Noah Shachtman's Blog

One of the biggest concerns about high-tech, so-called “network-centric” warfare was that it would lure commanders into conducting push-button wars — directing action from their wired hub in the rear, while their troops were fighting in the front.

“In Lebanon, Israel’s first digitized ground war,” Defense News’ Barbara Opall-Rome reports, those fears appear to have been realized. “After-action probes found egregious cases where commanders relied on [sensor feeds] instead of moving forward to assess critical points in the evolving battle.”

“This war underscored the limitations of plasma, especially when it is accorded disproportionate priority over training and discipline,” said Matan Vilnai, a retired major general and former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) deputy chief of staff, now a prominent member of Israel’s Labor Party.

In post-Lebanon War Israel, “plasma” has become derisive shorthand for the virtual command and control provided through networked operations…

Examples of such dangers were found in the wartime functioning of two critical divisions, where both brigadier generals were assailed for lack of hands-on contact with forces under their command.

In the case of IDF 162 Division, the commander managed the entire war from deep inside home territory, venturing only twice and for very brief periods beyond the Lebanese border. Whether by sheer misfortune or as a direct result of the hands-off command style, the 162 Division’s 401 Armored Brigade and Nahal Infantry Brigade were involved in one of the war’s biggest blunders, which claimed the lives of 12 Israeli soldiers.

One of our insider correspondents points out this AP photograph from Lebanon and raises a red flag:

I am not saying the description is false, but I spent 20 years in the Air Force, much of that time doing targeting and mission planning for aircrews which involved a lot of post-strike analysis. This is by far, the lease [sic] amount of damage from an “air strike” I have ever seen. Even a Hellfire missile does more damage than this, remember the Predator strike on the car of some Al Qaeda operatives some time back? Total destruction of a soft vehicle like this. The only damage, other than minor body damage, I see is a missing sun roof. Thought you might want to add it to your list of possible fakes.

While inconsistent with the effects of large munitions such as satellite- and laser-guided bombs and even, yes, Hellfire missiles, this damage might represent a lucky hit by a helicopter-fired unguided rocket or a cluster bomb … or something far more sophisticated.

Consider: The U.S. Air Force since the late 1990s has had a weapon that disperses guided submunitions (each packing the punch of a hand grenade), each bomb capable of taking out a company of tanks. It’s called the Sensor Fuzed Weapon. Globalsecurity.org explains:

The Sensor Fuzed Weapon [SFW] is an unpowered, top attack, wide area, cluster munition, designed to achieve multiple kills per aircraft pass against enemy armor and support vehicles. After release, the TMD opens and dispenses the ten submunitions which are parachute stabilized. Each of the 10 BLU-108/B submunitions contains four armor-penetrating projectiles with infrared sensors to detect armored targets.

Defense Industry Daily appropriately calls the SFW “cans of whup-ass”.

Israel is a known consumer of American Joint Direct Attack Munitions and a producer of laser-guided bombs. Has it gotten into the SFW game too, either with American weapons or its own similar design?

If so, I’m not surprised they’ve kept it under wraps. This is a cluster bomb we’re talking about, the kind of weapon notorious for accidentally taking out civilians who might be milling around the battlefield.

–David Axe

UPDATED, 8/11/06: A source from inside the aviation industry says the mystery munition might be a Viper Strike.

Technology has enabled unprecedented persistence and precision for Israel forces, Aviation Week reports:

Unmanned aerial vehicles are providing the Israeli forces persistent surveillance with electro-optical/infrared and synthetic aperture radar. “Electro-optical sensors are integrated on the F-15s, F-16s and UAVs and they are the best we’ve ever had. The video is great. The video from the UAVs is particularly good because they are sitting 10,000-15,000 ft. directly over the target looking straight down with the minimum of atmospheric haze,” says the former senior officer.

But is it enough?

Hezbollah rocket launchers have been a primary target for the Israeli air force’s F-15s, F-16s and bevy of unmanned aircraft, which have all been fitted with electro-optical/infrared sensors to spot and engage those targets. And, while launchers are taken down daily, the rate of Hezbollah operations appears unaffected, and there are signs of potential escalation in the projectiles’ lethality and range.

And even if Israeli airpower is achieving its operational objectives … does it matter? William Arkin says no:

Israel has lost its current war against Hezbollah. Not because it hasn’t achieved many of its military goals and isn’t on the way to achieving more. Not because airpower and technology intrinsically are useless in fighting the “new” war.

Israel has lost in the court of public opinion, particularly in Europe. As I said yesterday, a certain ruthlessness in going after Hezbollah has challenged the aesthetic about conventional warfare and the level of damage deemed acceptable when a country is pursuing an unconventional foe.

–David Axe

“Terrorists are cowards,” one Army sergeant told me in Iraq last year. “And they can’t shoot worth @$%#!,” he added.

Through all the troubles in Iraq, the U.S. military has taken some comfort in its absolute tactical superiority to insurgent forces. In a stand-up fight, U.S. troops always win.

But what if that changed?

Indications are that Hezbollah has achieved the unthinkable. It has combined the elusiveness and agility of a terrorist group with the fighting prowess of a modern army, according to The New York Times:

Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” said a soldier who just returned from Lebanon. “They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.”

This is bad. Real bad.

On the other hand, as fellow blogger and Iraq vet Geoff Edwards has pointed out: the bolder and more tactically proficient a group like Hezbollah gets, the more it looks and acts like an army and the easier it is to find, fix and destroy using precisely those weapons that, against an insurgent force, are nearly useless.

–David Axe

UPDATE, 4:37 EST: Now Reuters is reporting that Israel has shot down a Hezbollah drone:

Israeli aircraft shot down a suspected Hizbollah drone as it flew over Israeli territory on Aug. 7, the Israeli army said. “I can confirm that the air force destroyed a Hizbollah drone,” an army spokesman said, but would not provide any other details, including where the drone was flying. Israel’s Channel One television reported that the drone was believed to be armed, but the army had no comment.

Is this another bit of ignorant reporting like the “drone hits ship” situation a couple weeks back? Or is this the latest example of Hezbollah’s remarkable military sophistication?

If it’s true, I wonder … was this drone on a surveillance mission, or doing something more nefarious?

Israelis are already notorious for having their cell phones permanently attached to their ears. And that’s before they got a hold of a new service by the start-up Cellact. The company is sending out text message warnings to Sabras of “a missile or bomb attack, shooting, or other emergency announcements,” Globes reports.

The system enables key emergency services staff (police, firefighters, rescue teams, and stand-by details) to be paged from anywhere, including the field, by SMS through any licensed cellular phone. The service will be charged at NIS 0.20 [$.04] per message…

Cellact VP sales and marketing Gal Biran said, “After the shelling started, Cellact made a decision to harness its technology for the benefit of residents and companies in the north. SMS use meets two requirements in the event of an emergency; timely warning and distribution, and high reliability even in the event of heavy web traffic or poor reception. The system also provides ongoing communications when people are indoors or in air raid shelters, and can be used to easily relay information such as the opening hours of specific bank branches, or any important announcement that the public will not be able to see on notice boards because they are confined to their homes.”

FEMA is working on a similar system here in the U.S., with a twist. FEMA’s text messages will “tell you to get to a television or radio because something unfortunate has happened that you need to know about.” Sounds like Cellact’s straightforward alerts make a little more sense.

(Big ups: Sam)

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.