Can precision firepower driven by intelligence and speed provide victory without boots on the ground?
Israeli PULS systems work with a new Israeli fire control system that coordinates the use of multiple ground and air launched missiles and rockets. This new fire control system was used successfully in 2021 when Hamas started another war with the massive launch of thousands of rockets. This attack was defeated within days using the new Israeli fire control system, which included some innovative systems for quickly finding targets for Israeli rockets and missiles and destroying more targets in a shorter time, with fewer Israeli losses than in the 50-day 2014 Hamas war.
The approach had its origin in failure:
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.
This approach worked against Hamas earlier this year.
But Hamas is a smaller threat in a smaller area that is entirely very close to Israel. Could Israel replicate the success against Hamas, which fields a much smaller arsenal, in a war with Hezbollah?
Is this speedy precision how Israel will cope with Iron Dome weakness?
I continue to suspect that Israel will need to go in on the ground against Hezbollah. But firepower hopes spring eternal.
On the other hand, I've thought the logic of the situation requires an Israeli large-scale ground raid for a long time now.
Still, it is possible that Israel's counter-battery and leadership decapitation approach will work very well against the specific threats that Hamas and Hezbollah pose. But in the process warp the Israeli military into a force that can't cope with enemies that fight outside that narrow threat range.
UPDATE: Israel's quadcopter swarm forward observer. But it was enabled by Gaza's small size:
Israel recently confirmed that it had used swarms of military-grade quadcopters equipped with encrypted communications and a guidance system that enables a swarm (dozens or more quadcopters) to be controlled by one human operator. ...
Gaza was an ideal place to use a quadcopter swarm because it is small; 41 kilometers long and for most of that length it is about ten kilometers wide.
Is this a template for other enemies? I have strong doubts.
UPDATE: Will southern Lebanon be the first test of the Gaza template on a larger scale?
Three rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory Wednesday and the army responded with sustained artillery fire, Israel's military said. There was no immediate information on damages or casualties.
It is apparently quite possible that Palestinian groups not affiliated with Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, fired the rockets in order to spark a war between Hezbollah and Israel.
