I noted changes in Israeli ground force policies for armor and artillery that seem appropriate for a focus on defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon by increasing the amount of precision fire support for Israeli army units.
Strategypage writes about Israel's change in fire support focus:
Israel accepted that the American use of GPS guidance in rockets, while more expensive, was more effective than the cheaper (but less accurate) Israeli developed rocket guidance system and even cheaper unguided artillery shells.
Israel has gone ahead and developed its own GPS guided rockets [and] Israel has also developed a GPS guided 155mm artillery shell and 120mm mortar shell. Each tank battalion has some of these 120mm mortars and using GPS guided shells does not require using a lot of ammo to get the job done. In effect, Israel has all but eliminated the use of the traditional artillery barrage, reducing ammo use by over 90 percent. This meant many artillery units were disbanded.
This radical shift in artillery weapons has been coming since the 2006 war with Hezbollah, when the Israelis found that they did little damage to Hezbollah bunkers, even though over 120,000 unguided 155mm shells were fired at them. Meanwhile, they noted that the U.S. 227mm MLRS rockets with GPS guidance was excellent at taking out similar targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So there you go. If Israel drives all the way to Baalbek, Hezbollah will take a beating and lose the consolation prize of heavy Lebanese casualties that lack of precision weapons (and training and organizations to exploit them) would guarantee.
