilians than Israeli soldiers.