Tech Undermining Israeli Army?
Israel has one of the most wired armies on the planet. Relying on overlapping networks of flying drones, hidden cameras, and unattended ground sensors, the Israeli Defense Forces have become a model for how information technology ought to be used in combat. Even the Americans rely on Israeli gear to help them keep tabs on battlefields.
But now, some Israeli security experts are beginning to wondering whether all that equipment is such a good idea, after all -- "whether misplaced reliance on high technology created the conditions that have plunged the nation into its first twin-fronted, gloves-off war against Islamic terror," Barbara Opall-Rome writes in this week's Defense News.
In interviews here, security experts and military officers not directly involved in the fighting say there are fundamental flaws in Israel’s budget-draining techno-centric defensive strategy, which is being funded at the expense of training and discipline throughout the lower echelons of active-duty and reserve forces.
It is intolerable, sources here assert, that Hamas commandos from Gaza and Hizbollah fighters in south Lebanon — within a 10-day period and despite early warnings — were allowed to sneak across borders fortified by a network of manned, unmanned and ground-based systems.
Hizbollah operatives found holes in the system of networked surveillance sensors, throwing doubt on Israel’s highly touted method of low-signature warfare. Particularly shocking was the penetration at Za’arit, which is monitored by an installation heralded as an example of the military’s ability to maintain virtual control over the northern border area.
Evading dozens of eyes trained on computer screens in the base’s combat information center, the operatives disabled at least one camera, penetrated a so-called dead zone of the border fence, and ambushed reservists dispatched to investigate alarms...
While all here appear to embrace the military’s corporate, almost sacrosanct pursuit of information superiority and standoff, remote-controlled capabilities, many are urging renewed emphasis on basic soldiering pending a more thorough validation of high-technology, networked operations...
One IDF brigadier general said... "With all due credit to technology and the capabilities it provides, we cannot neglect basic soldiering and discipline. But time and again, we’ve seen our training budget gutted to allow for full-bore investment in Tzayad [the IDF’s digital Army program, a rough equivalent of the U.S.' Future Combat Systems]. And now we’re seeing the results blowing up in our faces."
UPDATE 10:59 AM: Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post has a must-read diary of an Israeli F-16 pilot.
Hitting the target is expected, no misses are acceptable. There aren't any congratulations for a well-performed mission. Only a hammer on the head if something goes wrong. Personally, I think it's a healthy attitude; it causes the whole system to be less rash and hot on the trigger.
One abduction from under the wall, and an incursion, abduction, and wrecked tank on the northern border, in the grand scheme of things, does not indicate the failure of technology or transformation. We can only know the success or failure of the wall and its hi-tech surveillance if we also know how many bombings, abductions, etc. it has prevented.
Same thing goes for current operations in Lebanon. We do not know the final outcome; there is much currently that we do not know; and a particular outcome (victory, defeat, or draw) is not determined.
I'm not saying that Israel hasn't screwed up, that technology and transformation have not failed, just that we cannot make that determination based on the arguments and evidence presented here.
Next, it is merely assumed that technology and training are mutually exclusive, that there is a necessary and inevitable trade-off, and that that trade-off has in fact been taking place in Israel. But, not evidence is given in the post to indicate that Israel has cut training programs and that these cuts, moreover, were the direct result of buying technology. You can't just assume what you set out to prove.
This post is just one of many that follows a pattern of analysis found often on this site: New technology is always criticized, and anything less than perfection is portrayed as failure. But that is an unreasonable standard and a self-fulfilling prophecy, great for saying "Gee look I was right again!" but not, ultimately, very useful analysis. New technologies will never be perfect. Neither will wars and the strategies used to carry them out. Holding ourselves to a standard of perfection, in technology or strategy, is a sure way to guarantee failure.
Posted by: Sean Lawson at July 20, 2006 11:53 PM