The Namer is based on a Merkava 4 chassis, and it replaces the preferred personnel carrier for high intensity conflict in the IDF up to this point, which is based on captured T-55 hulls.
It appears that its heavy armor, sensor suite, and remote controlled weapons systems served it well in the conflict.
IIRC, it’s the heaviest AFV in the world.
First a disclaimer, this is not an essay on the rightness or the wrongness of the Gaza operation. It is an analysis of the tactics used with an eye toward tactical lessons learned from the Lebanon war, and toward lessons that should be learned by the US military.
Think of it as the War Nerd, without the good writing.
Aviation Week & Space Technology has an analysis of the combat in the Gaza Strip (paid subscription required), and it’s basic conclusion is rather unsurprising, though it’s rather controversial in some military circles, that air force operations must be completely subordinate to the ground forces authority.
Considering the debacle in Lebanon in 2006, where the Chief of Staff was the first, and likely the last, Air Force general, and worked on the USAF model, basically the assumption that precision guided munitions delivered from altitudes in excess of 8000 feet could win the war, this is not an unanticipated change in tactics.
One need only look at Afghanistan to see that the Taliban’s best recruiting tool is the USAF.
Some of the things that they did that worked on a tactical level:
This does not make Gaza operations a victory, but these are lessons that the US military, and particularly the bomb happy boys in blue in the USAF, desperately need to learn for Afghanistan.
Because it’s clear that General Odierno is doing his level best to box Obama in on Iraq:
Among those consulted by the president was Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who has developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama’s campaign timetable, by pulling out two brigades over the next six months. In an interview in Iraq on Wednesday, General Odierno suggested that it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be drawn down significantly.
This is borderline insubordinate.
A president needs his generals to tell him, and congress, the truth, but you don’t want them spouting off to the press in order to make your job more difficult.
If this is not slapped down now, it will only get worse.
While my original source, Ynetnews, should be viewed with a jaundiced eye, their report that death figures were inflated is from the respected Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, which as best as I can tell is a well respected center to center-left paper based in Milan.
They quote a doctor as saying that deaths are likely in the 500-600 range (Google translation, original Italian version) , along with indications that a much higher number of the casualties were combatants than has been previously reported.
This is not uncommon following such a conflict, when people presumed dead start heading home.
Additionally, the dynamics in terms of public relations battle would tend create a situation where the Palestinians would be inclined to over report deaths in the first few days.
There is a historical precedent, the battle of Jenin, where the initial reports of casualties were as high as 500 , and eventually were determined to be 52 to 56.
I do not expect to see a 9.6:1 differential between initial and final numbers here, though.
They are huntind down the genicidal Hutu Militias that fled Rwanda in the 1990s.
These folks, and in particular the refugee camps that serve as their logistical bases, should have been shut down a decade ago.
It’s been about a day, and Hamas launches mortar shells at Israel, and they miss, with the shells landing somewhere in Gaza.
Not surprisingly, it appears that the war has boosted Likud in the polls, with, “right-wing and religious parties are projected to control a 10-seat majority over a coalition of center, left, and Arab parties in the 120-seat parliament,” which means no unity government.
The other big political winner in the war is Labor, which went from 4th or 5th place to a solid 3 in polls
The election is still 3 weeks away, but Benyamin “Dick Cheney without the Charm” Netanyahu looks to be lock as next PM.
Well things in Gaza are largely quiet, and Israel plans to have its troops outbefore the inauguration.
I would note that the matter of weapons movement across the Philidelphi crossing is still unresolved, which to my implies that this is not really much of a victory.
I’m not sure how they could have achieved a victory in any case, unless they had recovered Gilad Shalit.
I expect rockets to fall again before the election, and for Netanyahu to win as a result.
The cease fire is to be effective at 2:00am Sunday morning local time, or about 4½ hours ago.
Note that Hamas has not signed on, and that soldiers will apparently maintain their positions.
As near as I can tell, at least at this point, the only definitive winner in this cease fire is Benyamin Netanyahu.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a mess.
Jeffrey Goldberg says that Israel can’t make Peace with Hamas.
That their philosophy and theology will simply never allow them to make a real peace.
He relates his discussions with Nizar Rayyan, in which the now dead Hamas leader says that the first priority is to “deal with” Arabs looking for peace deals (i.e. Fatah), calls Jews the descendants of apes and pigs, denies the Holocaust, and says that God is opposed to a religious state in that part of the world.
Let’s be clear there can be no deal with Mr. Rayyan. With him, the point was mooted when he was killed.
On the larger point, the question is, “Can you negotiate a peace with people who believe as he does?”
The answer is clearly no.
Neither can you bomb them until they give up. They are, to quote Elwood Blues, “On a mission from God.”
You can’t kill them all, and any attempt to do so is likely to create more radicals.
What you can do, however, is destroy them as a viable political force. I’m not sure how, but you can reduce people like this to the soap box ranters you see now and again in places like the Boston Common, and that should be the strategy.
That being said, I have no idea how to do that, particularly because today the soap box ranters are a rather potent political force in the territories.
We are getting conflicting reports on how much longer the fighting will go on, with reports of 2 more weeks, that it may end tonight, and that Hamas has rejected the cease fire terms.
We’ll know its over when its over, I guess.
Part of the reason for this is that
there appears to be a rift between Hamas in Gaza and their nominal leaders in Syria, with the latter taking a much harder line….Which is easier for them, because they, and their neighbors are not in the cross fire.
On a tactical level, we now have reports of ubiquitous recording of events on video by the IDF, on the theory that this will be an effective defense against accusations of war crimes.
This means, at the very least, that there are elements in the IDF who believe that they are following טוהר נשק, because people who believe that they are committing war crimes don’t video tape it these days.
Additionally, we have reports of extremely close coordination between UAV’s and ground forces.
This is because they are under the direct control Army, and not AF units, which is something that the US Army should note, because the USAF wants direct control of anything larger than a seagull.
I would also note that IDF armor is doing very well, unlike in Lebanon in 2006.
I think that this is because there is no longer an Air Force man as chief of staff, and so they have moved away from the US “long range PGM” model, and back to maneuver warfare.
It doesn’t hurt that their APCs are the heaviest in the world (contra the direction of the US Army with its light weight FCS manned vehicles), and that the Merkava has a number of systems, remote machine guns and a 60mm mortar, that are very effective in urban combat too.
Finally, we have a video of a trip to a missile factory.
I will note that you can hear children in background at one point, and whether this is evidence of human shield use, or simply an artifact of living with 1.5 million people in a space the size of Washington, DC, is left to the reader.
H/T Danger Room for the vid.
Also, I will post on Jeffrey Goldberg’s NY Times OP/ED later.
Israel continues its advance into Gaza city, and Aviation Week has an analysis of the tactics of the the ground assault on Gaza by the Israelis (paid subscription required) and it appears that the tactics were a surprise to Hamas, which is a very real difference from what happened in 2006 against Hezbollah.
They were expecting an incursion from the north, and by attacking from the east, they cut both the supply and communications to the militias who had moved north to face an assault that never happened.
In 2006, the IDF, under the command of a Chief who was an Air Force General, showed none of this initiative, because, big surprise here, the Air force always thinks that it can win a war on its own.
An interesting bit of technology has entered the fray, a FLIR with automatic gain control, which can give near-instantaneous BDA while the fireball is still present.
That being said, for all the tactical and technological skills on display here, I still don’t see a strategic goal in anything done so far, with the possible exception of the seizure of Hamas broadcasting facilities.
There are reports that Hamas is now calling for a week long cease fire, and they are demanding an Israeli troop pullout as a part of this.
I am not sure if this is a sign of weakness or strength on the part of Hamas, or just some sort of theater.
H/T WallStreetJackass.
The IHT is now reporting that Israeli ground forces have moved into some of the most heavily settled areas of Gaza, particularly Gaza City, and that more reserves are being called up.
I’m not sure if this is a pre-cease fire push, or just an increase in operational tempo.
By the standards of any counterinsurgency campaign, the IDF has superb intelligence on the other side.
There is also some luck involved, as when Israeli paras captured a man and found a detailed map of the measures that had been taken by Hamas in the al-Atatra neighborhood in Gaza. (see also here)
I would assume here that the reason that this man was targeted in the first place was because it was believed that he had valuable information.
An interesting side note to all this, is that Hamas is going Beau Geste in their plans, using manikins to tactical advantage.
The irony there is obvious.
It looks like the war is reviving the political fortunes of both the Labor Party and Ehud Barack.
It was firmly mired in 3rd place, and at risk of dropping further, with polls showing their winning 8 seats in the 120 seat Knesset, and now the polls are showing 16-18 seats, which might put them in 2nd place.
To my mind, one of the real problems is not security, but the fact that the Labor Party has largely abandoned labor as a movement, and when there is that much buy-in on Thatchernomics, they lose a clear differentiator between them and Kadima, in particular.
It appears that most of Labor’s new support is coming at the expense of Kadima and other members of the coalition, so I think that Likud is still favored to win the election.
Well, there was a 3 hour truce to deliver supplies, and then the fighting started up again, and the Israeli cabinet has OK’d continued conflict.
On a brighter note, things seem to be developing diplomatically, with a lot of people on both sides in Cairo.
Finally, if you think that the Middle East can make you cynical, you haven’t ever truly experienced real cynicism. Just check out the War Nerd’s latest, it’s on Gaza, and it makes everyone else that I’ve ever heard of sound like Little Orphan Annie.
To paraphrase Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, that’s isn’t cynicism, this is cynicism
In what may be the most significant move of the war, Israelhas seized the Hamas TV station, Al-Aqsa.
Really I’m serious. I believe that one of the strategic goals of this war for the Israelis is seizing Hamas’s media tools, which play a significant part of their political apparatus.
I’m not making joke about how this war is really a hit called by Disney Corporation, because Al-Aqsa broadcast “Farfour,” an anti-semitic Mickey Mouse look-a-like.
There is more to this action than that, though I would still day, whatever you do, don’t f$#@ with the mouse.
The most interesting thing here is just how terrified surrounding Arab governments are of Hamas.
Notwithstanding Hamas’s Sunni theology, their close ties to Iran have Egypt, Jordan, and the House of Saud in particular concerned about some sort of revolutionary Shia tidal wave hitting them.
In addition to their use of the US made Small Diameter Bomb (SDB), the Israelis have been using a number indigenously developed bombs to take out tunnels and buried weapons caches.
It appears that the IMI PB500A1 is figuring rather prominently,which appears to allow for a 1000 lb class weapon to match the penetrating power of a 2000 lb class weapon, which allows an aircraft to carry more weapons per sortie.
Just heard on the radio.
posted via cell phone
I guess that the lede here is the deaths of Nizar Rayyan, who appears to be the most senior member of Hamas’ military wing, and Azkariah al-Jamal, leader of their rocket forces.
While al-Jamal was hit in his car, Rayyan was hit at his home, where he was staying with his 4(!) wives and 10 children, who were also killed in the strike.*
I can’t say that I’ll shed a tear over Rayaan or al-Jamal, though the deaths of family members is unfortunate.
Israel is still resisting calls for a truce, and there are increasing indications that Israel is preparing for a ground assault (also here)
In the world of the more surreal aspects of the war, there is a PR campaign between Israel and Hamas being conducted on YouTube, and in the reports of Israeli cell phone warnings to civilians in advance of strikes, we have another report confirming this activity, along with reports that Hamas is sending text message threats.
Again, let me state that I really want to hear the War Nerd’s perspective on all this, because his lack of moral dimension on his commentary provides more military insight.
*Reports are that he refused to go to ground, a stupidity that should be restricted to military leaders, and that he refused to allow his family to go elsewhere, which is wrong, and cowardly, on many levels.