by Yoav Limor
Picture the Third Lebanon War: Hezbollah wakes up to discover that a contingent of elite IDF troops has taken over the airport in Beirut, and that IDF forces are in control of all major routes connecting Lebanon with Syria. Does this sound far-fetched? An exclusive glimpse into the IDF's new Depth Corps.
Israel Defense Forces troops
in action.
|
Photo credit: Ziv Koren |
It was August 2, 2006. Deep in the throes of
the Second Lebanon War, Operation "Short and Sweet" was underway. A
joint force consisting of the elite Sayeret Matkal (General Staff
Reconnaissance Unit) and the IAF crack commando outfit Shaldag was
ferried by helicopter into Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, where it raided a
number of Hezbollah strongholds in the Baalbek region. After a night of
deadly combat, the units had eliminated 19 Hezbollah operatives and
taken five as prisoners. Then Defense Minister Amir Peretz declared the
raid to be "the operation that would change the face of the war."
On the ground, however, the reality was quite
different. The operation changed nothing. It had no impact on the final
outcome of the war, nor did it give Israel any tactical advantage in the
Beqaa. It was an operation borne out of the IDF's frustration in its
inability to score any significant achievements. It wanted to surprise
Hezbollah on its own turf, an area where the Shiite terror group felt
immune and protected. There were also intelligence tips indicating that
abducted soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Elded Regev may have received
medical care at the Dar al-Hikma Hospital in Baalbek.
In reality, however, the Hezbollah operatives
who were killed during the operation were low-level foot soldiers. The
captured POWs had little value, and were released within weeks. The
intelligence that was gathered at the site proved worthless. Regev and
Goldwasser were nowhere to be found, and no reliable information
speaking to their whereabouts was ascertained.
The most senior commander of that raid, Nitzan
Alon, who at the time held the rank of colonel and was quickly
re-stationed from his routine job with the Bethlehem Brigade and who
today occupies the post of GOC Central Command, acknowledged that it was
an unnecessary raid that needlessly endangered the lives of soldiers. A
higher-ranking officer said that this was simply a case of "flexing
muscles while taking a neighborhood stroll."
Nonetheless, something positive did emerge
from this superfluous operation: the realization that depth was a
problem that needed a solution.
The army came to understand that it was
impossible to take a brigade commander and put him at the helm of two
disparate units, send them on an on-the-fly mission, dump them on the
outer edges of the Middle East and expect to "win the war." This is an
area to which thought and planning must be given. What isn't practiced
and rehearsed simply will not come to pass during the real thing.
Eliminating pockets of resistance
A great deal of effort and persuasion was
needed to allow Israel Hayom to gain this unprecedented glimpse into the
IDF's secretive new Depth Corps command. There was a lot of opposition
to the idea, stemming mainly from the need for secrecy and the desire to
preserve the element of surprise. Others were opposed simply because
the exposure did not suit them.
The command, fields troops from some of the
most elite, top secret units in the army, including Special Forces, the
Intelligence Corps, and the Air Force. These are men who are much more
comfortable when faced with al-Qaida operatives than with journalists.
From their standpoint, anything written in the newspapers could expose
them to danger. Ultimately, though, the powers that be agreed to allow
Israel Hayom to gain access into this most sensitive of nerve centers.
The goal of this arrangement is twofold. From a
domestic angle, it was meant to educate the IDF as to the necessity of
this command, a necessity in an army which is still showing pockets of
resistance to the idea of a separate Special Forces Command. There is
also a need to deter outside enemies from trying their luck against this
new outfit which is secretly, quietly, consolidating to become a force
that will tilt the scales in the next war.
Regardless of how presumptuous this goal sounds, the logic behind it is quite simple.
Realizing that it will have a difficult time
coping with the IDF when the two sides meet in the battlefield, the
enemy (Hezbollah and others) transferred the bulk of its operations deep
into its territory, hundreds of kilometers away from the Israeli
border. New armaments, including rockets and precision-guided missiles,
allow it to be more effective from a distance and threaten without being
threatened.
During the last war, Hezbollah primarily fired
rockets from southern Lebanon. During the next conflict, it will unload
most of its heavy weaponry from the Lebanese hinterland. During the Yom
Kippur War, Syrian forces did battle with Israel on the Golan Heights.
In the next war, it will launch Scuds from both the north and the east.
The way to neutralize the threat is to be
present in all the areas where the enemy is ensconced. The IDF must be
present in large contingents of troops and sufficient armaments that
would enable it to knock the enemy off balance, interrupt its battle
plans, and significantly reduce the threat to the home front.
In other words, forget everything you knew
about the old combat zones, this is no longer relevant. The original IDF
was built to engage in eyeball-to-eyeball battles on the Golan Heights.
It was constructed to traverse minefields and destroy divisions and
battalions. The modern-day enemy, however, is different. He doesn't wear
a uniform, and he isn't stationed at a base. He is primarily a civilian
who spends his leisure hours engaged in military activities. It could
be a farmer or a laborer who toils his fields by day, yet operates a
Katyusha by night.
In this battlefield, taking an advantageous
position for lookouts and reconnaissance is no longer enough. The
biggest initial challenge is to identify the enemy — a civilian who
blends together with a number of other civilians who look just like him.
Then there is the challenge of identifying his hiding place and his
weapons caches before finally getting to him without ramming through the
entire village.
That is just the easy part. Usually the enemy
sits in an area that the Golani and Paratrooper Brigades are accustomed
to operating in and where tanks can be somewhat effective. The real
threat on the strategic level sits at a distance, deep within enemy
territory. That is where the enemy keeps its main assets and heavy
arsenals. This is an area in which brigades would have little chance of
effectively operating and where the air force and the navy would have a
difficult time launching joint-force operations.
When it comes to the Lebanese front, IDF
General Staff planners have focused their work on possible scenarios
that are likely to unfold deep into our neighbor to the north. That
means Beirut, where Hezbollah keeps its headquarters and command posts;
the Beqaa, the area that Hezbollah uses for its logistical base; and, in
the not-too-distant future, northern Lebanon, particularly the Tripoli
region.
The reason for this is not just because the
long range of rocket fire allows for a withdrawal to areas that
Hezbollah considers "immune," but also because the Alawite minority that
may just find itself ousted from its position of power in Damascus
could bring with it strategic arms and regroup in the topographically
friendly regions of the mountains and the coast.
Try to envision the Third Lebanon War. Let us
assume that on the fifth day of the conflict, Hezbollah wakes up to
discover that a contingent of IDF troops had taken over the airport in
Beirut, or that IDF forces had taken control of all the major routes
connecting Lebanon with Syria. Does this sound far-fetched? According to
foreign media reports, the IDF planned to undertake similar measures in
Iraq in 1991 immediately after Scud missiles hit Tel Aviv.
Some units have already been trained for such
scenarios. One of them is Shaldag. That is the extent of the information
that we have been permitted to see. The man who commanded Shaldag
during Saddam's salvos was then-Col. Benny Gantz, who was known to clown
around with his troops by breaking out into polka dancing. It is
reasonable to assume that Gantz derived a number of insights as to what
the IDF could (and, in particular, could not) accomplish against a
menacing, distant enemy. He could combine those insights with the
lessons learned from the mistakes of the 2006 conflict so as to better
understand that the IDF currently does not possess the suitable means to
cope with an entrenched enemy far from the border.
Gantz's baby
In the meantime, Israel continues to wage
shadow wars in that gray area where things happen secretly and by
surprise with no fingerprints left behind. This is what is known in IDF
parlance as CBC, the campaign between the campaigns. According to
foreign news sources, this includes attacks on weapons caches in Sudan
and the attack on a convoy carrying surface-to-air missiles in Syria, in
addition to a number of intelligence-gathering operations, acts of
sabotage, and assassinations. The frequency of these actions is
indirectly proportional to the level of media exposure they receive.
It wasn't so long ago that these missions were
conceived from the bottom up by intelligence officers who turned
information into an operation, like when information on the whereabouts
of a terror target is gathered at a mass funeral. The advantage that can
be gained here is the pinpoint, professional, and intimate knowledge
amassed by those in the field. The disadvantage here is the lack of an
overall, broader outlook. Every intelligence officer dealt solely with
his area of responsibility while all of the operational units were cut
off from one another. The distance was so great that Shayetet 13,
Sayeret Matkal, and the air force commando units would use radios of
different frequencies.
This is the gap that the Depth Corps
initiative aims to bridge. Alongside considerations of a grand, "larger"
war, it wishes to examine the daily struggle and secret campaigns
without viewing them through the filter of a specific unit or army
division. During Operation Pillar of Defense last November, the man who
commanded the operation was GOC Southern Command Tal Russo. Russo and
his subordinates, however, viewed the fighting solely as it unfolded in
their area of responsibility, Gaza. Not only did nobody devote much
thought to what was taking place outside the area (in Sudan, Libya,
Syria and Lebanon), but, despite what we witnessed during the Second
Lebanon War, the IDF found itself with almost no special operations to
carry out in Gaza.
The Depth Corps headquarters are in a building
adjacent to the General Staff building. It includes a number of floors
of drab, gray office space that are hardly an indication of the
achievements it produces in the field. Upon its founding, the IDF
insisted that it be a heterogeneous, multidisciplinary body staffed
largely by officers from various army units. Five of them, all of whom
carry the rank of colonel and who have headed branches, met with us last
week to try to explain why their command is important.
There was I., the former Shaldag member who is
responsible for operational planning; G., a pilot of the Yasur
helicopter who is responsible for the aerial aspects of operations; A.,
who emerged from the naval commando unit to take over the teaching and
instructional duties; Y., who served in Military Intelligence and who is
in charge of the unit's intelligence contacts; and O., who is in charge
of technology and communications.
The interview did not go smoothly. Not only
were they visibly uncomfortable speaking to a reporter, but they were
also anxious about safeguarding the secrecy in which this outfit
operates. Nonetheless, at the prodding of Col. K., a former Operations
Branch officer who is now their commander, they managed to give us a
taste of what they were doing while tiptoeing their way through
confidentiality concerns.
"On a routine, day-to-day basis, things work
quite well in the army," said I. "The units know what to do, and they do
a pretty good job. During emergencies, things don't work as well, and
our job here is to plan as comprehensively as possible to make sure that
the next war doesn't surprise us."
"From here, we see the entire army, and this
enables us to have a wider, better picture," said A. "The bottom line is
that the results we deliver will be better."
"Until now, we've focused mainly on missions,"
said Y. "Now we are looking at the whole picture. Our challenge is to
give our leaders a wide array of possibilities so that they could make
the best choice."
"The 'special units' will have to make a very
significant change," said G. "They need to make planning changes as well
as changes in their capabilities. In 2006, we didn't have any tricks up
our sleeve. Depth Corps is a kind of wild card that could end up making
the difference."
"In 2006, the cooperation between the units
wasn't good," said A. "In the Navy, we provided aid to land forces for
the first time during the 'real thing,' during the war. We are now
making this connection here so that it will look different the next
time."
"Our job is to bring the right troops at the
right time to the right place," said Y. "It sounds easy, but it is
uncertain as to whether the Air Force or the Navy or Military
Intelligence has the capability or the time to do this in addition to
the current workload they have."
"Here we have something that could shock the
enemy," said O. "It could create a surprise effect that would have
fundamental ramifications."
Yoav Limor
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8177
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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