Am I Wrong About Air Power Limits?

Is air power far more effective than I have assessed? Is Israel's destruction of 80% of Hezbollah's rocket arsenal the proof I am wrong?

Israel's defense minister says Israel has achieved a major success with its air campaign against Hezbollah:

“I estimate the remaining capacity of the missiles and rockets to be in the order of 20%, and also it is not organized in the way that it used to be organized, in a way that [Hezbollah] could fire [large] volleys,” he said.

If Hezbollah started with 150,000, that means 30,000 are left so the last part of disruption is important. Even that 20% could inflict serious damage if fired over a week. You can't kill the rain with anti-rocket systems, I've long warned.

But my conclusion from that logic was that Israel would need to send in ground troops to end the threat of a devastating Hezbollah barrage:

I have no idea what the Israelis are thinking when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah.

I thought Israel screwed the pooch in 2006 by failing to go in for the kill with ground troops and instead trying to rely on air power.

Although I will grant that Israel did pound Hezbollah enough to keep them quiet, Hezbollah endured to deny Lebanon a chance at a normal future and is currently an important component of Assad's military effort to fight the rebellion. And Hezbollah's arsenal of rockets is far larger when they decide to no longer be quiet.

The 2008-2009 Gaza Winter War seemed to validate my hopes that Israel had learned a lesson.

So a drive on Baalbek is the way to go, right? I've long thought that a multi-division push is in order.

Am I wrong about the relative strength of air power versus rocket barrages?

Perhaps. But I don't think his has really been a test of my thinking. My assumption on the limits of air power was that bombing physical rockets would take too long to have an effect against an enemy determined to overwhelm your air defenses. 

And Israel's 80% accomplishment took over a year to achieve, during which Hezbollah refrained from trying to launch a big barrage to overwhelm Iron Dome. Hezbollah kept up a steady drip of attacks in Solidarity Theater instead. In about a year, Hezbollah fired about 8,000 rockets at Israel. Or about 160 per week. With only a small percent of unguided rockets likely to hit a target, not that many anti-rocket rockets would be needed each week.

And even now, it is Hezbollah's disrupted command and control that erodes their ability to surge what they have left--30,000?--to punish Israel. And I assume some are simply unavailable in the short term because they are in storage. Given time, Hezbollah can repair and overcome their limits. Hence Israel's insistence that Hezbollah must be ejected from southern Lebanon for long-term security.

Mostly I was wrong in assuming that Hezbollah would use their rockets before they lost them. And that's interesting, no?

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.

NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.

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NOTE: I made the image with Bing.