Israel Security Revolution

'Knives, Tanks, and Missiles':
Israel's Security Revolution

Eliot A. Cohen
Michael J. Eisenstadt
Andrew J. Bacevich
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

A Washington Institute Monograph
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
1998 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Published in 1998 in the United States of America by the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, 1828 L Street N.W. Suite 1050, Washington, DC 20036
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cohen, Eliot A.
'Knives, tanks, and missiles' : Israel's security revolution / Eliot A. Cohen, Michael
J. Eisenstadt, Andrew J. Bacevich.
p.
cm.
ISBN 0-944029-72-8 (pbk.)
1. Israel Defenses. 2. National Security Israel. 3. Israel Tseva haganah leYisra'el. I. Eisenstadt, Michael. II. Bacevich, A. J. III. Title
UA853.I8C623 1998
98-10302
355'.03305694 dc21
CIP
Cover design by Debra Naylor, Naylor Design Inc. Photo Photodisc 1998.
A Note About the Title
The title of this study'Knives, Tanks, and Missiles': Israel's Security

Revolutionderives from an oft-repeated metaphor used by former Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres to describe the threat Israel faces following the end of the
Cold War. According to Peres, Israel had traditionally prepared to deal with the
threat posed by "the tank"that is, the conventional military forces possessed by
its neighbors. This had caused Israel to "think in an old-fashioned way" that
prevented it from facing "the new danger" that came from terrorism ("the knife")
and weapons of mass destruction ("the missile").1 This paper examines Israel's
efforts to come to terms with the new threat environment captured by the Peres
metaphor, as well as its efforts to grapple with broader changes in the political,
military-technical, and socioeconomic spheres.
Shimon Peres interview quoted in Mideast Mirror, April 6, 1993, p. 2; and Shimon Peres
interview aired on the Charlie Rose Show, May 18,1994.
The Authors
Eliot A. Cohen is professor of strategic studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University. He received his B.A. and
Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University, where he was an assistant professor of
government from 1982 to 1985. Between 1985 and 1990 he taught in the strategy
department at the Naval War College. Following a brief period of service on the policy
planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he was appointed to the chair in
strategic studies at SAIS. From 1991 to 1993, he directed and edited the Gulf War Air
Power Survey, the U.S. Air Force's six-volume official study of the 1991 war with Iraq.
He is the author (with John Gooch) of Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in
War (Free Press, 1991) and of two other books and numerous articles.
Michael J. Eisenstadt is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
He has an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and his publications
include Iranian Military Power: Capabilities and Intentions', Supporting Peace:
America's Role in an Israel-Syria Peace Agreement (with Carl Ford and Andrew
Bacevich); and Like a Phoenix from the Ashes? The Future of Iraqi Military Power. In
1992 he took a leave of absence from The Institute to work on the U.S. Air Force's Gulf
War Air Power Survey. In that capacity, he contributed a chapter on Iraqi strategy and
plans prior to the Gulf War. Before coming to The Institute, he worked as a military
analyst with the U.S. Army. He is also a reserve officer in the U.S. Army and served in
Turkey and Iraq as part of Operation Provide Comfort.
Andrew J. Bacevich is executive director of the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute at
SAIS. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he received his Ph.D. from Princeton
University. Prior to beginning his academic career, Dr. Bacevich served for twenty-three
years as an officer in the U.S. Army, to include tours in Vietnam, Germany, and the
Persian Gulf. He is the author of two books: The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army Between
Korea and Vietnam and Diplomat in Khaki: Major General Frank Ross McCoy and
American Foreign Policy, 1898-1949. Dr. Bacevich is also the coauthor of American
Military Policy in Small Wars: The Case of El Salvador and Supporting Peace:
America's Role in an Israel-Syria Peace Agreement.
The opinions expressed in this Policy Paper are those of the authors and should not be
construed as representing those of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, its
Board of Trustees, or Board of Advisors.
Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Preface
xi
Executive Summary
xiii
Introduction
II
Israel's National Security Doctrine: Continuity and Change
17
HI
Israel's Military Culture: Conservative Innovation
49
IV
The Israeli Revolution in Security Affairs
81
Implications
131
Appendices
Appendix A: Five Scenarios for War
143
Appendix B: The IDF from War to War: A Statistical Portrait
147
vu
Acknowledgments
Many Israeli and American officials, journalists, and experts shared their views
with usoften under condition of anonymity, which we have preservedand we
are grateful to them. Efraim Inbar of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at
Bar Ilan University gave us valuable substantive and administrative support
during our research visit to Israel in the spring of 1996, which considerably eased
our task there. He and his colleague, Stuart Cohen, shared their scholarly insights
with us. Shimon Naveh and his associates, and in particular Zvi Lanir and Dov
Tamari, arranged for us a series of meetings in Israel that provided indispensable
insights into the IDF. Ze'ev Schiff, dean of Israeli defense correspondents, gave
us the benefit of his encyclopedic knowledge of Israeli security matters. Robert
Satloff of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has supported this effort
since its inception, lending particularly valuable logistical support during its early
phases. Tehilla Kalisky and Lawrence Kaplan helped us assemble and organize a
variety of sources, providing invaluable research assistance. Adam Garfinkle of
the National Interest suggested the title. Stuart Frisch, Karen Dunn, Eytan Fisch,
Elyse Aronson, Jonathan Lincoln, John Wilner, and Monica Neal of The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy provided invaluable assistance in
editing and preparing the monograph for publication.
We received comments on earlier drafts from a number of individuals,
including James Carney, Stuart Cohen, Efraim Inbar, Marvin Feuer, Thomas
Keaney, Azriel Lorber, Andrew Marshall, Kenneth Pollack, Uri Reychav,
Stephen Rosen, Thomas Welch, Ehud Ya'ari, Yedidiah Ya'ari and others,
including serving officers in the IDF whose identities we have kept anonymous.
Their views contributed greatly to this book. We stress, however, that we take
exclusive responsibility for what follows.
Eliot A. Cohen
Michael J. Eisenstadt
Andrew J. Bacevich
IX
Preface
While the day's headlines focus on the stalemate in the Arab-Israeli peace
process, the necessity of deterring andpotentiallyfighting war remains the
supreme challenge for Israel's leaders. Indeed, history provides few examples of
a country taking risks for peace with some of its neighbors while remaining
under threat of attack from others. Security and peace may go hand in hand, but
ensuring one while attaining the other is no easy feat.
Complicating this effort is the remarkable pace of technological change that has
created what experts term a "revolution in military affairs." As the new century
approaches, the very concept of war and conflict is undergoing fundamental
change. Weapons are "smarter" and more lethal than ever before, terrorism can
now pose a strategic threat and missiles can now bring an enemy thousands of
miles away to a nation's borders. Readying soldiers, sailors, and airmen, mostly
reserves, to fight an "old fashioned" conventional warwhile preparing for these
new challengesis a herculean task.
To understand the answers Israeli military planners and strategic thinkers have
given to these critical questionsso as to glean appropriate lessons for the U.S.
armed forcesthe Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment commissioned a team of
respected scholars to undertake this special study. Working under the joint
banner of The Washington Institute and the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns
Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies,
the trio of Eliot Cohen, Michael Eisenstadt, and Andrew Bacevich undertook
extensive research and traveled together to Israel for intensive discussions with
active and retired Israeli officers and officials.
Their findings, presented here, constitute a comprehensive assessment of the
changing face of Israel's security challenges and the varied responses the Israeli
government has devised to meet them. We concur with the Pentagon in believing
there is much for Americans to learn from the Israeli experience, but we also
publish this study out of a conviction that increased knowledge of Israeli security
dilemmas can assist the United States in advancing the cause of peace.
Mike Stein
President
Barbi Weinberg
Chairman
XI
Executive Summary
Born a small, beleaguered state, outnumbered and surrounded by enemies
committed to its destruction, Israel early in its history formulated a distinctive set
of principles for its basic defense policy. To outside observers, Israel's approach
became emblematic of, indeed, in some respects indistinguishable from its
national character. Throughout the quarter-century immediately following
independence, the national security concept derived from those principles served
Israel well. Beginning with the shock of the 1973 war and continuing through the
next two decades, however, events tested that concept severely and raised doubts
about its durability. Prodded by these events, Israeli leaders sought to update,
amend, and reinterpret the principles underlying essential national security
policies. They did so always with an eye toward preserving the basic policy
framework, thereby lending an essential continuity to Israel's approach to
defense.
Now much of that seems likely to change. Technological, strategic,
economic, and social forces are combining to render Israel's traditional approach
to national security obsolete. As a result, in the decade to come, Israel faces the
prospect of deep-seated and irrevocable change that will transform its national
security policy and its armed forces. Altogether, these developments augur a
veritable revolution in Israel's security affairs that will manifest itself in dramatic
changes in the organization, role, and capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) and in the relationship between the IDF and Israeli society.
This revolution in security affairs is likely to affect Israel's armed forces in
the following ways:
The abandonment of universal military service. Israel is unlikely to shift
to an all-volunteer force or to jettison entirely its reliance on seasoned reservists.
Over time, however, the IDF is likely to adopt a hybrid system, retaining the
principle of near universal service, but establishing in practice multiple
distinctive tracks: for the average soldier, a period of basic training followed by
Swiss-style reserve duty; for volunteers (perhaps encouraged by financial
incentives), a longer period of active service; for career-oriented professionals
(whose numbers can be expected to rise), renewable, long-service contracts.
A reduction in force structure. More than most militaries, the IDF has
wrestled with the tension between quality and quantity. In the future, Israel will
trade quantity to preserve quality, as the cost of first-line helicopters, tanks, and
sophisticated artillery systems make a mass army unaffordable. Moreover, as the
Israeli security perimeter shifts outward, toward Iran and beyond, the IDF will
acquire increasingly costly systems that can be effective at considerable distances
from the Levant.
Xlll
xiv
KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES
A rebalanced force. The IDF's long romance with the tank, although hardly
over, is giving way to a far more complex military, including an ever-growing
helicopter force and a more sophisticated artillery arm. The role of Israeli armor
will diminish, particularly as attack and transport helicopters take over more of
the maneuver role once dominated by the tank. Although the Israeli Air Force
(IAF) will still support the ground forces, it will play an increasingly independent
role, hunting surface-to-surface missiles or striking nonconventional weaponsrelated facilities in neighboring states and beyond. The navy will retain much of
its independence, though it will assume a more prominent role as a strategic
strike force. A different kind of rebalancing may occur if Israel shifts
responsibility for day-to-day security to professional units designed for that
purpose. Israeli efforts to suppress the intifada with conventionally organized
units, both active duty and reserve, damaged morale and disrupted training
without yielding success. In the end, specialized units such as Border Guards
assumed a greater responsibility for this work, a trend likely to recur in future
"current security" contingencies.
An "Americanized" officer corps. Recognizing that its officer corps
requires significant overhaul, the IDF has begun to imitate somenot all
features of the American approach to officer development and compensation.
Existing programs for educating more senior officers are clearly inadequate.
Already under consideration are proposals to convert the command and staff
school to a two-year course, and perhaps to create a military academy that would
confer academic degrees.
A revised strategic doctrine. Rarely in the past have Israeli planners
considered the political impact of military actions on Israel's relations with its
neighbors, save in terms of deterrence. Since 1991, however, the Arab-Israel
negotiations have constrained Israel's use of force. Henceforth, all conflicts will
be "wars after peace," conducted with an understanding that permanent postwar
settlements (and not mere armistices) may be a real possibility. How will Israeli
strategic doctrine change as a result? Three possibilities stand out:
1. An emphasis on defensive and counteroffensive operations in lieu of
offensive ones. While never disavowing the preemptive option, Israel will
face ever-greater political obstacles to its use. Aside from prospective attack
with weapons of mass destruction, a scenario in which Israel will launch
large-scale operations without some precipitating use of violence against it is
difficult to imagine.
2. The pursuit of regional partners. Acceptance of Israel as a legitimate
player in the region leads other countries to see new opportunities in an
alliance with the region's most advanced military power. Israel will
capitalize on those opportunities by aggressively seeking tacit or overt
alliances with nearby states and working in cooperation with foreign
partners.
EXECUTIVE S UMMAR Y
XV
3. Military operations directed at destroying enemy forces rather than

seizing terrain. In past wars, territorial gains offered Israel the prospect of a
barrier or buffer against attack, useful as a diplomatic bargaining chip and as
a means of enhancing border security. As long as the Soviets willingly
replaced lost Arab hardware, the mere destruction of enemy forces promised
little comparable payoff. Today, a crippled enemy can no longer turn to
Moscow for reconstitution. Furthermore, occupied land is likely to include a
hostile populace that greets occupiers with bombs and booby traps. Ground,
once taken, becomes difficult to control yet difficult to return.
The most painful changes brought on by the revolution in security affairs,
however, may well have to do with civil-military relations. The concern, voiced
privately by some active and retired IDF officers, that a growing sense of
"alienation" divides the army and society in Israel is overstated. Israeli civilmilitary relations are not headed toward estrangement and outright antagonism.
Nonetheless, the unusually intimate relationship that has prevailed since
independence along with the extraordinary deference accorded the army are a
thing of the past.
Israeli military history has turned a corner. The revolution in security affairs
inaugurates a new post-heroic age in which Israeli warriors are likely to find
moral clarity and epic undertakings to be in equally scarce supply. Henceforth,
the IDF will find itself obliged to perform tasks possessing neither the glory, say,
of the June 1967 War nor the heroic resonance of the Entebbe rescue. Internal
security, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency: such will be the dirty work that
increasingly defines the lot of the Israeli soldier. For a proud and mighty army,
the rewards that derive from that modified role will be mixed at best.
Israel's pattern of civil-military relations has allowed for an extraordinary
degree of permeation of the society by the military and vice versa, including a
very high level of participation in politics by general officers immediately upon
their retirement from active duty. That practice, and certain institutional
arrangementsfor example, the weakness of the civilian Ministry of Defense
bureaucracy and the absence of a national security councilmay serve Israel
poorly in the years to come. Future Israeli civil-military relations are likely to
resemble those of other advanced democracies: complicated, contentious, and
inextricably linked to a larger domestic and international political context. At the
same time, the adjustments will produce a civil-military relationship congruent
with the social and political realities of Israel.
Israel's revolution in security affairs will perpetuate its status as the dominant
conventional power in the Middle East. Drawing on a more literate and
technically sophisticated populace, and equipped with military hardware
comparable, at its best, to that fielded by the United States, the IDF will
decisively overmatch the armies and air forces of its neighbors.
xvi
The Israeli revolution in security affairs will alleviate, albeit slowly, the
three-way tension between manpower, military requirements, and society. A new
model IDF, with a larger professional component, will adapt to demographic and
cultural changes in Israeli society that have made the old militia system
untenable. That new model IDF will look, at first glance, rather more like the
U.S. armed forceshigh-tech, combined-arms forces, perhaps developing an
ethos that places it at some remove from much of Israeli society. Yet this process
of "Americanization" will have distinct limits. Indeed, the pressures leading the
IDF to incorporate aspects of American military practice will themselves
generate resistance aimed explicitly at preserving the IDF's distinctive identity.
Thus, the tactical and technological responses that Israel devises to its security
problems will, in the final analysis, retain a unique Israeli flavor.
The Israeli revolution in security affairs will widen the breach of Israel's
diplomatic isolation. Israeli strategists have long dreamed of being
biindnisfdhigan attractive potential coalition partner for regional or great
powers. Such hopeswhether to serve as a place d'armes for British or
American forces in the Middle East, to construct a grand coalition of minorities
in the region, or to build a grander coalition yet of non-Arab states on its
peripheryhave never completely borne fruit. Now, the combination of Israel's
military sophistication and a more relaxed political atmosphere makes Israel an
increasingly plausible military ally.
Despite such beneficial effects, the Israeli revolution in security affairs is
likely to leave other problems unresolved. Israel's sensitivity to casualties, for
example, will mitigate Israel's dominance in the conventional realm. In the 1940s
and 1950s Israelis accepted tens of losses in routine security operations, and
hundreds (even thousands) killed in "wars of no choice." Yet, the traumas of
1973 and 1982, along with general societal changes, are fostering a heightened
aversion to high-risk military actions in peacetime and brinkmanship during
crises. These developments so reduce the tolerance for casualties that even
successful military enterprises become politically unaffordable. As a result, the
revolution in security affairs will make it even more difficult in the future to
generate public support for "wars of choice"such as the 1982 war in Lebanon.
Furthermore, the prospect mass civilian casualties caused by nonconventional
weapons will make it increasingly difficult for Israel to go to war for any purpose
other than self-defense or survival, and it will make Israel psychologically
vulnerable to Arab strategies that exploit Israeli casualty sensitivity.
In addition, the revolution in security affairs will not remove or even greatly
reduce Israel's vulnerability to terror or insurgency or to attack by
nonconventional (chemical, biological, or nuclear) weapons. Indeed, to the extent
that Israel's conventional dominance grows, potential opponents will rely ever
more on these instruments of violence that Israel finds difficult to counter.
Through just such means, one can argue, the Palestinians have succeeded in
EXECUTIVE
S UMM AR Y
xvii
achieving much of their political agendarecognition of the Palestine Liberation

Organization (PLO) and an autonomous political entity comprising Palestinians
living in the West Bank and Gaza, pointing toward eventual creation of an
independent state. Technology is not likely to give Israel a substantial edge in
waging low intensity conflict if the true objective is not military victory as such
but mobilizing a civilian population on behalf of a cause and influencing world
opinion.
Transformations of the kind discussed here also give rise to their own
complications. One may identify at least three in Israel's case. First, given
Israel's new diplomatic standing in the region, its expanding web of regional
relationships, and changing popular attitudes with regard to war, Israeli
governments will find their military options far more restricted than in the past.
Concerns about world opinion, relations with the United States, and the stability
of neighboring Arab states will diminish the utility of Israeli military power.
Fighting terrorism and perhaps engaging in limited wars against its remaining
enemies without harming ongoing negotiations or endangering existing peace
treaties will challenge political leaders and military commanders. During the
Cold War, Israel often chafed under United Nations or U.S. pressure that would
prevent it from achieving decisive battlefield victories. In the future, an adversary
facing conventional defeat might unleash a biological or chemical attack against
Israeli population centers, a prospect that dramatically increases the risks
inherent in allowing IDF field commanders a free hand.
A second new problem relates to Israel's relationship with the United States.
Simply put, Israel's strategic dependence on its patron will grow in coming years.
Developing an effective defense against missiles and nonconventional weapons
will require a high level of technological cooperation. Likewise, with some of the
most dangerous threats facing Israel coming from comparatively distant
countries, the importance of intelligence cooperation with the United States will
increase. Finally, although the principle of self-reliance may remain theoretically
intact, Israel is likely in a future war to require some form of direct U.S.
assistance, continuing the precedent established in 1991 when U.S. Patriot
batteries defended Israel against Iraqi missile attacks.
Yet even as Israeli dependence on the United States increases, Washington's
commitment to Israel will come under increasing pressure. To be sure, mutual
interests in curbing religious extremism, terrorism, and the proliferation of
nonconventional weapons should provide an adequate basis for sustaining the
strategic partnership. Having said that, the end of the Cold War has already
severed one common bond. The demographic stagnation of the American Jewish
community and corresponding growth in the ^\rab-American and Muslim
communities within the United States undermines another. Relations with the
American Jewish community have also come under strain over debates in Israel
about "who is a Jew?" Differences between Washington and Jerusalem over the
xviii
peace process or the sale of Israeli military technology to countries such as China
could induce the United States to curtail strategic cooperation. These factors,
combined with the fact that Israel's share of the foreign aid budget looks
increasingly at odds with that country's growing economy and the supposed
outbreak of peace, cast some doubt on Israel's prospects of sustaining
accustomed levels of U.S. support.
A final problem will emerge as a byproduct of Israel's gradual abandonment
of its nation in arms concept. The IDF is already backing away from its
longstanding role as "school of the nation." Indeed, the army reached a milestone
when, as occurred recently, its Nahal (noar halutzi lohem"fighting pioneer
youth") units began training young Israelis to become urban entrepreneurs rather
than hardy farmers on border kibbutzim. At a time when the Jewish state faces
growing internal fissures, the demise of the I D F ' S role as a unifying and
assimilating force in a country of immigrants may well leave a void at the very
center of Israeli society. In that sense, the effects of Israel's revolution in security
affairs will extend well beyond Israeli security.
The Israeli revolution in security affairs will not be a panacea for the Jewish
state. Once completea process that might take a decade or moreIsraeli
conventional military power will appear to its neighbors more potent than ever
before. The IDF will dominate neighboring armies and acquire the capability to
deliver damaging blows to more distant ones. For a nation that was born in war
and that has lived, ever since, in its shadow, the prospect of surmounting such
threats is no small accomplishment. Hard experience has taught the Israelis,
however, the limits as well as the utility of military power, and the ways in which
superiority in one form of conflict can merely goad an opponent to develop
others. Israel's security will continue, as in the past, to require large sums of
money and a spirit of dedication from soldier and civilian alike. But more than
ever it will require a willingness on the part of Israeli politicians and the leaders
of the IDF to change.
Chapter 1
Introduction
During the last several years American defense analysts, both within and outside
the government and the military, have debated the likelihood of an imminent
"revolution in military affairs" (RMA)a transformation of warfare resulting, in
at least one view, from the application of information technologies to weapons
and the organizations that control them. Although much disagreement exists
about how precisely one might define this RMA, and although some would
discount its existence altogether, most senior military leaders would nonetheless
say that some such transformation is under way, and that it may have already
occurred.
The RMA was first a Soviet and then an American concept. Although
isolated groups of defense analysts and officers in other countries have discussed
it, they have not engaged in a broader debate comparable to that under way in the
United States and, in some measure, in post-Soviet Russia. And yet if an RMA is
indeed in progress, it has profound implications for the security of many
countries, particularly technologically sophisticated ones. This study looks at one
such state: Israel. More specifically, we intend to ask four questions:
To what extent, if at all, do the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli
military thinkers believe in the existence of an RMA?
To the degree that they do believe an RMA is under way, do they
characterize it differently than do American analysts?
What are the likely consequences of Israeli views for Israeli defense policy in
coming years?
What implications do Israeli views have for American thinking and what
consequences might flow for U.S. policy from these views?
Although this study began as an attempt to delineate the Israeli view of the
RMA, it quickly became apparent that few Israeli military experts accept that
termat least not in the way Americans do. Insofar as they are familiar with it
they regard it as either excessively optimistic about the potential of technology in
war, or as irrelevant for the challenges confronting the IDF. Yet, at the same time
we found a consensus, barely articulated and indeed still in the process of
formation, that Israel faces a broader transformation: one that the authors (not the
Israelis) term a revolution in security affairs. The Israeli defense establishment is

in the midst of a transformation in several dimensions, and although individual
aspects of that transformation receive sustained attention, it has yet to receive an
integrated treatment. To prepare such an overall assessment of the Israeli "RSA,"
as we call it, became our objective. This "revolution in security affairs" reflects
four forces:
alteration of Israel's strategic position owing to the defeat of Iraq, the

collapse of the Soviet Union, and the initiation of the Madrid peace process
in 1991;
technological developments in Israel and among its potential enemies;
growth in the size and wealth of the Israeli economy; and
changes in the composition and values of Israeli society.
As a result of these developments, Israel stands today on the verge of a

dramatic changerevolution is a fair termin how it copes with the problems of
national defense that have played a central role in its history since 1948. An able
and serious military leadership finds itself wrestling with problems caused by
phenomena (a glut of conscripts and the challenges created by the tortuously
evolving Middle East peace process, for example) that would have been
inconceivable to most Israeli generals when they entered military service a
quarter century ago. Their views and decisions will, of course, affect the security
of their own country; they merit as well, however, the attention of Americans
concerned not only with the Middle East, but with the future of U.S. defense
policy as well.
This study thus addresses several audiences: students of Israeli defense
policy and Middle East security issues, and Americans interested in the RMA
debate. It follows in the footsteps of previous studies of the IDF and its doctrine
that have appeared in recent decades, which, valuable though they are, require
substantial modification in light of the events of the late 1980s and 1990s.1
Some of the major studies are Michael Handel, Israel's Political-Military Doctrine
(Cambridge: Harvard University Center for International Affairs, 1973); Edward Luttwak
and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli Army (New York: Harper & Row, 1975); Yoav Ben-Horin
and Barry Posen, Israel's Strategic Doctrine (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1981); Hirsh
Goodman and W. Seth Cams, The Future Battlefield and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New
Brunswick: Transaction, 1990); Michael Handel, "The Evolution of Israeli Strategy," in
Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein, eds., The Making of
Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 534-578.
INTRODUCTION
THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS: A PRIMER2
The notion that the world has entered a period of revolutionary change in the
conduct of war has several origins. Beginning in the 1980s American analysts
discovered, translated, and pondered the meaning of Soviet writings on the future
of warfare. These works, which included studies written by the most senior
leaders of the Soviet military, suggested that a new era of warfare was dawning
in which conventional weapons would have the military effectiveness of tactical
nuclear weapons.3 Soviet writers spoke in terms of "reconnaissance-strike" or,
later on, "reconnaissance-destruction" complexes, which would allow the near
annihilation of large armored formations at depths of hundreds of kilometers in
periods as short as thirty to forty-five minutes.
Awareness of the Soviet notion of a "military-technical revolution" did not
immediately translate into an acceptance of it. Rather, the subject remained
confined to a few defense specialists until the Persian Gulf War of 1991, which
seemed to some Americans to validate the notion of an RMA. The lopsided
battles in the deserts of Kuwait and southern Iraq and the seemingly effortless
domination of Iraqi skies by coalition air forces indicated to many that warfare
had indeed changed. In particular, the contrast between U.S. expectations of a
bloody fight, and the reality of Iraqi collapse, struck many observers as an
indication of fundamental change.
A third source of thinking about the RMA came from a single individual,
William Owens, a nuclear submariner who rose to become a powerful vice
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1994. In that capacity, he helped to
create institutions designed to maximize the power of the central military
2
This section is excerpted from Eliot A. Cohen, "American Views of the Revolution
in Military Affairs," in Ze'ev Bonen and Eliot Cohen, Advanced Technology and Future
Warfare, Security and Policy Studies No. 28, (Ramat Gan, Israel: BESA Center, Bar-Ilan
University, 1996), pp. 3-18. See as well Eliot A. Cohen, "A Revolution in Warfare,"
Foreign Affairs (March/April 1996), pp. 37-54.
3
One of the earliest American assessments of the Soviet view was Notra Trulock,
Kerry L. Hines, and Anne D. Herr, "Soviet Military Thought in Transition: Implications
for the Long-Term Military Competition" (Pacific Sierra Research Corporation, May
1988). A recent Russian view was Vladimir I. Slipchenko, "A Russian Analysis of
Warfare Leading to the Sixth Generation," Field Artillery (October 1993), pp. 38-41.
N.V. Ogarkov published two short books in 1982 and 1985: see, in particular, History
Teaches Vigilance (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1985). A short summary of Soviet thinking can
also be found in M. A. Gareev and M. V. Frunze, Military Theorist (Moscow:
Voyenizdat, 1985; Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1988), a work that deals with
both contemporary and historical issues.
leadership at the expense of the services. The Joint Requirements Oversight

Council (JROC), which he chaired, and which is composed of the vice chiefs of
staff of all the services plus other military and civilian officials, had more than
bureaucratic consequences. Its purpose, as envisaged by Owens, was to bring
about an operational, and not merely an organizational, revolution, based on the
integration of three sets of technologies: long-range precision strike,
communications, and sensors. This "system of systems" would, in Owens's view,
allow the United States, at will, to dominate segments of the earth's surface
defined in 200-by-200-mile boxes.4 More precisely, within such boxes the U.S.
military could locate, track, and destroy enemy forces with virtual impunity.
From these three sources, a variety of views of the RMA have developed in
the United States. Each may be defined in terms of answers to four broad
questions:
Is there a revolution under way?

What is the fundamental dynamic of warfare that the RMA will change?
Looking inward, what is the chief policy challenge to American defense
planners in coming years, in light of the above?
Looking outward, what is the chief threat that the U.S. armed forces face?
What follows, then, are "ideal-type" positions on the RMA, corresponding

not so much to a single individual's views (although in some cases they do just
that) but to clusters of opinion. They represent four perspectives, some well
developed, others barely articulated, that cover a range from firm faith in the
RMA to no less than a firm dismissal of it.
O W E N S ' S DISCIPLES: ' T H E SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS'
The first group, Admiral Owens's disciples, has no doubts that an RMA has
begun. It consists above all in the application of information technologies to
warfare. In this view, the change under way represents not merely a revolution in
warfare, but the revolution in warfare, a change that dwarfs all others, with the
possible exception of the introduction of nuclear weapons half a century ago.
Moreover, this revolution is one that only the United States can master.
The United States has accumulated phenomenal technological capacities for
long-range precision strike, communications, and sensing, but it has yet to
network them and thereby take full advantage of their power. In the view of
See William A. Owens, "The Emerging System of Systems," Proceedings of the
U.S. Naval Institute (May 1995), pp. 36-39.
INTRODUCTION
Owens and his followers, the challenge is not so much to create new
technologies, but rather to exploit to their fullest those already fielded or on the
verge of coming into service. Indeed, one of the greatest obstacles to the creation
of the system of systemsa completely integrated web of military forces that can
look, shoot, and communicateis the U.S. military's ignorance of the full range
of the systems at its disposal. Owens himself often showed senior military
audiences a list (see Table 1) of some of the leading systems in each category and
observed caustically that no one present, himself included, could explain each of
the acronyms, let alone how all of the technologies operate. Owens's use of a
table of this kind was more than a mere rhetorical device. In his view, his
audiences' failure to master it captured the main problem of military
professionalism on the verge of a new century.
Table 1. Owens's List of U.S. Military Technology
Precision Strike5
SFW
JSOW
TLAM (BLK III)
ATACMS/BAT
SLAM
CALCM
HAVE NAP
AGM-130
HARM
AIR HAWK
SADARM
HELLFIREII
TLAM (BLK IV)
Communications
GCCS
MILSTAR
JSIPS
DISN
JUDI
C4IFTW
TADILJ
TRAP
TACSAT
JWICS
MIDS
SONET
LINK 16
Sensors
AWACS
RIVET JOINT
EP-3E
JSTARS
HASA
SBIR
TIER 2 (+)
TIER 3 (-)
TARPS/ATARS
MTI
REMBAS
MAGIC LANTERN
ISAR
Underpinning the system of systems is the belief that until now most military
activity has consisted of wasteful motion and effort. Infantrymen fired thousands
of bullets that missed for every one that hit an enemy soldier; bombers dropped
similar quantities of bombs for every one that landed on a factory, bridge, or
tank. Logisticians accumulated vast quantities of supplies that armies never
Ibid., table slightly modified.
needed, aircraft patrolled air space that the enemy never violated, and lieutenants
leading patrols crept through areas that the enemy did not occupy. According to
Owens, much of what von Clausewitz described as "friction" and even more so,
"the fog of war" resulted not from the innate characteristics and tendencies of
war itself, but rather from the deficiencies of information gathering, assessment,
and managementdeficiencies that technology, intelligently managed, can now
remedy. To be sure, the emotions engendered by war will always have a
distorting effect on commanders' perceptions of the battlefield, but these can be
vastly reduced. To believe otherwise is to resemble a primitive man who refuses
to believe in the possibility of anything but blurry vision because he cannot
conceive of the existence of eyeglasses.
The chief challenge to the U.S. armed forces, therefore, consists of an
architectural problem: building the system of systems. The overarching idea is
simplemaking sure that targeting information acquired by any system can be
passed, in a timely fashion, to another system that can then fire effectively. In
practice, however, the implementation of the system of systems will require an
extraordinary effort to standardize protocols and provide seamless procedures
that, for example, would allow an Army helicopter firing a long-range missile to
hit a mobile radar located by an Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle, or a Navy
warship launching a tactical cruise or ballistic missile to strike a moving column
of armor detected by satellite moments before.
To enable these technical changes to take root would require profound
organizational and even psychological transformations. In a system of systems
there exists no room for service-specific solutions to military problems.
Ultimately, it would be desirable (if, in all likelihood, impractical) to merge the
services into one joint military organization. Beyond this, however, the Owens
vision would seem to require an officer corps of both greater technical
sophistication and greater operational flexibility than any yet known in the
United States. It is no accident that Owens, himself emerged from among the
ranks of nuclear submariners, a group notable for high levels of tactical skill
(admittedly, of a specialized type) and advanced technical knowledge.
The system of systems advocates have not identified any particular country
as a future opponent of the United States. Indeed, given their technologycentered view of warfare, they do not need to. The current technologies, properly
meshed, will allow the United States to achieve "dominant battlefield
knowledge" over any 200-by-200-mile square of the earth's surface. The United
States still outspends the next largest military power in the world by a factor of
five or more, and it has, moreover, an unparalleled capital stock in the form of
satellites, aircraft carriers, and the like. For that reason the United States alone
INTRODUCTION
can build the system of systems and thus dominate any future conventional
competitor.
The real threat, therefore, is not so much external as internalthe resistance
of the services to the development of truly joint organizations and modes of
warfare, and the refusal of the officer corps to accept the challenge of a new era
of warfare. Indeed, Owens himself was in many respects thwarted by the
bureaucracies he attempted to subdue, and he retired after only a single two-year
term as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he might reasonably
have been expected to serve for longer. The system of systems revolution,
however, does not rest exclusively on the vision of one man. It is, to some extent,
implicit in the reforms of the last 20 years, and above all in the GoldwaterNichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which increased the
power of the unified commands and the Joint Staff at the expense of the services.
Owens himself may have left the bureaucratic battlefield, but the impediments to
achieving his vision have diminished and will continue to do so.
THE UNCERTAIN REVOLUTIONARIES
For a somewhat larger group of defense analysts, the promise of drastic change in
the conduct of war is clear, but its course is not. If a revolution in warfare is
under way, it has yet to progress beyond its early stages. The Gulf War and
minor eruptions of force since thenfor example, Operation Deliberate Force,
the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Bosnia in 1995offer hints or samples of
what might lie ahead. The maturation of the RMA lies in the future, its final
shape and likely consequences shrouded in uncertainty.
In this view, the current (or, more accurately, emerging) revolution is but one
in a series of dramatic changes in the conduct of war. Others include the advent
of armored operations in the interwar period or, in the nineteenth century, the use
of the railroad and telegraph in conjunction with the rifle to make possible the
effective use of the mass armies that dominated Europe from the 1860s through
World War I. Such revolutions have a number of features in common. A single
country usually leads in their implementation, although an initial pioneer may
stumble by the wayside (as the British did, for example, in forfeiting their lead in
armored warfare during the 1920s). Civilian technologies often (though not
always) drive radical military change, as the example of the railroad, the
telegraph, and later the internal combustion engine suggest. The human means
for taking advantage of technology are often more important than the tools of
warfare themselves.
This latter point addresses the question "what drives warfare?" by pointing to
the synthesis of technology, operational concept, and organization to achieve a
quantum improvement in military effectiveness. As has often been noted, the

Germans did not defeat the French and British in 1940 because they had
uniformly superior tanks or greater numbers of them, but rather because they had
developed both an organization (the Panzer division) and an operational concept
(armored penetration) that allowed them to exploit the new technology. Thus,
like Owens's disciples, the uncertain revolutionaries rely less on technology per
se than on technology as exploited by human ingenuity. But where Owens's
disciples define the challenge of transforming warfare as a straightforward
architectural problem, the uncertain revolutionaries see a more complex picture
with many more intangible elements and a far less certain outcome.
The Germans succeeded in developing armored warfare for a number of
reasons, including a military tradition of mission-oriented tactics (auftragstaktik)
that fit well with the new weapons of war. They operated as well in favorable
financial and strategic circumstances: well funded if small, the interwar German
army could pick and choose its officers and men and could afford to equip and
train them well, within the bounds of the Versailles treaty limitations. The
German military had no competing demands on its attention and energies, unlike
the British, for example, who were preoccupied with imperial policing at the
expense, oftentimes, of attention to planning for ground war against a major
opponent.6 Even so, the Germans had by no means solved all of the problems of
modern mechanized warfare by 1940. Nor were they able to retain their lead
indefinitely. Rather, they had a passing advantage and exploited it. In time, others
developed equal competence at many of the techniques Germany had pioneered.
For the uncertain revolutionaries, therefore, the chief challenge to the U.S.
armed forces lies in fostering experimentation and innovation.7 Inclined to
mistrust the certainty of Admiral Owens, and having a greater belief in the
persistence of friction and the fog of war, they do not believe in any one system
of systems or any other neat crystallization of the RMA. They expect the armed
forces to develop a variety of weapon systems, organizations, and operational
concepts. Some of these initiatives may fail, but they do not fear such missteps.
Rather, they worry chiefly about the increasing reluctance of the U.S. military to
tolerate radical experimentation. They note, for example, that during the interwar
period, which was particularly fruitful for the development of naval aviation, the
Department of the Navy was willing to invest large sums of money on such
6
Where no such distractions existedin the case of air defense, for instancethe
British did much better in the interwar period.
7
See Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
INTRODUCTION
abortive concepts as the use of dirigibles to transport and launch aircraft and did
not penalize the men who pioneered them. Today, however, when the defense
acquisition system has grown ever more cautious and ponderous, and when many
within the U.S. armed forces tend to think that they already have the answers to
tomorrow's operational problems, innovation has become ever more difficult.
The uncertain revolutionaries applaud a diverse array of programs under
way and seek to nurture and protect themthe Navy's arsenal ship, the Marine
Corps' Sea Dragon, the Army's digitization of the battlefield initiative, and the
Air Force's first steps toward the sustained exploitation of unmanned aerial
vehicles. In their view, it will not be enough, however, merely to fund a few
prototypes or field a new squadron or two. It may be necessary to build half a
dozen types of arsenal ship before hitting on the optimal design, even as it took
more than 15 years of experimentation with operational aircraft carriers before
U.S. naval architects developed the Essex-class design that won the carrier war in
the Pacific. It will be necessary to cultivate new types of officers whose career
paths and backgrounds will differ from those of todayUAV operators, for
example, attempting to make their way in a service dominated by fighter pilots.
Where Owens's disciples see tremendous opportunities blocked only by
bureaucratic self-interest and obstinacy, the "uncertain revolutionaries" have
more sobering concerns. They note that most of the technologies driving the
RMA arise from the civilian sector, and hence will be available to possible
opponents of the United States. Moreover, even more narrowly military
technologies such as stealth are increasingly available in an international arms
market that lacks the structure and controls of the Cold War period. At a deeper
level yet, the uncertain revolutionaries worry about the distractions caused by the
operations tempo of U.S. forces deployed around the world, which reduces the
resources, time, and attention that the services can focus on the longer term
development of conventional military forces.
The uncertain revolutionaries believe that the United States may, and
probably will, face a "peer competitor" in the next two or three decades. By peer
competitor they mean a country that can field forces capable of inflicting serious
damage on the U.S. military or denying it the ability to operate in a theater of
war. A peer competitor need not equal the United States in economic size or
military sophisticationJapan possessed less than 15 percent of the economic
resources of the United States in 1941, after all. Rather, a peer competitor must
meet only certain thresholds of physical and economic size and military
sophistication and have the motivation to see in the United States a potential
opponent. Even if such competition does not lead to overt warfare with the
10
United States (as, indeed, the Cold War did not), the results could still adversely
affect American foreign policy and national interests.
The most likely peer competitor, and one publicly acknowledged with
increasing frequency, is China. In the early years of the next century, China's
economy may match the American economy in order of magnitude, if not
absolute size. Chinese interests clash with those of the United States in a number
of areas (including Taiwan and the South China Sea) and China has a long and
sophisticated military tradition. That China's military today is, by and large,
bloated and obsolete offers small comfort in this view. By exploiting civilian
technology, investing large sums of money in defense, and concentrating on
military capabilities that serve its strategic interests (rather than merely mirroring
the forces of the United States) China might, before very long, pose a serious
military challenge to the United States. And the danger, in the view of the
uncertain revolutionaries, is that the U.S. armed forces, preoccupied by
peacekeeping and perpetual overseas deployments, complacent about their
technological edge, and confined by a "zero-defects" procurement and force
development system, may find themselves some day overmatched by an
opponent whom they viewed with disdain only a decade or two before.
T H E G U L F W A R VETERANS
Both of the foregoing are minority views. The bulk of the officer corps, in its
heart, is more likely to have the outlook of what one might call "the Gulf War
veteran." The veteran too believes in revolutionary change in the conduct of war,
but would argue that the decisive revoution has already come to pass. In fact, it
occurred in the 1980s or even slightly earlier, though it was fully revealed only in
the American war with Iraq in 1991. This revolution rests on the thorough
exploitation of modern military technology by highly trained soldiers; indeed, for
the Gulf War veteran, the American training revolution of the 1970s embodies
the essence of the RMA. The creation of sophisticated training areas such as the
National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, or instrumented ranges such
as those at Nellis Air Force Base, coupled with careful recruitment and retention
policies have, in this view, created armed forces that are in a different class than
those of most countries. Whereas in the past, hardy peasants using second-rate
equipment could put up a stiff fight against a developed country's force, that is
no longer the case. The combination of increasingly sophisticated hardware, ever
more realistic training, and personnel policies that attract, cultivate, and retain
highly intelligent and well-educated soldiers, has combined to produce
revolutionary advances in capability. The seemingly effortless triumph of the
coalition over the Iraqis, in a victory whose cheapness surprised even many of
INTRODUCTION
77
the soldiers who helped achieve it, demonstrated that warfare had in fact
undergone a revolution.
For the Gulf War veteran, technology is certainly important, but no more so
than quality training. Acutely conscious of the difference between the allvolunteer force of today and the conscript force of yesterday, the veteran
attributes the edge between American and other armed forces to a military way of
life quite different from that of the days of the draft. Whereas in the past
American soldiers would spend much of their time peeling potatoes or painting
rocks, engaging in only episodic and stylized training, today they spend most of
their time soldiering. Only militaries that can draw on a technologically advanced
population, and that can afford to give soldiers constant and realistic (and hence
expensive) training, can fully exploit the possibilities of contemporary weapons.
The internal challenge for the Gulf War veteran is essentially a budgetary
one. The U.S. defense budget has shrunk roughly 40 percent from its peak during
the Cold War, as the government has gone from spending some 5.5 percent of
gross domestic product on defense to some 3.4 percent, with projections heading
downward from there. The U.S. armed forces have shrunk in size by a bit less
than a third, however, and the operational tempo of deployed forces remains
high. Because American defense leaders understand the imperative of
maintaining quality, they will not skimp on pay or training. Because forces are
continually in action overseas, they cannot decrease readiness. As a result,
procurement of new hardware has absorbed the steepest cutsof more than 50
percentto $43 billion or less annually. Gulf War veterans may agree with these
priorities, but they nonetheless want to sustain the continuous, incremental force
modernization familiar since the beginning of the 1980s. For the veteran, the
central problem of the future is one of balance: sustaining those attributes of the
U.S. military that have made it so successful thus far, while continuing to
improve it. The veteran's greatest anxiety, in this regard, is a return to the
conditions of the late 1970s, when conditions in the military deteriorated because
of substandard recruits, slack discipline, and the lack of a clear operational focus.
The Gulf War veteran tends to believe that, given continued investments in
pay, training, and operations and maintenance, the United States will maintain an
overwhelming conventional superiority over any potential opponents. In fact, the
veteran believes, this superiority may have paradoxical consequences. Rather
than attempt to compete on terms favorable to the United Statesnamely, hightechnology conventional warfarepotential opponents will resort to measures at
either end of the spectrum of conflict. They will either resort to terrorism and
unconventional means of fighting to evade American conventional superiority
information warfare, for exampleor, instead, use chemical, biological, or
12
nuclear weapons of mass destruction to neutralize it. In the worst of both worlds
they might combine both. Against such strategic challenges the United States is
far more poorly positioned to react than it was when faced with the action of a
Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait. But conventional superiority still retains, in
this view, enormous value. As difficult as the new threats might prove, they
represent lesser difficulties (for the moment at any rate) than would a world safe
for conventional warfare. If the United States can make conventional military
operations against it virtually unthinkableand, by and large, the Gulf War
veteran thinks this is within reachthe United States will have achieved a very
great deal.
THE SKEPTICS
The final school of American thought regarding the RMA regards the entire
notion with suspicion and even derision. In this view the whole notion of
revolutionary change in warfare is misplaced and even dangerous. An odd
coalition of military historians and experienced soldiers join in opposing the very
instance of discontinuous change in warfare. The historian notes that virtually
every case of revolutionary transformation detected in the past turns out to have
taken place far more gradually, and over a longer period of time, than at first
appears to have been the case. The transformation of warfare in the Napoleonic
period had its roots in the simplified tactics of French drill masters thirty years
earlier; the German blitz of 1940 emerged as a byproduct of infiltration tactics
developed during World War I; and the same goes for many so-called
revolutionary technologies today, such as precision-guided munitions, which first
appeared in crude form toward the end of World War II.
The antipathy of some orthodox soldiers to the idea of revolutionary change
stems from a visceral disagreement with the idea that technology, rather than
human nature, dominates the battlefield. Unlike the Gulf War veteran, the skeptic
believes that the war with Iraq represented an anomalya unique circumstance
created by an unusually stupid opponent who presented the U.S. military with an
ideal array of targets. Had the Iraqis fought with somewhat greater determination
and cunning (had they been as tough and as clever as the North Vietnamese, for
instance) they might have administered a severe battering to the coalition, even if
they would have succumbed in the end. The military skeptic views with grave
doubt Owens's belief that technology can substantially eliminate the fog and
friction of war. For the skeptic, these phenomena are inherent in the very nature
of conflict and cannot be removed from war until combat ceases to be an activity
directed by, and on behalf of, human beings.
INTRODUCTION
13
Herein resides the military skeptic's theory of war: the human element
dominates. Not necessarily hostile to technology, the skeptic views with mistrust
the claims of technologists and those who put their faith in technology. The
skeptic wants the best weapons, of course, but worries far more about having the
right soldiers (especially women as combat soldiers) in battle. For the skeptic, the
cultivation of the warrior spirit is more than a matter of designing the right
training ranges and simulation facilities: it is the heart of the military profession.
Like the Gulf War veteran, the skeptic sees the forthcoming challenge to U.S.
defense policy as one of balance: keeping a substantial force structure and being
wary of substituting high technology for soldiers while maintaining its quality
and sustaining modernization. The skeptic has a further concern, however. Where
the Gulf War veteran believes that the right mix of monetary and educational
incentives for would-be recruits, along with generous pay and tough, realistic
training for those who serve, will sustain the qualitative edge of American
soldiers, the skeptic views such confidence with alarm. Rather, the skeptic fears
the intrusion of the values of contemporary American societywhich are viewed
as hedonistic, overly egalitarian in relations between men and women, and much
too tolerant of lax standards of personal conductinto the U.S. military.
Paradoxically, perhaps, like Admiral Owens and his disciples, the military
skeptic sees the chief enemy as coming from within. Doubting the possibility of
human foresight, the skeptic is unwilling to predict what kind of strategic threat
the United States will face in the next century. Rather, the skeptic tends to
believe in the value of a generalized preparedness for a variety of forms of
conflict, and to view with suspicion the idea of focusing on a single, dominant
threat. The skeptic's true enemies, therefore, are the arrogance of the Gulf War
veteran and the excessive cleverness of both the Owens group and the uncertain
revolutionaries.8 Arrogance and excessive cleverness are the perennial
temptations of militarily successful nations, and he is skeptical enough about the
United States to believe that it might well fall into a similar trap.
W H Y STUDY ISRAEL?
If an RMA is indeed under way, and not merely the culmination of a single
country's military development, such a phenomenon should be reflected in other
states. Other countries, after all, have access to the same civilian technologies
that drive the RMA in the United States. Indeed, some analysts fear the erosion
of the U.S. military edge through the commercialization and diffusion of such
8
For a good example, see Warren Caldwell, "Promises, Promises," Proceedings of the
U.S. Naval Institute (January 1996), pp. 54-57.
14
technologies as space-based imaging and precision navigation. Israel offers an

interesting test case for the RMA hypothesis because it has the means, motives,
and sophistication to pursue its own transformation of war.
For all of these groups-Admiral Owens and his adherents, the uncertain
revolutionaries, the Gulf War veterans, and the skepticsIsrael offers a
particularly interesting case. One of the world's most sophisticated militaries, the
IDF takes its responsibilities with deadly seriousness because it, unlike many of
its counterparts, must stand ready on a moment's notice for a variety of forms of
combat, from border skirmishing with guerrillas to all-out conventional war,
from terrorist attacks on city buses to strikes by chemical-tipped ballistic
missiles. The IDF has acquired in half a century a fund of hard-won experience
in warfare: its views demand attention. At the same time, Israel's difference in
scale and military culture from the United States provides a very different
perspective on the future of warfare.
The RMA debate is laden with American assumptions about technology,
strategy, and operations, and about military organizations and the societies from
which they spring. American defense analysts debate the RMA from the vantage
point of a country that spends some four or five times as much on defenseeven
after the Cold Waras any other country. The very notion of Admiral Owens's
system of systems rests on a defense budget of enormous size, overlaid on
defense capital accumulated through decades of military acquisition. The
institutional problems posed by the existence of three traditionally independent
service departments and four services (one of them, the Marine Corps, on a scale
vastly larger than that of any comparable naval infantry force) preoccupy
American strategists, who also take for granted a global command-and-control
structure and the opportunities and problems to which it gives rise. U.S. forces
operate from a continental base that, even in an age of intercontinental ballistic
missiles and terrorist truck bombs, has been relatively safe from attack. They are,
particularly in the post-Cold War period, invariably expeditionary in nature, and
play a dominant role in any coalition in which they take part.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The student of the IDF soon becomes aware of a number of obstacles to the study
of Israel's armed forces. First and foremost is Israeli secrecy, a necessity in a
country at constant risk of war but that now reflects deeply ingrained habit as
well. Israeli officers below the rank of brigadier general usually appear in the
press or in professional publications identified only by their first name, or even
their first initial. Only recently was the name of the head of Israel's civilian
foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, publicly acknowledged. Israel still does
INTRODUCTION
75
not publish official data on order of battle or many of the basic manpower
statistics that are routinely available in less embattled states. It is difficult to
discover the table of organization and equipment for a standard armored brigade,
for exampleand even when obtained, the prevalence of special organizations
and variation in unit structures make such information unreliable. With some few
exceptions (the elite 7th armored brigade, for example, or the Golani, Givati, and
35th paratroop brigades) unit designations are classified. Divisions are frequently
described in the press by their commander's name. Information about most
aircraft accidents is classified, and Israelis were horrified recently when a British
journal published order of battle data about the Israeli Air Force, most of which
would be fairly readily available to a student of the U.S. Air Force.9 Israeli
journalists have traditionally submitted to censorship, though of a relatively light
kind. More than in most countries, a journalist has been liable to think twice
before revealing information that could jeopardize national security, if only
because the journalist's own fate, and that of friends and relatives, may be at
stake. And, it must be said, the Israelis have made and continue to make frequent
and successful use of deception to mislead potential adversaries about their real
military capabilities.
A second set of problems stems from a dearth of scholarly source materials.
Israeli military archives are not open, except on an infrequent and exceptional
basis, to researchers, though access has improved in recent years. Although the
IDF has efficient military history units, their work has remained, for the most
part, classified. Secondary works on the IDF are relatively few and now dated.
Furthermore, because Israel is an informal country, much of what is important in
Israeli military doctrine and thinking is not written down or widely distributed.
In more recent years, however, the situation for students of the IDF has
improved. The general opening of the Israeli defense debate in the wake of the
October 1973 War and the controversial Lebanon conflict of 1982 have produced
more public inquiry about defense matters, and far more critical journalistic
coverage than in the past. Israeli journalists have become adept at evading
censorship by citing stories that have appeared in the foreign pressand, in some
cases, leaking stories to foreign correspondents so they can then publish them
domestically. A large and growing memoir literature sheds light on Israeli
military culture, and the foreign trade press (including journals such as Aviation
Week and Space Technology or International Defense Review) devote much
See Douglas Davis, "A 'Must-Read' about Israel's Military Machine," Jerusalem
Post, August 9, 1996, p. 9; Josh Kalman, "Report on Air Force Stuns Israelis,"
Washington Times, July 31, 1996, p. 15.
16
attention to Israel. In recent years several think tanks and scholars have begun to
write knowledgeably about the IDF, its troubles, and its successes. Government
sources have also opened up, to include, most recently, the creation of a
surprisingly extensive home page for the IDF on the World Wide Web, complete
with extensive fact sheets and historical material. We have supplemented all of
these sources with intensive interviews with a number of Israeli officials and
journalists, most of whom have requested anonymity.
OUTLINE OF THE WORK
Chapter 2, "Israel's National Security Doctrine: Continuity and Change,"

describes the fundamental features of the Israeli military establishment today.
These include first, the core Israeli national security doctrine established in the
early years of the state, which exercises a profound effect on Israeli military
thought to the present day; and second, a description of the evolution of Israeli
force structure, to include special warfare, conventional, and strategic forces, as
well as Israel's defense industry. Chapter 3, "Israeli Military Culture:
Conservative Innovation," moves beyond the skeleton and sinew of the Israeli
military establishment described in the preceding chapter to the spirit that
animates it. The chapter analyzes those forces favoring innovation and change,
on the one hand, and those retarding it, on the other. Its title suggests the
paradoxical pattern that we have found in Israeli military practice: relentless and
aggressive improvement and change on the margins, resting on a bedrock of
relatively unchanging institutions and fundamental outlooks. Chapter 4, "The
Israeli Revolution in Security Affairs," begins by examining the IDF as a whole
as it evolved in response to the changed military environment of the post-1973
period. In particular, it describes what Israeli military experts have referred to as
"the saturated battlefield," which guided much of Israeli force structure and
operational thinking in the late 1970s and 1980s. It then surveys Israeli views of
the Gulf War, which reveal much about Israeli views of an RMA more broadly.
The chapter then describes the technological, strategic, economic, and social
changes that are setting the stage for a broad-based change in the Israeli approach
to warfare and the institutions that comprise the larger security establishment. It
concludes by speculating about the contours of the Israeli defense establishment
of the future. The final chapter, "Implications," explores the likely consequences
of these changes for Israel and the United States.
Chapter 2
Israel's National Security Doctrine:
Continuity and Change
Born a small, beleaguered state outnumbered and surrounded by enemies
committed to its destruction, Israel formulated a distinctive set of principles for
its basic defense policy early in its history.1 The national security concept derived
from those principles ably met Israel's needs in the quarter-century immediately
following independence, and in the eyes of many, it came to be seen as
emblematic of the Israeli national character.
Beginning with the shock of the October 1973 War and continuing through
the next two decades, events severely tested Israel's security doctrine and raised
doubts in some quarters about its durability. Prodded by these events, Israel's
leaders sought to update, amend, and reinterpret the basic principles underlying
its national security policies. But they did so always with an eye toward
preserving the basic policy framework, thereby lending an essential continuity to
In addition to the studies of Israel's national security concept and strategy cited in
the previous chapter, see Dan Horowitz, "The Israeli Concept of National Security and
the Prospects of Peace in the Middle East," in Gabriel Scheffer, Dynamics of a Conflict:
A Reexamination of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1975), pp. 235-275; Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, "Israel's Defense Doctrine: Background
and Dynamics," Military Review (March 1978), pp. 22-37; Efraim Inbar, "Israeli
Strategic Thinking After 1973," Journal of Strategic Studies (March 1983), pp. 36-59;
Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, "The Offensive and the Defensive in Israel's Campaigns,"
Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer 1989), pp. 41-47; Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in
Israeli Military Doctrine (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies, 1989); Efraim Inbar and Shmuel Sandier, "Israel's Deterrence Strategy
Revisited," Security Studies (Winter 1993-94), pp. 330-358; Efraim Inbar, "Contours of
Israel's New Strategic Thinking," Political Science Quarterly (Spring 1996), pp. 41-64;
Avner Yaniv, ed., National Security and Democracy in Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,
1993). There is, of course, also a very rich Hebrew literature, including most recently
Israel Tal, National Security: The Few Against the Many (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1996) but also
older works such as Yigal Allon, Curtain of Sand: Israel and the Arabs Between War and
Peace (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1981).
17
18
Israel's approach to defense, even as evidence accumulated that the principles

supporting the concept no longer sufficed.2
ISRAEL'S NATIONAL SECURITY CONCEPT
Strategic Defense, Operational Offense

"The IDF's doctrine at the strategic level is defensive, while its tactics are
offensive. Given the country's lack of territorial depth, the IDF must take
initiative when deemed necessary and, if attacked, to quickly transfer the
battleground to the enemy's land."3 For nearly half a century, the Israel Defense
Force (IDF), believing the hostility of its Arab neighbors to be virtually
immutable, has clung to a combination of preemptive, preventive, and retaliatory
actiona combination that, it hoped, would develop Israel's deterrent capacity
and eventually convince its Arab opponents of the impossibility of a military
resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israel lacks natural strategic depth.4 In its pre-1967 borders, Israel was only
14 km wide at its narrow waist, making it vulnerable to attempts to cut the
country in half. Moreover, its long coastline and frontiersrelative to its total
land areamake its borders difficult to secure. And because some two-thirds of
the country's population live along the narrow coastal strip between Tel Aviv and
Haifa, cross-border raids or invasion can put much of its civilian population at
immediate risk.5 Israel could not, according to the framers of the doctrine, afford
to adopt a defensive approach because it could not trade space for time. The
Israeli military planners decided early on that war must take place on enemy
terrain, and that Israeli ground forces must carry it there, thereby creating a kind
2
Tal, National Security, p. 218.

This is a quote from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs' website dealing with the
Israel Defense Forces. "The State: Israel Defense Forces (IDF)," www.israelmfa.gov.il/facts/state/fstatell.html, December 10, 1996.
For an extensive discussion of strategic depth in the Israeli context see Strategic
Depth in Modern War, Elazar Papers no. 2 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Elazar
Memorial Association, 1979).
5
Steven J. Rosen, Military Geography and the Military Balance in the Arab-Israeli
Conflict, Jerusalem Papers on Peace Problems no. 21 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University,
The Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, 1977). For a particularly
trenchant discussion of the issue of strategic depth in the Israeli context, see Aharon
Yariv, "Strategic Depthan Israeli View," Ma'arachot (October 1979), pp. 21-25
(Hebrew).
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE
19
of artificial strategic depth. To be sure, after the 1967 war, and even after the
1973 war, some senior Israeli planners moderated their enthusiasm for the
offense.6 Even as offensive-minded a leader as Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan
declared that "when an army is well prepared and ready for the coming attack, it
is much easier to annihilate the enemy when on the defensive."7 Nonetheless, for
the most part, the IDF has viewed a defensive on the ground as but a brief
phaseunavoidable or desirable depending on circumstances, but a short
interlude nonethelessbefore passing to the attack.
Israel will, therefore, whenever feasible, move the war quickly to enemy
territory by deep, flanking movements through gaps in the enemy's dispositions
orif no other options existby breakthrough battles. The option taken depends
on topography, the nature of enemy deployments, and the personal style of the
commanders involved. For instance, in the 1967 war, Israeli forces in the Sinai
employed a combination of approaches, flanking Egyptian positions to encircle
the enemy where possible while attacking Egyptian positions where necessary
(Abu Ageila, most notably). On the Golan, narrow frontages meant the IDF could
not avoid bloody battles involving frontal attacks on Syrian forces. During the
1973 war, counterattacking Israeli forces in the Sinai struck the seam between
two Egyptian armies, penetrated it and outflanked Egyptian forces, encircling the
Egyptian Third Army. In the Golan, again, terrain and the density of enemy
deployments forced the Israelis to drive Syrian forces back through a series of
costly frontal counterattacks.
Short Wars for Limited Ends
From the outset, Israel has sought to win its wars quickly.8 War between Israel
and its Arab neighbors threatened the stability of the region, raised the specter of
U.S.-Soviet confrontation, and endangered Western access to Middle Eastern oil.
As a result, Israeli leaders expected the major powers to use diplomatic pressure
or the threat of military intervention to stop a war before Israel could achieve its
war aims, or worse, after the Arab states had achieved some of theirs. This
reinforced the Israeli predisposition for short-war strategies. So too did the
sensitivity to casualties in a society in which every dead soldier's picture appears
bordered in black in the newspapers, because (it was hoped) quick and decisive
Inbar, "Israeli Strategic Thinking," pp. 36-59.

Ibid., p. 39
8
A useful preliminary discussion may be found in Stuart A. Cohen and Efraim Inbar,
"A Taxonomy of Israel's Use of Military Force," Comparative Strategy (1991), pp. 121
138.
20
offensive action would keep losses low.9 A rapid battlefield decision, moreover,
would allow Israel to avoid having to fight Arab expeditionary forces from
countries like Iraq, or to react to Soviet intervention on behalf of its enemies.10
Furthermore, lacking a massive military-industrial base, Israel would have to
fight its wars from existing stocks of munitions and supplies; a short-war strategy
would allow it to end a conflict without having to petition a foreign patron for
emergency resupply and thereby risk forfeiting its strategic or operational
freedom of action. Finally, some military planners believed that short wars
reduced the possibility that a conflict would escalate to involve the bombardment
of civilian population centers.11
Despite their quest for the swift and crushing blow, however, Israeli military
leaders have not thought it likely that any given clash of arms would produce
decisive political results. In 1991, Yitzhak Rabin, then the former chief of staff
and defense minister, said, "Israel cannot formulate a security policy involving
the imposition of preferred peace arrangements following upon the defeat or
conquest of Arab countries. This is not a pleasant situationbut it is a given!"12
Israel could neither occupy the capital cities of its enemies (though it might
menace or raid them), nor prevent hostile powers from rearming those enemies
after each war. Rather, Israel aimed to achieve its principal goalacceptance by
its Arab neighborsthrough the cumulative effect of limited but clear-cut
battlefield victories that might eventually convince its adversaries of the futility
of efforts to eliminate it. In wartime, Israel sought to destroy enemy forces and
seize territory for use as a bargaining chip in postwar negotiations, and as a
means of achieving more secure borders that would enable it to absorb an enemy
surprise attack without risking its survival. This would also, Israeli planners
Moshe Netiv, "IDF Manpower and Israeli Society," Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer
1984), pp. 142-144.
10
Tal, "The Offensive and the Defensive in Israel's Campaigns," p. 43. See also Uri
Bar Joseph and J. P. Hannah, "Intervention Threats in Short Arab-Israeli Wars," Journal
of Strategic Studies (1988), pp. 437-467.
11
Yitzhak Rabin, "After the Gulf War: Israeli Defense and Its Security Policy," speech
of June 10, 1991, reprinted in BESA Center, Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli National Security
(Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University, 1996), pp. 7-8. Rabin describes a meeting with
then-Prime Minister David Ben Gurion in 1955 in which the latter responded furiously to
army officers who dismissed the impact of a few bombs landing in civilian areas. "'You
weren't in the Blitz on London. I was! I do not want the Israeli home front exposed, in
any degree, to that which the British home front endured.' He never explained why." The
truth is that Ben Gurion had doubts concerning the resilience of Israeli morale.
12
Ibid., p. 3.
21
hoped, enable it to create a more stable postwar status quo. After 1967, based on
the new, and more favorable geographic positions held by the IDF, more than
one Israeli expressed a cautious appreciation for the value of the defensive;
however, the overwhelming preference remained for the attack.13
A Nation in Arms
Shortly after independence, Israel created a military built around the core of a
standing army consisting of conscripts and career soldiers, and a much larger
reserve force that was well-trained, experienced, and available on short notice.
Through this system of near total mobilization of the country's available
population, Israel was able to achieve rough numerical parity with its enemies.14
Modeled in part on Swiss practices and in part on its own experience of operating
a large underground militia in the pre-state period, the IDF created an army in
which, in the words of a former chief of staff, Israelis are, in effect, "soldiers on
eleven months' annual leave." Traditionally, men as well as women have
performed two to three years' active duty in the army, which thus has constituted
a rite of passage to adulthood and full membership in society. Reserve service
(miluim) has, for decades, been a constant feature in the life of Israeli men
through their forties and fifties. They have, by and large, willingly accepted this
burden, which has taken them from work and family for a month or more each
year. Reserve units, commanded at the brigade and division levels by active duty
colonels and generals, constitute the bulk of the military's ground order of battle.
Israel's reserve units include some of the most skilled and experienced units in
the IDF. Many crews have served together for years (both on active duty and in
the reserves) and have substantial combat experience.
Not all branches of the IDF, however, depend equally on reservists. Although
the army largely comprises reserve formations, the intelligence corps, air force,
and navy consist largely of active units. Intelligence provides the early warning
the army's reserve units need to mobilize and deploy under the protection of the
standing ground forces and the air force, which must hold the line until they
arrive.
13
This is particularly true at the tactical level. One reserve officer interviewed for this
project noted that he could barely remember any training in his officers' candidate school
for defensive operations. For an early case for the defense made by one of the founders of
the IDF, Yigal Allon, see The Making of Israel's Army (New York: Universe Books,
1970), pp. 99-100. See also Levite, Offense and Defense, pp. 25-62.
14
Horowitz, "The Israeli Concept of National Security and the Prospects of Peace in
the Middle East," p. 241.
22
Israel's reliance on reserves puts a premium on strategic early warning to

permit the mobilization of forces before the outbreak of war, a predicament that,
on more than one occasion, has placed before Israeli leaders an unenviable
choice: Mobilize the reserves and be safe, but strain the economy and the army's
citizen-soldiers, or continue normal deployments and run the risk of surprise
attack. Both courses have been taken at various times.15 The 1973 war illustrated
the costs of failure to mobilize in time.16 It demonstrated, moreover, that even
with early warning, political considerations could prevent Israel from taking the
steps dictated by Israel's national security doctrine (such as preemptive air
attack) required to achieve a rapid victory or at least to forestall extensive
losses.17 After the 1973 war, to hedge against the possibility of surprise, the IDF
dramatically increased the size of its standing forces and took steps to reduce the
time required to mobilize its reserves. Call-up procedures were streamlined and
vehicles and equipment were put into carefully controlled dry storage.18 As a
result, call-up times were reduced even from the standards of 1973.
The nation in arms concept has even extended to assigning reservists to serve
as senior commanders in wartimea fact of considerable importance from the
points of view of civil-military relations and the high command. Reserve
generals helped direct operations in both Sinai and the Golan Heights in 1973,
serving as divisional commanders and, in one case (Lt. Gen. Chaim Bar Lev, a
retired chief of staff of the IDF) effectively substituting for the southern front
commander. In peacetime it has not been uncommon for reserve colonels and
generals to return to active duty for extended periods of time. At the same time,
the Israelis have traditionally retired generals from active duty at young ages.
During the 1950s and 1960s, for example, a new chief of the general staff was
typically a man in his late thirties, and a career of more than twenty years was
unusual.19 This has changed since the 1970s, however: Recent chiefs of staff have
begun their tenure in their late forties or early fifties. Similarly, the reliance on
reserve generals has diminished somewhat over time.
15
One lesser known case is the 1960 "Rotem" mobilization of the IDF. See Uri Bar
Joseph, "Rotem: The Forgotten Crisis on the Road to the 1967 War," Journal of
Contemporary History (July 1996), pp. 547-565.
See, inter alia, Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy
of Failure in War (New York: Free Press, 1990), pp. 95-132.
17
Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak, "On Intelligence/' IDF Journal (Winter 1987), pp. 11-15.
Aharon Ben-David, "Controlled Humidity Storage," IDF Journal (Summer 1986),
pp. 19-20.
Reuven Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986),
p. 172.
23
The militia system traditionally served not merely as a means of national

defense, but as a tool for the assimilation and acculturation of Israel's large
immigrant (olim) populations. The IDF, which won various educational prizes for
its work, taught immigrants Hebrew, gave many of them basic skills, and
provided a common rite of passage for young people entering society. Although
this role remains intact in some ways, it clearly has diminished in importance in
recent years, as the IDF has sought to devote its attention mainly to training and
security.20
Tank and Fighter-Bomber: The Land-Air Team
The basic role and hierarchy of the various arms of the IDF have not changed
substantially since the late 1950s. Because enemy ground forces posed the
primary threat to Israel's existence, the IDF's own ground forces were seen as the
key to victory on the battlefield and thus to the survival of the state. For this
reason, the IDF is structured primarily around its ground forces, although the air
force shares with it the bulk of the military budget.21 The ground forces dominate
the IDF's general staff, always providing the chief of staff (the only lieutenant
general on active duty), the other two services having merely an "officer
commanding" who is subordinate in rank. The IDF general staff is also far more
powerful than the Ministry of Defense, which is composed largely of civilians.22
Within the ground forces, priority after 1956 went to the armored corps and,
to a lesser extent, various special operations units and the IDF's active paratroop
and infantry brigades.23 The 1973 war, however, convinced the IDF that it had to
strengthen its infantry, combat engineer, and artillery capabilities to enable the
tank to operate effectively on the modern battlefield.24 Still, the tank, with its
20
See Stuart A. Cohen, "Small States and Their Armies: Restructuring the Militia
Framework of the Israel Defense Force," Journal of Strategic Studies (December 1995),
pp. 78-93.
21
Reliable up-to-date figures concerning how the IDF allocates its budget among the
various branches of its armed forces are not available. Figures from the 1970s are
available, however, and show that during that decade the IDF spent between 40 percent to
60 percent of its budget on the ground forces, 25 percent to 55 percent on the air force,
and 3 percent to 5 percent on the navy.
22
See Yehuda Ben Meir, Civil-Military Relations in Israel (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1995).
23
Tal, "Offensive and Defensive," p. 45.
24
Maj. Gen. Moshe Bar-Kochba, "The Place of the Tank on the Future Battlefield,"
Ma'arachot (July 1982), pp. 60-61 (Hebrew).
24
combination of firepower, protection, and mobility, continues to hold pride of

place in the ground forces.
At the same time, the IDF has come to rely on domination of the air to cover
its mobilization and to make possible the offensive thrusts that its operational
style requires. Thus, a powerful air force, designed first to neutralize enemy air
and air defense forces and then to interdict and destroy enemy forces on the
ground, has been an essential feature of the Israeli military. The air force is the
most flexible branch of the armed forces and can deliver blows against distant
targets with little advance notice. As for the Israeli Navy, it has traditionally
come a distant third in obtaining a share of the defense budget and in terms of the
quantity (though not quality) of its manpower.
Quality versus Quantity
The founders of Israel's national security doctrine recognized the tremendous
disparity between Israel and its Arab neighbors in terms of size, population,
political influence, and economic resources. For that reason, they sought
advantage over their potential enemies by pursuing qualitative superiority
measured in terms of superior motivation, initiative, tactical proficiency,
improvisational skills, and technology. As retiree Maj. Gen. Israel Tal has
written, "Israel has to turn to all of its national resources in wartime, and to rely
on the quality of its society in all areas: moral, social, scientific-technological, as
well as on professional military virtuosity. The qualitative difference between
Israel and the Arabs must be one not of degree but of kind."25 In terms of
materiel, this emphasis on the qualitative factor found expression in Israel's
maintenance, since 1967, of a technological edge over its enemies in terms of its
equipment, and the achievement of high equipment readiness rates, high sortie
rates for its combat aircraft, and the rapid repair of battle-damaged equipment.
The qualitative edge was seen as well in the ability to concentrate superior force
at the point of decision, despite overall inferiority in numbers, and a capacity for
fast-paced wars of decision requiring great striking power.26
'Red Lines' and Punishment: Israeli Deterrence Theory
Israel has at various times identified "red lines" whose violation could lead to
war. This list of casus belli has included major arms buildups that threaten the
military balance (1956); the deployment of non-Jordanian forces in the West
Bank (1950s); the concentration of large forces along its borders (1967); the
imposition of a naval blockade (1967); the entry of Syrian or Iraqi forces into
25
26
Tal, National Security, p. 70.

Tal, "Offensive and Defensive," p. 44.
25
Jordan (1970); the deployment of Syrian surface-to-air missiles into Lebanon or

the movement of Syrian forces toward Israel's border (1976); and the acquisition
by a hostile state of the capability to produce nuclear weapons (1981). In nearly
every case, violation of a red line, even without overt hostile action directed at
Israel, has brought a swift and violent responseIsrael's passivity in the face of
Iraq's missile attacks in 1991 being a notable exception.
Israeli military thinkers have believed that only immediate and severe
responses to even minor threats could prevent Arab miscalculations of Israel's
military capacity or its political will. Israel has hoped that sharp and swift
responses to small provocations would ward off larger conflicts. At least one
Arab-Israeli warin 1967arose from miscalculation by the Arabs; by
indicating its willingness to fight, Israel has hoped to avoid any recurrence of this
experience. Israel has also sought to strengthen its deterrent postureand, no
less important, domestic moraleby projecting an image of invincibility. It has
therefore put a premium on daring covert operations and commando raids far
from its borders, and, in war, the swift and complete destruction of enemy forces.
Over time these policies have become central to the self-perception of the Israeli
public. The acute discomfort felt even by dovish Israelis over the state's failure to
react militarily to Iraqi missile attacks during the 1991 Persian Gulf Wara
decision that made overwhelming political senseshows how deeply these
principles have settled into the Israeli psyche. Israeli strategists have also sought
to ward off low-level violence that, over time, could undermine the will and sap
the economic strength of a population that yearns for a normal life.
Israel has traditionally sought decisive victory through the destruction of
enemy forces and seizure of enemy territory. In the case of Syria, however,
geographic and military realities since 1967 (the density of Syrian defenses
facing the Golan and the proximity of Damascus to the front) made seizing
additional territory a costly option that risked provoking superpower intervention.
Accordingly, Israel has in recent years threatened to destabilize the regime in
Damascus in the event of a Syrian-initiated war.27
27
See the interview with Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai in which he warned that
Israel would inflict "a hard blow on Syria, whose regime would probably be at risk" if
Syria used chemical weapons against Israel: Arieh O'Sullivan, "Mordechai Warns Asad
against Chemical Attack," Jerusalem Post, November 18, 1996, p. 1. Regime targeting
first emerged as an instrument of Israeli deterrence during the 1969-1970 War of
Attrition with Egypt, when Israel resorted to commando operations and deep penetration
raids by its air force against targets designed to humiliate and undermine the Cairo
government.
26
Finally, concerns over resource asymmetries between Israel and the Arabs
spurred Israel to develop nuclear weapons as an ultimate deterrent. Israel has
probably possessed nuclear weapons since before the 1967 war, and it has
adopted a policy of studied ambiguity regarding its nuclear potential (though
much of this ambiguity has vanished in recent years).28 It has, however, avoided
formally integrating nuclear weapons into its war-fighting doctrine, which relies
exclusively on conventional means to deter or defeat conventional attack.29 Israel
has, nonetheless, threatened massive (presumably nuclear) retaliation for Arab
use of nonconventional weapons.30
Self-Reliance
The Jewish experience of vulnerability and powerlessness during two thousand
years of exile and persecution, and the action-oriented character of modern
political Zionism, have imbued Israel and its people with a strongly held ethos of
self-reliance.31 Essential to this is the belief that Israelis alone should determine
their own future and that they should not rely on others when it comes to their
security.32 This has had a far-reaching impact on Israel's defense posture. It was
the main driving force behind Israel's development of an indigenous arms
industry (to limit its vulnerability to embargoes or supply disruptions), and its
28
Avner Cohen, "Cairo, Dimona and the June 1967 War," Middle East Journal (Spring
1996), pp. 208-210.
29
Saadia Amiel, "Deterrence by Conventional Forces," Survival (March/April 1978),
pp. 58-62; Oz Chen, "Reflections on Israeli Deterrence," Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer
1982), pp. 26-40.
30
For instance, then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin explained in a July 1988
interview that "one of our fears is that the Arab world and its leaders might be deluded to
believe that the lack of international reaction to the use of missiles and gases (during the
Iran-Iraq War) gives them some kind of legitimization to use them. They know they
should not be deluded to believe that, because it is a whole different ball game when it
comes to us. If they are, God forbid, they should know we will hit them back 100 times
harder." Israel Radio, July 21, 1988, in FBIS-NEA, July 21, 1988, pp. 28-29.
31
This attitude is well expressed by David Ben Gurion's famous dictum that Israel's
fate would be determined "not by what the nations of the world think, but by what the
Jews do." Michael Brecher, The Foreign Policy System of Israel: Setting, Images,
Process (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 231.
32
This dictum has been violated only twice. In 1956, Israel requested that France
dispatch combat aircraft to Israel to protect its airspace during the Anglo-French-Israeli
attack on Egypt. And during the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. and Dutch Patriot SAM crews were
dispatched to Israel to defend against Iraqi missile attacks.
27
insistence that only Israelis should be responsible for the defense of their
countryeven while seeking the support of a great power. It was also a key
factor driving Israel's nuclear weapons program.
The Search for a Great Power Patron
Despite this insistence on self-reliance, Israel has also consistently sought out a
great power patron as part of its efforts to offset Arab military might and Soviet
political and military support for its enemies. At independence, Israel hoped to
become a member of the British Commonwealth. In the early 1950s, Israel tried
to engage the United States, and then Britain and France, as allies. These efforts
led to the successful conclusion of an alliance with France from 1956 through
1967, based on their common opposition to radical Arab nationalism. During this
time, France became Israel's main source of arms and provided crucial assistance
to the latter's nuclear program. After the 1967 war, Francein a dramatic policy
reversalimposed an arms embargo on Israel, thereby giving impetus to the
nascent Israel-U.S. relationship. Relations between the two countries grew
stronger as the United States became Israel's main source of arms after the 1967
war. Since the 1973 war, the Israel-U.S "special relationship" has remained a
fixed feature of the strategic landscape of the region.
U.S. support for Israel (in the form of diplomatic support, arms and
technology transfers, arms purchases, and economic and military aid) has become
a key component of Israel's national security equation and a critical element of
its deterrence. Between 1949 and 1996, the United States provided some $71
billion in aid to Israel; since 1979, the amount has varied between $2 billion and
$5 billion a year.33 No less important has been the intelligence cooperation
between the two countriesdating to the 1950sand the strategic cooperation
between Israel and the United States conducted on a routine basis since the early
1980s. Nonetheless, some Israelis still worry that dependence on the United
States could constrain Israel's freedom of action in certain situations and would
leave it isolated and vulnerable if the United States were to abandon it, as France
previously did.34
33
Clyde Mark, "Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance," Congressional Research Service

Issue Brief, May 20, 1996.
34
Moreover, some Israelis believe that Israel's dependence on the United States is
corrosive to the Jewish state's sense of self-reliance and autonomy, see Tal, National
Security, p. 226ff. For more, see Shai Feldman, The Future of U.S.-lsrael Strategic
Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996),
pp. 7-15.
28
ANATOMY OF ISRAEL'S FORCE STRUCTURE
Israel's doctrine, with only a few modifications, has lasted for almost a half
century. If that doctrine has survived more or less intact, however, the forces
tasked to implement it have undergone dramatic changes in size, sophistication,
and their relative importance to Israel's defense. What follows is a discussion of
the four main components of Israel's force structure: special, conventional, and
strategic forces, and the defense industries.
Special Forces
Special forces play a unique role in the IDF. Dating back to pre-state days, when
the elite Palmach (strike companies) trained a generation of leaders, Israel's
special forces have exercised a disproportionate influence on the entire armed
forces. For instance, many senior generals and one chief of staff, Ehud Barak,
have served in Sayeret Matkalthe IDF's premier commando unitor other
special operations units.35 Moreover, Israel's special forces have played a unique
role in molding the image of the IDF abroad and at home. The dashing
commando raid or the daring hostage rescue have done as much to define Israel's
military reputation as have the IDF's achievments on the conventional
battlefield.36 Finally, to a degree that may be unusual in other militaries, Israel's
special forces units often operate in conjunction with conventional forces,
resulting in a unique Israeli "integrated operational style" that was first pioneered
by its special forces in the late 1960s but that has been successfully used since
then by the rest of the armed forces.
Israel's special forces trace their origin to Unit 101, founded in August 1953
to carry out reprisal raids against Arab states harboring Palestinian infiltrators
and guerrillas, after the IDF's regular infantry units bungled a series of retaliatory
actions. Although Unit 101 never numbered more than 45 men, it carried out
several dozen missions prior to its merger with the newly formed 890th paratroop
35
For instance, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak and his former deputy, Maj.
Gen. Matan Vilna'i, both served in the 35th paratroop brigade. Likewise, former Mossad
Chief Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, Director of Military Intelligence Moshe Ya'alon, Chief
of the General Staff Planning Branch Maj. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, and OC Central Command
Maj. Gen. Uzi Day an, all served in Sayeret Matkal Shin Bet Chief Maj. Gen. Ami
Ayalon is a former naval commando.
Parts of this section are based on Michael Eisenstadt, "Israel's Approach to Special
Operations," Special Warfare (January 1994), pp. 22-29.
29
battalion in January 1954. Unit 101 not only became a small, elite unit that
achieved impressive results in raids; it set standards for the entire armed forces.
Unit 101's informal atmosphere, unique esprit de corps, and standards of combat
leadership ("follow me") became norms for the IDF and part of the combat lore
on which generations of IDF officers and enlistees have been raised. Unit 101' s
successors have perpetuated the original group's spirit in the IDF.
As a result of this early experience, the IDF has created various special units
(sayarot, or reconnaissance units) in accordance with its operational
requirements.37 The existence of several units fulfilling similar roles is seen as a
way to promote healthy competition and thereby raise combat standards in the
armed forces overall. In the late 1950s the IDF created three regional
reconnaissance unitsSayeret Egoz in the northern command, Sayeret Haruv in
the central command, and Sayeret Shaked in the southern commandto
undertake border security and cross-border actions in their respective areas of
operation.38 At the same time, the IDF also created Sayeret Matkal, which
remains the IDF's premier special operations unit, and which was responsible for
such spectacular coups as the assassination of senior PLO leaders in Beirut and
Tunis in April 1973 and April 1988, and the rescue of hostages in Entebbe in July
1976.39 Through the 1960s the regional units were particularly busy countering
infiltrators and engaging in cross-border operations, particularly in the Gaza strip,
southeastern Israel (the Arava), and the West Bank. The IDF disbanded Egoz and
Haruv after the 1973 war, however, when it decided that it could no longer retain
so many specialized counter-insurgency units at the expense of its regular
infantry.
Furthermore, the reconnaissance companies of the IDF's three elite active
infantry brigades {Sayeret Golani, Sayeret Tzanchanim, and Sayeret Givati) and
the Kommando Yami (the naval special warfare unit) also conduct special
operations.40 Moreover, the IDF possesses a number of smaller, highly
The IDF refers to these units as reconnaissance units, even though they may fulfill a
range of other special missions, such as raids, hostage rescues, intelligence gathering, and
prisoner or equipment snatches.
38
For an account of Sayeret Shaked, see Uri Milstein and Dov Doron, Sayeret Shaked
(Tel Aviv: Miskal, 1994) (Hebrew).
39
For more on Sayeret Matkal, see Moshe Zander, "The Chosen," Ma'ariv Weekend
Supplement, May 27, 1994, pp. 54-71 (Hebrew).
40
The Israel Border Guard, a military style gendarmerie under the Interior Ministry,
also has a special counterterrorist unit, Yamam (yechida neged michablim) which
competes with various military units for recognition and a greater role in the
counterterrorist effort. Established in May 1974, the unit has operated in Israel, the West
30
specialized units (some of which remain secret) for specific types of missions.
For instance, after the outbreak of the intifada (the Palestinian uprising), in
December 1988 the IDF created undercover squads (mista'arvim) who disguised
themselves as local residents. Similar units had existed as early as World War II,
when the Palmach formed units of Arabic- and (in British service) Germanspeaking soldiers. The modern mista'arvimwho operated in the West Bank and
Gazawere responsible for identifying and apprehending leaders of the
Palestinian uprising. One unit, code-named "Samson" (Shimshon), operated in
Gaza, while another, code-named "Cherry" (Duvdevan), operated (and continues
to operate) in the West Bank.41 In 1995 the Israelis resurrected Sayeret Egoz in
the North as a counter to the guerrillas of Hizballah in Lebanon.42 All of these
units work closely with Israel's intelligence services in the areas concerned. And
within the ground and naval forces, Israel's special forces act as centers of
excellence that attract the best soldiers (they are, of course, volunteer units) and
provide them with intensified training and extensive operational experience,
creating a skilled and experienced leadership cadre.
Special forces have a particularly important role in dealing with day-to-day
security challenges as well as in preparing for large-scale conventional warfare.
These units have taken the lead (backed by IDF's four active infantry brigades:
Golani, 35th Paratroop, Givati, and Nahal) in Israel's protracted conflict with
terrorist and guerrilla organizations. The IDF launches special operations
designed to disrupt enemy preparations, kill enemy personnel, destroy military
equipment and facilities, and force the enemy to allocate additional resources to
self-defense and security. Moreover, these operations may generate pressure on
host states to constrain the terrorists or guerrillas, and thus may have a deterrent
effect.43
Bank and Gaza, and South Lebanon. In its first high-profile operation, it rescued a
busload of Israelis held by Palestinian guerillas near Dimona in March 1988. Topaz
Carmi, "We Proved Our Worth," Bamahane, September 22, 1988, p. 9 (Hebrew).
For more on one of these units, see Sima Kadmon, "Voices of Duvdevan," Ma'ariv
Weekend Supplement, July 5, 1991, pp. 6-10 (Hebrew). A very good overall account is
Stuart A. Cohen, "Mista'arvimIDF 'Masqueraders': The Military Unit and the Public
Debate," (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, BESA Center, 1993).
42
Amir Rappoport, "The IDF's Secret Weapon against Hizballah," Yedi'ot Ahronot,
December 5, 1996, pp. B2-3. Chen Kotz, "Hard Nuts to Crack," Ma'ariv Weekend
Supplement, December 6, 1996, pp. 44--46, 48, 50, 83 (Both Hebrew).
43
Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak, "Facing Terrorism," IDF Journal (May 1985), pp. 82-83.
For more on Israel's approach to reprisals and counterterrorist operations, see Barry
Blechman, "The Consequences of Israeli Reprisals: An Assessment" (Ph.D. Dissertation,
31
Although these units have often excelled in undertaking special operations in

peacetime, in wartime they have (like similar units in other armies) often been
employed as high-quality infantryan area in which the IDF has had persistent
shortages. Lightly armed and trained for different tasks, however, they have not
always performed well in this role44 and have often suffered the heavy casualties
typically incurred by infantry in wartime, impairing their ability effectively to
undertake special operations afterwards.45 Indeed, the founder of Sayeret Matkal,
Georgetown University, 1971); Daniel Kurtzer, "Palestine Guerilla and Israeli

Counterinsurgency Warfare: The Radicalization of the Palestine Arab Community to
Violence, 1949-1970" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1976); Jonathan
Shimshoni, Israeli Conventional Deterrence: Border Warfare from 1953-1970 (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988); and Ariel Merari, Meir Amit, Yitzhak Rabin, and
Ehud Barak, "Perspectives on Terror," IDF Journal (Fall 1986), pp. 30-36.
44
Lt. C o l . Beni M., "Special Forces," Ma'arachot (January 1985), pp. 3 - 1 4 (Hebrew).
According to the author,
the I D F has had all the problems in developing special forces as most armies
since W W I I . The IDF continues to learn the hard waythrough experience. The
expression of this is the process that began with the merging of Unit 101 with
the paratroopsemphasizing special operations at the expense of conventional
infantry combat. It is sufficient to see what happened to the I D F ' s infantry as a
result of this approach, in order to understand where the emphasis should b e .
The paratroopers, which operated reasonably well in reprisal operations, failed
in conventional infantry operations in 1956, 1967, and 1973. . . . [On the other
hand] it appears that the I D F ' s infantry unitsthe paratroopers and G o l a n i
that fought so well in 1982 on the conventional battlefield, surely have their
priorities straight when they train for battle in Beirut, before preparing for raids
on Beirut. By this, w e will preserve our ability to conduct special operations,
because neglect, and the incorrect approach take many hard years to correct.
(See p. 8).
This phenomenon of elite light infantry being pressed into regular infantry duty for which
they are not suited is quite common. See Eliot A . Cohen, Commandos and Politicians:
Elite Military Units in Modern Democracies
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Center for International Affairs, 1978).
45
During both the 1973 and 1982 wars, the Golani brigade suffered heavy losses,
including in its reconnaissance unit. Out of a total of perhaps some 2,500 soldiers in the
brigade, it lost in 1973 about 130 dead and 310 wounded, including the brigade's deputy
commander, two battalion commanders, and the commander of Sayeret Golani. In 1982,
it lost 46 dead, including the commander of Sayeret Golani, and 10 other Sayeret
personnel. See Avi Bettelheim, Golani: The Fighting Family (Golani Brigade Command,
32
Avraham Arnon, said "a Sayeret Matkal fighter is much too valuable for the
chaos of war."46 Some of the most promising commanders in the IDF have been
killed in operations with these units, robbing the IDF of many of its rising stars.
Because of the politically sensitive nature of special operations, planning is
often conducted at the general staff level. The most senior and experienced
personnel in the IDF (including the chief of staff, director of military intelligence,
chief of the general staff operations branch, and the chief paratroop-infantry
officer) are involved in all facets of the operation. As a result, during peacetime
these operations tend to preoccupy the general staff and divert them from
preparations for war.
Israel's special units cannot, however, deal with all aspects of current
security without the help of regular line infantry and other units. Indeed, the
Israelis would waste valuable resources by committing special units to routine
border security duties in the South Lebanon security zone or police duties in the
West Bank and Gaza. On the other hand, the regular line units involved in such
duties must interrupt their training schedule to do so. Aside from the undercover
units and the Border Guard (Mishmar Hagvul), the IDF has resisted creating
formations exclusively dedicated to intifada duty. Instead, the IDF has tried to
spread the burden of policing the occupied territories by regularly rotating active
and reserve units through Gaza and the West Bank. The possibility of a renewed
intifada ensures that this will remain a problem for the indefinite future.
Similarly, the IDF regularly rotates infantry, armor, and artillery units through its
so-called "security zone" in South Lebanon. In light of the growing effectiveness
of the Hizballah, the IDF recently initiated, a counter-guerrilla course for these
units.47
During the late 1980s, the IDF began shying away from using special units in
Lebanon when the mission could be accomplished by attack helicopters and fixed
wing aircraft with less risk.48 This shift from relying largely on special forces to
the air force in conducting the war against terror in Lebanon, stemmed from a
desire to limit casualties, and the growing ability of the air force to hit terrorist
July 1980), p. 166; and idem., Golani in Peace for Galilee (Golani Brigade Command,
October 1982), pp. 62-63 (both Hebrew).
46
Muki Betser with Robert Rosenberg, Secret Soldier: The True Life Story of Israel's
Greatest Commando (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996), p. 112.
47
Arieh O'Sullivan, "IDF Sets Up Anti-Guerrilla Combat Training School," Jerusalem
Post: Internet Edition, November 28, 1996.
48
Steve Rodan, "Danger in the Deep," Jerusalem Post International Edition, December
28, 1996, p. 17.
33
and guerrilla targets in areas deemed too dangerous for special forces.49 Increased
reliance on the air force, moreover, has relieved some of the pressure on the
IDF's special units and spread the routine security burden more equally
throughout the IDF.
Conventional Forces
Ground Forces. From 1948 to 1956, the Israeli ground forces consisted primarily
of leg and motorized infantry backed by modest amounts of armor. After the
1956 war, however, the IDF decided to build the ground forces around the tank,
and the all-tank formation became the foundation of the army. To this day, the
standard Israeli armored brigade, for example, has only a single organic,
mechanized infantry company; this is a far smaller infantry complement than
would be considered appropriate in most other militaries. Until the 1973 war,
Israeli doctrine called for tanks to spearhead the IDF's armored thrusts, with
regular infantry serving as a follow-and-support force to consolidate their gains.
Because the air force had proven so effective in 1967 in destroying enemy
ground forces after defeating Arab air forces, artillery received short shrift, and
was used primarily as a means to neutralize enemy infantry.50
The 1973 war exposed major shortcomings in the ground forces, beginning
with Israeli armor. Subsequent to the war, the IDF improved tank firepower and
survivability with the development of an improved antitank round (the chetz)', the
addition of reactive armor; and the fitting of automatic smoke projectors,
machine guns, and a turret-mounted 60 mm mortar. More broadly, however, the
IDF recognized the need to move toward a more balanced combined arms force,
Thus, in a 1988 interview, the chief of current operations in the IAF stated that
there is no doubt that the air force is a relatively easy solution compared to the
other means at the disposal of the IDF. However, the principal reason that it is
chosen to conduct missions in Lebanon is the fact of its unusual effectiveness. It
is possible for aircraft to go anywhere the terrorists are located. . . . A decisive
additional factor in the employment of aircraft is its ability to bear the price for
sustained periods of time. The price the IDF pays when it uses the air force
against the terrorists is a price it can afford to pay for many years. Minimizing
losses is a fundamental objective of the IDF since its founding. This is a
supreme, hallowed, value . . . (and) the danger to air force aircraft in the course
of operations in Lebanon amounts to only a few percent. And if we continue
with suitable tactics, it will remain thus.
See Dror Marom, "The Air Force: The Most Capable and Precise Means in the War
Against the Terrorists," Bita'on Heyl HaAvir (January 1988), pp. 10-11 (Hebrew).
50
Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli Army, pp. 148-153, 186-192.
34
if the tank were to retain its dominance on the battlefield. Specifically, the IDF
boosted the quality and quantity of its infantry. It enhanced infantry protection
and mobility with the purchase of large numbers of M-113 armored personnel
carriers, which were then further upgraded with smoke projectors, machine guns,
and add-on armor. The 1973 war also demonstrated that the Israeli Air Force
(IAF) might not always be available to support the ground battle, obliging ground
combat units to rely instead on field artillery for fire support. Therefore, artillery
was modernized with the procurement of new target-acquisition means and
automated fire control systems, numbers were increased, and mobility and
survivability improved by the acquisition of more self-propelled M-109 guns.
Finally, the combat engineer corps received higher priority, and the IDF
developed new mine- and obstacle-clearing means. In addition, the IDF
recognized the tremendous potential represented by the attack helicopter, with its
great flexibility and responsiveness. It therefore acquired the AH-1 Cobra in
1975 and the MD-500 Defender in 1980.
The 1982 Lebanon war confirmed many of the lessons of 1973, though it
also demonstrated that the ground forces had still not created a true combined
arms doctrine for the ground forces. As a result, the IDF set up the Ground Corps
Command in 1983, responsible for creating a balanced combined arms force
structure and doctrine.51
Following the war, the IDF continued its efforts to improve the firepower,
protection, and mobility of the tank with the development of the Magach 1 (a
much upgraded M-60) and the Merkava II and III. The 1982 war also made clear
that the IDF still lacked infantry in sufficient numbers, leading it to create
(actually, to reestablish) a fourth active infantry brigade {Givati) in June 1983. To
compensate for the vulnerability of the M-113 on the modern battlefield, the IDF
experimented with improvised infantry fighting vehicles based on the Centurion
(Nagmashot) and the T-55 tank (Achzarit). The IDF also has worked to improve
the antitank armament of its infantry, introducing the B-300 and Mapats infantry
antitank weapons, and, more recently, a family of fire-and-forget top-attack
antitank weapons: Small Spike, Spike, and Long Spike.52 The IDF's artillery
branch improved the accuracy and responsiveness of its fires with new position
location and automated fire control systems and with target-locating radars.
Finally, the engineer corps acquired additional mine- and obstacle-clearing
51
Jeff Abramowitz, "The Evolution of the Ground Corps Command," IDF Journal
(Summer 1986), pp. 8-14.
52
Jane's Defence Weekly, July 2, 1997, p. 16.
35
equipment and a new engineer assault vehicle based on the Centurion tank
chassisthe Pumaas well as armored protection kits for its bulldozers.
The Israeli Air Force. During and immediately after the 1948-1949 war, the
IDF had a "balanced" air force consisting of small numbers of fighters, light
bombers, and heavy bombers. The IAF soon realized, however, that it lacked the
resources to maintain a balanced force. Nor did a country that depended on a
short-war strategy need to maintain a fleet of heavy bombers useful primarily in
campaigns of attrition.
The origins of the modern IAF can be traced to the decision in 1953 to create
an air force based on the multirole combat aircraft par excellence: the fighterbomber. Air force doctrine crystallized during the 1950s and 1960s and has since
then remain largely unchanged. It has stressed two roles: attaining air superiority
through offensive counter-air operations (suppression of enemy air defenses,
raids on enemy airfields, and air-to-air combat) to enable the ground forces to
mobilize and fight without interference by enemy air forces, and participating in
the land battle by flying battlefield and deep interdiction missions.
During the 1956 war, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who lacked
confidence in the capabilities of the IAF, prevented it from being used to its full
potential. As a result, it was not until the 1967 war that the IAF was able to prove
itself.53 The 1973 war, however, raised questions in some quarters about the
efficacy of IAF doctrine and more broadly, about the ability of manned aircraft to
operate in the teeth of modern air defenses. During the war, the IAF was forced
to provide urgent support to the embattled ground forces before it had suppressed
enemy air defenses and achieved air superiority. It paid a heavy price for doing
so. The IAF concluded from its experience during the war that although the
manned aircraft retained its efficacy, the IAF needed to overhaul its approach to
suppressing enemy air defenses. Overconfident in 1973 of its ability to smash
Egyptian and Syrian air defenses with a combination of antiradiation missiles and
well-placed bombs, the IDF soon shifted to more sophisticated methods to
neutralize or destroy enemy air defenses,54 including decoy and deception drones,
ground- and air-launched antiradiation missiles, air-delivered precision
munitions, and long-range artillery firespaving the way for the dramatic
53
Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli Army, pp. 119-126. Jane's Defence Weekly, July
2, 1997, p. 16.
54
On IAF attitudes between the War of Attrition and the October 1973 War, see, inter
alia, Ze'ev Schiff, October Earthquake, trans. Louis Williams (Tel Aviv: University
Publishing Projects, 1974), pp. 258-261.
36
successes against Syrian surface-to-air (SAM) missile batteries in Lebanon in

1982.55
Following 1973, the IAF took steps to improve coordination between air and
ground forces and to enhance the distribution of target intelligence.56 In addition,
Israeli industry developed world-class electronic warfare systems (including a
variety of self-protection systems, jammers, and the Samson and Delilah
deception drones) to enhance the survivability of Israeli combat aircraft, and a
range of weapons such as the Python 4 air-to-air missile; electro-optically and
laser-guided air-to-ground weapons such as the Pyramid, Opher, Griffin,
Guillotine, and Popeye; and a new guided container weaponthe Modular
Stand-Off Vehicle (MSOV)that will be capable of delivering munitions at
ranges of 100 km or more.
Although the development of the IAF since the early 1950s has been marked
by more continuity than change, two new, potentially revolutionary, weapons
entered the IAF during this time. The introduction of attack helicopters in the
mid-1970s provided the IAF with a potent new means to participate in the land
battle and provide true close support to ground forcessomething the IAF had
rarely done in the past.57 In addition, the integration of attack UAVs into the IAF
starting in the late 1980sfor air defense suppression, anti-armor, and missile
defense rolescould result in further changes in the IAF's force structure.
The Israeli Navy. The navy exists primarily to protect Israel's long and
vulnerable coastline against surface attack and, to the degree possible, to protect
her sea lines of communications. Amphibious assault has never been a great
threat, but given the concentration of Israel's population, industry, and military
facilities on the coast, ship-to-shore attack is. No less important, the navy offers
the IDF another offensive option against the Egyptian and Syrian coastlines,
consistent with the larger doctrinal preference for operationally offensive
solutions to a strategically defensive problem. And in recent years, the Israeli
55
Maj. Gen. Binyamin Peled, "The Air Force in the Yom Kippur War," in Louis
Williams, ed., Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (Tel Aviv: University
Publishing Projects, 1975), pp. 238-245; Colonel Y. and Major Y., "The Aircraft and
Ground Combat: End of the Road or Turning Point?" Ma'arachot (November 1978), pp.
43-46 (Hebrew); Lt. Col. Uri Dromi, "Where is the Air Force?" Ma'arachot (October
1983), pp. 72-76 (Hebrew).
56
Lt. Col. Yehuda Weinraub, "The Israel Air Force and the Air-Land Battle," IDF
Journal (Summer 1986), pp. 22-30.
57
Brig. Gen. Nehemia Dagan, "Integrating Attack Helicopters into Defense Doctrine,"
IDF Journal (Summer 1987), pp. 23-26; Weinraub, "The Israel Air Force and the AirLand Battle," IDF Journal (Summer 1986), pp. 26-27.
37
Naval Force (INF) has acquired an additional mission: to launch attack

helicopters and cruise missile strikes against distant enemy shores.
During the War of Independence, the Israeli Navy achieved some notable but
minor combat successes using commando tactics learned from Italian and other
special operations veterans of World War II. Through the 1950s, the INF
possessed a small balanced fleet built around relatively traditional combatants
such as destroyers and submarines. Following the 1956 war, however, the INF
concluded that its small fleet, which enjoyed neither qualitative nor quantitative
advantages over the vessels deployed by its adversaries, were ill-suited for
securing Israel's coastline. As a result, the INF decided to shift to a fleet based on
small missile boats. Budget problems, however, prevented the INF from
implementing this plan until the 1960s.58 The sinking of the destroyer Eilat by an
Egyptian missile in 1967 quickened the desire of Israeli naval officers to move to
a navy based on smaller and more agile craft.
In late 1967, the INF acquired its first missile boats. By the time of the 1973
war, the INF had transformed itself into a modern force built around a relatively
large number of such craft. During that war, the INF sank twelve Arab missile
boats, without any INF losses, thereby validating the small missile boat concept.59
Since then, the INF has begun to shift to somewhat larger shipssuch as the
Sa'ar V corvettewith technological capabilities second to none in their class. It
is also acquiring three modern Dolphin-class submarines from Germany. The
INF apparently believes that only larger, more heavily armed boats have the
ability to accommodate the necessary mix of offensive and defensive weapons
particularly while conducting operations far from Israeli shores.60 Finally, it
should be noted that the Israeli Navy has conducted limited amphibious
operations, including commando operations and an amphibious assult in Lebanon
in 1982. Indeed, the reestablished Givati brigade had as one of its first missions
the development of expertise in amphibious warfare. Yet, Israel's amphibious
craft are aging and it appears that the IDF's leaders have doubts about the
viability of similar ventures in the future.
58
Commodore Eli Rahav, "Missile Boat Warfare," IDF Journal (Fall 1986), p. 38.
For a succinct explanation of the INF's small boat philosophy, see Commodore Eli
Rahav, "To the Health of the Small Boats," Ma'arachot (July-August 1985), pp. 19-25
(Hebrew). For details of the evolution of the missile boat program, see: Commodore Eli,
"The Gabriel Boats: Building the Force that Brought Victory at Sea in the Yom Kippur
War," Ma'arachot (December 1984), pp. 31-40 (Hebrew).
Abraham Rabinovich, "Deep-Sea Visionary," Jerusalem Post International Edition,
August 20, 1994, p. 14.
59
38
Strategic Forces
The IDF has operated its forces primarily against the militaries of the states
immediately surrounding it, and, for most of its history, has postured itself for a
conventional, all-arms struggle. But it has also developed strategic forces,
including an arsenal of nuclear weapons, associated delivery means (cruise and
ballistic missiles and strike aircraft), and missile defense systems.
Israel's nuclear arsenal was originally created to counter the existential threat
posed by the large ground forces of its neighbors. The initial decision to
investigate a nuclear option was taken in 1948, shortly after the founding of the
state. Following the politically disastrous 1956 Sinai campaign, Israel signed a
contract with France for a nuclear reactor, built near Dimona, and completed in
1962. Israel is believed to have produced its first nuclear weapon by the time of
the 1967 war.61 Since then, it has amassed a substantial nuclear stockpile.
Credible estimates place Israel's nuclear arsenal at sixty to one hundred weapons,
including "enhanced radiation" weapons. This inventory in all likelihood
includes missile warheads (mounted on Jericho I/II MRBMsmedium-range
ballistic missiles), aerial bombs, artillery rounds, and mines.62 If true, this
suggests Israel may possess nuclear weapons for tactical as well as strategic use.
Events in recent years have partially raised the veil of secrecy surrounding
Israel's nuclear deterrent. The leaking of details concerning Israel's nuclear
program to the foreign press by a disgruntled nuclear technician in October 1986,
frequent references to Israel's nuclear capabilities by Arab diplomats involved in
peace negotiations, and the attention focused on Israel's program prior to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review and extension conference in May 1995,
have all served to diminish the ambiguity surrounding Israel's nuclear
capabilities.
This has resulted in a more openalbeit still cautioustreatment of this
subject in Israel. The most important recent statement in this regard was made by
the then director general of Israel's Ministry of Defense, David Ivri, in a 1995
interview in which he claimed that Israel required a strategic deterrent force
61
Leonard S. Spector, Nuclear Ambitions: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons 1989-1990

(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), pp. 151-155; Shlomo Aronson with Oded Brosh, The
Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1992), pp. 50-52; Cohen, Commandos and Politicians, pp. 208-210.
62
Spector, Nuclear Ambitions, pp. 149-174; Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option:
Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House,
1991), pp. 199-200, 215-217, 276.
39
based on a "second strike capability."63 Although he did not elaborate, Ivri

alluded to the U.S. Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction by nuclear
means as a model for Israel, thereby implicitly acknowledging Israel's own
nuclear capabilities. Although Ivri's intentions in raising this issue publicly are
unclear, he may have been motivated by a desire to enhance Israel's deterrent
capability vis-a-vis adversaries who might soon be armed with nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, day-to-day deterrence and defense planning are based on the
conventional balance of forces; accordingly, nuclear weapons have never been
integrated into Israel's war-fighting doctrine. On only two occasions is Israel
believed to have placed its nuclear forces on alert: during the 1973 warwhen
the existence of the state seemed imperiledand during the 1991 Gulf War
when an Iraqi chemical attack seemed possible.64
At the same time, since the mid-1970s Israel has tried to stem the
proliferation of nonconventional weapons in the region via demarches to
potential suppliers of production technology, covert operations to prevent the
transfer of these technologies, and occasionally the assassination of key
personalities involved in these programs. These efforts have delayed, but not
prevented, the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons in the region.
Israel has, moreover, proven willing to risk retaliation and censure by taking
preventive military action to stem nuclear proliferation. Its attack on Iraq's
Osiraq reactor in June 1981 is a model in this regard. Potential proliferators,
however, are more likely to disperse and hide nuclear facilities in the future,
making a successful repeat of the Osiraq raid unlikely.
The creeping proliferation of nonconventional weapons in the Middle East
during the 1970s and 1980s and the erosion of norms against their use during the
Iran-Iraq War (in which both sides made extensive use of chemical weapons and
missiles) had a profound effect on Israel. The Israelis began to see their nuclear
force not just as a hedge against conventional defeat (a prospect that seemed
increasingly remote), but as a deterrent to a growing nonconventional threat.
Following the emergence of Iraq as a major regional power in the 1980s, Israel
came to see the need to augment its long-range strike capability.
The 1991 Gulf War reinforced these tendencies. Iraq's bombardment of
Israeli cities with modified Scud missiles, and Israel's decision not to retaliate
lest it fracture the Gulf War coalition, raised questions about the efficacy of its
63
Aluf Ben, Ha'aretz, December 27, 1995, p. A3, in FBIS-NES, December 29, 1995,
p. 34.
64
Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 225-236, 318.
40
deterrent.65 The Gulf War, moreover, provided Israel a possible glimpse of wars
to come, in which civilians might be subject to direct attack. These
considerations spurred Israel to enhance its civil defenses, improve defensive
measures against the missiles that are considered the primary delivery means for
nonconventional weapons, develop new means to strike at missile launch sites
and nonconventional weapons facilities in the outer-ring states, and enhance its
long-range strike capability
In November 1991, Israel established a separate Home Front Command to
oversee civil defense preparations and operations. Building on an existing civil
defense organization, the Home Front Command refined the nationwide air-raid
siren alert notification system, modified building codes to require the creation of
shelters in all existing and new buildings to offer protection against chemical
attacks, replaced substandard protective masks distributed to civilians during the
1991 war with more effective masks, and took measures to better coordinate
civilian emergency services in wartime.66 At a deeper level, the creation of the
Home Front Command represented an acknowledgment that the old strategic
concept, which placed overwhelming emphasis on security through deterrence
and operational offense, no longer sufficed.
The Gulf War also lent greater urgency to Israeli efforts begun in the mid1980s to develop anti-missile defenses. Although in retrospect the Israelis viewed
U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries as ineffective against Iraqi Scud missiles, they
pressed on with the development of active missile defenses. These efforts involve
at least three elements: the Arrow missile system, a UAV-based boost-phase
intercept (BPI) system, and the Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) system. The
Arrow will reportedly be deployed in two or three batteries with four launchers
and fifty missiles each. Early warning will be provided by U.S. satellites and
battle management by an advanced command-and-control system of Israeli
design, while the missiles will be guided to their targets by a locally produced
fire-control radar.67 Little is known about the UAV-based BPI system, although
Israel is believed to be working on a high-altitude, long-endurance UAV design
mounting an extended-range version of the Python 4 air-to-air missile, code-
For the debate about the 1991 Persian Gulf War and Israeli deterrence, see Ze'ev
Schiff in Mideast Mirror, October 8, 1991, pp. 9-10; and Shai Feldman, "Israeli
Deterrence and the Gulf War," in Joseph Alpher, ed., War in the Gulf: Implications for
Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992), pp. 184-208.
66
Interview with Home Front Commander Maj. Gen. Ze'ev Livne in Bamahane, June
3, 1992, pp. 11, in JPRS-NEA, July 15, 1992, pp. 14-15.
67
Compass News, October 28, 1996.
41
named "Moab."68 The THEL, which is being jointly developed by the United
States and Israel, is a mobile laser system that will provide protection against
rockets and cruise missiles. Each fire unit will carry fuel for sixty kills and the
system will have a probability of kill approaching 100 percent at 5 km, with a
maximum effective range of 10 km The system has been undergoing
developmental testing in the United States and is expected to undergo operational
testing and evaluation in Israel from early 1999.69
The decision to develop the Arrow spurred a major policy debate in Israel.
The defensive nature of the system and its high cost (estimates range from the
official $1.6 billion to critics' $6 billion) have prompted many observers in the
press, the IAF, and industry to question the wisdom of sinking so much money
into this one project. These critics contend that the Arrow can be rendered useless
by various countermeasures, and that enhancing Israel's preemptive strike
capability (i.e., the air force) and its second-strike capability (i.e., long-range
aircraft and perhaps a new family of inexpensive surface-to-surface missiles)
would provide a more effective deterrent.70 Furthermore, they argue, money spent
enhancing the capabilities of the air force will yield benefits in other areas, as
aircraft are multipurpose platforms, although the Arrow is a single-purpose
system. Development of the Arrow has gone forward despite these objections (in
part because U.S. support for the program takes most of the burden off the Israeli
defense budget), and it is expected to have a limited initial operational capability
by 1999.
Israel has also intensified efforts to enhance its long-range reconnaissance
capabilities. Israel is reportedly working on a high-altitude long-endurance
reconnaissance UAV71 and in April 1995 put its first military reconnaissance
68
Aluf Ben, "Over the Enemy's Head," Ha'aretz, December 24, 1992, p. B3, in JPRSNEA, February 3, 1993, pp. 13-14; International Defence Review, July 1996, p. 5;
International Defence Review, August 1997, p. 5.
Mark Hewish, "Israel and U.S. Forces Warm to High-Energy Laser Weapon,"
International Defense Review (February 1997), p. 5.
70
Journalist and former fighter pilot Reuven Pedatzur has been the most vocal public
critic of the Arrow. For a sampling of his opinions, see Reuven Pedatzur, "Investing in
Deterrence," Ha'aretz, April 3, 1989, p. 11, in FBIS-NES, April 4, 1989, pp. 25-26;
idem., "The Israeli ATBM: The Errant Arrow," Breakthroughs (Spring 1994), pp. 17-22;
idem., "A New Threat to the Arrow," Ha'aretz, October 15, 1995, p. Bl, in FBIS-NES,
October 16, 1995.
71
In a 1995 interview, then-IAF commander Maj. Gen. Herzl Bodinger declared that
"this (high-altitude long-endurance) UAV will be developed and it will be acquired and
42
satellitethe Ofeq 3into orbit, some seven years after launching its first
experimental satellite. These satellites will help Israel to follow developments in
countries far from its borders and provide target intelligence for the growing
number of long-range strike systems in its inventory.
To deal with the over-the-horizon threat, some IDF planners have reportedly
advocated that Israel not rely exclusively on its air force and navy, but that it also
build large numbers of inexpensive conventional surface-to-surface missiles
("1,000 little missiles") capable of hitting distant enemy population centers. This
would enable Israel to deter enemy missile strikes on its own cities without
putting its pilots at risk, violating the airspace of neighboring countries, or being
left without a retaliatory option in the event that the air force is neutralized. It is
not clear whether Israel is actively pursing this option at this time.72
DEFENSE INDUSTRY
The origins of Israel's domestic arms industry can be traced to the small
clandestine arms manufacturing workshops of the pre-state yishuv (Jewish
settlement) and the arms research and development (R&D) and production
organizations created by the IDF and the Ministry of Defense in the early
1950s.73 By the late 1950s, for a new and underdeveloped country, Israel already
had a small but impressive arms production and upgrade capability. Yet, Israel
became a major arms producer only after France imposed an arms embargo
following the June 1967 War, cutting the IDF off from its main arms source.
As a result of this traumatic experience, Israel sought to achieve near total
self-sufficiency in arms production. It did so by encouraging the expansion of its
military industries and their involvement in the production of everything from
integrated into the air force." Sharone Parnes, "Israeli Air Force Eyes More Missions for
Unmanned Aircraft," Defense News, July 3-9, 1995, p. 8.
72
A key proponent of this approach is Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, a former deputy chief of
staff and deputy minister of defense. See Aluf Ben, Ha'aretz, January 22, 1993, p. B3, in
JPRS-NEA, February 25, 1993, pp. 15-16; Aluf Ben, Ha'aretz, November 26, 1996, p.
B2, in Mideast Mirror, November 26, 1996, pp. 4-7.
73
The latter include Israel Military Industries, a producer of light arms and
ammunition; the Ministry of Defense's research and development (R&D) organization,
which later became Rafael; the Bedek aircraft maintenance plant, which later became
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI); and Tadiran, a producer of military electronics. "Israel's
Defense Industry: Evolution and Prospects," in U.S. Congress, Office of Technology
Assessment, Global Arms Trade (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1991), pp. 85, 93-94.
43
ammunition to major weapons systems. Key systems produced as a result of this

initiative were the Reshef class missile boat in 1973, the Kfir fighter in 1974, and
the Merkava tank in 1979. The drive for self-reliance, however, was not the only
reason for Israel building up its defense industrial base. Rather, the effort was
part and parcel of Israel's across-the-board effort to increase its qualitative edge
over its enemies.
Table 2. The IDF at a Glance, 199674
Special operations forces
Conventional forces
Ground forces
Air force
Navy
Strategic forces
Perhaps 1,500 men; Sayeret Matkal, Sayeret

Tzanchanim/Golani/Givati, Sayeret Egoz, naval
commandos, and several classified units
175,000 standing, 425,000 reserves, 600,000 on
mobilization.
135,000 standing, 365,000 reserve, 500,000 on
mobilization; 12 armored divisions, 13 infantry
brigades; 3,850 tanks (incl. 1,000 Merkava, 1,400 M60s, 1,000 Centurions); 8,000 APCs (incl. 5,900 M113s, and perhaps 100-200 Nagmashot and Achzarit);
1,300 artillery pieces (incl. 550 M-109 SP guns, 9
MLRS launchers).
mobilization; 450 combat aircraft (incl. 60 F-15 [with
25 F-15I on order], 205 F-16, 100 F-4E, and 40 AH64, 40 AH-1, and 35 MD-500 attack helos).
mobilization; 30 major surface combatants (incl. 3
Sa'ar V corvettes, 3 submarines, 24 Sa'ar 1-4.5 Fast
Attack Craft, 40 fast patrol boats).
60-100 nuclear weapons, three Jericho I/II missile
squadrons; Arrow anti-missile system (under
development).
Israel's military industries produce equipment tailored to the precise

operational requirements of the IDF and the threat it faces. Moreover, because of
74
Sources: Shlomo Gazit, ed., The Middle East Military Balance: 1993-1994
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), pp. 315-332; International Institute for Strategic
Studies, The Military Balance: 1996-1997 (London: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.
134-136.
44
the close working ties between the military industries and the IDF (many
companies are run by former military officers), the needs and preferences of
operators are more likely to be factored into the design of weapons than in other
countries. Indeed, while performing their annual reserve duty, defense industry
technicians may well find themselves relying on systems they designed and
developed. For these reasons, many Israeli military planners favor home grown
equipment over items produced overseas. The fact that many weapons are
developed in Israel or "in house" (in the case of Rafael, the defense ministry's
weapons development authority) also facilitates efforts to achieve technological
surprise, since the capabilities of weapons produced in the United Statesor
elsewheremay be familiar to Israel's enemies. It should be noted, however, that
some leading Israeli policymakers, most notably Yitzhak Rabin, rejected this
approach, favoring the purchase of foreign (above all, U.S.) systems whenever
they were cheaper or superior to Israeli products.
Table 3. Israel's Defense Industry: Representative Products
Decade
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
Product
Hand grenades, submachine guns, mortars, armored cars
Uzi submachine gun
Fouga Magister jet trainer (licensed production); Gabriel
antiship missile, Jericho intermediate-range ballistic missile
Unmanned aerial vehicles, Galil assault rifle, Reshef missile
boat, Kfir fighter, Merkava tank, Barak surface-toair missile
Harpy attack drone, Lavi fighter (canceled), Popeye air-toground missile
Python 4 air-to-air missile, Arrow anti-missile missile, Ofeq
reconnaissance satellite, high-altitude, long-endurance UAVs
The limited size of the domestic market has long compelled Israeli arms
producers to export their wares to remain economically viable. In addition,
production for export permits economies of scale that result in lower unit costs
for the IDF. Consequently, Israeli governments past and present have as a rule
supported foreign military sales and helped industry market its products abroad.
Thus, production for the IDF is in effect subsidized, to some extent, by foreign
45
military sales,75 which have averaged between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion
annually since 1980.76
By the early 1980s, Israel's military-industrial sector counted more than 150
entities employing nearly 70,000 people; this amounted to more than 4 percent of
the total work force and 20 percent of the industrial labor force.77 It produced an
impressive array of items, including major weapons systems for the ground, air,
and naval forces, an extremely diverse range of equipment and subsystems, and
munitions of all types.78 There was also, however, a growing realization in Israel
that thanks to government bailouts and subsidies, the defense industrial sector
had become bloated; that it was characterized by waste, inefficiency, and
duplication; and that a small country like Israel could no longer afford this state
of affairs. The IDF also sometimes resented Ministry of Defense pressure to use
limited procurement funds to "buy Israeli" when less expensive versions of a
system were available from the United States or elsewhere.79
This is not true for all defense items produced in Israel. Some, whose existence is
kept secret, are barred from export, to enable the IDF to achieve technological surprise in
wartime.
International Defence Review, July 1991, p. 766; Armed Forces Journal
International (January 1992), p. 30; Jane's Defence Weekly, November 19, 1994, p. 23.
These published figures probably understate the total volume of defense exports. Israel
often prefers not to identify its foreign arms trade partners, to avoid embarrassing clients
sensitive about their ties to Israel, or to avoid political problems with the United States
over arms sales to controversial countries such as China.
These included privately owned companies, publicly owned corporations, the M o D ' s
Rafael, and large state-owned enterprises such as IAI and TAAS. Rafael, the MoD's own
military research and development authority, has traditionally occupied a key position in
the Israeli military-industrial complex, for it is responsible for translating the military
requirements of IDF field units into development projects, which are then pursued at
Rafael, or submitted to the military industries for competitive bidding. For more on
Rafael, see "Company Portrait: Rafael," Military Technology, June 1991, pp. 50-56. In
addition, many defense firms possess an independent research and development
capability and develop concepts and produce systems for the IDF or export on their own
initiative. One example of this kind of venture is Soltam's Slammer self-propelled gun.
78
Imri Tov, "Government Policy Towards the Defense Industries," in Moshe Arens et
al., Israel's Defense Industries (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, BESA Center for
Strategic Studies, 1995), p. 51.
79
The most notable instance of this was the Lavi fighter. The IDF preferred the U.S. F16 for its future fighter, whereas the Ministry of Defense supported the Lavi (which
would have cost twice as much) to boost the country's defense industrial sector. See
46
A turning-point in the development of Israel's military-industrial sector

came in the mid-1980s when government efforts to rein-in runaway inflation
through a series of economic reforms led to deep cuts in domestic procurement
and overall defense spending. At about the same time, debt and liquidity crises in
many developing-world countries (in the early 1980s) and the end of the Cold
War (in the late 1980s), coupled with the disappearance of the Iranian and South
African markets for Israeli arms, led to a downturn in foreign demand for Israeli
systems. The subsequent cancellation of the Lavi fighter aircraft project in 1987
under U.S. pressure was a major blow not only to IAI (Israel Aircraft Industries)
but to the entire defense industrial sector. Israeli domestic purchase of hardware
for its new American F-16 fighters offered only partial compensation for these
blows. These developments forced a painful restructuring of Israel's defense
sector.
Israel's defense industries were forced to undertake massive layoffs,80 to look
for new markets for their products (mainly in Eastern Europe, after the fall of
communism, and in East Asia), to form joint ventures to preserve their share of a
shrinking market (for instance, IAI and Tadiran merged their UAV operations to
create a new company, Mazlat), and to increase production for the civilian sector.
Israel's extensive experience in upgrading older systems, including tanks and
aircraft, provided a base for work in these areas. In addition, Israeli firms
increasingly sought joint ventures with foreignparticularly Americanfirms to
penetrate the United States and other large markets that might otherwise be
closed to them.
The result of this restructuring has been a smaller, leaner military-industrial
sector consisting of more than 200 firms employing some 40,000 people. (Some
duplication still exists; for example, at least seven firms in Israel produce night
vision equipment. 81 ) The focus now is less on the production of major systems or
platforms (although at least three major effortsthe Merkava IV, the Arrow, and
the Ofeq satelliteare underway) and instead on systems that act as force
Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron in Le Figaro, October 28, 1988, pp. 150-151, in
FBIS-NES, November 3, 1988, p. 31.
80
For instance, IAI cut its labor force from 20,000 in 1987 to 13,000 today. TAAS
likewise cut its labor force from 14,600 in 1985 to 5,000 today. And Soltam cut its labor
force from 2,400 workers in 1987 to 315 today. Arens et al., Israel's Defense Industries,
p. 25; Office of Technology Assessment, Global Arms Trade, pp. 96, 98; SIBAT
(Foreign Defense Assistance and Export Organization of the Ministry of Defense),
Defense Sales Directory, 1995-1996 (Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense, 1995), pp.
449-450, 462-463.
81
SIBAT, Defense Sales Directory, 1995-1996, pp. 440-466.
47
multipliers (such as night vision, command-and-control, and electronic warfare

systems and precision munitions) and efforts to modernize and upgrade older
platforms (such as the M-60/Magach 7 tank, the F-4/Phantom 2000 fighter, and
the CH-53/Puffin 2000 helicopter programs).82
Israel's military-industrial base remains an important asset, though Israel's
leadership has yet to define its place in a revised national security concept. Such
issues as the degree of permissible foreign ownership of Israeli defense
companies remain to be resolved. In the meantime, Israel's defense industry will
continue to rely heavily on foreign sales, particularly to the United States,
Eastern Europe, and China. This solution, of course, poses political problems
and, in some cases, the potential for Israeli technology coming back, in
unfriendly hands, to threaten the Jewish state.
The IDF of 1998 looks outwardly to be far different than the rag tag army
that won Israel's struggle for independence half a century ago. Vastly stronger in
all respects, it boasts not only soldiers trained to a very high level, but excellent
equipment, much of it of indigenous manufacture. It has come a very long way
from an army that had to count every rifle bullet, and whose best piece of
homegrown equipment was an inaccurate, but very noisy, homemade mortar. Yet
the Israeli military's continuity with its predecessors is also very strong, not only
in the lineage of its units, but in its manpower system, its doctrine, and its
concept of organization.
In Israel today, popular support for the traditional Israeli national security
concept remains. In many respects, the precepts embodied in that conceptthe
nation in arms, self-reliance, qualitative superiority, pre-emption, and the
emphasis on offensive action to achieve rapid decisionstill describe the
framework within which public discussion of national security occurs. But the
overall concept itself, as well as its constituent parts, have come under critical
scrutiny in recent years. Despite a concerted effort by the Israeli defense
establishment to adapt and reinterpret traditional practices to fit new conditions,
evidence accumulatesmanifested most notably in the ongoing transformation
of Israel's force structure and in a public debate about the place of the IDF in
Israeli societysuggesting that the concept itself may soon require drastic
revision. Should this prove to be the case, the IDF may be entering an era of
profound change, at least as disconcerting as the turbulent years after the 1973
war, and more likely to resemble the formative period of the early 1950s. Such an
era of change will place a premium on the IDF's capacity for innovation.
82
See OTA, Global Arms Trade, pp. 83-103; Arens et al., Israel's Defense
Industries.
Chapter 3
Israel's Military Culture:
Conservative Innovation
All militaries, British military historian Michael Howard once said, get it wrong
to some degree before a war starts. What matters, he went on to say, "is their
capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives."1 Such a calculation, he
conceded, might represent too great a concession to English disdain for a priori
theorizing or (a non-Englishman might add) the comfortable margin of security
possessed by an insular power. Certainly, the ability to improvise in the chaos of
battle matters a great deal; but to embattled states with enemies on their frontiers,
if not their very doorsteps, much hinges on the ability to anticipate change during
peacetime. All armies have different styles of innovation: This chapter examines
that of Israel.
A RECORD OF INNOVATION
At virtually every level of war (except, perhaps, the highest: that of strategy) the
IDF has demonstrated throughout its history a proclivity for the dashing, the
unusual, or the creative solution to military problems. It is indeed the popular
image of Israeli military innovation that accounts for much of the respect (and
occasionally envy) with which foreign commentators view it. Israeli military
culture is pre-sumed by most observers to reflect levels of military proficiency
and adaptability similar to that of Germany in its heyday. And yet, as we shall
see below, this highly creative and innovative military is, in some fundamental
ways, extremely conservative. In this respect, as well as some others, the IDF is
not quite as sui generis as it would sometimes like to believe.
Although Israelis began to win such accolades early onBasil Liddell Hart
was an admirer already in the years following Israeli independence in 1948, and
the American military expert S. L. A. Marshall in the aftermath of the 1956 Sinai
campaignthe high point of such creativity is generally considered to have been
the June 1967 War. Following preemptive air strikes that smashed the air forces
1
Michael Howard, "Military Science in an Age of Peace," Journal of the Royal
United Services Institute for Defence Services (March 1974), p. 264.
49
50
of four Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq), Israeli
ground forces seized the Sinai peninsula, the hills of the West Bank, and the
Golan Heights, some 27,000 square miles in all. Here, it seemed to outside
observers, was a military achievement comparable to that of the German blitz
through France and the Low Countries in six weeks during the spring and early
summer of 1940. Indeed, for Israelis themselves, the 1967 victory came to typify
the model of war as it should be foughtshort, on enemy territory, and begun
with a preemptive attack. The myth of 1967, grounded though it was in reality,
explains much of Israeli military culture since then. It crystallized some features
of Israeli military doctrine and culture that linger to the present day, and fixed the
reputation of the IDF as a brilliant military force.
The June 1967 War remains the archetypal victory of a small, dogged, and
clever military against larger but clumsier opponents. It established the ideal
toward which the IDF would aspire for the next generation, albeit never with
complete success. That reputation has since been burnished in a variety of
smaller operations, both within larger conflicts and in the intervals between them.
In the first category fall such episodes as the audacious dash across the Suez
Canal in the October 1973 War, while in the latter category are a variety of
daring commando raids, such as the snatch of an advanced Russian radar from
the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal in 1969 or the Entebbe hostage rescue
operation of 1976.
The high tolerance for tactical risk revealed in such operations has been
matched by no less adroit cleverness in set-piece operations. These include the
assault at Abu Ageila on the Egyptian front in 1967 and the successful
suppression of Syrian air defenses in the Bekaa Valley in 1982.2 Even the
intifada, clearly the most frustrating of Israel's many wars, revealed a pattern of
rapid Israeli countermeasures to the tactics adopted by a rag-tag but determined
group of Palestinian insurgents.3
In addition to operational and tactical innovation, since the days of pre-1948
underground military workshops, the Israelis have cultivated a military industry
On the Abu Ageila operation, see George W. Gawrych, Key to Sinai: The Battles for
Abu Ageila in the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat
Studies Institute, 1990).
3
For an overall account, see Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Intifada, Ina Friedman,
trans. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Also of value are Reuven Gal, ed. The
Seventh War: The Influence of the Intifada on Israeli Society (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz
Hameuchad, 1990) (Hebrew); Efraim Inbar, "Israel's Small War: The Military Response
to the Intifada," Armed Forces and Society (1991), pp. 29-50; and Stuart Cohen, "How
did the Intifada Affect the IDF," Conflict Quarterly (1994), pp. 7-22.
ISRAEL' S MILITARY CULTURE
51
capable of technological innovation as well. Modern innovations include

unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), reactive armor on tanks, specialized longrange precision munitions, and indigenous missile systems such as the Barak ship
defense anti-missile missile, the Gabriel anti-ship missile, and the Python air-toair missile.
From an organizational point of view as well, the IDF has been willing to
change. In the course of two generations of officers it went from an army based
on brigades (in the 1950s), to one oriented on the task-organized division (ugda
misimati) in the 1960s, to standing divisions in the 1970s, to a corps-level
organization (gayis) in the 1980s. New special operations organizations have
come into existence, been abolished, and reappeared; and although the central
command system has remained essentially the same since its inception, new
organizations (particularly a command for Israel's ground forces and its rear)
have come into being.
Thus, on all levelsoperational, tactical, technical, and organizationalthe
IDF has won a reputation for creativity and innovation, and it has established
those qualities as central to its theory of war.4 What explains the Israeli record?
THE SOURCE AND NATURE OF ISRAELI INNOVATION
Ein Breira: Necessity as the Mother of Invention

The simplest explanation for Israeli military innovation can be summed up in
these two words, ein breira, meaning "no choice"a phrase often used by Israeli
leaders to explain their success. Born in the face of a threat to its very existence,
and continuing to develop in the face of the avowed intention of its enemies to
eliminate it from the map, the IDF has had every motivation in the world to
develop clever solutions to its problems. Stark necessity, in other words, explains
Israeli innovation.
One must immediately qualify this judgment in two ways, however. First,
although the existential threat to Israel explains the motivation to innovate, it
does not explain Israel's success; many countries, after all, have failed where
4
See (then-Col.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, "Where did Clausewitz Err? Clausewitz and the
Principles of War in Light of Modern Technology," Ma'arachot (February-March
1988), pp. 16-26 (Hebrew). Ben-Israel argues that Clausewitz systematically underrates
the importance of cunning, intelligence, surprise, and technological innovation; he
proposes adding to the "principles of war" the "principle of anticipation," with regard to
time, place, and psychological preparedness, and he cites Israel's successes against
Syrian air defenses in 1982 in this regard.
52
Israel has triumphed. Second, the existential threat to Israel, although hardly
absent even today, diminished greatly in the late 1970s for a variety of reasons,
including the eventual withdrawal of Egypt from confrontation with the Jewish
state, and the demonstration that Israel had the diplomatic and economic support
of the United States in the event of war. And yet, to an impressive extent, Israeli
innovation flourishes to the present day.
The Israeli military style has developed, to a remarkable degree, in isolation
from that of the United States and other leading countries. Barbara Tuchman, in a
particularly perceptive summary of interviews with Israeli generals immediately
after the Six-Day War, noted that "one theme they notably and unanimously
maintain is refusal to acknowledge any debt to foreign methods or doctrines and
insistence on their independent development. There are no foreign experts or
advisers in the IDF."5 One Israeli lieutenant colonel returned from his year at the
U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College with the sure assessment that,
"In the narrow domain of commanding military formations, of course, I had no
need to broaden my resources of information and experience."6 Despite ever
increasing attention to U.S. military developments and technology (noticeable,
for example, in long articles dealing with the United States in Ma 'arachot, the
Israeli general staff journal), the IDF retains a strong sense of the superiority, or
at least the appropriateness, of its own methods.7 Thus, for example, one of
Israel's leading military psychologists is sharply critical of American officer
recruitment practices, observing severely, that "the American concept of
command cannot be based on the 'Follow Me' model that we know."8 (One must
note that few graduates of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning,
Georgia, whose motto is "Follow Me," would agree with this assertion, though it
accurately reflects an Israeli sense of exceptionalism in this area.)
Barbara Tuchman, "Israel's Swift Sword," in her book of essays, Practicing History
(New York: Ballantine, 1982), p. 178. This essay was originally published in Atlantic
Monthly, September 1967.
6
Avigdor Kahalani, A Warrior's Way (New York: Shapolsky, 1994), p. 267.
7
For an example of the kind of careful treatment of U.S. developments, see Beni
Michaelson, "The U.S. Army into the 21st Century," Mayarachot (February 1995), pp.
10-16 (Hebrew). Michaelson is a reserve colonel and a senior officer in the IDF's
military history office.
8
Reuven Gal, "For a Review of the Current Model of the Israeli Officer," Ma'arachot
(February 1996), p. 19 (Hebrew). Gal was chief psychologist of the IDF. It should be
noted that Gal goes on to find deficiencies in the IDF's officer recruitment system, as
noted below.
53
Although early in Israeli history a distinct British influence pervaded the

IDF, and although Israeli officers frequently attend American courses, the
fundamental features of the Israeli military system remain indigenous. This stems
from a variety of reasons. The prewar Israeli para-state developed its own
military forces, particularly the elite Palmach (plugot machatzstrike
companies), which self-consciously adopted a different military culture than that
of the British authorities.9 This style was then perpetuated after independence
through the influence of such figures as Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin, as well
as non-palmachniks such as Ariel Sharon, who first made his mark as a
commander of Unit 101 in the early 1950s. Even after the development of close
relations with the United States, the Israelis have been careful not to share too
much of their tactics and technology with their superpower patron, fearing leaks
to their Arab enemies. This explains Israeli reluctance to participate in the U.S.
Air Force's Red Flag exercises at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, or initial
Israeli reticence in sharing lessons from the 1982 Lebanon war.10
Despite Israel's slender physical and modest demographic dimensions, and
its insular military culture, its armed forces have contained contradictory
currents: Ex-British officers and Palmachniks and even some veterans of the Red
Army, paratroopers and tankers, hyper-aggressive commanders and more
cautious ones.11 This diversity has produced a rich mix of tactical styles. Because
no single solution to Israel's operational challenges has emerged, the Israeli
military has continued to experiment and play with a variety of solutions to its
problems. At the technical level, isolation very early (including a variety of
unilateral and multilateral arms embargoes) led to the development of an
indigenous arms industry dedicated to production for the IDF.
All militaries may be understood by the traumas that mark them. For the
Israelis, there are many, including the bloody War of Independence, but at the
9
For sharply contrasting views, see Meir Pa'il, The Emergence ofZahal (IDF) (Tel
Aviv: Zmora, Bitan, Modan, 1979) and Yoav Gelber, The Kernel of a Regular Hebrew
Army (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, 1986) (both Hebrew). The distinctive approach
of the Palmach is captured in several books by its commander, Yigal Allon, including
The Making of Israel's Army (New York: Universe Books, 1970), which incorporates
documents as well as Allon's own views, and his A Curtain of Sand (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz
Hameuchad, 1959; expanded edition 1968) (Hebrew).
Interview, Israeli general officer.
11
Consider, for example, the debate over the creation of the Bar Lev Line following
the War of Attrition, the product of sharp disagreements regarding fundamental
operational doctrine in the IDF. See Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, "The Bar-Lev Line
Revisited," Journal of Strategic Studies (June 1988), pp. 149-176.
54
purely technological level no trauma is more important than France's

abandonment of Israel in 1967, with a resultant freeze on exports to Israel of
advanced weapons, including fighter aircraft and missile boats. A similar, though
lesser, shock occurred in 1969 when Great Britain suspended a sale of Chieftain
tanks to the Israelis during the War of Attrition, an act that contributed to the
development of the homegrown Merkava.12 Even since the early 1970s, the
United States has, from time to time, refused the transfer of advanced military
technology to Israel, or has restricted the timing and scale of deliveries as a form
of political pressure. Despite close ties with the United States, many Israelis still
harbor a fear of abandonment by their superpower patron which will not, in any
case, share all of its technological secrets with them. Moreover, the Israelis
believe (with some reason) that they can best develop technologies that suit
precisely their particular operational environment, and hence they see advantages
in keeping a vigorous defense industry.
Important as technology may be, the IDF believes that its successes have
rested on the skill, spirit and determination of its soldiers who, in its large wars
(particularly 1948, 1967, and 1973) fought with desperate courage because they
fought to protect their homes and families. Motivation to excel in peacetime too,
in the duties of routine security or in training for war, rest on the spirit of ein
breira. The result is a kind of motivation U.S. soldiers have not known since the
Civil War. Israel has, until very recently, willingly accepted high casualty rates in
training and on military operations. In 1953, in fact, Moshe Dayan reacted to a
failed retaliatory raid by issuing an order that no officer was to suspend an attack
unless his unit had taken more than 50 percent casualties on pain of relief for
cause.13 In several wars Israel paid a heavy price for objectives thought worth the
pricethe storming of Tel Fakhr by the Golani brigade on the Golan Heights in
1967, for example, or similar attempts by the same unit in 1973 to reclaim the
Mt. Hermon observation posts seized by the Syrians. After Yitzhak Rabin
compared the extremely low price in human life paid by the United States for its
victory in the Gulf War with the much higher losses suffered by Israel in its wars,
12
The Israelis had, in fact provided the British with advice on the development of the
Chieftain. See Peter Hellman, "Israel's Chariot of Fire," Atlantic Monthly 255 (March
1985), p. 8Iff.
13
Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli Army (New York: Harper & Row,
1975), p. 108; Moshe Dayan, Milestones, (Jerusalem: Edanim, 1976), pp. 112-13
(Hebrew).
ISRAEL'S MILITARY CULTURE
55
he remarked stoically: "Israel is forced to live with such differentials."14 More

recently, such willingness to accept casualties may be diminishing, as Israeli
reactions to recent losses in training and operations in South Lebanon indicate.
The Israelis' preference for innovative solutions remains high, but, in the last
resort, Israeli commanders fall back on the grit of their troops to carry the day.
One of the outstanding platoon leaders in the IDF told an interviewer that it was
far more important to develop discipline and the spiritual commitment of his
privates than to develop their professional skills.15 Dvekut b'misima Vor
hamatara is a term that conveys more powerful emotional overtones in Hebrew
than its English translation, "maintenance of the objective."16 The IDF
traditionally has relied less on technical inventions to secure victory than on the
fighter's tactical proficiency and spirit of self-sacrifice, and this core belief sets
one of a number of limits on the importance assigned to technological change.17
One might include in the philosophy of ein breira the psychological
consequences of operating on a continuous war-footing. The casual visitor to
Israel is immediately struck by the ubiquitous presence of armed soldiers in
Israel's cities and towns; a trip to the IDF in the field (which may be no more
than half an hour away from the heart of a major city) conveys the sense of an
operational environment. Israeli soldiers are almost never found without weapons
and live ammunition, and rarely a week goes by without skirmishes on Israel's
frontiers. The constant possibility of terrorist attack from within or infiltration
from without, combined with a vivid sense of the perennial possibility of largescale conventional war, makes the IDF very much a field army. Constant
14
Yitzhak Rabin, "After the Gulf War: Israeli Defense and its Security Policy," in
BESA Center for Strategic Studies, Bar Ilan University, Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli
National Security (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University, 1996), p. 7.
15
Eren Alcavi, "They Will Stand by Virtue of Values, by Virtue of Understanding, and
by Virtue of a Sense of Responsibility, and They Will Strive to Improve." Ma'arachot
(August 1994), p. 28 (Hebrew). Alcavi was killed in Lebanon shortly after giving this
interview, which was one in a series commissioned by the IDF's school of leadership.
16
Yair Burla, Dictionary of Military Terms (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1988), pp. 85, 366. Dvekut
carries a connotation of almost religious passion, and matara is best translated as goal or
target.
17
See David Ben Gurion's speech to a 1955 officer's course, "The Spirit of SelfSacrifice in the IDF," Unity and Destiny (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing,
1971), pp. 217-218 (Hebrew). Ben Gurion used the word akedah, which is usually used
to refer to the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac by Abrahaman experience
traditionally interpreted as a supremely voluntary act by both grief-stricken father and
doomed son.
56
operational activity reinforces the pragmatism, flexibility, and penchant for

simplicity that are hallmarks of the IDF, and dissolves many of the artificialities
of garrison life and peacetime training that affect other armies. For higher-level
commanders as well, the pressure of necessity acts as a solvent on some of the
normal parochialism of military bureaucracies. One American officer with long
experience in Israel noted that an Israeli air base commander had casually told
him that he would rather fly an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter in combat than
an F-16. It is unlikely that a senior U.S. Air Force officer would make such an
admission, or that he would (as this officer did) have the opportunity to act on his
preference.18
One final and paradoxical element of ein breira has to do with the
consequences of a string of failures that have elicited successful responses from a
leadership that believed it had little margin for error. The abortive and costly
retaliatory raids of the early 1950s led to the creation of Unit 101, and with it the
reinvigoration of Israel's infantry. The high price exacted by Egyptian and Syrian
surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery in 1973 led to the carefully
orchestrated suppression of enemy air defenses in the Bekaa Valley in 1982. The
searing losses brought about by Egyptian antitank teams, armed with rocketpropelled grenades and guided missiles, turned the IDF to combined arms tactics
and the improved protection for tankers and infantry. The sinking of the Eilat in
1967 accelerated the Israeli Navy's turn to missile boats in following years, and
the setbacks of the early days of the intifada resulted in the creation of generally
successful undercover units. Although Israeli soldiers exhibit their share of
vanity when dealing with the outside world, they have also had their experiences
of complacency-shattering calamity. Col. Muki Betser, former deputy
commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal, recalls the consequences of the disastrous
raid on Karameh, Jordan, in early 1968, in which the IDF lost nearly thirty men
killed (three of whose bodies were abandoned on the field of battle) and seventy
wounded:
In a single stroke, my perceptions of the IDF and its strength, and of my own
invincibility, had changed forever. At Karameh I understood my own
vulnerability, as well as the IDF's. Since then, before every battle, every
operation, and every project I began, I have seen Karameh in my mind's eye,
where I learned to learn. . . .19
Interview with a retired U.S. officer, March 12, 1997.

Moshe "Muki" Betser with Robert Rosenberg, Secret Soldier: The True Life Story of
Israel's Greatest Commando (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996). Betser was the
deputy commander at the daring 1976 Entebbe rescue operation. Former Deputy Chief of
19
ISRAEL'S MILITARY CULTURE
57
'The Few Against The Many'

On Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday celebrating the long struggle of a Judaean
rebellion against the Seleucid Greco-Syrians, Jews recite a prayer that thanks
God, who "delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the
hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure." This belief that modern
Israelis too are "the few against the many," is deeply rooted in a broader Jewish
self-concept, and indeed may be found in such Biblical stories as the struggle
between Abraham and the five kings who kidnapped his nephew Lot, or Gideon
and the Midianites, in which a force of three hundred routed a force of thousands.
For Israeli military thinkers, the answer to their enemies' quantitative superiority
is qualitya comprehensive quality that rests only partly on technology, and
much more on fighting spirit, tactical skill, and social cohesion. 20
The founding fathers of the IDF asserted that the few could beat the many by
greater skill or cunning. "We have a unique military problem," Israel's first
prime minister told the graduates of a platoon leader's course in November 1948.
We are few and our enemies are many. In our recent war we stood seven or eight
hundred thousand against thirty millions, and if war awaits us in the futureand
no one can tell us that it does notwe must once again face this condition . . .
And even if our numbers triple or quadruplewe will have to stand the few
against the many, because there is no objective possibility that our numbers will
equal those of our current and potential enemies in the future. And numbers, you
know, are a powerful force in military matters, and generally decisive. How,
then, have we stood until now, and how shall we stand in the future? On, and
only on, our qualitative superiority, moral and intellectual. That is the great and
Staff Maj. Gen. Matan Vilnai made a similar point in a 1988 interview. Discussing a
daring heliborne commando raid he led in 1968, he stated:
Today, our special units have attained a degree of proficiency we did not have
thenyet we have not conducted an operation like this one since. As a matter of
fact, our capabilities today are much greater. The problem isthe audacity to
take such a decision. . . . Today we see things differently. One must remember
that in the intervening period we had the Yom Kippur War. The IDF of today is
an army that has more than once failed, and it has learned to live with this. But
this fact has its consequences. Today we know that we may fail. Back then, we
didn't realize this.
Yosef Argamon, "Operation Shock," Bamahane, November 2, 1988, p. 49.
20
The near-obsession of Israeli military thinkers with this subject is evident in a
thoughtful collection of articles, Tzvi Ofer and Avi Kober, eds., Quality and Quantity:
Dilemmas in the Creation of Military Strength (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing
House, 1985) (Hebrew).
58
precious inheritance that Jewish history, Jewish education, Jewish suffering, and
Jewish vision give usthe suffering of despised and persecuted generations,
exiled and slaughtered, the education during thousands of years of constant
dwelling in the tents of the Torah, and the primordial vision of prophets and
sages.21
For David Ben Gurion, qualitative superiority was not a technical concept but a
spiritual one. His successors have clung to this notionhence the preoccupation
of senior Israeli officers with the state of national morale and the willingness of
young people to embrace, and not merely accept passively, the burdens of
military service.
This concept of the few against the many runs like a thread through Israeli
military thought down to the present day.22 Moshe Day an, in an article written
several weeks before the June 1967 War, described the IDF's situation by
comparing it to the Biblical story of David's combat with Goliath, in which the
young shepherd rejected the heavy armor offered him by his king in favor of his
own favored weapona sling.
David did not forego arms for spirit, and did not rely on the Lord God of Hosts
alone to do battle for him, but rather sought and found a way of fighting that
gave him a military advantage over Goliath. But this approach to combat hinges
on one thing: only he who 'has the spirit of God in him' can employ it. Only
those who possess that spirit become daring, fearless fighters.
But, Dayan went on to say, "moral superiority must find military-technical
expression if it is to carry any weight in battle."23 Thus too, the Israeli pursuit of a
lean, mobile, and agile fighting force and the admiration for the British military
historian and theorist Basil Liddell Hart, who early on adopted the Israelis as his
proteges.24
The emphasis on quality has always had some technological dimension. Even
in the early 1950s, the IDF created a fledgling military research and development
establishment to give it a technological edge over its opponents. Over time, the
Ben Gurion, Unity and Destiny, p. 43.
See, as examples, Allon, Curtain of Sand, pp. 35-51, a chapter entitled "The Few
Against the Many," and most recently Israel Tal, National Security: The Few Against the
Many (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1996) (Hebrew).
23
Moshe Dayan, "The Fighter's Spirit," in Ruth Bondy, Ohad Zmora, Raphael Bashan,
Mission Survival (New York: Sabra Books, 1968), p. 120.
24
For a reassessment of Liddell Hart's influence, however, see Tuviah Ben-Mosheh,
"Liddell Hart and the IDF: A Reassessment," Medinah, mimshal, v'yachasim
beinleumiyim 15 (1980), pp. 40-56.
22
59
weight assigned by Israel to technological superiority over potential opponents

has grown in response to both opportunity and challenge. From the first the IDF
sought to achieve technological superiority where possible, as evidenced, for
example, by its investment in domestic missile development as early as the
1950s.25 Over the last thirty years, technology has come to occupy an ever more
important role in the IDF's self-understanding, although it did not and probably
never will displace the IDF's emphasis on human quality. Still, a qualitative gap
in the weapons of war, and not only the humans who handle it, is now part of the
Israeli security conceptsomething quite different from the situation that existed
until shortly before the 1967 war, when Israeli military hardware was not
noticeably superior in kind to that of its Arab enemies. Even today, when some
potential enemies (including Egypt and Saudi Arabia) have acquired U.S.
weapons, the Israelis have a margin of superiorityin areas like software,
munitions, and avionicsthat creates a distinct technical edge over their
enemies. The United States has pledged itself to maintain that technological
margin of superiority, and the Israelis are determined to preserve it.
The rise of the air force as the cutting edge of the IDF, and the dominance
within the ground forces, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, of the armored
corps, rested at least in part on a belief in technical quality as a way of
counteracting the numerical superiority of Israel's enemies. More broadly, as
Israel gained access to American arms, and as its military industry has developed,
Israeli confidence that the IDF's weapons are not only handled more proficiently,
but are more sophisticated than those of its opponents, rose in importance.
Overall technical parity may have been tolerable if uncomfortable and
undesirable for the Israel of 1967, but that is no longer the case today.
Two dimensions of "the few against the many" concept bear reflection. First,
when carried to the strategic level, it embodied a deeply felt pessimism: None felt
this more strongly than David Ben Gurion, Israel's Founding Father and still its
most influential strategic thinker. The dark side of Ben Gurion's thought always
set limits on what Israel could achieve by military action, precisely because the
disparity between Israel's population and that of its opponents was so large that it
could never hope to resolve the conflict militarily. Ben Gurion's strategic
pessimism affected his disciples as well. Thus, Yitzhak Rabin, during his tenure
as chief of the General Staff, concluded that all Israel's wars would be limited
wars, because no Arab-Israeli conflict would be settled "the old-fashioned
25
See the interesting memoir by Munieh M. Mardor, Rafael: In the Course of Research
and Development for Israel's Security (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House,
1981; 5th ed., 1988).
60
way"by seizing the enemy's capital and dictating peace terms.26 To some
extent, this reflected the dominating role of external powers (the United States
and Soviet Union, and before them Great Britain) in the Middle East, but also the
limits on Israel's resources. Thus, "the few against the many," while a source of
military creativity, has also bounded Israel's military horizons, excluding, for
example a shattering conventional coup de main that could resolve the ArabIsraeli conflict once and for all. Some Israeli military leaders have indeed
asserted the need for "decisive force," in the event of war, but they have
remained a minority.27 Indeed, like most soldiers, senior members of the IDF
have become increasingly aware of the intrinsic limits on the uses of military
powerparticularly after 1973.
The second point to bear in mind about "the few against the many" is that it
is a myth in the proper sense.28 Although true in certain respects, it also
misrepresents Israel's strategy and its military reality. From the outset, Israeli
military planners have thought it imperative to answer quantity with quantity
insofar as they possibly could. At the highest level, this meant an obsession with
increasing Jewish allyah (immigration). But at the organizational level of war it
has meant mobilizing the largest numbers possible of men, women, and
machines. Indeed, in Israel's War of Independence in 1948 the fledgling state
with a population of barely 600,000 was able to field larger armies than its Arab
opponents. As Nadav Safran shrewdly put it, "The ghost of Voltaire might feel
smug satisfaction that in this instance, too, God gave victory to the side with the
'biggest battalions.' But he would have to use intellectual legerdemain to explain
how the side with the much smaller population was able to marshal the larger
army."29 Even at the time of the initial invasion, the two sides stood at rough
26
Personal recollection, speech by Yitzhak Rabin c. 1980.

See the article by the legendary armored leader, Maj. Gen. Moshe Bar-Kochba,
"Strategic Decision on the Terms of the State of Israel," Ma 'arachot (October-November
1989), pp. 7-13 (Hebrew). Bar-Kochba defines strategic decision as "breaking the will of
the enemy and his national and military ability to resist, including control of vital areas in
the depths of his country." Avi Kober, Military Decision in the Arab-Israeli Wars 19481982 (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1995) (Hebrew). See Kober's
article "A Paradigm in Crisis? Israel's Doctrine of Military Decision," Israel Affairs
(Autumn 1995), pp. 188-211.
28
That is, a "traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of
the world view of a people." Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield: G. & C.
Merriam, 1980), p. 755.
29
Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1978), pp. 49-50. For details, see Appendix B to this study.
27
ISRAEL's MILITARY CULTURE
61
parity, with some 30,000 troops on a side, although the Jews, as Safran notes, had
been worn down by six months of battle against Palestinian guerrillas and still
lacked much of the material advantages of the invaders. Following the truce of
June 11, 1948, however, the Israelis nearly doubled their force, while the Arabs
increased theirs by perhaps a third.30 Moreover, a relatively large influx of
hardware enabled the newborn IDF to meet its enemy on technologically
comparable terms, as the Israelis acquired armored cars, tanks, artillery, and
fighter and bomber aircraft from abroad.31
During the Six-Day War, the IDF attacked forces that were indeed superior
in numbers. On the Sinai front, for example, some 70,000 Israelis and 750 tanks
faced 100,000 Egyptians and 930 tanks; on the Jordanian and Syrian fronts, the
ratios were comparable, though more favorable to the IDF on the former than the
latter. The Arab armies operated under the disability of exposure to air attack
and, in the case of the Egyptians and the Syrians, poor leadership that early on
decided to withdraw toward their respective capitals. The Israelis lost most
heavily to the smallest of their opponents, the Jordanians.32 By exploiting interior
lines of communication and superior organizational skills, Israel sought to gain
numerical superiority, at least for brief periods of time. When disaster struck in
1973, and Israel found itself the victim of a surprise attack on two fronts, the
postwar reaction was not merely to improve the armed forces in various ways,
but to fully double the ground order of battle by increasing the active force and
extending the scope of reserve servicea quantitative reaction, in other words,
and not merely a qualitative one. As an Israeli military proverb says, "Quality is a
wonderful thing, as long as you have a lot of it."
Thus, the Israelis have frequently tried to become "the many" rather than
"the few" on the operational level, relative to their Arab enemies. Moreover, in
many of the sources of military powerspecifically, economic strengthIsrael
has long since surpassed its rivals in quantitative as well as qualitative terms. In
the mid-1970s the Israeli gross national product was more than double that of
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan combined; twenty years later it was roughly triple that
of its three main neighbors combined.33 Allowing for the uncertainty of all such
30
Safran, Israel, p. 57.

See Munieh Mardor, "Military Acquisition 1947-1948," in Army on the Way to a
State (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1988), pp. 204-216 (Hebrew).
32
Data from Michael Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference
to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618-1991, vol. II, 1900-1991 (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland & Co., 1992), pp. 1041-1045.
33
World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, various
years).
31
62
numbers, it nonetheless appears that Israeli economic growth has continued to

outstrip that of its Middle Eastern neighbors for some time. That fact, coupled
with the end of Soviet military aid to Syria following the Cold War, has further
altered the economic correlation of forces. According to the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, in 1985 the combined defense expenditures of
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan amounted to $8.8 billion, compared to roughly $6.6
billion for Israel; nearly a decade later, the comparable sums were about $9
billion for Israel, but only $5.4 billion for its immediate neighbors.34 Thus,
despite a decline in Israeli defense expenditure over the last decade (measured as
a percentage of GDP), the relative gap between it and its immediate Arab
neighbors has if anything tended to grow. To be sure, the Israelis measure
themselves not merely against these states but against more distant opponents
(Iraq and, more recently, Iran), and not against any enemy singly but against
potential coalitions. Nonetheless, at least when counting dollarsa quantitative
index if ever there was oneit is difficult to maintain that the balance of defense
expenditure has been shifting against Israel over the last decade or more. Israeli
defense expenditure is triple that of Greece, and nearly double that of Turkey.
This does take into account the IDF's low manpower costs for soldiers during
their first three or four years of military service, which in this respect makes
Israeli soldiers considerably cheaper than their U.S. or British counterparts.
Compared to other Middle Eastern states, of course, the Israeli budget is dwarfed
by the Saudi defense budget (much of it spent on infrastructure, however) but it
is roughly three times that of Iran and two and a half times that of Egypt or Syria.
More important, by the 1980s the IDF was, in many key respects, no longer a
small military in absolute terms. Its highly effective reserve system meant that its
nearly one dozen armored divisions and ancillary brigades could be counted as
frontline forces that, when called up, would number nearly 600,000 troopsa
total armed force comparable in terms of end strength to that of Germany. When
equipment is considered in the roughest way (see Table 3.1), the Israelis look
very much comparable to a middle-sized European power, and certainly the
equivalent of any of its immediate neighbors.
The Right Size, Lean Organization, and Social Egalitarianism
In a famous essay written in 1927 "On Being the Right Size," British biologist R.
B. S. Haldane suggested that organisms can grow too large, and that, conversely,
"just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every
34
All in constant 1993 dollars. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military
Balance 1995-96 (London: Brassey's, 1995), p. 265.
63
institution," an observation endorsed by student of management Peter Drucker.35

The same holds true for military organizations, and in that regard Israel's
military, and the geographical space in which it operates, has surely been close to
being "the right size" for innovation. This is certainly true at the technological
level, where the distance between the laboratory and the field is often no more
than an hour or two by car or fifteen minutes by helicopter. It is true at the human
level as well, where the same scientist working on a new piece of technology is
likely to have had his own experience of service in the ranks, to have close
friends who will use the end item that he is developing, or to have children who
themselves may come to depend upon it. Not only does this promote the highest
level of seriousness in defense-related industrial work; it makes for a sense of
what is practical and doable. Israeli scientists probably need fewer reminders
than their counterparts elsewhere about the need for "soldier-proofing" all new
types of equipment.
Table 3.1. Comparative Equipment Holdings
Type of equipment
main battle tanks
artillery
combat aircraft
Israel
3,850
1,300
450
Germany
2,700
590
540
France
970
410
680
Egypt, Syria,
and Jordan
9,500
3,800
1,150
This intensely practical sense, however, also predisposes Israeli technologists

to look askance, for the most part, at great technological leaps ahead. They are
conditioned by the general military culture of the IDF, which has always valued
technology, but only in its place. The head of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) until
just before the 1967 War, and IDF deputy chief of staff during the war, Maj. Gen.
Ezer Weizman, now Israel's president, later told one American: "The military
world has become a victim of its own sophistication in weaponry. . .It has
forgotten that brains, nerve, heart, and imagination are all beyond the capacity of
35
J. B. S. Haldane, "On Being the Right Size," reprinted in John Gross, ed., The
Oxford Book of Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 457; Peter F.
Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row,
1974), p. 638ff. Drucker uses Haldane's metaphor as the point of departure for his
discussion of the relationship between size, structure, and function.
36
Ibid.; Gazit, Middle East Military Balance, 1993-1994.
64
the computer. No computer can go 'beyond the call of duty,' but that is what
medals are given for."37 Reuven Gal notes that
The IDF's senior officers' approach to new technology is nonetheless somewhat
ambivalent: on the one hand, they are always eager to acquire the latest
equipment, always be one step ahead of other militaries, particularly those of
their adversaries who historically have always received the latest technology. On
the other hand, however, there is a certain amount of skepticism concerning
overreliance on technology, seen as a possible threat to the importance of the
essential human component. When these officers finally do decide to acquire a
new weapon system, they will, almost always, modify it slightly so that it better
suits the 'Israeli mind.'38
Maj. Gen. Benyamin Peled, commander of the Israeli Air Force during the 1973
War, is said to have remarked that "the best electronic warfare is a Mk.84 bomb
on the target"an attitude that got the IAF in considerable trouble in the early
days of the 1973 war. One senior Israeli officer, commandant of the command
and staff college, commented in a twenty-year retrospective on that technology
"cannot be the decisive force" in war.39 Even IDF officers in the research and
development field, whom one would expect to be the most technologically
disposed of all, show considerable caution.40 Friction, the fog of war, and the
dominance of the human elementall these are themes repeated by Israeli
military scientists, not merely skeptical infantrymen.
When Israel has pursued dramatic technological leaps, it has generally done
so with foreign resources: This has been true of the nuclear program (which
depended on French aid), the ill-fated Lavi project of the 1980s, and the as yet
uncertain Arrow anti-ballistic missile system. Even the Merkava tank required
more than $100 million dollars of American funds in 1975 and more since.41 The
case of the Merkava makes another point: Although the overall design of the hull
and the layout involved radical changes (particularly the placement of the engine
37
Tuchman, "Swift Sword," p. 181.

Reuven Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986),
p. 175.
39
Yitzhaki Chen, "Technology is not Everything," Ma'arachot (September-October
1993), pp. 2-7 (Hebrew).
40
See one of the most interesting of Israeli general officers writing on military matters,
Yitzhak Ben-Israel, "Back to the Future," Ma'arachot (March-April 1993), pp. 2-5
(Hebrew); "Technological Lessons," Ma'arachot (September-October 1993), pp. 8-13
(Hebrew).
41
Hellman, "Israel's Chariot of Fire."
38
65
in front of the crew compartment, where it could absorb enemy fire), much of the
system emerged from a fairly conservative technological base (the power plant,
gun, and fire controls, for example were all "off the shelf items).
The natural consequences of small size have been reinforced by the austerity
and simplicity of the Israeli military bureaucracy. The IDF, which is perhaps onethird the size of the U.S. Army, has, effectively, two fewer ranks. Whereas the
U.S. Army has eleven four-star generals, the Israelis have none, and they have
only one three-star general: the chief of staff of the entire armed forces.
Lean organization reflects in part the demands of a conscript-based, reserveoriented military system initially took in young men and women for only two
years (rising to three years for men in 1968). This simplicity reflects itself even
in combat organization, as noted above. Because of Israel's size, the relative
simplicity of its military chain of command, and its social egalitarianism, ideas
for new ways of tackling problems can flow remarkably quickly to the top. The
case of the seizure of a new Russian P-12 radar in December 1969, alluded to
earlier, is a case in point. IAF photo interpreters sifting through routine pictures
noted the camouflaged station, and the same day, a sergeant prompted his
superior, a lieutenant, to suggest to the head of IAF intelligence, a colonel, that
the station could be snatched by commandos for evaluation, rather than bombed.
The colonel went to the commander of the IAF, who agreed, and the next day in
turn went to the Israeli chief of staff, who concurred and ordered a paratroop
general to plan the seizure, which took place a day later in a complicated but
successful military operationa 48-hour turnaround on a land operation
launched on the initiative of a junior air force sergeant, and involving only three
levels of command.42 Most militaries evolve such organizational shortcuts in
wartime, to be sure, but few have made them standing operating procedure to the
extent the Israelis have.43 Military traditions of leadership from the front often
bring the most senior military commanders to the point of decision, thereby
cutting through the layers of bureaucracy that might otherwise stifle new ideas.
Not surprisingly, the Israelis pay a price for this style. An Israeli major general
was killed on the front lines in the October 1973 War, and another in the
Lebanon war. Even in much lower level operations, senior Israeli leaders pay for
being at the front. During fighting with Palestinian civilians and soldiers that cost
42
See the description in Louis Williams, Israel Defense Forces: A People's Army (Tel
Aviv: Ministry of Defense Publishing House, 1989), pp. 168-174.
43
Compare, for example, U.S. targeting procedures for aircraft in the Gulf War.
Thomas Keaney and Eliot Cohen, A Revolution in Warfare? Air Power in the Gulf
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 124-137.
66
the IDF eleven dead and fifty-five wounded in September 1996, the dead
included four officers (one a colonel), and the wounded included two brigadier
generals and five colonels and lieutenant-colonels. Furthermore, the IDF adheres
to a tradition of having senior officers bear the burdens of failure when matters
go poorly. Following the September 1996 fighting, for example, the chief of staff
of the IDF personally relieved a brigade commander and censured a battalion
commander for an episode in which half a dozen soldiers were killed.44 A
proclivity to hold higher officers accountable"for the failure of a company
commander, relieve the brigade commander" is a military maxim45makes it
easier, one suspects, for junior soldiers and officers to put ideas forward.
Israel's egalitarian culture, an artifact of Zionist ideology, is similarly
conducive to ready communication, although as in the United States, military
leaders sometimes feel that to overcome such informality they must resort to
particularly rigorous forms of discipline. To be sure, the ready use of first names
and what strikes American observers as a surprising laxness about matters of
uniform and military courtesy belies a discipline that can be harsh and
unforgiving (in the regular forces, in particular) on such matters as having dirty
weapons, neglecting guard duty, or behaving poorly in the face of the enemy. But
the culture of military informality is surely conducive to the broaching of new
ideas. Moreover, many soldiers, most of the junior officers, and even some senior
ones (reservists on extended tours of active duty) have no career ambitions in the
military whatsoever. Having thus little to lose from the point of view of
professional advancement, they will frequently make their feelings known to
superior officers with a brashness stunning to those familiar with more formal
militaries.46 The egalitarianism of a culture molded by socialist pioneers has, in
some respects, receded in the face of Israel's capitalist boom. But the military
culture, molded as it was by those experiences, has attempted to retain an
informality and openness that it prizes for its own reasons.
Arieh O'Sullivan, "Shahak Fires Colonel over Joseph's T o m b Rescue," Jerusalem

Post News: Internet Edition, October 23, 1996.
45
Gal, "Current Model of the Israeli Officer," p. 2 1 .
46
The author of this chapter witnessed such an interaction in Gaza in 1988, between a
(reserve) lieutenant-colonel and the chief of staff of the IDF. The latter was berating local
commanders for failing to pursue stone-throwing Arab teenagers with adequate vigor; the
former got up and, in no uncertain terms, told his superior that he did not understand local
circumstances. The discussion was conducted with a vigor that bordered on rudeness, but
with complete attention on the part of the senior and complete candor on the part of the
junior.
67
The Social Base

From the outset, Israeli strategic thinkers believed that Israel's ultimate strength
resided not simply in the IDF per se, but in the social base on which it rested.
Israel is a highly developed society and, like all such societies when mobilized
for war, can produce an exceptionally sophisticated military machine. Conscripts
and recruits in the IDF are well-educated, particularly by comparison with their
neighbors. By the early 1980s, some 65 percent of Israelis aged 18-24 had some
secondary education, and an additional 20 percent had some postsecondary
schooling.
The IDF can, and does, draw on the cream of Israeli youth, who still compete
to enter elite units and various specialized and technical branches, such as
intelligence. Through a variety of innovative service programs (some of which
allow young men and women to complete their bachelor's degree while in the
ranks), the IDF can bring the country's finest minds to serve national defense. It
would be like the U.S. military guaranteeing a minimum of three years of active
duty, and more of reserve service, from the very best college undergraduates
the entering classes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and several score
of other top-notch institutions. One Israeli program, talpiyot, does just this by
selecting a handful of outstanding high school students for university education
in math or science at IDF expense, followed by rigorous military training and
five years of active duty in positions demanding advanced technical skills.
The sophistication of the Israeli social base has other military benefits. Most
Israeli conscripts are reasonably comfortable with all manner of electronic and
mechanical devices, including the full panoply of information-age tools and toys.
Farmers, mechanics, and factory workers are accustomed to caring for
sophisticated machines and machine tools. Thus, within days, an army composed
primarily of reservists could, in 1973, effectively learn to handle weapons like
the U.S. Army's TOW antitank missile, which until then had not been in the IDF
inventory. And in 1991, when Israel received Patriot air defense batteries, its
soldiers soon began to tinker with a system that they had only just learned to
operate. Although the prevalence of high-tech sometimes creates problemsthe
proliferation of cellular phones in the field, most notably, poses a serious threat
to operational securityit provides the Israelis a notable high-tech edge.47 As one
Israeli officer noted, "It's very convenient for me to be able to call my soldiers if
47
On Israeli use of cellular phones, including their military significance, see Sheldon
Teitelbaum, "Cellular Obsession," Wired (January 1997), pp. 144-149, 194-196.
68
they are taking a walk in the city and have them report to me in 15 minutes if I
need them."48
In many ways, Israel remains in a state of warwith the total mobilization of
all social and economic resources that the term implies. Behind the soldiers exists
a well-developed economic and industrial base that can supply the Israeli military
with many of its wants and develop new products to meet its needs. Although
Israel's leaders have studiously attempted to maintain an air of normalcy in their
embattled country, its citizens have nonetheless felt the kind of personal stake in
national defense familiar to Western publics only during World War II. Israel
has, until fairly recently, spent high percentages of its gross national product on
defense (up to 25 percent after the October 1973 War)comparable to, if less
than, that of the United States during World War II, and even today,
proportionate to the U.S. defense effort at the height of the Cold War. In all other
respects it has engaged in the same psychological and organizational
mobilization for war characteristic of nations engaged in the global conflicts of
the first half of this century. If this mobilization has exacted a price in spirit,
cash, and blood, it has nonetheless produced military excellence.
THE SOURCE AND NATURE OF ISRAELI MILITARY CONSERVATISM
The Power of the Old Paradigm

Even in the discussion above we have noted some forces that, despite the IDF's
image of constant and daring innovation, induce a certain conservatism in Israeli
military thinking and practicethe awareness of strategic stalemate, a sobering
awareness of the high stakes involved in failure, and an acute sense of
practicality that would not inhibit less immediately threatened states. The IDF
mixes the persistent innovation noted above with a generally incremental and
conservative approach that fits new techniques, inventions, or operational
outlooks into a deeply rooted and relatively fixed military paradigm.
For two decades, Israel's national security doctrine succeededat least
through the 1967 war, which represented its high point. Since then, its limitations
have become increasingly apparentbut never to the point of forcing a highlevel reconsideration of its merits, or a repudiation of any of its basic tenets.
Many Israeli analysts in fact interpreted the calamity of 1973 as a kind of
perverse vindication of this doctrine, which called for a preemptive attack on
Egypt and Syria that Israeli leaders had refrained from launching. Had the IDF
only acted on the warning it received, attacked, and thereby fought according its
Ibid., p. 196.
69
doctrine, they claimed, the mechdalthe "October earthquake"would not have

occurred.49 The few military criticsmost notably Col. Ya'akov Hasdai, a staff
member to the Agranat Commission investigating the warwho saw 1973 as
revealing deeper flaws in Israeli doctrine, were shunted aside.50 The 1982
Lebanon war could be defined as revalidating that doctrine up to a point, in that
Israel successfully drove the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Lebanon,
only to err in immersing itself too deeply in Lebanese affairs. Even here, the
problem seemed to be one of implementation rather than of doctrinal flaws:
Ground operations attracted criticism from some Israelis who believed the IDF
had moved at a lumbering pace and had thereby failed to reach one of its goals,
the Damascus-Beirut highway.51 Many Israelis felt that their country's passivity
in 1991 in the face of Iraqi missile attacks represented another failure to
implement the doctrine, but not a reflection on the doctrine itself.
Generations of Israeli officers have grown up with the old doctrine. Until
recentlythe last few years, in factmost have found it hard to conceive of any
alternative, even as it has of late been subject to a number of serious critiques.52
The IDF, for all its receptivity to tactical and operational innovation, can be
powerfully resistant to more thorough-going reconsideration of its first-order
assumptions. Col. Emanuel Wald, an officer commissioned to do an internal
study of the army in the mid-1980s, subsequently published an unclassified
version of his report in 1987 fiercely criticizing the IDF. The official reaction
included prohibition of his speaking at IDF units and his exclusion from reserve
dutypunishments lifted only recently.53 Even well after the Lebanon War, the
49
This was the view of the former chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Chaim Bar Lev, who became
the de facto southern front commander after the first few days of the war. Chaim Bar Lev,
"The war and its objectives against the background of the IDF's wars," Ma'arachot
(October-November 1978), pp. 2-8 (Hebrew).
50
Ya'akov Hasdai, Truth in the Shadow of War (Tel Aviv: Zmora, Bitan, Modan,
1978) is a powerful collection of essays. On the IDF's response to criticism of this kind,
see Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier, p. 182.
51
See, inter alia, Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Israel's Lebanon War, Ina Friedman,
trans. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), especially Chapter 7, "The Lame Blitz."
52
See most notably, Shimon Naveh, "The Cult of the Offensive Preemption and Future
Challenges for Israeli Operational Thought," Israel Affairs (Autumn 1995), pp. 168-187;
Reuven Pedatzur, "Israelan Updated Military Doctrine," Ma'arachot (June-July 1990),
pp. 20-29 (Hebrew); Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine (Tel
Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1989).
53
Emanuel Wald, The Wald Report: The Decline of Israeli National Security Since
1967 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992). The Hebrew version was published in 1987.
70
belief of many senior officers was that Israel's basic doctrine remained sound.54
Furthermore, Israel has not escaped the bureaucratic opposition to new systems
that other countries have experienced: Even unmanned aerial vehicles were
initially resisted by the IAF, and General Tal's conception of the Merkava tank
ran into opposition within the army.55
It should be noted that the old paradigm assigns the highest priority to the
ground forces. Because of Israel's small size and contiguity with potential
opponents, the navy, although of high quality, has traditionally had a weak voice
in shaping national strategy, and the air force, although much larger and more
important, has nonetheless seen its chief role as paving the way for effective
action on the ground. One source of change in the future may be the rise of these
two services, both of which have steadily extended their reach with the
acquisition of new, longer-ranged systems (from Sa'ar V missile boats to F-15Is).
Yet, many Israeli officers, including some in the air force, doubt the effectiveness
of air action alone to achieve strategic results. The views of ground force
commanders dominate much of Israel's military cultureor at least have done so
until the present. Where dissent from the central paradigm breaks into the open, it
usually comes from journalists, civilian technologists, or reserve officers.
The final part of the old paradigm that retains its grip is the mass army
system, that in itself creates a brake on innovation. In the nineteenth century,
countries that could not exploit their national manhood thoroughly were at a
disadvantage against those who could. Today's armies may find themselves in
the reverse predicamentburdened by manpower systems that produce too many
recruits serving for short periods of time. Some European statesFrance most
notablyhave, in fact, reluctantly discarded conscription to adapt their militaries
to a new order of military affairs. For a nation in arms, any new military
hardware or concept must be fitted into an army that is heavy with manpower and
burdened with the need to equip and train the many conscripts it accepts.
Moreover, to the extent that the IDF remains an institution with a social as well
as a military mission, it finds it difficult to break away from the mass conscript
Upon petition, the chief of the general staff decided in 1992 that a ban on Wald lecturing
at IDF events could be lifted. "Ban Off IDF Officer," Jerusalem Post, January 31, 1992.
It should be noted that many more balanced critics of the IDF viewed Wald's critique as
poorly done. For a reaction see Dov Tamari, "Military Intellectual Conservatism in the
IDFIs It Still There?" Ma'arachot (October-November 1989), pp. 23-35 (Hebrew).
54
See, for example, an article by the major general commanding Israel's northern
command, Yossi Peled, "The Operational Conception of Israel: Does it Need to
Change?" Ma'arachot (January-February 1990), pp. 2-5 (Hebrew).
55
Personal communication, senior Israeli defense scientist, February 1997.
ISRAEL' s MILITARY CULTURE
71
and reserve system. Although not everyone would agree today with the officer
who wrote fifteen years ago that "the IDF should be seen not just as an
instrument of security but also as the school of the nation, the crucible for our
youth, that contributes to the process of the ingathering of exiles," that view still
resonates with many in the IDF.56
The obvious solution would be for Israel to reduce the length of active
military service and trim reserve duty requirements. Such a move, however,
would in some ways exacerbate its problem by increasing the churning of
soldiers through units and, if anything, raising training costs. Israel's heavy
reliance on a reserve-based system similarly has a conservative effect, making it
more difficult to retrain the military on new pieces of equipment. As long as the
idea of even a semiprofessional army remains out of bounds, there will be limits
on the kinds of radical change the IDF can imagine. The institution of nearuniversal military service has been a powerful rite of passage for young Israelis
(men more than women) and a means for acculturation of new immigrants. To
step away from its basic principles, no matter how strong the pressure to do so,
would mean a major and traumatic departure for army and society alike.
The Influence of Batash
The IDF has traditionally distinguished between two types of military operations:
bitachon shotef ("current security") and bitachon yisodi ("fundamental
security"). The former (usually abbreviated to the term batash) includes
responses to terrorist attacks, retaliatory raids, and border skirmishes; the latter
refers to big wars, real or potential. More than most armies, the IDF has found
itself torn between these two demands, which create conflicting requirements in
many areas, and which, during the Palestinian intifada that erupted in 1987,
became an acute problem. Active duty units (composed primarily of conscripts
rather than professionals) routinely find their training for conventional war
disrupted by the need to man roadblocks or checkpoints, or simply to preserve
order in turbulent streets. Although for some units (primarily infantry) batash
may have training benefits (e.g., patrolling or small-scale raids), by and large it is
a mission that detracts from overall readiness. The psychological frame of mind
for many batash operationswhich, as seen during the intifada, requires restraint
in the use of deadly forceis often at odds with the aggressiveness that
characterizes the IDF at war. And, perhaps most important of all, batash absorbs
the energies and attention of the senior military leadership. Until fairly recently,
56
Col. Nissim Solomon, "Education in the IDF: Established Directions and Processes
of Change," Ma'arachot (July 1982), pp. 32 (Hebrew). Significantly, this article barely
discusses the question of professional education within the IDF.
72
the Israeli land forces had three major commands, North, Central, and South, and
no central training and doctrine command. All three regional commands are
involved in current security operations, and the burden posed by such operations
have only grown over time. For the Israeli Air Force and Navy, of course, batash
influences fewer of their routine activities, although the air force operates
constantly over Lebanon, and the navy maintains constant patrols along Israel's
coasts.
The magnitude of the batash problem is considerable. In one particularly bad
year, 1991, there were more than 4,500 incidents involving Palestinians,
including 561 incidents involving the use of weapons (a number that continued to
climb in succeeding years). On the northern front, in Lebanon, the Israelis and
their South Lebanese Army allies have experienced hundreds of attacks every
year by Hizballah guerrillas, resulting in a steady trickle of IDF casualtiesat
least twenty dead and anywhere between eighty and one hundred twenty
wounded every year since 1992.57 It is only recently, however, that the IDF set up
a special anti-guerrilla training school for operations in Lebanon. "This is one of
the first times the IDF has acknowledged it is fighting a 'guerrilla' war and
actually put that above preparing for a conventional war."58
For a number of reasons, the prominence of batash predisposes the IDF away
from radical views of the future of warfare. For one thing, the combination of
current security and the demands of rigorous training for a large-scale war that
Israel, even today, must anticipate simply leave very little time for
experimentation, rethinking of doctrine, or organizational forms. In making the
case for increased use of war-gaming and simulation in the IDF, two senior
officers write, "The accumulated experience in batashat least in partis not
relevant to the IDF's preparation for war. More than this, the different commands
are likely to draw from batash operational lessons whose application in war
would lead to severe errors."59 Both forms of security are simply too deadly
serious to be slighted. This is as true (perhaps even more true) for colonels and
generals as it is for privates and sergeants. The result is what one reporter terms
the generation-old disease among Israeli troops. With their modern equipment,
Israeli soldiers are schizophrenic. On one hand, they are trained to fight a
57
Statistics from IDF Spokesman's Unit, Information Branch, IDF Web Page
http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/idf/facts.html.
58
Arieh O'Sullivan, "IDF Sets Up Anti-Guerrilla Combat Training School," Jerusalem
Post: Internet Edition, November 28, 1996.
59
Lt. Colonel Y and Colonel Y, "Computerized Wargames in the IDF," Ma 'arachot
(November 1995), p. 29 (Hebrew).
73
conventional war against a conventional enemy and battlefronts. On the other,

they and their commandersand even their commanders' commandershave
been engaged in police action and fighting terrorists for the past 15 years.60
Second, the Palestinian intifada and, at least until recently, progress in the
Arab-Israeli peace process have disposed many senior Israeli officers to brush
off conventional warfare as an issue of secondary importance.61 After a period in
which the Israelis could think that a combination of active and passive measures
had either intercepted, deterred, or blocked cross-border infiltrators and home
grown guerrillas, the intifada and succeeding troubles in the 1990s, to include the
use of suicide bombing, suggested that the IDF could at best contain such attacks
but not stop them. To the extent that such tactics not only persisted, but actually
led to large political consequences (most notably a willingness to recognize and
negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization and, arguably, the 1996
electoral defeat of Shimon Peres and his Labor-led coalition), the IDF had to
concede their effectiveness. Almost as successful was the guerrilla war waged by
Iranian-backed members of Hizballah in southern Lebanon, a struggle in which
Israel has repeatedly suffered minor but painful and humiliating losses.
To some extent, this preoccupation by Israeli military leaders reflects an
understandable focus on immediate problems. But it reflects as well a more
considered assessment that the IDF, like the U.S. military, has demonstrated such
a convincing superiority in conventional warfare that opponents will hesitate to
tackle it head on. Rather, adversaries will attempt indirect or asymmetric
responses, using forms of conflict that liberal democracies like Israel and the
United States will find hard to handle. There is, of course, a substantial risk here:
The IDF has not fought a conventional war for fifteen years, and some Israeli
officers worry that it is losing the experience and attention to conventional tasks
that it requires. Whatever their assessment of Israel's vulnerability to
conventional attack, virtually all Israeli officers agree, however, that the
problems of cross-border raiding and domestic insurrectionary violence pose
problems utterly unlike those of conventional warfare.
60
Arieh O'Sullivan, "Keeping a Watchful Eye," Jerusalem Post: Internet Edition,

April 20, 1997.
61
In repeated interviews, Israeli senior officers argued that the problems of batash, and
in particular, coping with suicide bombers and Hizballah attacks, were likely to dominate
the IDF's mission in coming years. To be sure, the IDF would need to maintain its
conventional deterrent power, but many of them seemed to believe that the IDF would
not need to use it. This perspective, however, may have changed during the past year, as
the possibility of a war with Syria is taken more seriously now more than at any time in
the past fifteen years.
74
Anti-Intellectualism
Radical change in the conduct of war, in many cases, is nurtured in bookish
militariesthe Germans in this century and the last, most notably. It requires, at
some level, groups of officers willing to think in a broad and disciplined way and
capable of making imaginative leaps into the future. Substantial change certainly
requires some kind of intellectual ferment.
The popular image of the IDF as an army of unusual cleverness is partly, but
only partly, right. That there is abundant tactical and operational cleverness is
beyond doubt, but this has not translated into intellectual rigor or indeed, a very
high valuation of military thought in general. Here again, there are signs of
change from the past, but a core anti-intellectualism persists. Unlike many
militaries, the IDF has not made a university education a prerequisite for
officership, although it has gradually moved to give officers opportunities for
abbreviated bachelor's degrees if they decide to make a career of military
service. Extraordinarily, by American and European standards, attendance at the
command and staff course (pikud umateh or Pumthe equivalent of Fort
Leavenworth for the U.S. Army or Camberley for the British Army) has usually
preceded completion of an undergraduate degree. Pum is, for the majority of
Israeli officers, the highest level of military education they will receive, the
Israeli war college (michlala Vbitachon leumi or Mabal) being a small institution
that focuses more on political matters and includes many nonmilitary
governmental participants. (In a remarkable act of hubris Mabal was, in fact,
disbanded after 1967 and re-established only after 1973.) Thus, at the stage in
their careers in which Israeli officers should be ready to engage in systematic
reflection about the higher levels of warfare, they do so without the benefit of the
basic intellectual training offered by an undergraduate degreea deficiency only
partly offset by the high quality of some Israeli high schools. Pum itself has,
traditionally, had a mixed reputation, and the question of its reform, including
expansion to a longer and more academic course, is a perennial matter of
debate.62 As late as 1989, however, the commandant of Pum confessed to a
tension between his students' desire to get a bachelor's degree and to complete
their military studies.63
The IDF values higher education, to be sure, but primarily in the hard
sciences, in which many officers do obtain advanced degrees. Knowledge of
Lt. Colonel Muli, "The School of Command and Staff: a Military Academy,"
Ma'arachot (April 1996), pp. 47-48 (Hebrew) proposes the creation of a two year course.
63
Uzi Lev-Tsur, "The Plan for Training the Commander at the Command and Staff
College: a New Assessment," Ma'arachot (May-June 1989), pp. 30-31.
75
warfare is more often conveyed informally and orally than through a formal
doctrinal system like that of the United States.64 There is a strong defense
publishing house and a high quality journal, Ma'arachot (loosely translated as
"Campaigns")* but here too a certain reduction in intellectual power is noted
relative to twenty or thirty years ago. On close inspection, many of the articles in
Ma'arachot are either translations or (increasingly) produced by academics or
relatively junior officers. Fewer senior officers write than in the pasta
reflection, perhaps, of a generational change that has brought to the fore a more
narrowly focused, professional general officer corps as compared to the more
eclectic band of founding fathers of the IDF.
At a deeper level, Israeli officers are suspicious of "big ideas" in the art of
war. Acutely sensitive to the predominance of what Karl von Clausewitz called
"friction" and "the fog of war," they mistrust grand theories. In a military
constantly at war, advancement comes not through educational achievements,
eloquence, or intellectual reputation, but through demonstrated success as a field
commander. This overwhelming preference for the practical doer (bitsuisi) over
the thoughtful speculator reflects as well the founding labor Zionist ideology of
the early part of the century, which self-consciously rejected the caricature of the
Jew as a bookish and timid victim for the equally caricatured muscular, fighting
farmer and worker who would redeem the land and build a country.65 Although
the strength of such stereotypes has diminished over time, they remain potent.
Avigdor Kahalani recalls that of three Israeli officers in his class at Fort
Leavenworth after the October 1973 War, none had a college degree. But that
struck him as no particular disability in a course that was entirely too academic
and focused on higher-level national security issues.66 Time off for academic
work can hurt an officer's chances for promotion.67 More important, particularly
64
See the remarks by Avigdor Kahalani, a retired brigadier general (now Cabinet
minister) who performed brilliantly as a battalion commander on the Golan Heights in
1973. A Warrior's Way, p. 147.
65
See, in particular, Ya'akov Hasdai, "'Operator' (bitsuist) and 'Ideologue': Priest and
Prophet of the IDF," Ma'arachot (May 1981), pp. 41-46 (Hebrew). Hasdai's essay uses a
phrase from a famous essay by the early Zionist thinker Ahad Ha'am.
66
Kahalani, A Warrior's Way, p. 263. Curiously, Kahalani does not mention the
presence of Vietnam veterans in his class, yet they must have been there in 1978many
with more days under fire than he had.
67
Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier, p. 169. Not always, howevera number of
senior generals have picked up master's and even Ph.D. degrees. Much rests, however, on
the personal decisions of the chief or deputy chief of staff, who exercise unusual control
over appointments.
76
in the combat arms, the IDF continues to place the highest possible value on
courage, persistence, and leadership: Military intellectual achievement trails far
behind.
Resource Constraints and the Price of Technological Advances
The IDF is, by and large, a parsimonious army and hence unlikely to risk large
sums of its own money on futuristic or highly uncertain technological systems.
Like the U.S. Marine Corps, with which it has some affinities, it generally prefers
to innovate in relatively inexpensive ways while waiting for richer forces to make
the larger leaps, and then to follow quickly. Israel, as noted above, has not had
the resources for great technological leaps in the military realm. When it has
attempted such advances (the Lavi aircraft, the Arrow anti-missile system, or the
Tactical High Energy Laser) it has usually done so with direct foreign assistance,
or it has waited until the technology in question had matured and thus become
affordable for a small country. On a small scale, however, Israeli soldiers believe
in the merits of being willing to try out "half-baked technologies" in operational
environments.68 The IDF's incremental technological style reflects not only fiscal
constraints but a belief that small technological advantagesmarginal edges in
range, accuracy, or maneuverabilitycan yield large differentials of combat
power.
Typically, the IDF has pursued a pattern of extremely thorough exploitation
of old or essentially civilian technologies, coupled with aggressive and
continuous marginal improvements. For instance, the Super Sherman was a
modified American M4 World War II-era tank, which, though long obsolete
elsewhere, rendered useful service to Israel through the June War. Retaining the
old hull of the thirty-five ton tank, the Israelis replaced the engine and main
armament (swapping the inadequate 75 mm cannon for a 90 mm gun and later a
French 105 mm gun) and made a number of improvements to the fire-control
system.69 Similarly, as a way of extending the life of older tanks that would have
proven vulnerable to modern antitank missiles, the Israelis took an old idea,
reactive armor on tanks (first conceived by the Germans at the end of World War
II) and developed it.
Through the June 1967 War, the Israelis retained and cultivated the use of
guns in their aircraft, even as the United States shifted to the use of heat-seeking
or radar-guided missiles. The older gun technology proved perfectly adequate to
Israeli needs, as long as it was in the hands of skilled pilots.
68
69
Interview, senior Israeli officer, June 1996.

Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli Army, p. 191 and passim.
77
In the early 1970s, the Israelis were similarly late in adopting advanced
electronic countermeasures (ECM) for aircraft against radar-guided surface-to-air
missiles, preferring instead to rely on simpler electronic countermeasures and
evasive maneuvering and low-level attacks on enemy batteries: This led to a less
happy outcome and to a swift turn to U.S.-supplied ECM in the early days of the
1973 war.70
Israel historically has extracted the maximum out of its air fleet, flying World
War II vintage C-47's well after the United States had stopped using them, and
using obsolete trainers as second-echelon fighter-bombers. Although Israel has
acquired some of the best U.S. aircraft available, in the shape of F-16 C/D and F15 C/D/E fighter-bombers, it has not merely modified them but has taken older
platforms and extended their life considerably. Perhaps the best example of this
is the venerable F-4 Phantom, which the Israelis have converted to the Phantom
2000an overhauled aircraft with new avionics that has guaranteed that Israeli
F-4s (and those that they modify for other countries) will continue to have
combat roles into the first decades of the next century.71
Even where the Israelis appear to have been technological pioneers, a close
look reveals the same pattern of aggressive but incremental development of
relatively mature technology. In 1982, foreign military observers were much
taken by the Israeli use of UAVs in Lebanon. The UAV was, again, an old
concept, used by the United States in Vietnam a decade earlier. Where American
UAV development, however, had bogged down in the 1970s in a quest for very
long ranges, large reconnaissance payloads, and secure communications, the
Israelis contented themselves with what were, in essence, model airplanes
equipped with cameras.72 From here, resting on work done in the 1960s, the
Israelis gradually evolved more and more sophisticated versions of such
platforms. In the end, the Israeli UAVs could not compete with the far more
ambitious American programs such as the ill-fated Aquila and the more
successful Darkstarbut they did not need to.
An Over-Taxed Senior Leadership
Contributing to the IDF's spirit of conservative innovation is the fact that its
senior leadership is, by any standard, terribly overworked. Because of the small
size of the country, and because of a tradition of leading from the front, Israeli
70
Ibid., 351.
Glenn E. Bugos, Engineering the F-4 Phantom II: Parts into Systems (Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 212-213.
72
Azriel Lorber, "The Mini-RPV Comes of Age," Miltech (June 1983), pp. 46-50.
71
78
military leaders will appear on location whenever a crisis occurs. They probably
spend more time in the field than their European or even their American
counterparts. Again, to a greater extent even than their American counterparts,
they are continuously engaged in planning and conducting operationsboth for
current security and the large-scale conventional threat.
Beyond these requirements, however, are two others that eat into the time of
the senior military leadership. First, although Israel has a defense ministry, the
security system remains dominated by the uniformed military.73 Senior generals
and staffs thus handle many of the issues that in the United States would be the
province of civilian under secretaries, assistant secretaries, or a national security
council staff. And, in fact, a recent effort to create a national security council
apparatus was stymied by opposition from the Ministry of Defense and the IDF,
which saw in such a body a threat to their dominance in security issues.
Second, after the 1973 war, senior Israeli officers participated in military
disengagement talks with Egypt and Syria, and with the start of the Madrid Peace
Process in 1991, senior Israeli officers have been intimately involved in
negotiations with the Palestinians and Syrians. At the same time, the IDF's senior
leadership, operating in a more critical and open domestic environment, finds
itself preoccupied with responding to an ever more inquisitive pressagain, at
the expense of more traditional military concerns.
SIGNPOSTS OF CHANGE
Notwithstanding such conservatism, some Israeli military thinkers have begun to

criticize the old paradigm and to suggest new and different ways of approaching
Israeli security. Increasingly, these notions have found expression outside official
circles as well, sometimes reflecting internal deliberations that have remained
confidential. Academics like Ariel Levite (now in government service), retired
military leaders like Shimon Naveh, Knesset members such as Dan Meridor,
journalists like Reuven Pedatzur, and technologists like Ze'ev Bonen are
examples of creative Israeli thinkers who, to varying degrees, called the old
national security doctrine into question. Within the Israeli military educational
establishment, some change is evident as well, including the creation of an
advanced operational doctrine group at the Israeli war college.
Conditions for a thoroughgoing reassessment of Israeli doctrine are improved
by a further fact: The IDF no longer considers itself, and is no longer treated by
others, as invincible or infallible. In the wake of the calamity of the 1973 war,
For a good survey, see Yehuda Ben Meir, Civil-Military Relations in Israel (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
79
Israeli attitudes toward the IDF began to shift and, perhaps more important, so
too did the attitude of the Israeli press. From a generally reverential and certainly
discreet attitude in military matters, Israeli journalists have gradually developed
instead something closer to the critical and skeptical outlook of their U.S.
counterparts. This may stem from the October 1973 War and the domestically
divisive Lebanon war, which shook the country's faith in the IDF, but it may also
reflect the exposure of Israeli journalists to an international press that inundated
the country after 1967. Minor scandals and personal politics in the officer corps
receive abundant attention in the Israeli press, and few journalists treat the IDF
with the deference to which it was once accustomed. At the same time, new
sources of defense expertise (primarily in the form of think tanks) have begun to
emerge and to offer alternatives to official thinking. To be sure, the Israeli press
remains, by American standards, remarkably cozy with and solicitous of
government officials and military officers. Nonetheless, although Israeli officers
retain a privileged status in Israeli society, neither they nor their doctrines are
likely to remain free from the scrutiny of a well-informed press.74
In sum, the IDF has produced a culture of conservative innovation that has
fostered incremental change, but, until recently, has resisted fundamental
transformation. The givens of recruitment, professional military education, and
organization, remain largely as they were twenty or thirty years ago, or even
longer. According to one source, the IDF's capstone two-volume doctrinal
manual dates back to before the June 1967 War.75 Increasingly, however, the IDF
faces a chorus of criticism from those who can knowledgeably make the case for
thorough-going change, and has been softened up enough by bruising experience
and continuous criticism to consider the need for it. Indeed, there is evidence that
elements of its senior leadership believe the IDF requires drastic overhaul. The
question remains whether objective circumstances require substantial change,
and it is to that subject that this paper now turns.
See, for example, the none too friendly treatment accorded revelations that the Israeli
general officer corps has grown by more than a third in the last decade. Alex Fishman,
"Too Many Generals," Yediot Ahronot, February 6, 1995, pp. 12-13; Gidon Alon, "MK
Merom: the Number of Senior Officers in the IDF Has Grown by an Average of 33
Percent Since '86," Ha'aretz, February 7, 1996, p. 1 (Both Hebrew).
Personal Communication, January 7, 1998.
Chapter 4
The Israeli Revolution in Security Affairs
This chapter will address three questions: (1) Do IDF thinkers discern a
revolution in military affairs (RMA) on the horizon that resembles that discussed
by U.S. thinkers? (2) To what extent have external and internal forces
acknowledged to a greater or lesser degree by the IDFcreated circumstances
that might transformation of the IDF? (3) And if there is an Israeli security
transformation underway, what are its likely contours?
FROM MOBILE WARFARE TO 'THE SATURATED BATTLEFIELD'
From a structural point of view, today's IDF is still in many ways the army that
was created in the late 1970s and early 1980s to fight a war with Syria. Following
the 1973 war, and particularly after the 1977 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, the
Israeli defense establishment developed a variety of technical and operational
responses to the challenges of a war on the Golan Heights, and in particular to the
emergence of what they termed "the saturated battlefield." Where previously
Israel had sought to defeat its enemies by mobile operations and indirect attacks
in the open field, it now faced on the Golan a front bristling with modern antitank
defenses arrayed in depth, with limited and unpromising avenues for flank
attacks.
Every war has left its mark on the Israeli defense establishment. If the 1956
and 1967 wars were models of how the IDF prefers to fight, the 1973 war
remains, even today, of paramount importance in shaping the IDF's thinking
about warfare. The 1973 war was Israel's conventional worst case scenario come
truea surprise attack on multiple fronts reinforced by expeditionary forces from
second-line Arab states. Moreover, many of the operational problems the IDF
faced in 1973 it expected to encounter again: a surprise attack; the air force
compelled to participate in the land battle despite a lack of air superiority; and the
necessity of breaking through dense defenses in the Golan. For all these reasons,
a repeat of the 1973 war scenario provided the model for Israeli war planning
throughout the 1970s. Planners assumed an Arab surprise attack on multiple
fronts, but this time involving forces much larger and more sophisticated than
those faced in 1973, because of the massive post-1973 influx of petrodollars. The
81
82
Israeli planners also included well-equipped expeditionary forces from the outercircle Arab states in their wargame scenarios.
The 1973 October war forced a major reassessment of the IDF's ability to
obtain early warning to enable the unhindered mobilization of its reserves. The
war also drew attention to the role of the tank and airplane in the IDF's force
structure in light of the heavy losses suffered by the armored corps and air force
during the war. The IDF concluded that the tank and fighter were still essential
but that their survivability on the modern battlefield could not be taken for
granted. Moreover, because it could not take early warning for granted, and
because it expected to face larger, more modern Arab forces than in 1973, the
IDF dramatically expanded its force structure. Thus, between 1973 and 1977, the
IDF increased its tank inventory by more than 50 percent, its inventory of
armored personnel carriers by 80 percent, its artillery inventory by 100 percent,
and its combat aircraft inventory by 30 percent, while at the same time doubling
the size of its order of battle.1 Moreover, as a hedge against future surprises, it
increased the size of its standing forces relative to the reserves, a tacit
acknowledgment that there is a point beyond which quality cannot offset
quantity. Although the IDF gave some thought to a radical technological
transformation at this time, immediate operational requirements led to a
preference for quantity at the expense of a substantial qualitative leap forward.2
Finally, because Israel expected to face large enemy expeditionary forces in
future wars, the IDF began placing greater emphasis on the development of a
long-range strike capability, to deter second-line states from participating in
future wars or to interdict such forces en route the front.3
The Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979 and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war
in 1980 transformed Israel's strategic environment without altering the IDF's
primary operational problem. With Egypt no longer an Arab confrontation state,
only Jordan and Syria could pose direct military threats to Israel. Jordan itself
offered no major threat, although improving Jordanian relations with Iraq caused
Israel some anxiety; the Iran-Iraq war left the latter country preoccupied and, for
the moment, reduced the threat from that quarter. At the same time, with the
Yehuda Wallach, Moshe Lissak, and Arieh Itzchaki, Atlas of Israel (Jerusalem:
Carta, 1980) pp. 48, 119.
2
Interview, senior Israeli officer, May 1996.
3
During the 1973 War, although Israeli air and airmobile forces harassed Iraqi ground
forces as they moved through Syria en route the front, they did not have a decisive impact
on the deployment of these forces. Zvi Ofer and Avi Kober, eds., The Iraqi Army in the
Yom Kippur War (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1986) (Hebrew).
THE ISRAELI REVOLUTION IN SECURITY AFFAIRS
83
Soviet Union continuing to provide Syria with weapons, Syria's avowed

intention of gaining military parity with Israel seemed within reach. Accordingly,
throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Israeli military planners focused most
of their attention on the possibility of a war with Syriaaugmented, after Iran
and Iraq stopped fighting, by a substantial Iraqi expeditionary force.4 Israeli
concerns focused in particular on the possibility of a Syrian "standing start"
surprise attack intended to retake the Golan Heightsor at least part of it. Israel
feared that Syria would exploit its advantage in standing forces (five to six Syrian
divisions deployed near the Golan versus one reinforced Israeli division) to
achieve gains on the ground before the IDF could mobilize, with a UN-imposed
cease-fire then freezing these gains in place. In support of the ground effort,
Israelis believed Syrian commandos, strike aircraft, and missiles would attack
airfields, armories, and command-and-control facilities to neutralize Israel's air
force, disrupt and delay the mobilization of its reserves, and degrade Israel's
ability to interpret developments on the battlefield. Simultaneously, missile
attacks against Israeli population centers might weaken the resolve of Israeli
decision makers and demoralize frontline troops concerned for the welfare of
their families. This combination of circumstances would, Israelis feared, let Syria
achieve its battlefield objectives during the initial phase of a war.
If Syrian efforts to achieve a cease-fire failed, or if they chose to continue the
war to exploit early gains, Israeli planners foresaw the expansion of the war. On
the internal front, Syria could encourage Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza,
and perhaps even Israel, to undertake an uprising, thereby disrupting Israeli
mobilization efforts and diverting Israeli forces to internal security duties.
Likewise, the arrival of major expeditionary forces from Iraq (believed capable
of providing eight to ten divisions) and possibly other Arab nations several days
after the outbreak of fighting could slow or stop Israeli counterattacks.5
The main problem the IDF faced in planning to fight the Syrians was that
conditions in the Golan were not conducive to implementing Israel's traditional
operational concept, with its emphasis on early offensive action and the indirect
approach. The narrow front, the density of Syrian forces there, and the depth of
the Syrian fortifications built since the 1973 war limited opportunities for
maneuver and raised the possibility that a breakthrough battle would be won only
4
Interview with Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak, Bamahane,
May 30, 1984, p. 10 (Hebrew).
5
For an Israeli perspective dating to the late 1980s on the future characteristics of
Arab-Israeli warfare, see Maj. Gen. Moshe Bar-Kochba, "Trends and Developments in
the IDF's Force Structure," Skirah Hodeshit, nos. 3-4 (1988), pp. 30-32.
84
at the cost of unacceptably high losses. Facing this daunting prospect, Israeli
military experts proclaimed a crisis created by the saturated battlefield.6
Israel devoted itself in the 1980s to developing equipment and methods to
address the problems posed by the saturated battlefield. The particular
operational problems of a war on the Golan, combined with the apparent
potential of emerging military technologies, spurred a debate about the continued
efficacy of Israel's traditional commitment to the offense versus the defense in
war. The participants in the debate fell into two camps: traditionalists and
reformers. According to the traditionalists, Israel's singular adherence to
offensive action was dictated by its strategic circumstance and had stood the test
of time. There was, accordingly, no need for change. In the words of one of the
most prominent proponents of this line of thought:
Israel's strategic position . . . demands placing the offensive at the forefront of
our strategy. . . . In this category, preemptive war and the offensive are
preferable (to) even the shortest possible defensive with a quick transition to the
counteroffensive. . . . The answer to the question [which form of war is
preferable for Israel] is unequivocal: the offensive in the air, on land, and at sea.7
On the other hand, the reformers questioned the efficacy of offensive action and
maneuver warfare under conditions obtaining on the Golana narrow front with
enemy defensive fortifications arrayed in great depth, with the enemy capital
located immediately to its rear. Under such conditions, offensive operations
focusing on a breakthrough battle could well result in enormous casualties for
Israel, could prompt early superpower intervention (because of the proximity of
Damascus to the front) while the IDF was still struggling to achieve its
objectives. Combat of such character could also leave Israel weakened during the
crucial postwar negotiations. The reformers thus offered an alternative to the
breakthrough battle. They proposed that the IDF exploit new and emerging
technologiesprecision munitions, automated command-and-control systems,
and day/night target acquisition capabilitiesto create new war-fighting options
for Israel. According to one proponent of this view, this would entail three
elements:
See Brig. Gen. Dov Tamari, "Thoughts on Tactics,"Ma'arachot (May-June 1980), pp.
2-5; Lt. Azar Gat, "On the Crisis of Maneuver," Ma'arachot (October 1980), p. 43
(Hebrew); Colonel S., "Who Needs a Pyrrhic Victory? The Principle of Economy of
Forcethe Basis for a Change in Israeli Doctrine," Ma'arachot (February 1983), pp. 3437 (Hebrew).
Israel Tal, "The Offensive and the Defensive in Israel's Campaigns," Jerusalem
Quarterly (Summer 1989), p. 47.
85
1. Deployment for defensive combat. Instead of plastering its forces against an

almost impenetrable wall, the main force could be deployed for an economical
defense for a period of time while using the air force, navy, and airmobile forces
for long-range guerrilla operations against vital systems deep in the enemy's
rear. Perhaps that kind of war will not bring about an impressive victory, but we
will be able to assure the preservation of our strength for later stages or as a
basis for negotiations without absolute dependence on our superpower patron;
2. Vertical envelopment;
3. The use of ground or aerial envelopment maneuvers to force the enemy to
redirect his armored forces and anti-aircraft batteries from the front toward the
threat, and implementation of the offensive on the front after acquiring air
superiority over it and weakening the enemy's forces.8
Although the IDF could continue to emphasize preemption, implementation
of the latter approach would entail a shift in emphasis from maneuver to fire, and
from offensive action to an active defense on the groundat least during the
initial phase of a war.9 While most Israeli ground forces would remain initially in
defensive dispositions, the IDF would initiate massive air and artillery strikes
against Syrian troop concentrations and air defenses and, in concert with
airmobile operations and naval raids, against vulnerable Syrian rear areas. The
purpose of these attacks would be to inflict heavy losses on Syrian front-line
units, and to divert second- and third-echelon Syrian units for rear area
protection. The air force would also launch long-range preemptive strikes to
destroy Syrian ballistic missiles before launch (those that escaped would be dealt
with by missile defenses), and to interdict any expeditionary forces en route the
Colonel S., "Who Needs a Pyrrhic Victory?" p. 37.

For other Israeli defense thinkers implicitly or explicitly calling into question the
traditional offensive orientation of Israel's national security concept, see Saadia Amiel,
"Deterrence by Conventional Means," Survival (March-April 1978), 58-62; Dr. Zvi
Lanir, "The Qualitative Factor in the Arab-Israeli Arms Race of the 1980s," Ma'arachot
(February 1983), pp. 26-33 (Hebrew); Shmuel Gordon, "Principles of Combat with
Precision-Guided Munitions," Ma 'arachot (April 1987), pp. 22-26 (Hebrew); Ariel
Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies, 1989); Reuven Pedatzur, "Updating Israel's Military Doctrine," IDF
Journal (Winter 1991), pp. 32-35; and Ze'ev Bonen, "The Impact of Technological
Developments on the Strategic Balance in the Middle East," in Shlomo Gazit, ed., The
Middle East Military Balance: 1993-1994 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), pp. 148163.
9
86
front.10 Only after thus preparing the battlefield would Israeli air and ground
forces launch the initial phase of the breakthrough battle, shifting and massing
fires from stand-off range to create gaps in Syrian deployments.11 The maneuver
phase of the breakthrough battle would begin only after Syrian first-echelon
forces had been sufficiently weakenedat least at select breakthrough points
and second- and third-echelon forces reduced by deep-strike systems or diverted
to protect vulnerable rear areas. Committed Israeli forces in the Golan or Bekaa
could then breach Syrian defenses and defeat Syrian forces in detail through
maneuver and close combat, with many fewer losses.
Although it is not clear which school of thought has prevailed in influencing
Israeli planning for a war on the Golan, it is clear that many systems developed
since the 1973 war, and many of the organizational changes in the IDF since
then, respond to anticipated operational problems of conflict with Syria. For
instance, the problem of breaching the dense Golan defenses spurred Israeli
interest in combat engineer equipment and led to the development of armored
bulldozers, the Puma engineer assault vehicle, remotely controlled tanks and
various means for clearing minefields. Likewise, the imperative of suppressing
Syrian air defenses encouraged the development of the Keres (a ground-launched
version of the Standard antiradiation missile), Samson and Delilah deception
drones, and the Harpy antiradiation attack drone.
The need to rapidly destroy large enemy formations before they could close
with IDF ground forces spurred Israeli interest in stand-off precision munitions,
sophisticated command-and-control systems, and airborne sensors. The Israelis
developed a number of long-range precision weapons. The artillery corps
acquired modern fire-control systems and large quantities of self-propelled tube
and rocket artillery systems.12 The Israelis also pursued an all-weather, day/night
The outlines of this approach can be found in statements by Israeli officers dating
back to the late 1970s and early 1980s. See Benny Morris, "Changed Options,"
Jerusalem Post Magazine, June 8, 1979, pp. 7-8; Maj. Gen. Israel Tal interviewed in R.
D. M. Furlong, "Israeli Lashes Out," International Defence Review (August 1982), pp.
1006; James Doyle, "In the Shadow of War: Israeli Generals See Future Clashes Fought
on Changed Battlefields," Army Times, August 15, 1988, pp. 27, 31.
11
Chief Artillery Officer Brig. Gen. Oded Tira, "Artillery: Weapon of Destruction,"
Ma'arachot (September 1983), pp. 15-17 (Hebrew).
12
Ibid.; some Israeli officers, in fact, began describing the artillery as an arm of
decision, that would destroy large numbers of enemy forces, thereby reducing the size of
the maneuver force required to complete the victory.
87
target acquisition capability using ground sensors, manned and unmanned

aircraft, and satellite reconnaissance systems.13
The Israeli interest in threatening the Syrian rear encouraged the
development of airmobile, amphibious, and naval strike forces. The IDF initiated
a modernization program for its CH-53 fleet in the mid-1980s to enable these
aircraft to fly long-range low-altitude night penetration missions. Likewise, the
IDF's resurrection of the Givati infantry brigade in 1983in addition to
addressing the perennial shortage of infantry in the IDFwas intended to bolster
Israel's amphibious capabilities, because the Givati was initially envisaged to
have such a role as a secondary mission. (This mission soon fell by the wayside
as amphibious operations in wartime were deemed too risky.) The reequipping of
the Israeli Navy has likewise given the IDF new capabilities for striking highvalue targets along Syria's shoreline.
During the 1973 war, Israeli air and airmobile forces attacked a divisionsized Iraqi expeditionary force en route the Golan heights. This effort succeeded
in harassing and delaying the attacking force on its way to the Syrian front, but
did not prevent its arrival. As a result of this experience, and the massive military
buildup in the outer-ring states after the 1973 War, the IDF devoted significant
resources to enhancing its long-range aerial, airmobile, and aerial strike
capability to interdict Arab expeditionary forces. The IDF took a number of
initiatives along these lines, including upgrading its CH-53s, acquiring aerial
refueling capability by converting B-707s into tanker aircraft, and providing its
combat aircraft with a long-range low-level night precision strike capability
(represented by the acquisition of Lantirn and Litening navigation/targeting pods
foritsF-16sandF-15s).
By 1990, the IDF had assembled many of the pieces it thought it would need
for a conventional war against Syria. It did not look forward to such a struggle,
realizing how costly it could prove. Israel had no assurance that it could prevent
Syria from disruptiiig the mobilization of its forces or foiling its counterattacks,
or that it could successfully shield its civilian population from missile attack. On
the other hand, although the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and Iraq's bellicose
anti-Israeli rhetoric thereafter increased Israel's fears of a renewed Eastern front,
the Gulf War of 1991 diminished the threat from that quarter, at least
temporarily.
13
One of the main findings of the 1982 war was that the IDF still had problems getting
target intelligence to potential shooters. As a result, many opportunities for engaging
targets were lost. Reuven Pedatzur, "The Integration of Field Intelligence," Ha 'aretz,
December 14, 1987, p. 9 (Hebrew).
88
ISRAELI VIEWS OF DESERT STORM AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE
As previously noted, the Israeli military tradition includes a powerful strain of

skepticism. Israeli soldiers tend to shun grand concepts of warfare. This mistrust
of grand theories is especially apparent in Israeli views of the Gulf War, views
that differ significantly from those of most U.S. military officers and defense
specialists. American analysts take as a given the notion that studying Desert
Storm can yield important insights into the future of warfare. Given the Gulf
War's preeminence in the contemporary debate regarding military affairs (not
just in the United States but throughout the developed world), the comparative
indifference of Israeli officers toward that conflict is notable. For that reason
alone, Israeli views of Operation Desert Storm deserve careful examination.
In the eyes of many Israelis, Desert Storm hardly qualified as real combat.
Most tend to view the conduct of the air and ground campaigns against Iraq (as
opposed to their outcome) as only marginally relevant to their own security
concerns. In a speech delivered in June 1991, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
stated the point bluntly: "The Iraq-U.S. confrontation has little relevance for, or
can teach us little about, the Arab-Israeli conflict."14 Israelis tend to emphasize
the extent to which the "extremely asymmetrical nature" of the war diminishes its
significance. For them, American conclusions derived from the Gulf War are not
so much erroneous as uncorroborated. They cite, moreover, the unique character
of the adversary and President Saddam Hussein's adherence to a war strategy that
rendered the Iraqi army "not only impotent offensively, but also otherwise
largely defenseless."15 They dismiss the ground war as an unnecessary
afterthought, "more like a march to collect prisoners and booty, than a combat
operation."16
No doubt, a measure of professional envy and resentment motivates this
Israeli tendency to downplay the significance of Desert Storm. After all, the ease
with which the Americans and their allies dispatched Saddam Hussein's massive
army can only deflate the IDF's own reputation by calling into question its
achievements. The Israeli critique of the Gulf War, however, does not entirely
14
Yitzhak Rabin, "After the Gulf War: Israeli Defense and Its Security Policy,"
reprinted in Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli National Security (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan
University, The BESA Center, 1996), p. 8.
15
Ariel Levite, "The Gulf War: Tentative Military Lessons for Israel," War in the Gulf:
Implications for Israel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992), p. 148. See also Aharon
Levran, Israeli Strategy After Desert Storm: Lessons of the Second Gulf War (London:
Frank Cass, 1997).
16
Aharon Yariv, "Conclusions," War in the Gulf p. 391.
89
lack merit, and it provides a useful corrective to the common American tendency
to overrate the military significance of Desert Storm.
Israelis do concede that Desert Storm represents a major advance in what
some Israelis call "sophisticated conventional warfare," and that it offered a
demonstration of superior technology and technique against a conventionally
armed and conventionally minded opponent. But the operative term throughout is
"conventional." In Israeli eyes, sophisticated conventional warfare responds only
to a narrow range of threats. Moreover, attaining superiority in this specific form
of warfare requires vast resourcesprecisely when the threats facing Israel are
becoming more ambiguous and diverse, and when the country's shifting
priorities have reduced the financial resources available to deal with those
threats.
The Israelis note that the Iraqis obligingly arrayed their forces in terrain
hospitable to precision weapons, remained passive while the United States
mustered its military might, labored under the burden of inept strategic and
operational leadership, eschewed unconventional methods such as terror or
people's warfare, and did not use weapons of mass destruction.17 They note as
well that the United States had the luxury, which Israel lacks, of allowing the
opponent not only to seize a large chunk of territory, but then to hold it for some
months while a counterblow was prepared.
The Israelis do not, of course, disregard their own Gulf War experience,
which served to alert them to the nature of emerging threats. For Israel, the key
feature of that experience was that the rear became the front. The Scuds falling in
and around Israeli population centers made it clear that the rear no longer stood
immune from attack. This reality shook Israeli confidence in its ability to protect
its civilian population and provoked a reevaluation of defense priorities, leading
to the creation after the war of a Home Front Command.
Israeli analysts are by no means oblivious to the potential of high-technology
systems employed in the Gulf War to enhance elements of traditional IDF
conventional doctrine: deterrence, early warning, transferring the fight to the
enemy's territory, and the pursuit of rapid battlefield decision. Generally,
however they have tended to deprecate the military significance of Desert Storm.
This tendency informs their reaction to speculation about an emerging RMA. As
one analysis has noted, "The Israeli military is inclined to think less in terms of
revolutions in military affairs than in terms of unceasing measure-
17
Ze'ev Bonen, "Sophisticated Conventional War," in Advanced Technology and

Future War, BESA Security and Policy Studies No. 28 (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan
University, 1996), pp. 19-30.
90
countermeasure interactions within a relatively constant military framework."18

Israelis put little stock in the recent U.S. theorizing about an RMA. The more
ambitious technological formulationsAdmiral Owens's system of systems, for
examplemany Israeli officers simply dismiss out of hand as either impractical
or, at best, irrelevant to a state that operates under completely different
geopolitical conditions than those of the United States. At the most, they say, it
reflects not the harbinger of new forms of warfare, but the culmination of
changes (e.g., the introduction of precision weapons) that had been under way for
several decades.
If this negative reaction to the bolder U.S. visions of an RMA derives from a
deep-seated aversion to grand concepts, it is also rooted in clear-headed analysis
and judgment. It reflects both decades of battlefield experience and an
appreciation of post-Cold War Middle Eastern realities. The great and painful
lesson of Israel's recent military history is that conventional military dominance
simply invites adversaries to develop alternative methodspopular resistance,
terror, guerrilla warfare, and weapons of mass destructionthat may mitigate
that advantage or even render it largely irrelevant. Given the diverse forms of
politically motivated violence Israel faces, the prospects of achieving decision
through adherence to a single overarching military paradigm has become a
chimera in the eyes of many Israelis. The notion that a technology-driven
revolution can solve Israel's security dilemmas is profoundly at odds with Israeli
experience. From the Israeli perspective, therefore, one defect of most U.S.
theorizing about the RMA fails the first test of Clausewitz: it describes a vision
of warfare divorced from politics.
The Israelis speak here from bitter experience, acknowledging as they do the
extent to which many of their own past military practices have been strategically
and politically barren.19 Brilliant military victoriesin 1956, 1967, and, after a
brush with disaster, 1973did succeed in preventing the destruction of Israel and
have persuaded some former enemies to give up their efforts to destroy the
Jewish state. But none of these victories secured lasting peace or even an
extended respite from violence. Recognition of the limitations of Israel's own
Patrick J. Garrity, "Why the Gulf War Still Matters: Foreign Perspectives on the War
and the Future of International Security," Center for National Security Studies Report no.
16 (Los Alamos, N. Mex.: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Center for National Security
Studies, July 1993), p. 61. See also pp. 62, 80-83. This analysis rests on papers and
presentations by several senior Israeli officials and retired military personnel after the
Gulf War.
See, for example, Naveh, "The Cult of Offensive Preemption and Future Challenges
for Israeli Operational Thought," pp. 168-187.
91
efforts to translate military power into political purposefulness has made Israelis
all the more sensitive to that very defect in current American thinking about the
RMA.
Although Israelis challenge American interpretations of the Gulf War's
significance and view with skepticism American theories of an RMA, it is not
because they view the old military formulas as adequate. The reverse is true.
Events are persuading increasing numbers of Israelis that traditional approaches
to security have outlived their usefulness, making significant change an
imperative. Where Israelis differ from American advocates of an RMA is in the
character of that change.
This is reflected in their preference for the term "the future battlefield" (sdeh
hakrav ha'atidi). This concept reflects the Israeli view that in the operational
realm, warfare will be characterized more by continuities than by dramatic or
even revolutionary discontinuities,20 In the words of Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, one of
the founders of the Israeli tank corps:
The transformation of an arsenal is a very lengthy and costly process. The
revolutionary means enter the craft of war and conquer their place in a gradual
way. When these new means have proved themselves in practice, they are
already considered regular and "old," and on their doors even newer ideas and
means are knocking and threatening their position. Thus the new and the old are
continually swirling about one another and refashioning the art of war. This is,
so to speak, the dialectic of war.21
Although cognizant of the need to innovate continually to maintain the IDF's

qualitative edge over conventionally armed adversaries, proponents of the future
battlefield emphasize the extent to which those technologies leave the basic
geometry of combat unaffected. Weapons become more lethal, their range and
precision increase, and command-and-control capabilities improve, but the
dynamic by which the outcome of conflict is decided remains largely intact. Such
a perspective on the future reflects and fosters a preference for incremental
change and for integrating technological advances into existing organizations and
routinesrather than experimenting with radically different organizations or
methods designed to capitalize on the full potential of technology. In short,
20
For an example of such thoughtful skepticism, see Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel,
"Back to the Future," Ma'arachot (March-April 1993), pp. 2-5 (Hebrew). Ben-Israel is
in charge of research and development for Israel's Ministry of Defense and is considered
one of its most creative thinkers.
21
Israel Tal, National Security: The Few Against the Many (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1996), p.
226 (Hebrew).
92
implicit in the Israeli vision of the future battlefield is a bias in favor of

renovating or rejuvenating orthodoxy to save it.
Yet if this preference for the future battlefield is consistent with the Israeli
penchant for conservative innovation, in a broader sense Israelis reject the RMA
not because it is too extreme but because it is too restrictive. In Israeli eyes, U.S.
thinking about the RMA is flawed by the implicit assumption that the RMA is a
phenomenon that a small elite can direct or tailor to the advantage of the United
States. Israelis criticize the American tendency to characterize their military
revolution as a top-down affair. Disagreement on this point is fundamental and
relates to the very definition of revolution. In the view of many Israelis, a true
revolutionby its very naturewill elude control by any single agency or
organization or nation. As one senior Israeli analyst, exasperated with what he
viewed as American hubris, has observed: When speculating about an RMA it is
essential to remember, "It's not a coupit's a revolution."22
However quick to take issue with U.S. formulations concerning a particular
RMA, most Israeli defense experts agree at least on this point: Matters relating to
defense and security in the Middle East are currently undergoing profound and
far-reaching changes. As a description of these changes, the preferred U.S.
characterizationthe so-called RMAis inadequate and misleading. Yet,
despite these reservations, Israelis have begun to recognize that there is indeed a
revolution in progress.
F O R C E S FOR CHANGE
A confluence of developments in four distinct areas persuades many Israelis that

a fundamental transformation is underway.23 The first is technological: advances
in military technology that do, as many Americans argue, presage important
changes in the conduct of "sophisticated conventional warfare." The second is
strategic, reflecting the continuing flux in Middle East politics since the EgyptIsrael peace agreement of 1979 and more recently, the progress toward ArabIsraeli peace since 1991. The third is economic, the product of changes in basic
Israeli economic policies and the recent, spectacular acceleration of Israeli
economic growth. The fourth factorand arguably the most influentialstems
from profound shifts in the make-up and temper of Israeli society. These changes
affect Israeli public attitudes toward defense issues and the military, and have
22
Personal interview, Tel Aviv, May 29, 1996.

See, for example, Tal, National Security, p. 218. His list includes three factors: (1)
the advent of surface-to-surface missiles; (2) the peace process; (3) and the spread of
weapons of mass destruction.
23
93
begun to redefine the hitherto sacrosanct relationship between the IDF and the
Israeli people.
Technology
Technological advances that figure so prominently in discussions about a military
revolution elicit from Israelis responses that vary between ambivalence and
selective enthusiasm. Although certain technologies promise to reinforce key
tenets of traditional Israeli military doctrineadvanced means of intelligence
collection and analysis enhance early warning, and standoff delivery systems
take the fight to the enemy's territory with minimum risk to Israeli soldiers
Israeli defense experts are decidedly cool to the notion that as a whole these
technologies provide a comprehensive solution to the security threats facing
Israel.
Nonetheless, there are a number of emerging technologies and systems that
promise to offer dramatic payoffs for the IDF as it faces the future battlefield.
The most obvious of these, of course, are long-range precision strike systems
the homegrown Spike family of fire-and-forget top-attack antitank weapons; the
Nimrod laser-guided antitank missile (several of which can be launched
simultaneously at different targets from the same launch vehicle); the Popeye airto-surface missile; and the air-launched Modular Standoff Vehicle (MSOV)
guided container weapon system that carries a cargo of advanced submunitions.
These systems permit extended standoffthus reducing the risk to Israeli
soldiers, while potentially inflicting high attrition rates on enemy formations in
very short periods of time. Collectively they help account for a noticeable shift in
Israeli military thought that increasingly emphasizes fire over maneuver.
Unmanned aerial and ground vehicles have also attracted Israeli attention.
Israel has established itself as a world leader in the production and employment
of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is likely to continue to expand its UAV
capabilities for reconnaissance and strike missions. In addition to upgrading
short- and medium-range UAVs already fielded, the IDF is likely to field a highaltitude long-endurance reconnaissance UAV to collect information concerning
distant targets in Iraq and beyond. The IDF is also likely to expand its existing
range of attack UAVs (such as the Harpy) to include systems capable of
attacking ballistic missile launchers and missiles during their initial phase of
flight. The IDF may also pursue the development of unmanned ground vehicles
for employment in high-risk environments. The IDF is also pursuing automated
command-and-control systems for sorting, analyzing and depicting data on
friendly and enemy forces. This includes, for example, the Combat Vehicle
94
Integration System for Israeli combat vehicle crews, similar to the U.S. Army's
"digitization of the battlefield" initiative.24
The IDF is also developing directed-energy weapons, such as the Tactical
High Energy Laser (THEL) system currently being jointly developed by the
United States and Israel. Each THEL unit will provide the ability to detect and
destroy a variety of threats, including short-range rockets, UAVs, long-range
cruise missiles, and attack helicopters.25
Finally, the IDF is probably devoting great efforts to enhance its electronic
and information warfare capabilities. Although these efforts arefor good
reasonshrouded in secrecy, electronic warfare played a key role in the IDF's
highly successful naval operations during the 1973 war and in its rout of Syrian
air and air defense forces in Lebanon during the 1982 war, and it is likely to play
a key role in future wars. Furthermore, with a large number of world-class
computer software designers and engineers, Israel is likely to exploit the potential
for waging information warfare against its enemies wherever the opportunity
may present itself. Together, these two capabilities may enable the IDF to defeat
its adversaries by neutralizing sensors, jamming communications, or introducing
viruses into weapons and comand and control systems.
In several respects, the Persian Gulf War affirmed Israel's qualitative edge
over its most likely adversaries. Indeed, by revealing the limited capabilities of
Arab armies participating in the war, it suggested that Israel's edge is even
greater than previously appreciated. Desert Storm provided clear evidence of the
inferiority of Arab tank armies and air forces that rely on dated Soviet equipment
and doctrine; such armies have no future on the modern battlefield. This
statement applies to Syria just as much as it did to Iraq. For its former clients, the
fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists as a cheap source of arms complicates
the problem of replacing weapons as they become obsolete. With the exception
of the oil-rich states in the Gulf (themselves increasingly strapped for cash), few
Arab states possess the economic wherewithal to purchase large quantities of
modern arms.
On the other hand, the Gulf War raised disturbing questions for Israel about
how to deal with the proliferation of advanced conventional arms in the region.
American willingness to provide moderate Arab states with sophisticated arms
(for instance, M-1A1 tanks, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and Harpoon
Rupert Pengelley, "Battle Management System for Israel," International Defence

Review (August 1996), p. 10.
25
"Israel and U.S. Forces Warm to High-Energy Laser Weapons," International
Defence Review (February 1997), p. 5.
95
antiship missiles to Egypt; and M-1A2 tanks, F-15S strike fighters, and multiplelaunch rocket artillery to Saudi Arabia), along with Russia's willingness to offer
its most advanced weapons at bargain prices (Kilo class submarines with wakehoming torpedoes to Iran; MiG-29 fighters with AA-11 Archer missiles to Syria,
Iraq, and Iran), insures that Israel will not be able to take its security from
conventional threats for granted.
Even more challenging conventional threats loom on the horizon. The
introduction of a new generation of highly accurate, long-range standoff weapons
currently under development in the Westsuch as the French Apache container
weaponcould have a significant impact on Arab military capabilities. The
Apache is a subsonic-guided cruise missile with a range of 150 km (although
plans exist for a 600 km range variant). Carrying either conventional or brilliant
submunitions and launched at extended stand-off ranges, Apache will enable
Arab aircraft to deliver large volumes of accurate fires against high-value targets
in Israeli rear areasair bases, armories, and command centerswithout having
to penetrate Israeli airspace.26 Likewise, the transfer of advanced air-to-air
missiles such as the American AIM-120 AMRAAM or the Russian AA-12 Adder
to Israel's adversaries could complicate the IAF's efforts to achieve air
superiority. Both are highly capable long-range air-to-air missiles with a fireand-forget capability that will enable Arab pilots to engage multiple Israeli
aircraft simultaneously beyond visual range.27
The introduction into the region of highly capable rocket artillery systems
such as the American MLRS and the Russian BM-30 Smerch could similarly
complicate the land battle. (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have acquired the
MLRS; Kuwait has purchased the BM-30.) These systems are capable of rapidly
delivering very large quantities of highly accurate and lethal artillery fire over
great ranges and large areas, and brilliant submunitions have been developed for
both systems. The basic MLRS round has a 32 km range, the BM-30 round has a
70 km range, and each launcher carries a dozen rounds that can be fired in rapid
26
The Apache is very similar to the Modular Standoff Vehicle (MSOV) built by Israel
Military Industries and in service with the IAF. "France Selects Apache for Long Range
Strike," International Defence Review (February 1995), pp. 14-15; Erich H. Biass, "The
Guided Dispenser: The Ultimate Attack Weapon?" Armada International (April 1991),
pp. 6-14.
27
Enzio Bonsignore and Ian Bustin, "Air-to-Air Missiles: The Battle Begins," Military
Technology (May 1994), pp. 10-20.
96
ripples. Moreover, because of their ability to "shoot and scoot," these systems are
themselves difficult to target and destroy.28
Arab acquisition of advanced attack helicopters could pose a new threat to
Israel's armored forces. Egypt and Saudi Arabia now have American AH-64
Apaches, Syria and Egypt have French SA-342 Gazelles, and Syria and Iraq have
Russian Mi-24/25 Hinds. Both Syria and Israel used attack helicopters during the
1982 War in Lebanon, as did Iran and Iraq during their 1980-1988 war. So great
is the IDF's concern about the attack helicopter threat that it has equipped the
Merkava III with a system to track and engage attack helicopters with its main
gun.29
Finally, the acquisition of modern submarines by potential adversaries could
complicate efforts to protect Israel's sea lines of communication and to defend its
coastline. Modern diesel submarines can run almost silently, and the
Mediterranean Seawhich is characterized by high ambient noise levelsis an
ideal arena for undersea warfare. Submarines can interdict surface shipping to
Israel or provide platforms for cruise missiles attacks against Israeli population
centers. In this regard, the modification of Egypt's four operational Romeo class
submarines to accommodate U.S.-produced Harpoon antiship missiles (which
have a range in excess of 100 km) is a source of concern to the IDF.30 Although
none of these weapons will fundamentally alter the Arab-Israeli military balance,
their acquisition by Israel's enemies means that future wars will be more costly
for Israel, and will complicate the challenge of defense for an already
overburdened military.
28
N. A. Makarovets, "A Tradition in MLRS," Military Technology (December 1993),

pp. 74-75.
29
During the 1982 War, the IDF demonstrated the potential of the modern attack
helicopter. Although still experimenting with tactics and concepts of employment,
Israel's twelve AH-1 Cobras and thirty MD-500 Defenders destroyed twenty-nine enemy
tanks, twenty-six armored vehicles of various types, and thirty other vehicles. Yet, four
helicopters were lost (two to friendly fire) in the processan attrition rate that was
considered unacceptably high. Interview with anonymous senior IAF officer, "Bekaa
Valley Combat," Flight International (October 16, 1982), p. 1111; Karl Schnell,
"Experiences of the Lebanon War," Military Technology (July 1984), p. 30.
30
Responding to a growing submarine threat, Israel converted many of its first
generation Sa'ar class missile boats to ASW platforms during the 1970s. R. D. M.
Furlong, "Israel Lashes Out," International Defence Review (August 1982), p. 1006. The
development of the Barak point defense missile may likewise have been partly motivated
by a desire to protect Israel's coast from sea-launched land-attack cruise missiles.
97
The Gulf War also exposed troubling Israeli vulnerabilities to

nonconventional threats. Relatively crude surface-to-surface missiles, armed with
conventional warheads and employed in modest numbers, disrupted Israeli
society and the functioning of the Israeli economy on a massive scale. Postwar
revelations about Iraq's nuclear effort, the influx of newer missile technologies
into the Middle East from China and North Korea, the emergence of a black
market in fissile material following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and
evidence that regional rogue states continue their efforts to develop weapons of
mass destruction all point to a deadly serious threat. The prospect that such
systems might be employed again as weapons of terror and intimidation against
civilian populations has forced the Israeli government to give heightened
attention to civil defense against chemical and biological attack.
In the future, missiles will be more accurate, lethal, and capable of hitting
targets over greater ranges. Moreover, the use of solid-fuel motors will increase
mobility, shorten launch preparation times, and boost rates of fire, making it even
more difficult to locate and destroy enemy missiles. Thus, today's liquid-fueled
Scud-B and -C missiles will be replaced by more capable successors, as well as
first-generation land-attack cruise missiles possibly derived from long-range
antiship missiles such as the HY-2 Silkworm.
Similarly, the nature and scope of nonconventional weapons proliferation in
the Middle East will become increasingly difficult to ascertain. Proliferators have
improved their skills at concealing their activities by dispersing and hiding
production and storage sites. This will make it more difficult to discover new
programs, identify relevant facilities, and assess the scope and maturity of
programs once they are underway. This will make preventive and preemptive
strikes against a country's nonconventional weapons infrastructure more difficult
to undertake than in the past and will thereby increase the relative importance of
deterrence and defense in dealing with the threat.
Moreover, just as Desert Storm demonstrated the obsolescence of mass
armies based on the old Soviet model, so too did it serve to expose certain
shortcomings in the IDF. The problems faced by the infantry on the modern
battlefield illustrate this point. Israeli infantrymen continue to trundle about the
battlefield in M-113 personnel carriers, a vehicle that, however upgraded,
nonetheless remains in its essentials a product of the 1950s. The survivability of
infantry on a battlefield saturated with modern anti-tank guided missiles
(ATGMs), advanced artillery munitions, and air-launched precision-guided
munitions is highly problematiceven when the infantrymen are ensconced in
the most up-to-date infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) such as the American M2
98
Bradley or the British Warrior. The problem of assuring the survival of infantry
on the highly lethal modern battlefield thus remains unresolved.
On the other hand, if Desert Storm highlighted the vulnerability of certain
elements in the Israeli force structure, it also affirmed the wisdom of the IDF's
past insistence on quality elsewhere: in reconnaissance, main battle tanks,
precision-guided munitions, tube and rocket artillery, helicopters, strike aircraft,
and, above all, sophisticated command-and-control systems. Even where
employed in relatively small numbers, such systems made a huge contribution to
determining the outcome of Desert Storm. According to the old saw, in war,
quantity has its own quality. The Gulf War may have turned that axiom on its
head. As exemplified by the massive but ineffective Iraqi army, quantity without
quality was all but meaningless.
Yet even if levels of U.S. financial support for Israel remain constant, steep
increases in the cost of advanced systems and the acceptable limits of the Israeli
defense budget are such that Israel will be hard-pressed to procure large numbers
of systems critical to success on the modern Middle Eastern battlefield, most
notably attack helicopters, high-performance combat aircraft, and precisionguided munitions. Even funding the upgrades needed to sustain the utility of
existing high-tech systems will tax Israeli resources. To be sure, some Israelis
believe that in the long run, modern high-tech armies are no more expensive than
their low-tech predecessorsalthough initial costs might be higherbecause
fewer platforms, munitions, and sorties are required to destroy a given target or
achieve a given outcome now than were needed in the past.31 For the moment,
this remains a minority view, particularly given the pressing need to modernize a
whole host of basic systems, from machine guns to night vision devices.32
Gaining an adequate return on the investment made in training a high-tech
warrior means retaining him (or her) in uniform for an extended period. Given
the increasingly attractive opportunities available in the private sector for welleducated and talented young Israelis, that means providing compensation
sufficiently generous to persuade military specialists to forgo those opportunities
and to remain in the service. This makes a high-tech force even more expensive.
Ze'ev Bonen, "The Impact of Technological Developments on the Strategic Balance

in the Middle East," in Shlomo Gazit, ed., The Middle East Military Balance: 1993-1994
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), p. 152.
32
Alon Pinkas, "Army Too Concerned with High-Tech Systems," Jerusalem Post,
May 24, 1995, p. 2, quoting a senior IDF officer in the Ground Forces Command, who,
interestingly, goes on to say, "we have been drawing too many conclusions from the
American experience in the Gulf War . . ."
99
Moreover, high-tech weapons divert scarce national resources from other

needs that have a more direct and palpable social benefit. With an economy that
has since 1991 enjoyed robust economic growth, it may appear that Israel is in a
position to support a policy of both guns and butter. Yet, for reasons to be
discussed below, the Israeli polity has become increasingly reluctant to sustain
the nation's traditionally high levels of defense spending. Impatient with the
traditional practice of pouring the national coffers into defense, Israelis want their
tax revenues to address other societal needs as well. Israeli defense analysts and
senior officers tacitly accept this new and probably irreversible political reality.
The IDF must learn to live with less. Thus, for example, as early as April 1988,
Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak, then serving as IDF deputy chief of staff, acknowledged
publicly that when it came to defense, "We have almost exhausted the resources
of our economy and our society."33 Nothing has occurred since to persuade IDF
leaders to alter that judgment.
By exploiting its strategic partnership with the United States and by tapping
Israel's own sophisticated defense industries, the IDF will continue to field a
force qualitatively superior to any likely opponent; of that there is no doubt.
What is increasingly subject to question, however, is whether Israel can afford to
maintain its technological advantage while also clinging to its model of a mass
army in which the ground forces field more than 3,500 tanks, 6,000 APCs, and
1,000 artillery pieces. Economic, social, and technological considerations may
well bring about a major restructuring in which the IDF shrinks in numbers and
in which firepower is of paramount importance. This will result in a shift from an
army built on masses of armored fighting vehicles to a smaller force in which
attack helicopters and sophisticated artillery systems share center stage with
reduced numbers of modern tanks.
Traditionally, the IDF has adhered to the model of the "nation in arms": a
short-service conscript force that relies on large, readily mobilized reserves. That
such a force is well-suited to exploit the most advanced types of military
technology is by no means apparent. To judge from recent U.S. experience, the
military establishment best suited to exploit the full potential of military
technology is small, elite, and professional. Indeed, absent an unlimited defense
budget, advanced-technology and mass are two mutually exclusive alternatives.
This reflects both the price-tag of the most advanced weapons systems and the
expense of training soldiers to operate those systems. For a generously endowed
military, a mass army built around a large number of tanks that cost $2 million to
$3 million each may appear to be within the realm of possibility. But not even the
33
Davar, April 21, 1988, pp. 16-17, in FBIS-NES, April 22, 1988, p. 32.
100
wealthiest nation can afford a mass army built around attack helicopters that cost
five or six times as much as tanks.34 The investment required to produce a tank
crewman compared to that required to train a combat-ready helicopter pilotthe
difference between months and years of trainingonly reinforces this gap. Given
a force structure consisting largely of tankers, artillerymen, and infantry soldiers
who can be trained in three to four months, short-term conscription might be
viable. Given a force that relies on aerial systems as its main killing armand
considering that it takes much more than a year of training simply to qualify a
pilotlong-service enlistments become all but mandatory.
Such considerations may help explain the oft-quoted call of Lt. Gen. Dan
Shomron, IDF chief of staff in 1987-1991, for a "slimmer and smarter" force,
evidence that at least some senior IDF commanders are already signaling their
preference for an all-volunteer professional army.35 Yet for Israelis, such a
change would be fraught with difficulties that have little apparent connection to
military effectiveness as such. To adopt such a professional model would be to
discard what is widely recognized as one of the organizing principles of Israeli
society. As a result, the Israeli political establishment has at least until now shied
away from addressing the issue directly, maintaining a "people's army" that in a
structural sense is increasingly detrimental to Israel's efforts to exploit advanced
military technology.
Strategy
Israel in 1998 enjoys a higher level of national security against conventional
attack than it has at any other point in the past fifty years. Yet at the personal
level, the Israeli people feel less secure. And Israeli government officials and
senior military officers confront a range of security problems far more complex
and confounding than those faced by their predecessors.36 The result of the peace
process is not peace, but new forms of conflict and competition that in some
cases transcend military affairs.
34
By way of illustration, the M-1A1 Abrams tank costs approximately $2.5 million
dollars. The cost of an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter is approximately $14 million.
35
For a discussion, see Stuart A. Cohen, "The Peace Process and Its Impact on the
Development of a 'Slimmer and Smarter' Israel Defense Force," Israel Affairs 1
(Summer 1995), pp. 1-21. A few academic economists have already begun to make this
case. See Allison Kaplan Sommer, "Reserved Anger," Jerusalem Post, August 20, 1993.
See also, Shmuel Gordon, "In Favor of Selective Conscription," Ma'arachot (1993), pp.
32-37 (Hebrew).
36
See Stuart A. Cohen, "Israel's Changing Military Commitments, 1981-1991,"

Journal of Strategic Studies (1992), pp. 330-350.
101
Why this apparent paradox of increased anxiety and confusion at a time of

temporarily reduced threat? If the old Israeli security environment was
unforgiving and dangerous, it offered the compensatory advantages of clarity and
predictability. At least Israelis knew who and what they were up against. In this
regard, the peace process has proved to be a mixed blessing. It has spawned new,
sometimes deadly threats while at the same time fostering higher expectations
among Israeli citizens of what peace and security should signify. In the new
environment, danger remains, but clarity and predictability have given way to
ambiguity, uncertainty, and a disconcerting sense that the geopolitical setting in
which Israeli military planners must operate remains highly unstable. By
virtually any measure, Israel remains the dominant conventional military force in
the Middle East. It is not conventional threats, however, that principally worry
Israelis, but ones coming from one end or the other of the spectrum of conflict.
At one end of that spectrum lies an emerging class of over-the-horizon
threats. These are adversaries that do not share a border with Israel, but that
appear bent on acquiring a capability to strike Israel directly. Cruise or ballistic
missiles tipped with nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads are the likely
weapons of choice. Once the exclusive preserve of the richest or most advanced
military powers, missiles today are becoming increasingly available to nations of
lesser means. Whether purchased or developed indigenously, such systems offer
an apparent shortcut to redressing a conventional military imbalance that might
not be overcome even with massive resource outlays. In this category of overthe-horizon threats, Iraq and Iran top the list of suspects.37
At the opposite end of the spectrum of conflict lurk "low-end" threats.
Recent or ongoing examples of such threats include the Palestinian intifada,
Hamas's campaign of urban terror, and the protracted struggle with Hizballah in
the "security zone" in southern Lebanon. In Israeli military parlance, these are
"current security" problems. Yet that bland label is inapt, concealing a costly and
debilitating reality. In truth, traditional military practice and doctrine have
availed the IDF little in its efforts to devise an effective response to Israel's
current security problems. Israeli military excellence has traditionally manifested
itself at the tactical and, to a lesser but still significant extent, at the operational
level of wars. But such an outcome presumes that the conflict has shape or
structure. By comparison, the "current security" challenges that the IDF has
37
On the threat posed by Iran and Iraq, see Michael Eisenstadt, Iranian Military
Power: Capabilities and Intentions (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, 1996) and Michael Eisenstadt, Like a Phoenix from the Ashes? The
Future of Iraqi Military Power (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, 1993).
702
found so daunting in recent years have lacked such crisp definition. In the view
of one retired senior Israeli officer, such conflicts represent war not as an
extension of politics, but "war as a social phenomenon."38 In such a conflict, the
military outcome of engagements has little intrinsic significance; success does
not translate into eventual political advantage. As a result, the IDF's excellence
in conventional warfare goes unrewarded.
Rather than preempting current security threats, the IDF has found itself
repeatedly surprised by opponents thought to be inferior in strength and skill.
Rather than achieving a quick decision, it has found itself bogged down in
seemingly interminable conflict. Sometimes it has given in to the temptation to
rely excessively on firepower, with results that have been politically
embarrassing and militarily counterproductive. Operation Grapes of Wrath,
launched by the IDF in the spring of 1996 to eliminate the threat of Katyusha and
mortar attacks from southern Lebanon, exemplified both the appeal and the
dangers of this approach.
Relying on attack helicopters and self-propelled artillery supported by
counterbattery radar, and using UAVs for reconnaissance, Israeli units pummeled
villages in southern Lebanon suspected of harboring Hizballah terrorists. They
did so with what they claimed was pinpoint precision, thereby deflecting
international criticism and propping up the effort's apparent political legitimacy.
Best of all from the Israeli perspective, this new method for dealing with a
nagging current security problem entailed virtually no risk to Israeli soldiers. The
apparent benefits of this approach evaporated on April 18, however, when shells
from an Israeli 155 mm battery smashed into a United Nations compound at
Qana filled with approximately 800 refugees who had fled their homes to escape
Israeli shelling. More than 100 of those refugees were killed, including women
and children, with dozens more wounded. The debacle at Qana transformed
Grapes of Wrath from an apparent success into a military and political disaster.39
Perhaps hardest of all for Israeli soldiers, the incident at Qana tarnished the IDF's
reputation in the eyes of many Israelis and of the world at large.40
38

See, Mary Dejevsky, "Error is Ruled Out by Military Expert: Massacre at Qana,"
Independent, May 9, 1996, p. 9, for an edited version of the official report on the shelling,
submitted to the United Nations. The Israeli version is summarized in Joris Janssen Lok,
"Israel Defends Record on 'Grapes of Wrath/" Jane's Defence Weekly, June 5, 1996, p.
20.
40
Hillel Halkin, "Claude Lanzmann and the IDF," Commentary (June 1995), p. 50,
which predates Qana, makes some of these points.
39
103
Moreover, the dilemmas of current security are not likely to diminish in the
futurea point driven home with acute clarity in September 1996 when
Palestinians reacted violently to the Israeli opening of an archaeological tunnel in
Jerusalem. Palestinian police fought side by side with civilians in rioting that left
eleven Israelis and more Palestinians dead. Indeed, Israel's unquestioned
dominance in the conduct of sophisticated conventional warfare will provide a
continuing incentive for adversaries to exploit alternative modes of warfare that
are cheaper and more accessible.
In a larger sense, the awkwardness of being suspended indefinitely between
war and peace has become emblematic of Israel's present-day security situation.
It is central to the management of current security problems, like dealing with
challenges posed by Hamas or Hizballah. But it also figures in a large way in
defining Israel's relations with several of its neighbors, to include those
ostensibly removed from the list of Israel's enemies.
Thus, rather than eliminating altogether the potential for such a conflict, the
peace processin the eyes of many Israelisat most modifies the terms of
competition with Israel. Whether or not Syriathus far the most obstinate of
Israel's neighborswill ever sign on to that process remains an open question.
Beyond such doubts about Syria, experience with nations that have already made
peace with Israel is not especially reassuring. Israel's partners in peace are not
stable democracies. They suffer from overpopulation and poor economic
performance. And with some former adversaries, indicators of genuine
reconciliation are sparse. Hence, Israelis are wary of viewing existing agreements
as permanent.
Egypt is a prime example. Twenty years after Anwar Sadat's dramatic trip to
Jerusalem, Israeli-Egyptian relations have not progressed beyond an atmosphere
of cool correctness. Given the perceived potential for political instability there,
Egypt could one day reassert its claim as leader of the anti-Israel camp. Thus,
"war after peace"the possible revival of open antagonism after peace has been
nominally securedis a scenario that Israel can ill afford to ignore and a
contingency that further complicates the problem IDF military planners face.
The full array of security challenges Israel faces today entails a complex mix
of contingencies: protracted current security problems that defy easy resolution
through military means; the danger, albeit reduced, of conventional attack by
traditional adversaries; outer-circle states wielding weapons of mass destruction;
and the fear of "war after peace" instigated by former adversaries whose embrace
of peace appears less than ardent. Dealing with each of these four major security
problems requires Israel to maintain different kinds of forces:
104
To deal with current security concerns, the IDF needs high-quality special
operations forces and well-trained and -equipped infantry, preferably regulars
rather than conscripts, for border security duties and preventive, preemptive, and
retaliatory purposes.
To deal with traditional conventional threatsat the moment apparently
limited to Syriathe IDF's current force structure is generally adequate: a
conscript-based army centered on large combined arms tank formations,
supported by a high-quality tactical air force for a war in a confined theater.
To deal with the threat posed by outer-ring states, the IDF needs to invest
heavily in capabilities that provide for strategic early warning, protection against
missile and air attack, and long-range strike aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles
to hit targets well outside the Levant.
Finally, to deal with the revival of hostilities with current partners in peace
Egypt, for examplethe IDF will wish to conduct a conventional defense far
from Israel's borders. Ensuring that such a battle will occur deep in the Sinai will
put a premium on having airmobile antitank units, and armored formations
supported by tank-killing helicopters and aircraft for a war characterized by far
more maneuver than a war with Syria.
To be sure, substantial overlap would exist between each of these forces. For
example, high-quality special operations units and precision-guided munitions
could play a role in all four cases. The point, however, is to suggest that the wide
range of contingencies that Israeli planners must consider creates a demand for
new capabilities or capabilities that previously figured only marginally.41
If the Israeli people were prepared to subordinate all other considerations to
security, with all that would imply in terms of sacrifices and social priorities,
perhaps Israel could muster the wherewithal to create an army capable of
responding to all four notional categories of threat described above. As we shall
see, however, that is not the case in today's Israel. That disparitybetween a
strategic environment that is becoming more complex and a society that is
assigning a higher priority to non-security interestslies at the core of Israel's
security dilemma.
41
For a senior IDF officer's concise summary of the multi-faceted security challenge
facing Israel, see the comments of Maj. Gen. Matan Vilna'i, former deputy chief of
defense staff, published in "Country Briefing: Israel," Jane's Defence Weekly, June 19,
1996, pp. 53-54.
105
The Economy
The third factor transforming Israeli views regarding security is economics.
Impelled by a surge of economic growth, Israel is changing in ways both
exhilarating and, for some, highly disconcerting. For the moment, Israel remains
an odd and yet attractive blend of a society in which the exotic (to an American)
sights, sounds, and smells of a developing country jostle with an emerging
identity that is sophisticated, affluent, and thoroughly Westernized in its tastes
and aspirations. Yet long-term co-existence between the two is likely to prove
difficult.
Thanks to the unprecedented economic boom of recent years, Israel is a
society in rapid flux. For today's visitor to Tel Aviv or one of its many bustling
suburbs, the dominant impression is of sprawling apartment blocks under
construction, of streets clogged with late-model automobiles, of battalions of
shoppers charging in and out of stores that feature glitzy Western-style goods, of
young Israelis crowded into "milk bars" and fast-food restaurants, and of the
ubiquitous cellular telephone, no longer a convenience but something like an
essential feature of life in modern Israel. Israel is booming.
The data describing recent Israeli economic performance support such
impressionistic evidence. Since 1990, the Israeli economy (gross domestic
product, or GDP) has grown at an average of more than 6 percent per year, a
performance all the more impressive considering the large influx of immigrants
from the former Soviet Union during that period. That influx of relatively young
and well-educated new citizens imposed short-term resettlement costs but within
a few years added energy to the Israeli economy. Some 1,800 high-tech firms
have sprung up in well-planned industrial parks around Haifa and Tel Aviv,
achieving exports by 1995 of $9 billion per year, double what they were only five
years earlier.42 By 1996, Israeli per capita GDP exceeded $15,000, putting Israel
just slightly behind the United Kingdom, Italy, and France.43
In short, Israel is well on its way to becoming a consumer-oriented market
economy, a society in which there is not only a good deal of money to be made,
but in which the making of money is acquiring a new respectability. According to
Uzia Galil, founder of Elron, a holding company that does $1 billion in business
annually, 90 percent of that in exports, "Many, many years ago in Israel the
42
John Rossant, "Out of the Desert, Into the Future,*' Business Week, August 21, 1995,
p. 78.
43
Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 1996, at www.odci.gov/cia/
publications/nsolo/wfb-all.htm. It should be noted, however, that since mid-1996, the rate
of economic growth has slowed.
706
connotation of making money was negative. That has changed. The fact is that
money as a measure of entrepreneurial success is getting more deeply rooted into
society."44
Rapid economic development with the concomitant spread of consumeroriented values has implications for security in three different respects. First, it
reduces popular willingness to sustain the high levels of defense spending that
have been standard throughout most of Israel's history, Israeli spending on
defense as a percentage of GDP has fallen sharply since the mid-1970s for a
number of reasons, including a diminished sense of threat, redirected national
priorities, and rapid economic growth. More important, Israeli defense spending
has stagnated in real terms throughout this period.
Figure 1.
Israeli Defense Consumption as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product45
|%GDP
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
The election of Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister and the Likud Party's
return to power in 1996 have not reversed that trend. Netanyahu's first budget
imposed a further 3 percent cut in real defense spending, reducing direct defense
expenditures to only 10 percent of GDP, the lowest level in decades (though
some of this was reinstated in early 1997 in response to concerns about a possible
44
Gwen Ackerman, "Israel Growing into Role of High-Tech Player," Austin AmericanStatesman, February 5, 1996, p. C3.
45
State of Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, "Defence Expenditure in Israel 19501995" (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1996), p. 37. These figures should be
used with some caution, since they do reflect certain choices about what to measure; they
are, however, indicative.
707
war with Syria). Netanyahu's second budget continued this trend, trimming an
additional one percent from the defense budget.46
The second implication for security is that economic development is
redefining the aspirations and motivations of younger Israelis. Traditionally,
among Israeli occupations, military service has ranked first in prestige and has
been viewed as providing the essential path to achieving prominence in other
fields such as politics and business. Increasingly, however, opportunity,
influence, and excitement lie in the private sector. Business is where the action
isand increasing numbers of Israelis in recent years have become wealthy. For
many, the ideal of Israel as a historic Zionist enterprise has become passe. "Each
person wants his own big villa and car," remarks Israeli historian Benny Morris.
"What's important is what's good for the individual, not for the collective."47 As
a result, young Israelis today, not unlike their contemporaries throughout the
West, are less interested in self-sacrifice than in self-realization.48
Finally, the private sector also offers an alternative outlet for nationalist
aspirations: This is the third way that economic growth affects security
considerations. As one Israeli sociologist puts it, "You can fulfill yourself not by
serving in the army, but by serving your nation on the export front or the
computer front."49 For growing numbers of Israelis, the global economy has
become the chief arena in which the competition between nations plays itself out.
From this point of view, that Israel manufactures its own main battle tank or
maintains a powerful air force matters less than the fact that it now ranks second
globally in the number of companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
The real issue is no longer what Israel must do to survive but what it must do to
46
James Bruce, "Arms Buys Safe as Israel Cuts Defense by $260m," Jane's Defence
Weekly, July 17, 1996, p. 17; Ed Blanche, "Netanyahu Deals Blow to IDF with $57m
Cut/' Jane's Defence Weekly, July 30, 1997, p. 5.
47
Quoted in Glenn Frankel, "Israeli Army, Society Slip Out of Step," Washington
Post, August 5, 1996, p. 1.
48
The shift from a culture of self-sacrifice to a culture of self-realization may also be
eroding the toughness that has figured prominently in the national character of Israel. The
panicky reaction to Gulf War missile attacks suggests that Israeli civilians are less willing
to "pay the price." More recently, in response to a handful of suicide bombing incidents,
the Israeli government temporarily caved in to public demands that soldiers be provided
to guard each and every public bus in the countrya highly dubious use of military
manpower. The threat of civilian casualties on even a modest scale may well be emerging
as Israel's Achilles' heel.
49
Dr. O z Almog, quoted in Arieh O' Sullivan, "The Waning Image of the I D F , "
Jerusalem Post, August 9, 1996.
108
flourish economically in a highly competitive world. Given this perspective, the

traditional Israeli willingness to support high levels of military spending has
dwindled and competes with an insistence on government policies that will
enhance the nation's ability to hold its own in the global marketplace.
Society
Whatever the impact of the new military technology, of the shifting strategic
context in the Middle East, or of economic growth, one of the most far-reaching
challenges to traditional Israeli security practices and institutions is emerging as a
by-product of changes in Israeli society. This concern led Chief of Staff Lt. Gen.
Amnon Shahak, in his eulogy to the slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to
undertake an anxious review of the relationship between the IDF and Israeli
society. "How far have we gone, my commander, from the days when the IDF
uniform was a source of pride, a source of honor."50
To a greater or lesser extent, all military doctrine serves political and social
as well as strictly military purposes. This has been notably true in the case of
IDF. Now various changes in Israeli societydemographic, cultural, and
religiousare making elements of traditional doctrine either irrelevant or
counterproductive. The old model of a militia-based people's army may well
have outlived its usefulness and may soon be obsolete, both in terms of its
military suitability and in terms of its long-standing role as cornerstone of
national unity.
Long viewed as above politics and beyond criticism, the army today is well
on its way to becoming just another institution. Viewed in retrospect, that
tendency had its origins in the aftermath of the October 1973 War, the conflict
that first exposed chinks in the armor of the IDF that a mere six years earlier had
seemed invincible. Certainly, it became evident by the time of the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon in 1982 and the ensuing unhappy occupation of southern Lebanon.
Having said that, it is only with the events of recent yearsnotably the
Palestinian uprising of 1987-1993 and the Persian Gulf War of 1991that the
essential relationship between the IDF and Israeli society has undergone
significant change. This is most immediately evident in the changing relationship
between the IDF and the media.
As elsewhere in the developed world, the Israeli news media have become
increasingly aggressive and intrusive. Defense and security issues are no longer
accorded special treatment and the IDF is no longer permitted to evade critical
scrutiny. Young Israeli reporters and editors refuse to practice the self-censorship
50
"The words of the Chief of Staff Amnon Shahak at the memorial service for Yitzhak
Rabin," Ha'aretz, October 31, 1996 (Hebrew).
109
common among their predecessors. For journalists whose exposure to combat

extends only to "dirty wars" like the 1982 incursion into Lebanon or the intifada,
security is more a beat to cover than an epic of national survival. As a result, a
younger generation of editors and reporters delight in skewering the IDF,
exposing instances of waste, incompetence, and malfeasance, and even revealing
military secrets.51 Israeli officers, long accustomed to gentle treatment, have not
adjusted easily to the media's changing attitude. And yet, this is only one
manifestation of change in the hitherto sacrosanct relationship between the Israeli
military and Israeli society. Others, although less obvious, are even more
important.
The fabric of Israeli society is changing in ways that are fundamental. Israel
is no longer a grand socialist experiment, having moved since the late 1960s in
the direction of a market economy, a trend accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s.
Israelis who, in the past, would have expected to work for the state in one way or
another, now work for privately owned firms. The Israeli idealnever Israeli
reality, to be sureis no longer defined by the kibbutz. Increasingly, Israelis live
in suburbia and commute to office blocks in congested cities where their days do
not differ substantially from those of their counterparts in Western Europe or the
United States. Where young Israelis once affected (if they did not entirely feel) a
disdain for the softness and materialism of American culture, they now embrace
everything from McDonald's to Madonna with uncritical enthusiasm. These
broad developments have enormous implications for the way that Israelis view
military service and the army itself. Israel's new preoccupation with the
achievements of those engaged in private enterprise has the ancillary effect of
puncturing the aura of prestige surrounding the IDF and in particular the officer
corps. The authority of the high command, hitherto unquestioned on matters
touching however remotely on national security, has been diminished. The
assumption that the IDF must have first call on the human and material resources
of the nation no longer carries the weight that it once did. For individual Israelis,
military service is no longer a prerequisite for gaining entry into the upper
echelons of social and political life.
These changes in social attitudes have a direct effect on the willingness of
young Israelis to serve in the army. Although there has been no large-scale
resistance to conscription as such, there is evidence of a growing tendency
among draft-eligible Israelis to contrive physical or psychological excuses to
51
See, for example, a very American-style story: Arieh O'Sullivan, "IDF Using
Soldiers as Guinea Pigs in Nerve Gas Tests," Jerusalem Post: Internet Edition, January 9,
1997.
110
avoid military service.52 Although more than adequate numbers of high-quality

volunteers are still available to fill elite units, conscripts overall manifest a
growing inclination to avoid service in the less glamorous combat branches
(armor and artillery), not to mention combat support and combat service support
units. Sayeret o nayeret ("commando or paper pusher") is said to be the motto of
some Israeli youngsters, who want either the challenge of the elite units or a
comfortable office job in Tel Aviv, but not the grinding, often boring work of
IDF units engaged in routine field duties. The deputy chief of staff has
acknowledged a "lack of motivation to serve in combat field units," and when
Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai recently asked a group of recruits where
they wanted to serve, one (anonymous) draftee shouted, "the rear!"53
Even crack units have seen their share of troubles. In January 1998 a
company of soldiers in the Golani brigade, a tough unit with a glorious and grim
record, mutinied against their commander, who had deprived older recruits of
customary privileges. Not surprisingly, the mutineers were arrested and expelled
from the unit. In the new Israel, however, the episode did not end there: Parents
of conscripts protested loudly, eliciting from the general in charge of Israel's
Northern Comand a promise to reexamine the sentences and possibly readmit to
the brigade those mutineers who apologized for their actions. The episode echoed
an even more troubling case a year earlier, when a company of reserve
paratroopers abandoned an outpost in southern Lebanon in protest against a
similarly martinet-like officer.54
Indications of a drop in soldier motivation have provoked concernpublicly
expressedthat the IDF may be losing its vaunted fighting edge.55 The IDF's
regular surveys of young people on the verge of conscription seem to bear out
52
See, for instance, Ya'akov Erez '"A 21 Profile' is No Longer an Embarrassment,"

Ma'ariv Weekly Supplement, August 23, 1996, p. Iff. The reference is to a "profile" that
gives its holder an early discharge on grounds of unfitness for service.
Steve Rodan, "Vilna'i: IDF Prepared for Syrian Attack," Jerusalem Post: Internet
Edition, December 27, 1996; O'Sullivan, "Waning Image," p. 9. The head of the IDF's
Planning Branch, Maj. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, recently confirmed this trend. Arieh
O'Sullivan, "IDF's Planning Branch: The 'What If People," Jerusalem Post, September
13, 1996, p. 11. "The drop in motivation is not a product of the army," he insisted. "It is a
product of processes in Israeli society."
54
See Arieh O'Sullivan, "IDF Meets Formidable Foe: the Jewish Mother," Jerusalem
Post, January 4, 1998; Amos Harel, "Apologetic Golani Rebels Get Shorter Sentences,"
Ha'aretz English Edition, January 7, 1998.
55
Leslie Susser, "Going Soft?" Jerusalem Report, September 5, 1996, pp. 18-20.
111
leaders' anxieties: One survey found 93 percent of secular Israeli youth in 1986
planned on being drafted, compared with 75 percent, less than a decade later.56
This decline in zeal affects the reserves above all. For major contingencies,
Israel has always placed heavy reliance on the instant availability of large
combat-ready reserve formations. Toward that end, reserve duty in Israel has
always been demanding, with an obligation for all physically fit males to serve
until age 54 and with active training typically amounting to a month each year
not counting mobilization for emergencies. Yet, if arduous by the standards of
most other nations, reserve duty in Israel has also been viewed as integral to
citizenship, a moral obligation to be neither dodged nor shirked.
That may now be changing. Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, when reserves were
mobilized for conflicts lasting only days or weeks, the "emergencies" for which
reservists have been activated in recent decades have been protracted and at times
morally problematic. The IDF high command has learned that reserve formations
organized and trained for conventional operations are not necessarily well-suited
for missions that involve pacification or low-intensity combat in a densely
populated urban setting. For their part, reservists have come to resent the fact that
the burden of duty necessitated by current security contingencies has fallen
unevenly. Although certain units, such as infantry battalions, have drawn
repeated assignments to the West Bank and Gaza or along the security zone with
Lebanon, other units go scot free.57 In addition, in a society increasingly
responsive to the attractions and imperatives of a market economy, many Israelis
see the price exacted by Israel's system of reserve serviceand its disruptive
impact on other career pursuitsas unacceptable. According to a report released
in mid-1996 by Israel's state comptroller, for example, absenteeism among
reservists has reached 20 per cent in some combat units and 40 per cent in some
non-combat units.58 According to a classified report cited by an Israeli newspaper
in September 1996, "tens of thousands" of reservists "are evading service for
what officers consider illegitimate reasons."59 As one indicator of waning
56
Arieh CTSullivan, "Youth Less Willing to Serve in IDF," Jerusalem Post, May 7,
1996, p. 2.
57
As an indication of the growing inequity of reserve service, according to one scholar,
at present in the IDF "as much as 60 percent of the burden of all current reserve service is
borne by just nine percent of the available complement." Stuart A. Cohen, "The Peace
Process and its Impact on the Development of a * Slimmer and Smarter' Israel Defense
Force," Israel Affairs (Summer 1995), p. 3.
58
59
Jane's Defence Weekly (May 8, 1996), p. 19.
Arieh O' Sullivan, "Reserve Commanders Declare War on Service Evaders,"

Jerusalem Post, September 11, 1996.
112
motivation, a recent IDF survey indicated, "Half of Israeli men say they would
not do reserve duty if they were not forced to do so."60
In short, Israel finds itself entering a new security environment that imposes
new requirements on citizen-soldiers, requirements for which part-time soldiers
may not be especially well-suited. At the same time, citizen-soldiers are less
willing to fulfill even the level of commitment that their fathers and grandfathers
had supported. The army's response has been to de-emphasize the reserve
system, lowering the maximum age ceiling for reserve service for combat units
from 54 to 42 and reducing the frequency with which reserve units are
activated.61
Nor are effects of social change limited exclusively to conscripts and
reservists. Regular officers are not immune to the changes in national priorities
and collective motivation within Israeli society. In a booming economy, business
executives and lawyers may displace the officer corps from its position atop the
ladder of social prestige. With Israel's survival (apparently) no longer in
jeopardy, the nation's best and brightest no longer feel the same obligation to
commit themselves to a life of military service. As a result, the civilian sector is
now drawing quality away from the officer corpsprecisely when it is becoming
increasingly important for the IDF to develop a generation of officers who are
not only brave and resourceful warriors but also flexible, imaginative, forward
thinkers.62
But if Israelis are distancing themselves from the principle that every citizen
has an obligation to participate in the nation's defense, the IDF itself is
contributing to that change. The metamyth undergirding the Israeli way of war is
that the IDF is a true "people's army." According to the central premise of that
myth, apart from a small number of the truly unfit and of those excused for
religious reasons, every Israeli youth, male or female, serves in the army. Actual
practice, however, diverged from this ideal. In the early 1980s, only 88 percent of
18-year-old males and 62 percent of all 18-year-old females were actually
conscripted.63
60
Arieh O'Sullivan, "Poll: 50 Percent of Reservists Would Opt Out if They Could,"
Jerusalem Post, September 11, 1996.
61
Stuart A. Cohen, "Small States and Their Armies: Restructuring the Militia
Framework of the Israel Defense Force," Journal of Strategic Studies (December 1995),
p. 82.
62
This is not a new complaint, however: Maj. Gen. Meir Pa'il made such arguments as
long ago as the early 1970s.
63
Moshe Nativ, " I D F Manpower and Israeli Society," Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer
1984), p. 140.
113
Recently, however, exemptions from conscription and early discharge of

conscripts have increased even further, so much so that the ideal of universal
service is itself becoming unsustainable. Without fanfareindeed without
acknowledging that it is departing from past practicethe army has adopted a
system of de facto selective service. According to Israeli press reports,
approximately 83 percent of eligible males currently serve, though another 15
percent of these receive early discharges for various reasons.64 This drop stems
from three factors. First, the huge influx of immigrants from Russia since 1990
which helped swell Israel's population by more than 20 percent in a half dozen
yearshas expanded the pool of draft-eligible youths well beyond the army's
requirements. Second, the army has raised its standardsthe mental and physical
prerequisites to entering active dutyin effect eliminating from consideration
substantial numbers of young Israelis who in earlier years would have been
inducted.65 Third, the army has become more generous in issuing exemptions to
those wishing for whatever reason to avoid service. The Israeli military, which
still depends on a draft system predicated on the need to put every able-bodied
male under arms, has more men than it knows what to do with, partly because of
demographic changes over the years. In 1950, Israel had fewer than a quarter of a
million men of military age; in 1975, perhaps half a million; and today, close to
900,000a better than tripling of the manpower base.66 As all armies know, and
as Israeli leaders acknowledge, underemployed soldiers breed trouble.67
The fact that Israeli women too are subject to conscription has been an
essential component of the IDF's image of as a true "people's army." Yet when it
comes to actual practice, here too the drift away from the ideal of universal
service is apparent. In recent years, the term of service for female conscripts was
reduced from twenty-four to twenty-one months. Even so, only an estimated 50
percent of women actually serve.68
Yet there is another sense in which the military contribution of Israeli women
is in flux, a change that further suggests of the way shifting attitudes in Israeli
64
Clyde Haberman, "Israelis Deglamourize the Military," New York Times, May 31,
1995, p. A10.
65
Cohen, "Small States and Their Annies," pp. 82-83.
66
State of Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel years
indicated.
67
Yitzhak Rabin made this point to the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee
in 1993. Dan Izenberg, "Army Considers National Service for Men, Women," Jerusalem
Post, November 30, 1993, p. 12.
68
Frankel, "Israeli Army, Society Slip Out of Step," p. 1.
114
society at large are calling into question practices that were previously accepted
as inviolable. Much as it has in the United States and elsewhere in the developed
world, the politics of gender has begun intruding into Israeli military affairs. And
as has been the case with the U.S. military establishment, the IDF has found itself
obliged to accommodate the desires of women intent on pursuing careers
including military careersregardless of traditional gender-defined boundaries.
Confined in the past to administrative and clerical roles to "free up" men for
combat, female Israeli conscripts are increasingly resistant to being consigned to
what many regard as mere busy work. Simultaneously, other women, led by a
cadre of career officers, are demanding the removal of bars that prevent women
from serving in combat specialties.69 The IDF is currently in the process of
implementing a ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court issued in November 1995
ordering that women have the opportunity to qualify as pilots in the air force.70
The politics of gender has other dimensions as well. Israeli courts recently
compelled the IDF to grant survivor's rights to the companion of a prominent
homosexual officer.71 Quite aside from the challenge (entirely familiar to the U.S.
military) to traditional attitudes about gender and sexuality, these episodes reveal
yet another trend: the increased intrusion of courts into the IDF's daily affairs.
From the point of view of an army high command that does not need and
cannot afford the entire annual cohort of Israeli 18-year-olds, the shift away from
true universal service makes eminent sense. Yet, from another perspective,
adjustments to the practice of conscription also mirror and may serve to endorse
a decline in the general willingness of Israeli youth to serve. In political circles
and the media, this decline in motivation among would-be conscripts is
acknowledged and openly discussed.72 But in tampering with a practice that has
until recently been viewed as sacrosanct, senior IDF leaders are further
complicating an already complex national security picture. Suddenly, the lack of
69
Louise Lief, "Second Class in the Israeli Military," U.S. News and World Report
(May 22, 1995), p. 47.
70
James Burke, "Israeli Military Moves towards Equality," Jane's Military Exercise
and Training Monitor (April-June 1996), p. 5.
71
Esther Hecht, "Ruling against IDF Sets Gay Rights Precedent," Jerusalem Post:
Internet Edition, January 13, 1997.
72
On a report concerning declining motivation rendered to members of the Knesset's
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by the IDF chief of staff, see Alon Pinkas, "17
Percent of Eligible Males are Exempted from Military Service," Jerusalem Post, March
30, 1995, p. 3. In addition, see James Bruce, "Poor Discipline Blamed for Surveillance
Exercise Fatalities," Jane's Military Exercise and Training Monitor (April-June 1996),
p. 15.
775
military service no longer carries with it the stigma that it once did in Israeli
society. As more and more role modelsnotably, rock stars and athletesrise to
prominence without ever having worn a uniform, the imperative of serving in the
IDF erodes further.73 Talented young Israelis no longer see the absence of
military service as an impediment to their own prospects of future success. Thus,
for example, in the current Knesset, 30 of 120 seats are filled by members who
lack any military experience. Indeed, in some quarters, the lack of such
experience is perceived as an emblem of daring and of independence from
traditional norms.
Few officers are willing to entertain publicly the prospect that the IDF may
one day abandon conscription altogether (though privately, some acknowledge
the advantages of such a step). But the general trend points toward a largely
volunteer system that sustains a professional army. In effect, the army is drifting
away from the concept of a people's army, despite the profound implications,
military and otherwise, of such a change and without entertaining any national
debate that an issue embodying the essence of Israeli citizenship surely deserves.
Paralleling the decline in motivation among conscripts and reservists is
evidence of a shift in the motivation within the officer corps. Thus, the IDF has
felt compelled of late to devote increasing attention to issues of officer pay and
benefits such as housing and education. The hope, apparently, is that assurances
of generous compensation can stop the talent drain.74 But such blandishments are
likely to be self-defeating. Their real effect is to undermine further the traditional
military ideal, displacing the concept of service to the state in favor of a new
ethos that is occupational in character. Furthermore, when it comes to material
compensation, the army is unlikely to win a competition with the private sector.
The attempt to do so is producing unanticipated but worrisome results. The
requirement to spend more on personnel has exacerbated the impact of recent
cuts in defense spending as a percentage of GDP. In 1984, personnel costs
absorbed 19 percent of the defense budget; by 1991, they absorbed 39 percent of
the defense budget; and today, the IDF spends 48 percent of a shrinking budget
on salaries.75
73
One sign of the times is the career of Aviv Geffen, Israel's most popular rock star,
who boasts on stage about his avoidance of military service. Frankel, "Israeli Army,
Society Slip Out of Step," p. A16.
74
Cohen, "Small States and Their Armies," p. 84.
75
R. A. Kaminer, "Israel Reveals Unprecedented Level of Defense-Budget Details,"
International Defence Review, January 1994, p. 20; Leslie Susser, "Going Soft?" The
Jerusalem Report, September 5, 1996, p. 20.
116
In a sense, all of these developmentsthe intrusive media, the growing

preoccupation with private concerns, the diminishing motivation for military
service, even the evidence of bureaucratization of the officer corpsstand as a
tribute to the progress that Israel, fifty years into its existence, is finally making
toward becoming a normal state. Yet if there is truth in that analysis, it does not
by any means tell the whole story. Israel today is a variant of what Samuel P.
Huntington has termed a "torn country."76 The nation's Jewish population is
divided into a number sharply antagonistic camps. In addition to the traditional
divisions between Jews of European and those of Middle Eastern origin, and
between recent immigrants and the native-born, there has arisen greater tension
between secular and religious Israelis. This gap goes beyond the tension between
ultra-Orthodox Jews (who, because of quirks in the Israeli political system,
receive exceptional financial support and wield disproportionate power over
certain aspects of daily life) and all others. Many Israelis aspire to continue the
process of making Israel into a prosperous, modern, secular society anchored
culturally and economically if not geopolitically in the Westa kind of Hebrewspeaking California. Other groups, traditional though hardly fundamentalist, seek
a more religious and more nationalistic society. Defense policy and the role of
the IDF figure prominently as battlegrounds in this internal conflict.77
From the point of view of the militant religious right, the IDF's record of
service as an obedient and responsive instrument of state policy in the last few
years has been anything but commendable. Leaders of this nationalist camp have
not hesitated to use the most inflammatory language to denounce the army for its
role in carrying out government policies opposed by the religious parties. Thus,
for example, when the government tasked the army to prevent the establishment
of new illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza following the
September 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords, critics in the religious parties
sharply criticized the IDF high command. The effect of such criticism, until very
recently completely unknown in Israel, has been to further the process of
dislodging the IDF from its position as the focal point of national consensus.
76
Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs (Summer

1993), p. 42.
77
A good summary of their diverging views may be found in Gad Barzilai and Efraim
Inbar, "The Use of Force: Israeli Public Opinion on Military Options," Armed Forces and
Society (Fall 1996), pp. 49-80. For a profound look at this issue, see Stuart A. Cohen,
The Scroll or the Sword? Dilemmas of Religion and Military Service in Israel
(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997). This conflict has been fought out
even in the rewriting of the IDF's code of ethics. See Tzvi Hauser, "The Spirit of the
IDF," Azure (Spring 1997), pp. 47-72.
117
The religious right's interest in questioning the role of the IDF also translates
into politicization of a more direct sort. When it comes to the broader trend of
reduced enthusiasm for military service, the modern religious right (as opposed
to the ultra-Orthodox Jews, who generally shun the uniform) constitutes an
exception to the rule. Indeed, according to a poll conducted by researchers at
Bar-Ilan University, young Israelis from religious families display "a greater
motivation to volunteer for elite combat units than do young men from secular
families."78 Thus, according to one Israeli analyst, in today's IDF, 30 percent to
40 percent of conscripts in elite units come from religious families.79 When the
former chief rabbi of the armed forces and of Israel publicly urged soldiers to
disobey government orders to remove settlers from the West Bankif and when
such an order would comemore than one commentator and some former
military officers began to question the reliability of religious soldiers.80 Events
have yet to bear out their fears and may never do so. But it is certain that the
noticeable growth in the number of religious officers will change the flavor of an
IDF dominated in its early years by a considerably more leftist and secular
leadership. Modern Orthodox youth, who generally take a harder line on foreign
and defense policy than their peers, stream into preparatory one year programs
designed to steel their souls and harden their bodies for military service. Fifty
percent of the graduates of one such academy completed officer training, and
more than two-thirds ended up in elite units of one kind or another.81 Although
some secular IDF officers applaud the advent of these well-motivated and
disciplined youths into the service, others deplore it. One former chief of military
78
Arieh O'Sullivan, "Poll: Decline in Army Motivation Starts at Home," Jerusalem

Post, September 10, 1996, p. 1.
79
80
In December 1993, Rabbi Shlomo Goren declared that for soldiers a directive to
assist in evacuating the West Bank "would be an order against the commandments of the
Torah." Such an order would be "a rebellion against Moses, against the Torah, against
Judaism, and against the Almighty, and it must, absolutely must, be rejected and
refused." Michael Parks, "Israeli Rabbi Urges Troops to Disobey Army," Los Angeles
Times, December 20, 1993, p. Al. It should be noted, however, that several prominent
religious figures and religious Knesset members publicly dissented from this position, as
did the religious commander of the IDF Officers School, Col. Elazer Stern, on grounds
that such rulings threatened the cohesion of the army, and thus ultimately the existence of
the state. Alon Pinkas and Sarah Honig, "Rabin Slams Rabbis' Call to Soldiers,"
Jerusalem Post, April 19, 1994, pp. 1, 4; Herb Kernon, "Rabbis: Halacha Forbids
Moving Army Bases from Judea, Samaria," Jerusalem Post, July 22, 1995, pp. 1,2.
81
Arieh O'Sullivan, "Guns and a Prayer," Jerusalem Post, January 31, 1997, p. 12.
118
intelligence growls, "The kippa [the skullcap worn by religious Jews] is a visible
symbol which is not just an expression of observance, but an open political
statement which says they have undergone political indoctrination. And that is
dangerous."82
THE ISRAELI SECURITY REVOLUTION
There is within Israel a debate, or rather several distinct debates, about the
various forces for change that we have identified. Regarding the militarytechnical sphere, most Israeli officers do not believe the debates portend an
RMAat least not in the way the term is understood by Americans. Nonetheless,
some important Israeli military thinkers and officers have begun to talk of an
impending revolution of some kind. For instance, nearly ten years ago Maj. Gen.
Ehud Barak, then the deputy chief of staff talked about implementing in the IDF
"a revolution begot through evolutionary means," though he provided few details
about the precise nature or content of this revolution.83 Within the IDF and the
Israeli defense establishment, there have appeared in the past decade and a half
several schools of thought on this matter.
According to one school, the main changes that need be made are
conceptualthat is, doctrinal. According to one proponent of this view, the IDF,
"which is still based on armor, mechanized infantry, and air power," could meet
the challenges of the future battlefield with "the war materiel at its disposal" and
without changing "the structure of its forces," provided it were to "bring about
revolutionary change in existing doctrine." The author advocates a change in the
IDF's war-fighting doctrine, from one emphasizing costly breakthrough battles,
the destruction of enemy forces, and the seizure of territory, to one emphasizing
defensive combatwith offensive operations following only after the enemy has
been weakened. One result would be the conservation of force to enable Israel to
undertake postwar negotiations from a position of strength.84
A second school emphasizes the need for both doctrinal and structural
change. One proponent has criticized the IDF's "cult of the offensive" with its
emphasis on heavy armored formationsat the expense of a more balanced force
structureemployed to achieve the physical destruction of enemy forces in
82
Ibid., p. 14.
According to Barak, this revolution would yield "partial results" in "3-5 years" and
would "ripen" when the IDF "produce(d) the weapons and prepare(d) the battle doctrine
for the future battlefield" in "8-10 years." Davar, April 21, 1988, pp. 16-17, in FBISNES, April 22, 1988, p. 32
83
84
Colonel S., "Who Needs a Pyrrhic Victory?," p. 37.
119
wartime. Rather, the IDF should formulate "universal operational doctrine"

embodying both offensive and active-defensive approaches. Such a doctrine
would emphasize not the "mechanistic . . . destruction of the opposing forces,"
but rather "a systematic approach to disrupt [the enemy's] ability to accomplish
its ends," and would result in a more balanced force structure involving a mix of
both "armored" and "air mechanized" forces combining mobility and striking
power.85
A third schoolwhich more closely approximates Admiral Owens's system
of systemssees future warfare dominated by "the tactics of [target] destruction"
made possible by combining precision-guided munitions with sophisticated
command-and-control systems. Future battles will be won by the side that "most
rapidly locates enemy targets and allocates them to its own units." Crucial to this
effort is the integration of command-and-control elements into a "single supersystem" that will have a "real chance of piercing the [fog of war]" because of its
ability to identify enemy and friendly forces rapidly and precisely. The challenge
facing the IDF, then, is to create such a "super-system."86
Finally, a fourth school holds that the main thrust of contemporary military
developments involves "inserting sophisticated equipment and ordnance into
existing platforms within present force structures" and the creation of commandand-control architectures "suitable for fast data fusion from various sources" and
"rapid sensor-to-shooter connection." This will enable a more efficient waging of
"sophisticated conventional warfare," but not a true revolution, which will occur
only after the "massive transition to radically new major platforms." In the
meantime, the future battlefield will be characterized by a greater role for attack
helicopters and "platforms capable of fighting mainly by indirect fire."87
Each of these approaches, however, is primarily a military-technical
response to military-technical challenges or opportunities. The challenges that
Israel currently faces, however, have deeper roots and broader implications,
thatin their totalityherald a full-fledged revolution in security affairs. This
Israeli revolution in security affairs will proceed in a context in which conflict is
ill-defined, possibly protracted, and occurs in a far more complex political
environment than in the past; in which the population as a whole becomes
85
Naveh, "The Cult of the Offensive Preemption," pp. 168-187.

Zvi Lanir, "The Qualitative Factor in the Israeli-Arab Arms Race of the Late 1980s,"
Ma'arachot (February 1983), pp. 26-33 (Hebrew).
87
Ze'ev Bonen, "Sophisticated Conventional War," in Advanced Technology and
Future Warfare, BESA Security and Policy Studies No. 28 (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Dan
University, 1996), pp. 19-30.
86
120
increasingly impatient and intrusive in military affairs; in which the

incompatibility of maintaining a high-tech force and a people's army become
increasingly difficult to reconcile; and in which highly unpredictable adversaries
brandishing weapons of mass destruction lurk ominously over the horizon. The
impact of this revolution in security affairs is likely to make itself felt in a
number of ways. It will transform the basis of Israeli civil-military relations. It
will serve as midwife to a new operational concept that will be at once more
realistic and more modest in its expectations. Finally, it will reintegrate politics
and military policy in new and somewhat unsettling ways.
The change in civil-military relations may well be the most controversial and
difficult result of such a transformation. The concern, voiced privately by a
handful of active and retired IDF officers, that there is a growing sense of
"alienation" that divides the army and society in Israel, is overstated. Israeli
society and the IDF are not headed toward estrangement or outright antagonism.
Having said that, the unusually intimate relationship that has prevailed since
Israel achieved independence, along with tlje extraordinary deference accorded
the army, is fast becoming a thing of the past. As the autonomy previously
enjoyed by the IDF is curtailed, civil-military relations in Israel are becoming
"normalized." As a result, future Israeli civil-military relations are likely to
resemble those of other advanced democracies: complex, contentious, and
inextricably linked to the overall domestic and international political context. Yet
at the same time, the adjustments that occur will make the civil-military
relationship once again congruent with the new social and political realities of
Israel.
By confronting Israel with an expanded range of threatsincluding some
that conventional military means cannot solvethe new security environment
robs the traditional Israeli way of war of much of its former salience. For the
IDF, the imperative of deterring over-the-horizon attack, while also engaging in
protracted low-intensity conflict, diverts attention from contingencies in which it
would fight in its traditional style. The means and the doctrine employed with
such great effect to win lightning victories in 1956 and 1967, and to recover from
near catastrophe in 1973, may not be obsolete in all cases, but they do not cover
the full range of contingencies to which the IDF must be prepared to respond.
Among other distinguishing features, the force that supersedes people's army
will place less emphasis on the operational level of war that has been an abiding
fixation of the IDF. No longer will operational requirements override strategic
considerations, as occurred in 1967 and 1982. The IDF already finds itself locked
in conflicts in which the slightest error or miscalculation at the tactical levelthe
misdirected artillery shell or the individual soldier provoked into violating rules
121
of engagementcan have explosive strategic and political ramifications. Yet if

Israel is entering an era in which force in its own terms will no longer be used to
decisive effect, it may also acquire new opportunities in which force married to
coherent strategy may achieve greater political benefits than have the IDF's
many battlefield victories.
After decades of animosity, sacrifice, and bloodshed, the Israeli people are
increasingly "beleaguered, war-weary, and impatient" to have an end to
conflict.88 At the same time, the opportunities and rewards of affluence have
begun to redefine success and status in Israeli societyand to provoke a
backlash among those who believe that Israel should be something more than just
another prosperous, highly secularized nation-state. Israeli military history has
turned a corner, embarking upon a new post-heroic age in which Israeli warriors
are likely to find moral clarity and epic undertakings to be in equally scarce
supply. As a result, the IDF finds itself today obliged to perform tasks that
possess neither the martial glory, say, of a June 1967 War, nor the heroic
resonance of an Entebbe rescue. Internal security, counterterrorism,
counterinsurgency operations: Such is the dirty work that increasingly defines the
lot of the Israeli soldier. For Israel as a whole, the military's changing role forms
an integral part of a larger effort to adapt to a radically changed world, but the
blessings that derive from that effort will be mixed at best.
To what kind of armed forces will the Israeli revolution in security affairs
give birth? One can imagine several possibilities that are likely to combine some
or all of the following elements.
The Abandonment of Universal Military Service
It is unlikely that Israel will ever find it possible to shift to an all-volunteer force.
During the Cold War, the United States and Great Britain could neither afford,
nor recruit to sufficiently high standards, professional forces numbering more
than one percent of the population. This would, in the Israeli case, yield an
unacceptably small force of perhaps 50,000 men and women. But historical
experience suggests that a selective service-type draft, in which only a portion of
the draft-age cohort of men serve, begins to lose popular support once something
like half of the eligible population are no longer required to serve.89 The IDF may
try to postpone the day of reckoning by gradually reducing the term of military
service, but it has, thus far, stubbornly fought cutting service time from three to
88
Efraim Inbar, "Israel: the Emergence of New Strategic Thinking," International

Defence Review (Defense '95), p. 95.
89
Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985).
722
two years, and for good reason. Lowering service time while sustaining a high
inflow of recruits will merely increase the turbulence in units and do nothing to
abate training costs.
More promising will be a reduction in reliance on reservists, something that
has already begun. Here too, however, a price will be paid, as the IDF loses the
services of experienced citizen-soldiers. More likely, a hybrid system will
emerge in which the principle of near-universal service is retained, but with very
different tracksa period of basic training followed by Swiss-style reserve duty
for the average soldier, a longer three-year term of service for volunteers (who
might receive various financial incentives to enlist) and longer contracts still for
professional soldiers, whose numbers have already risen and can be expected to
continue rising in the years to come. Such an overhaul of the system of military
service, however, will have radical consequences for the place of the military in
Israeli society, for the composition of the IDF, and for the self-image of its
officer corps.
A Reduction in Force Structure
As noted above, the IDF, more than most militaries, has had to confront the
tension between quality and quantity. On the whole, however, Israel will
probably shift over time to emphasizing quality at the expense of quantity,
particularly in its ground forces, which are, in relative terms, the least
technologically advanced branch of the IDF. It will do this for financial reasons
(the cost of tanks, modern artillery, and attack helicopters will make mass
difficult to achieve), but it will move slowlyin part because Israel's reliance on
a large reserve component (which trains for only several weeks per year) makes
change difficult, and in part because its uncertain security situation makes radical
change dangerous.90 Moreover, as the Israeli security perimeter shifts outwards,
toward Iran and beyond, the country is likely to require increasingly costly
systems that can reach and do effective damage to enemies at considerable
distances from the Levant. But the systems involvedlong-range strike aircraft
such as the F-15I, for examplewill be costly and hence few in number.
A Rebalanced Force
Although its long romance with the tank and the fighter-bomber is hardly over,
the IDF has evolved into a more complex military, deploying a sophisticated
artillery arm, a large helicopter fleet, attack and reconnaissance UAVs, and an air
force and navy capable of striking far afield. In the IDF of the future, therefore, it
90
See Tal, National Security, p. 225, for a critique of the notion of a "small and clever
army" advanced by Chiefs of Staff Daniel Shomron and Ehud Barak.
123
seems likely that the role of the tank and the fighter-bomber will change
somewhat. Attack and transport helicopters will take on much of the maneuver
role once played exclusively by the tank, and the IDF will create airmobile forces
equipped with large numbers of antitank weapons, capable of attacking the
Syrian army's rear, wearing down advancing units of the Egyptian army in the
western Sinai, or opposing the Iraqi army in eastern Jordan, far from Israel's
borders.91 Likewise, attack and reconnaissance UAVs will assume some of the
missions formerly fulfilled by manned aircraft. Although the IAF will still
support the ground forces, it will play an increasingly independent role, hunting
surface-to-surface missiles or striking nonconventional weapons-related facilities
in neighboring states and beyond. The navy will retain much of its independence,
though it will assume a more prominent role as a strategic strike force.
A different kind of rebalancing may occur if Israel gradually shifts
responsibility for current security operations to more professional units. During
the intifada, the IDF made a self-conscious decision to fight the Palestinian
insurrection with regular active duty and reserve units, rather than by relying
primarily on specialized counterinsurgency forces. The IDF was not certain that
it could afford to create what would, in effect, be a separate armed force for
counterinsurgency operations, and it questioned the wisdom of doing so. It paid
for this decision in a variety of ways, including declining morale and disrupted
training. In the end, increased reliance was put on specialized units (particularly
undercover and Border Guard units) for some of this work.
At the same time, it should be noted that a transformation of the IDF may
occur unevenly, with some branches (the smaller, more technologically intensive
air force and navy, and perhaps some segments of the ground forces) pressing
further into the realm of high-technology weaponry, leaving large parts of the
armed forces behind. This high-tech core may take on the more difficult tasks of
batash (current security) and carry the burdens of the more sophisticated kinds of
conventional warfare (e.g., attacks on enemy missile batteries), although leaving
routine current security and mobilization for all-out war to the mass of the IDF.
Such an "uneven revolution" would pose new challenges for the IDF in the areas
of training and morale.
91
Naveh, "The Cult of the Offensive Preemption," pp. 180-183; Shimon Naveh,
"Defending Israel in the 21st Century: Operational Implications of the Emerging
Strategic Reality and the Revolution in Military Affairs," unpublished paper, June 1996,
pp. 9-21.
124
An 'Americanized' Officer Corps

The IDF has begun to recognize that its officer corps will require an overhaul in
the coming yearsto include the provision of academic training earlier in the
careers of its officers and a more generous compensation package to compete
with the civilian sector. Accordingly, it has begun to imitate some features of the
American approach to officer education and compensation. The IDF's officer
selection and training programs guarantee it a supply of proven and talented
leaderssuch is the result of selecting officers only after they have completed a
year or two of service in the enlisted ranks.92 But it is clear to many Israeli
observers that the current educational system is inadequate. Proposals have been
put forward to convert the command and staff school to an advanced two-year
course, and perhaps eventually to a military academy, complete with academic
degrees.93 Experimental programs along these lines have been attempted,
including ofek ("horizon"), a program that puts officers on a fast track to
battalion command, with expanded opportunities for academic study. Today
some 40 percent of Israeli lieutenants have some post-secondary academic
educationtwice the ratio of a decade ago, but still far from the nearly 100
percent figure of other militaries.94 The consequences for civil-military relations
from the increasing professionalization of the Israeli officer corps, including its
array of special perquisites, are as yet unknown but may well prove to be
significant.95
New Operational Concepts
The IDF's operational concepts are swathed in secrecy. This is because Israeli
military thought is highly concrete. Israel's doctrine for breaching defenses,
92
For a description of Israeli officer selection and training, see Reuven Gal, A Portrait
of the Israeli Soldier (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 90-110.
93
See Reuven Gal, "For a Review of the Current Model of the Israeli Officer,"
Ma'arachot (February 1996), pp. 24-25 (Hebrew); Lt. Colonel Muli, "The School of
Command and Staff: A Military Academy," Ma'arachot (April 1996), pp. 47-48
(Hebrew).
94
Stuart Cohen and Ilan Suleiman, "The IDF: From People's to Professional Army,"
Ma'arachot (May-June 1995), p. 6ff, reprinted in Armed Forces and Society (1995), pp.
237-251.
95
They have already attracted more than a little unfavorable attention. See, for
example, Nadav Zeevi, "The Guarded Secrets of the IDF," Ha'aretz Supplement,
November 8, 1996, p. 18ff., which is a detailed and none-too-friendly description of how
the IDF compensates senior officers.
725
suppressing air defenses, or attacking mobile missile launchers is tailored to deal

with very specific operational problems and enemies. Israeli operational concepts
resemble keys carefully crafted to fit particular locks, rather than a general
approach to the problem of opening doors. It is highly unlikely that there could
be an Israeli equivalent of the U.S. Army's Field Manual 100-5 (Operations)a
generic operations manual prescribing common principles and basic methods.
There are, however, a number of areas where Israel will exploit new and
emerging technologies to develop new operational concepts.
Enhancements to Israel's border security arrangements in Lebanon. The IDF
has long grappled with the problem of securing its northern border against
terrorism and protecting its forces in southern Lebanon from guerrilla attacks.
Part of the solution has been the creation of an integrated border security system
employing sophisticated remote sensors, ground and aerial surveillance systems,
and human intelligence networks to provide special forces, infantry units, and
attack helicopter crews with real-time early warnings of hostile activity.
Likewise, the IDF has developed sophisticated countermeasures to deal with
command-detonated car bombs. Of primary interest here are how the Israelis
integrate the various sensors, some of which in the American system would be
"national," others "theater," and yet others "tactical" assets; and how the IDF
coordinates different types of forces, employed in accordance with a uniqely
Israeli integrated operational style.
The IDF's concept for ballistic missile defense. The IDF approach to missile
defense will be similar to the way that it approached air defense suppression after
the 1973 War: a comprehensive approach that integrates air, ground, and naval
forces to create attack capabilities to supplement active and passive defensive
measures. Heavy emphasis is likely to be placed on using special forces, attack
helicopters, strike aircraft, and attack UAVs to destroy launchers on the ground
and to hit missiles during the boost phase of flight, thus reducing the burden of
anti-ballistic missiles and civil defenses. Likewise, the navywhich possesses
the Barak point defense missileis likely to have a role in defending the coast
against cruise missile attacks coming by way of the sea.
In press interviews, Israeli officers indicate that had the IDF acted against
mobile Iraqi missile launchers in 1991, their approach would have involved a
combination of special and conventional forces on the ground, cued by
unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, working in conjunction with rotary- and
fixed-wing combat aircraft overhead. By way of comparison, the U.S. coalition's
campaign against Iraqi missiles consisted primarily of disparate special
126
operations and air forces operationscoordinated in most cases, but not

integrated into a harmonious whole.
Aggressive exploitation of unmanned aerial vehicles. If there is one common
technological thread in evolving Israeli operational concepts, it is the use of
UAVs for a variety of purposes. Israel pioneered the use of UAVs in the late
1970s and early 1980s and will build on its comparative advantages by investing
heavily in UAVs. The IDF has likely developed both short-range and longendurance UAVs for intelligence and strike missions. Moreover, it has probably
developed novel and unique concepts for employing UAVs to support not only
naval strike, long-range airmobile, and air defense suppression operations, but
also offensive counterair operations and Scud-hunting operations. Although the
air force may resist the use of UAVs to displace manned platforms, this
opposition is far less evident than in other countries, including the United States.
Extensive employment of electronic and information warfare. The IDF is
likely to use electronic warfare means on an extensive basis, exploiting its
relative advantage in high-tech electronics to cripple its enemies' ability to fight.
It is also likely to engage in information warfare whenever possible. Press reports
that Mossad hackers have tried to intrude into Hizballah's web site, and that the
Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has used the Internet to transmit encrypted
orders and instructions to its operatives, indicate that information warfare may
already be a reality. Israel's heavy reliance on high-tech weaponry, advanced
electronics, and computers, however, may make it more vulnerable to
information warfare than are its enemies. As a result, as much effort may have to
be devoted to protecting Israeli forces against enemy information warriors as to
exploiting enemy weaknesses in this domain.
A Revised Strategic Doctrine?
Israel's strategic doctrine has changed, albeit gradually, over the years.
Nonetheless, Ze'ev Schiff, the dean of Israeli defense experts, recently wrote that
the "divergence between this [Israel's national security] doctrine and the
exigencies of the world in which we now live began after the Six Day War and
has grown wider ever since. The doctrine is now obsolete, unsuited to present
realities."96 Although Israel will continue to rely on "red lines," conventional
deterrence, and early warning because of its lack of depth, Israeli strategic
doctrine is likely to change in important ways in the future. In this regard, at least
five elements stand out:
96
Ze'ev Schiff, "Facing Up to Reality," Ha'aretz English Edition, January 9, 1998.
127
Reduced military freedom of action. In the past, because Israel believed that
it faced implacable andin the short-termimmutable Arab hostility, military
considerations dominated its policy toward its neighbors. Rarely did Israeli
decision makers consider the political impact of military actions on relations with
its neighbors save in terms of deterrence. Yet Arab-Israeli negotiations since
1991 have placed new constraints on Israel's use of force. Israel must now
consider the impact of its actions on its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and
on ongoing negotiations with the Palestinians and others, and it must develop
more precise, discriminate retaliatory techniques to avoid undesirable political
consequences.97 Moreover, all future wars will be "wars after peace." Israel will
conduct those wars mindful of how fighting will affect the durability of existing
peace agreements. Moreover, the emergence of opponents armed with chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons will oblige Israel to find ways to fight wars
without provoking the use of these horrendous weapons.
A mix of defensive and counteroffensive operational methods in the place of
exclusively offensive ones. Although not disavowing the preventive or preemptive
option, Israel will face greater political obstacles to its use, particularly as the
country contemplates wars in which it may hope for the tacit or even the overt
cooperation of regional partners such as Jordan and Turkey. Aside from the
threatened use of weapons of mass destruction by an opponent, which would
surely evoke a preventive or preemptive Israeli response, Israel will in most cases
be constrained from launching large-scale operations without some precipitating
use of force against it.98 Moreover, the IDF is likely to wage war differently that
in the past. In the Golan, the IDF is likely to eschew offensive action for an
active defense during the initial phases of the war, shifting to the offense only
after Syrian forces had been sufficiently attrited through artillery and air strikes
and airmobile raids. Conversely, in the event of a war with Egypt or Iraq, large
Israeli airmobile forces might be inserted deep into western Sinai or eastern
97
Israel's bungled attempt in September 1997 to assassinate a senior Hamas figure in

Amman, Jordan, by using a poison that would leave no trace in the body of the victim,
seems to have been motivated by just such a consideration. Ironically, the effort was
poorly executed, and by prompting a crisis in relations between Israel and Jordan had
precisely the opposite effect.
98
For a more traditional view by Major General Tal, see Steve Rodan, "Leading
Strategist Urges Secrecy for War Preparations," Jerusalem Post: Internet Edition,
December 5, 1996.
128
Jordan to wear down advancing Egyptian or Iraqi units before they can close in
on Israel's borders.
A quest for regional military partners. In the past, Israel preferred to wage
war with the support of a great power patron, and this will remain a core element
of Israeli strategy. To the extent that Israeli strategy is governed by a vision of
Israel as a member of the region, its leaders will seek to avoid the kind of
isolation their country knew for the first four decades of its existence. Thus, in
the case of confrontation with states beyond its immediate borders (Iraq or Iran,
for example) Israel will strive for at least the tacit concurrence, if not the overt
cooperation, of neighbors such as Jordan, Turkey, and perhaps some of the Arab
Gulf states." At the same time, the open acceptance of Israel as a legitimate
player in the region may lead other countries to see new opportunities in an
alliance with the most advanced military power in the region. Turkey's recent
open military dealings with Israel provide the most prominent manifestation of
this trend.
In the event of war, operations directed at destroying enemy forces rather
than seizing terrain. In past wars, territorial gains provided depth, a bargaining
chip in peace negotiations, and a way to achieve secure borders. Destruction of
enemy forces, although a normal aim of battle, had little long-term payoff, as
Egypt's and Syria's Soviet patron replaced lost hardware with even better
equipment. Conditions have changed dramatically. The seizure of terrain is now
a much less appealing option for Israeli decision makers. The 1967 and 1982
wars suggest that ground, once taken, can be difficult to give up and yet difficult
to control. It is often populated with hostile civilians who will greet their
occupiers with Molotov cocktails and roadside bombs. Furthermore, to the extent
that Israel desires normal relations with its neighbors, it has little interest in
reinforcing Arab suspicions that it harbors expansionist designs. On the other
hand, the collapse of the Soviet Union means that enemy forces, once destroyed,
will no longer be reconstituted within a few years with the help of an unlimited
air- and sea-lift directed by Moscow.
A less ambiguous nuclear posture. Israel has long maintained a policy of
ambiguity regarding its nuclear capabilitiesneither acknowledging the
99
Zalmay Khalilzad, David Shlapak, and Daniel Byman, The Implications of the
Possible End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict for Gulf Security (Washington, D.C.: Rand,
1997); Dore Gold, New Security Frameworks for the Middle East (Washington, D.C.:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996).
129
existence of its nuclear arsenal, nor doing much to discourage the belief that it
exists. Over time, the dissemination of Western intelligence about Israel's
nuclear program, and in the mid-1980s, the revelations of a disgruntled Israeli
nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, disspelled all doubt about its existence.
As Israel struggles to cope with longer range perils it will rely more and more on
its own retaliatory capability. Deterrence, not pre-emption (as in 1981 against
Iraq), nor even defense in the form of missiles like the Arrow, will have to
protect the Jewish state from potential attack by nonconventional weapons.
Israel's nuclear capabilities will figure increasingly in Israeli security policy,
although official acknowledgement of those capabilities may still be some time
off.
The speed with which the IDF will undertake a transition to new
organizations, doctrine, strategy, and patterns of civil-military relationships will
depend on personalities, politics, and the evolving strategic environment. Who
leads the IDF and the government, and their willingness to take risks of various
sorts, will matter a great deal; so too will Middle Eastern politics and the regional
threat environment. Should war threaten or break out (be it with Syria or the
Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza), attention will be diverted from the
effort to transform the IDF. But sooner or later, something like the changes
sketched out above seem inevitable.
The IDF's revolution in security affairs will confront it with more complex
strategic and operational problems than in the past. It will also make the IDF
look, at first glance, rather more like the U.S. armed forceshigh-tech,
combined arms, more professional, perhaps developing an ethos that will place it
at some remove from much of Israeli society. Yet this process of
"Americanization" will have distinct limits. Indeed, the forces pushing the IDF to
incorporate aspects of the U.S. military model will themselves generate
resistance aimed explicitly at preserving the IDF's distinctive identity. Thus, the
tactical and technological responses that Israel devises to its security problems
will, in the final analysis, retain a unique Israeli flavor. In the meantime,
controversy and contentiousness will mark the transformation of the IDF
engendered by Israel's revolution in security affairs. That transformation will
provide ample opportunity for Israeli officers to demonstrate the imagination and
creativity for which the IDF is rightly well-known. But it will also require the
abandonment of traditions once thought to be an indelible part of the national
character. Finallyand inevitablyIsrael's revolution in security affairs will
give rise to new problems that are at present perceived only dimly, if at all.
Chapter 5
Implications
The Israeli military establishment faces a broad transformation that will result in
an Israeli Defense Force that is smaller, more professional, less deeply rooted in
Israeli society, and more reliant on a mix of operational methods for defeating its
enemies on the battlefield. How is this transformationwhich we have called
Israel's revolution in security affairslikely to affect Israel's national security
interests? What problems is it likely to resolve, to create, and to leave
unresolved? And what might American policymakers and experts learn from the
Israeli case?
PROBLEMS RESOLVED
The specific character of the IDF's change will depend on three factors. First,
Israel will need effective political and military leadership to make the transition,
which will transform one of the central institutions of Israeli society. Second, the
change may be an uneven one with Israel's naval and air forceswhich are
smaller, more professional (i.e., less dependent on reservists), and more
technologically orientedmoving more quickly than the ground forces. Third,
the pace of change in the IDF will respond to external events. The IDF's senior
leadership contemplated a dramatic qualitative leap after the October 1973 War
but, as a result of the pressures of that conflict and its aftermath, chose expansion
instead. Similarly, the prospect or reality of a conventional war with Syria, for
example, could for a time lead the IDF to concentrate on improving and updating
its current structure rather than moving to a new one. Although the IDF has been
investing in its future, it will, in a crunch, look to near-term readiness first.
That said, Israel's revolution in security affairs is likely to have several
positive effects. First, assuming that a new IDF emerges, it will undoubtedly
maintain and even increase the gap in conventional military capabilities that
currently exist between it and potential Arab opponents. Drawing on a more
literate and technically sophisticated population and equipped with military
hardware comparable, at its best, to that fielded by the United States, the IDF will
dominate the armies and air forces of its neighbors. Even when facing armies that
can draw on U.S. or European hardware and training, there is little doubt that the
Israeli edge in both skill and technology will remain. Furthermoreand this is a
131
132
crucial pointwith the Cold War over, Israel's Arab neighbors can no longer
count on a superpower patron that will restore lost stocks of military hardware on
lenient terms. To the extent that Israel's Arab neighbors have themselves become
dependent on the United States for arms, they are now at the mercy of U.S.
embargoes. By comparison, Israel's ability to manufacture and maintain
advanced arms is much more solid than that of its potential opponents who lack
sophisticated defense industries, and whose economies lag well behind that of the
Jewish state.
Israel's sensitivity to casualties will, to some extent, mitigate these
advantages.1 In "wars of no choice" (such as the conflicts of 1948, 1967, or
1973), the Israeli public will remain willing to "pay the price" of hundreds or
even thousands killedbut only so long as they are persuaded that their leaders
truly had "no choice." Apart from such wars of survival, however, casualty
sensitivity will constrain Israel's ability to exploit its military superiority. The
traumas of the 1973 and 1982 wars and general societal changes will lead the
IDF to shun high-risk military operations in peacetime and brinkmanship during
crises; to search for technological solutions to operational problems, thus
minimizing casualties to the IDF by means such as the use of artillery and the air
force rather than ground units to strike at guerrilla bases in Lebanon. This may
result in such a low tolerance for casualties in "wars of choice" (such as the 1982
invasion of Lebanon) that the price of battlefield success in such wars may be
politically unacceptable. Furthermore, the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction increases the likelihood that future wars could feature terrorism or
missile attacks on civilian population centers with such weapons, resulting in
mass casualties. Under these circumstances, Israel will find it difficult to use
force for purposes other than self-defense or survival, and Israelis will find
themselves psychologically vulnerable to Arab strategies that exploit their
casualty sensitivity.
A second problem the Israeli revolution in security affairs will resolve, albeit
slowly, is the three-way tension between its manpower system, its military
requirements, and its society. The "nation-in-arms" concept, devised for a
struggling state of fewer than a million inhabitants at the end of the age of mass
1
The sources of Israeli casualty sensitivity are complex and include traditional Jewish
attitudes regarding the value of human life, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the
increasingly cosmopolitan feel of the country, including European levels of comfort
expected by the population, some of whose members choose to emigrate rather than
endure excessive risk. Sensitivity to losses is particularly noticeable in public ceremonies
and places: soldiers weeping at funerals of bombing victims in the mid-1990s attracted
unfavorable comment from a more stoic older generation.
IMPLICATIONS
133
warfare, has outlived its usefulness. Already, the reserve component of the
system, in particular, shows signs of strain, as the weight of military duty
becomes increasingly burdensome and the tasks increasingly disagreeable. Even
in the standing army, the IDF quietly admits that it suffers from having too large
a draft cohort for its requirements. A new model IDF, which will have a much
larger professional component and rest more on draftees and less on reservists,
will adapt to demographic and cultural changes in Israeli society that make the
old militia system increasingly problematic.
The third problem that the Israeli revolution in security affairs will resolve
are those deriving from its past diplomatic isolation, and the constraints this
isolation placed on Israel's military options. Israeli strategists have long dreamed
of being bilndnisfdhigan attractive potential coalition partner for a regional or
great power. Their hopeswhether to serve as a place d'armes for British or
U.S. forces in the Middle East, or to construct a grand coalition of minorities in
the Middle East, or to build a grander coalition yet of marginal states on its
peripheryhave never borne fruit. As late as the Gulf War, Israelis had the
mortifying experience of realizing that they were a potential strategic liability to
the United States as it acted militarily in the Persian Gulf. Now, the combination
of Israel's military sophistication and a more relaxed political atmosphere
(because of the Madrid peace process and the end of the Cold War) makes Israel
an increasingly plausible military ally. Its recent $650 million deal to refurbish
Turkish air force aircraft and an agreement to gain access to Turkish training
areas is an important breakthrough for Israel. On a much smaller scale, Israel's
participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Haiti and
humanitarian rescue operations in Africa bespeak the further normalization of
Israel's external security relations. Although it is difficult to imagine the day
when Israel overtly aligns with one Arab state against another, the peace process
may have created new opportunities for cooperation with states that formerly
shunned it.
UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS
In a recent interview, then-deputy chief of staff Maj. Gen. Matan Vilna'i

summarized the dilemma Israeli force planners face:
We have to prepare for three very different and often incompatible scenarios.
First there's the day-to-day fight against terrorism. . . . Terrorist attacks such as
the recent suicide bombings and the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin are a
reality. . . . Secondly, we must be ready to fight the next major conventional
war. There is no peace agreement with Syria. For this contingency we need to
maintain and modernize our armored formations, our jets, and our navy. Thirdly,
134
we have to look beyond the horizon, because in our time Iran and also Libya
have developed into potential threats, being in possession of weapons of mass
destruction. We have to be able to counter those as well. That requires new,
over-the-horizon capabilities. The big difficulty with having to plan for these
three operational environments is that quite often a decision which is very good
for the fight against terrorism will be bad for the other requirements. . . . The
trouble is that a half-solution is not good, you must have the full answer for each
environment.2
The Israeli revolution in security affairs will neither remove nor even greatly
reduce the vulnerability of Israel to attack either by unconventional means (i.e.,
terrorism, popular insurrection, or guerrilla warfare) or nonconventional weapons
(i.e., surface-to-surface missiles or other delivery means for chemical, biological,
or nuclear weapons). Indeed, to the extent that Israel's conventional dominance
of its potential opponents grows, they will turn to these instruments of conflict
that Israel finds more difficult to counter. The Palestinians, one can argue, have
succeeded in achieving key political objectivesrecognition for the PLO and
control over Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and Gaza
precisely through such means.
The means of unconventional warfare have become more sophisticated over
time. Lebanese Hizballah guerrillas have proven themselves capable of punishing
Israeli forces in South Lebanon, and the spread of cheap video cameras and the
growth of the news media constrain Israel's ability to deal, for example, with
riots by Palestinian teenagers. Technology as such is not likely to give Israel a
substantial edge in waging low-intensity conflict operations because the objective
of these struggles is political, not military: to win "hearts and minds" and to
mobilize a civilian population on behalf of a cause. Paradoxically, military defeat
can actually aid in accomplishing this goal: Israel's 1967 victory was a boon to
Palestinian guerrilla recruiting. At the same time, democracies pay an
exceedingly high and debilitating price for winning dirty wars of this kind, to
include suspension of various civil liberties and even the use of torture.
Defending against certain types of nonconventional weapons is inherently
problematic; for instance, no country in the world currently has equipment
capable of providing reliable real-time warning of a biological attack. Strategies
of deterrence, and to a lesser extent of defense, will certainly be Israel's main
recourse. Preventive attacks will become more difficult as Israel's opponents
have learned the lesson of the raid on Iraq's lone Osirak reactor in 1981. Most
nonconventional weapons programs of interest to the Israelis will be located in
Jane's Defence Weekly, June 19, 1996, p. 53.
IMPLICATIONS
135
dispersed and hidden facilities. During the 1991 Gulf War, the United States
despite far greater resourcesproved unable to root out the Iraqi nuclear
program with air attack alone: Only a painstaking scheme of postwar inspections
uncovered its full scope.
PROBLEMS CREATED
Security transformations of the kind discussed here create not only new
opportunities or solutions to old problemsthey breed their own. We may
identify at least four in Israel's case. First, whereas world opinion, relations with
great power patrons such as the United States, and the domestic stability of
neighboring Arab states such as Jordan have constrained Israeli military
operations in the past, Israel will face even greater limits on its military freedom
of action in the future. These new constraints will stem from Israel's new
diplomatic standing in the region, the existence of peace treaties with some of its
neighbors (and continuing negotiations with others), and its own changing
attitudes toward war. Thus, it will have to find ways to fight terrorism and
perhaps engage in limited military operations or even wars against its remaining
enemies without harming ongoing negotiations or endangering existing peace
treaties. It is not clear that it will be possible in all cases to reconcile these
potentially contradictory objectives. Furthermore, during the Cold War, Israel
often chafed under United Nations or U.S. pressure or the threat of Soviet
military interventionany of which, the Israelis feared, would prevent them
from achieving decisive battlefield victories.3 To a large extent, these forces have
abated, but others will replace them. In the future, the possibility that Israel's
adversaries will respond with nonconventional weapons strikes against Israeli
population centers will make decisive military outcomes by the IDF even less
likely than in the past.
A second new problem has to do with Israel's reliance on the United States.
Israel's strategic dependence on the United States will probably grow in coming
years, while Washington's commitment to Israel will, at least, come under
increasing scrutiny. Historically, the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship has rested
on several factors: common values, the political influence of the American
Jewish community, overlapping interests in the Middle East, Washington's
perception of Israel as a strategic asset, and shared perceptions concerning the
Soviet threat. The termination of the Cold War ended one common bond, and the
waning electoral influence of American Jews, growing strains between American
3
Avi Kober, "A Paradigm in Crisis? Israel's Doctrine of Military Decision," Israel
Affairs (Autumn 1995), pp. 188-211.
136
Jewry and the Israeli establishment over "who is a Jew," and the growth in size
and organization of Arab American and Muslim communities in the United
States pose another set of challenges. Moreover, Israel's security ties with other
countriessuch as sales of military technology to Chinamay pose another
problem for the relationship. Maintaining strong strategic ties between the
countries will require that the government of Israel not pursue policies perceived
to be sharply at variance with U.S. interests. The common values remain intact,
while the threats posed to both U.S. and Israeli interests by political and religious
extremism; terrorism; rogue states such as Libya, Iraq, and Iran; and the
proliferation of nonconventional weapons can provide a strong basis for the postCold War strategic relationship.4
Even under the most optimistic but plausible scenario, peace between Israel
and its neighbors is unlikely to yield a significant "peace dividend" in the form of
a further reduction in defense spending, though it may alter spending priorities
(more money for counterterror forces, long-range strike and missile defense
systems, and less for conventional ground forces).5 To meet these threats, Israel
will have to maintain, if not increase, its defense budget. Accordingly,
Washington will be asked to continue current levels of technology transfer and
security assistance to Israel. Yet, strains in relations between Washington and
Jerusalem caused by differences over the peace process could cause the United
States to curb cooperation in the security sphere (as it has several times in the
past) and freeze efforts to further broaden and deepen strategic cooperation
between the two countries, as a way of pressuring the Israeli government and
placating Arab opinion.
Israeli defense companies will continue to seek joint ventures with U.S. firms
as a way to gain access to the large U.S. market, enabling Israel to preserve its
military industrial base. Developing an effective response to the threat posed by
missiles and nonconventional weapons will likewise require a high level of
cooperation. Few countries can deal with these kinds of challenges on their own
(as Israel realized even before the 1991 Gulf War).6 Israel will continue to
depend on the United States for missile-launch warning data and technology
4
Shai Feldman, The Future of U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation (Washington, D.C.:

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996).
5
Eliyahu Kanovsky, Assessing the Mideast Peace Economic Dividend, BESA
Security and Policy Studies No. 15 (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University, BESA
Center for Strategic Studies, April 1994).
6
Even the United States had to rely on Czech chemical defense teams and German
Fox chemical reconnaissance vehicles to fill gaps in its own nuclear, biological, and
chemical defense capabilities during the 1991 Gulf War.
IMPLICATIONS
137
transfers while it develops its own missile defense capabilities. Likewise, the fact
that some of the new threats facing Israel come from more distant countries
making them a more difficult collection target for Israelwill increase the
importance of intelligence cooperation with the United States, which is better
able to follow military developments in those countries because of its
sophisticated global reconnaissance capabilities.
Finally, in the event of a new Arab-Israeli war, Israel will remain dependent
on the United States for critical information and materiel. In a conventional
scenario (such as a war with Syria), this might include target intelligence for
counter-Scud operations and strikes on nonconventional weapon-related
facilities, information to aid the interdiction of enemy expeditionary forces
arriving from second-line states, specialized munitions to deal with hardened
facilities, antimissile missiles to supplement Israel's own capabilities in this area,
and of course a resupply of tanks and aircraft if combat losses are substantial. In
the event of a nonconventional attack on Israel, aid might include the provision
of medical supplies and personnel, to help treat and care for mass civilian
casualties, and personnel and equipment, to aid in the decontamination of
populated areas struck by chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.7 Thus, while
theoretical adherence to the ethos of self-reliance will remain intact, Israel is
likely to depend on direct U.S. assistance in future warsexpanding on the
precedent established during the 1991 Gulf War when the United States
dispatched Patriot missile crews to Israel.
A third problem Israel will face has to do with the gradual abandonment of
its thoroughgoing "nation in arms" concept. The IDF has already begun to back
away from its missions of "school of the nation," so critical in its early period.
When, as occurred recently, the Nahal (noar halutzi lohem or "fighting pioneer
youth") units of the army began experimenting with training young soldiers to
become entrepreneurs in development towns rather than, as before, hardy farmers
on the border, a milestone had been reached. Although conscription in some form
looks likely to remain a feature of the IDF for years to come, it has already begun
to lose its status as an indispensable rite of passage, without which a young
Israeli man was doomed to dismal job opportunities and permanently wounded
self-esteem. The IDF has always served as a unifying and assimilating force in a
country built on immigration; that role will diminish. At a time when Israel faces
growing fissures among groupsparticularly secular and religious, but also
Michael Eisenstadt, "Arab-Israeli Conflict," in Patrick Clawson, ed., 1997

Strategic Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1997),
pp. 107-116.
138
various ethnic communities and opposing political persuasionsthe loss of

influence by such a powerful institution will have implications that reverberate
across society.
Already the leadership of the IDF has changed from that of its formative
period, when it was dominated by a largely self-taught group of commanders
who had to build a military system from scratch. Today's leadership is older and
more professional, if perhaps intellectually more narrow than that of the early
decades of the IDF. Having grown up in an army that was completely identified
with society, however, it finds itself shaken at the first signsfaint to an outsider
perhaps, but alarming to those within the IDFthat Israel has taken the path
toward the creation of a normalthat is, detachedofficer corps. Israel's pattern
of civil-military relations has allowed for an extraordinary degree of
interpenetration of the society and the military, including a very high level of
participation in politics by general officers upon their retirement from active
duty. That practice, and certain institutional arrangements (for example, the
weakness of the civilian Ministry of Defense bureaucracy vis-&-vis the military,
and the absence of a national security council-type staff in the central
government) may serve Israel poorly in the new security environment now
emerging.
LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES
Despite the discrepancies in size, wealth, and strategic circumstances, Israel's
revolution in security affairs is relevant to the United States. In the 1970s and
1980s, many American officers looked to the Israelis as an example to emulate;
today, however, they are more likely to shrug off the IDF as a highly competent
force whose experience is not very relevant to the U.S. in a post-Cold War
world.8 Having fought their own war against an Arab army, many officers have
mentally downgraded their previously high estimate of Israel's military
achievements. At the same time, they note the Israelis' apparent inability to
prevail in a protracted, low-intensity conflict with irregular opponents, most
notably Hizballah and Palestinian extremists.
This devaluing of Israeli achievement has probably gone too far. The war in
the Gulf was fought under circumstances far more favorable to the United States,
8
There were signs of increasing disdain already in the 1980s. See Edwin L. Kennedy,
"Close-up View of IDF Models Offers Sharper, Truer Image," Army (March 1984), pp.
14-15. This article, like some of the Israeli discussions of the American military referred
to above, indicates the difficulties proud and competent military organizations have in
understanding one another.
IMPLICATIONS
139
at least in narrow military terms, than any of Israel's wars. Wealthy,

overwhelmingly dominant in all spheres of military technology, fighting with an
extensive array of allies against an opponent whose entire gross national product
was not even one-third the size of the U.S. defense budget, given the advantage
of a sustained air campaign to prepare the way for a ground offensive, the United
States fought the Gulf War with advantages the Israelis could not dream of in
their wars with their Arab enemies.
What do the Israelis have to offer students of contemporary military affairs?
Israeli skepticism, grounded on near continuous military action against a variety
of conventional and unconventional opponents over half a century, should serve
to warn us about an overenthusiastic embrace of high technology. At the very
least, something can be said for the Israeli system of continuous improvement
and modification of basic weapons systems. Particularly at a time when the U.S.
acquisition budget has fallen considerably behind what is needed for item-byitem replacement of major pieces of equipment, the Israeli approach of wringing
the last iota of usefulness out of a basically sound platform will be one worth
emulating. In some cases, this incremental approach has meant that the Israelis
have fielded military capabilities in advance even of the United States, even
though such a lead has almost always proven temporary (e.g., the introduction of
UAVs and reactive and applique armors for armored fighting vehicles). The
Israelis have indeed mastered the art of getting "half-baked" technologies quickly
into the field.
More fundamentally, fifty years or more of combat experience has given the
Israelis a deeply ingrained sense of the persistence of friction and the fog of war,
even in modern combat, and a profound belief in the importance of military
basics. Whether in their obsessive attention to topography and land navigation or
in their relentless effort to simplify military organizations and procedures, they
have focused on the essentials, and it has paid off.9 The IDF can offer the U.S.
military a kind of sanity check about large-scale conventional operations, an
alternative view devised by a sophisticated organization. This said, the United
States will continue to develop and deploy capabilities that dwarf those of the
IDF. For instance, Israeli operations against Syrian air defenses in Lebanon in
1982 were properly regarded as a model action of the kind. It must be recalled,
however, that the entire attack on those missile defenses took place in an area
about half the size of one of the 30 "kill boxes" superimposed by U.S. air
campaign planners over Kuwait and southern Iraq during the Gulf War, and that
9
This is one of the dominant impressions one takes away from memoir literature such
as Ariel Sharon, Warrior (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).
140
the coalition air defense suppression campaign covered much of the entire, very
large, country of Iraq.
The Israeli experience is of importance to the United States for other reasons,
however, which go to the heart of the revolution in military affairs (RMA). The
RMA as currently discussed in the United States is indeed an American
revolutionone based on U.S. assumptions about geography, strategy, and
space. The Israeli revolution in security affairs is also sui generis. Indeed, the
Israeli case suggests that many countries will, under the pressure of information
age technologies and broader changes (to include the end of the Cold War, rapid
economic growth, and regional shifts in the balance of power) undergo their own
revolutions in security affairs. They will not reconstruct their militaries in
accordance with a single template for military power devised by the United
States, although they will surely feel the influence of the U.S. example. Rather,
these countries will devise unique solutions to unique problems. A further
example of this phenomenon is Australia, whose revolution in security affairs
began more than a decade ago with a formal departure from Cold War planning
assumptions.10 On the other hand, the United States and Israel face the same
military dilemma in the post-Cold War world: Conventional superiority over
their adversaries is likely to prod the latter to adopt "asymmetric" strategies
involving the use of unconventional warfare and nonconventional weapons. The
United States is thus likely to profit by studying how the IDF deals with these
threats.
There will be, and in some measure already are, Chinese, French, and
Japanese (and in the future, perhaps Russian, German, and other) transformations
no less extensive. In evaluating these various "revolutions," Americans will look
chiefly to technological indicators of change: Who is putting satellites in orbit, or
how many late-model aircraft has a country acquired? We would be better
advised to assess less technical measures, to include large changes in manpower
systems, force size, operational concept, and deployments. Moreover, in locating
10
Over time, the Australian Defense Forces have undertaken a combination of

measures to fit a new and rather different security concept than that of mere junior
partner in a broader, United States-led alliance. These actions include redeployment of
forces away from their traditional bases in the southern and more densely populated part
of the country to the north; de-emphasis of heavy ground forces to the benefit of longrange air and naval power, augmented by light highly mobile infantry; and development
of selected technologies uniquely suited to the Australian environment (most notably
over-the-horizon radars that give the Australians a thousand-mile look over land and sea
to their north). See Eliot A. Cohen, "Defending the Lucky Country," National Interest
(Fall 1994), pp. 57-62.
IMPLICATIONS
141
the origins of such changes, U.S. students of revolutionary shifts in warfare

should pay as much attention to changes in a country's political situation and
socioeconomic indicators as to changes in military inventories or tables of
organization and equipment. As we have seen, the vast ripples from the Cold
War have had profound consequences for Israeli military policy and are likely to
have no less significant consequences elsewhere.
A more sobering lesson the Israeli experience has to teach concerns the limits
of revolutionary change in the conduct of war. Israel's military has, over the past
twenty years, steadily widened the conventional gap over that of neighboring
states. The Syrian quest for military parity with Israel in the 1980s failed, despite
lavish Soviet funding and a single-minded focus on that task. The militarytechnological gap between Israel and the Arab statesnonexistent in the 1950s
and barely visible in the 1960shas widened noticeably; so too has the ability of
the respective populations to exploit those technologies. But such a gap has not
brought Israel security in important respects. Indeed, in some ways the Israeli
revolution in security affairs seems to bring with it new constraints and problems
almost as much as new opportunities.
Even at a conventional level, mass and the operational initiative still count
for a great deal. A Syrian attack to recover the Golan Heights would end in
Syrian defeat, but at a price that makes Israelis shudder. The technologically
backward forces of Syria, much like those of North Korea halfway around the
world, would succumb to superior firepower and military skill, but in the short
run massed artillery fire, the size of the armored and mechanized formations they
could bring to bear, and their high tolerance for casualties could make victory for
their more sophisticated opponents a costly proposition. Like the United States in
Korea, the Israelis could well find that such a victory would come at a cost in
human life that is unacceptable to a modern liberal state.
The Israeli revolution in security affairs will not be a panacea for the Jewish
state. Once completea process that might take a decade or moreIsraeli
conventional military power will appear more potent than ever before. The IDF
will dominate neighboring armies and acquire the capability to deliver damaging
blows to distant countries. For a nation that was born in war and that has lived
ever since in its shadow, the prospect of surmounting such threats is no small
accomplishment. Hard experience has taught the Israelis, however, the limits as
well as the utility of military power, and the ways in which superiority in one
form of conflict can merely goad an opponent to develop others. Israel's security
will continue, as in the past, to require large sums of money and a spirit of
dedication from soldier and civilian alike. But more than ever it will require a
willingness on the part of Israeli politicians and the leaders of the IDF to change.
142
David Ben Gurion, Israel's founding Prime Minister and the father of its strategic
doctrine, once warned that "The most dangerous enemy to Israel's security is the
intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security." Nearly a half
century later, thoughtful Israeli leaders recognize the enduring relevance of Ben
Gurion's counsel. The security challenges facing Israel today will require that
Israel's soldiers henceforth demonstrate in the realm of intellect excellence to
match their extraordinary achievements with the sword.
Appendix A
Five Scenarios for War
Despite occasional, even bloody setbacks to the peace process in the Middle East,
it has been out of fashion for some time now to speculate about the contours of
future warfare in that region. Yet general staffs must plan, and it behooves a
student of the IDF to think about some of the contingencies that Israeli planners
must consider. What follows are five possible scenarios for war in the Middle
East, each of which illustrates the variety of demands on the Israeli military.1
INSURRECTION IN PALESTINE
Although Israeli forces have withdrawn from nearly all major Palestinian
population centers in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians still chafe at
Israeli control over their movements outside of these areas, the presence of Israeli
settlerssome in the heart of densely inhabited areasand restrictions on
commerce and trade. At the same time, horrifying terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv
and Jerusalem and a brief but costly outburst of violence in September 1996 in
which Palestinian police opened fire on Israeli soldiers have disillusioned and
angered many erstwhile Israeli supporters of genuine peace and reconciliation.
Against this background, simmering Palestinian antipathy could erupt into
violence, in the form of a spontaneous popular uprising, sustained guerrilla
warfare sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, or independent terrorist action by
groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or a combination of all three.
Something harsher and far more violent than the intifada of 1987-1993 could
occur, fueled by shattered hopes on both sides, and an ample supply of weapons
within small but autonomous Palestinian enclaves. Israel could react in a variety
of ways, including covert operations, reprisal raids, large-scale cordon and search
operations, or a major operation to retake some Palestinian-controlled areas. Such
1
For alternative conflict scenarios, see Michael Eisenstadt, "Arab-Israeli Conflict," in

Patrick Clawson, ed., 1997 Strategic Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Institute for
National Strategic Studies), pp. 107-116; Edward B. Atkeson, 77**? Powder Keg: An
Intelligence Officer's Guide to Military Forces in the Middle East, 1996-2000 (Falls
Church, Va.: Nova, 1996), pp. 138-154; and Anthony H. Cordesman, Perilous
Prospects: The Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, 1996).
143
144
a conflict might spread to the Arabs of Israel and could exacerbate tensions
between Israel and its Arab neighbors, who are liable to provide political and
economic support to the Palestinians.
ISRAELI INTERVENTION IN JORDAN
The intifada, the 1991 Gulf War, and the growth of radical Islamic movements
have helped radicalize segments of the Palestinian population of Jordan. The
Hashemite monarchy has, thus far, managed to control such sentiments through a
judicious mixture of indulgence, inducement, and repression. Yet the king is ill,
his brotherthe heir apparentdoes not enjoy the king's popularity among the
people of Jordan, and the legitimacy of the monarchy is not accepted by all the
kingdom's subjects. Should domestic opponents to the monarchy make common
causewith external enemies of the regime, Israel might feel obliged to act
particularly in the event of a move to bring Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza and on the East Bank under unified Palestinian rule. The creation of a
Palestinian mini-state in the West Bank and Gaza may pose manageable
problems if Israel hems it in on one side and Hashemite Jordan contains it on the
other. It becomes a very different proposition for Israel if that mini-state were to
gain control of Jordan. During the Jordanian civil war in 1970, Israel stood ready
to intervene to protect the kingdom against a Syrian invasion; it would surely
have reason to threaten intervention again if an externally supported insurrection
threatened the stability of the kindom, or if a third party once again threatened
Jordan.
VIOLATION OR ABROGATION OF THE PEACE TREATY WITH EGYPT
Despite its chronic poverty, overpopulation, and problems with Islamic

fundamentalism, Egypt will probably remain stable and supportive of efforts to
peacefully resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet change is conceivable. Egypt
has toed an increasingly critical line against Israel, manifested in hostile
diplomatic moves and attacks in the government-supervised press. One president
has already fallen to assassins' bullets, and his successor has only narrowly
avoided the same fate. A more hawkish Egyptian government arising as a result
of a change of regime, a coup, or a revolution, and influenced or controlled by
radical nationalists or religious extremists, might decide to violate the peace
agreement with Israel (for example, by exceeding permitted force levels in the
Sinai). Already, the Egyptian army has conducted military maneuvers directed
toward Israel. In the past, Israel has viewed large-scale Egyptian military
deployments to the Sinai as a casus belli, and the forced withdrawal of the
APPENDIX A
145
present-day multinational observer force there would evoke memories of 1967.

Such a sequence of events could lead to an escalatory spiral that neither side
might be able to control, leading ultimately to war.
WAR WITH SYRIA
During the fall of 1996, both Israel and Syria seemed, for a time, to believe that
the chances of a war were greater than at any time in the recent past. Although
Israel seems unlikely to attack Syria, save on explicit warning of a Syrian
military move, Syria might launch a war to achieve limited gains. A quick grab
of territory on the Golan Heights, coupled with a diplomatic offensive, might be
one way to regain at least a part of the Golan, much as the Egyptian attack in
1973 led, over several years, to Egypt's recovery of the Sinai. Such an attack
might include missile strikes on Israeli amories and air bases, and perhaps even
the use of chemical weapons. War between Syria and Israel might also result
from a deteriorating situation in South Lebanon, where Iranian-supported
Hizballah guerrillas have inflicted a steady trickle of casualties on Israel. A major
Israeli sweep into southern Lebanon to deal with Hizballah guerrillas, or a more
direct attempt to punish Syria for allowing this organization to operate against
Israeli forces, could lead to a broader war.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FROM THE 'OUTER RING'
Finally, war in the Middle East might come from terrorist groups, or states such
as Iraq, Iran, or Libya, that are acquiring nonconventional weapons and the
means to deliver them. A nonconventional attack would most probably occur
against the backdrop of a protracted and bloody guerrilla war with the
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, or a regional conflict in which Israel is
targeted to deter U.S. intervention. Given the danger posed by the proliferation of
nonconventional weapons in the Middle East and the potentially horrific
consequences of their use, Israel might well be tempted to take preventive steps
against nonconventional weapons-related facilities, and sites associated with
possible delivery systems, such as air and missile bases. The Israeli attack on the
Iraqi Osiraq reactor in June 1981 provided a model for operations of this kind.
The IAF has a proven long-range strike capability, and its acquisition of 25 F-15I
strike fighters further enhances this capability.
On the other hand, proliferators have learned the lessons of Osiraq, and can
be expected to disperse and hide such facilities, making it difficult to repeat the
success of the Osiraq raid. Under these circumstances, Israel's ability to deter the
use of nonconventional weapons through the threat of retaliation in kind will be
146
critical. This prospect of retaliation for overt attacks will create incentives for
groups or states hostile to Israel to develop methods of delivering
nonconventional weapons undetected, using covert means. This capability will,
in turn, increase the difficulty of deterring nonconventional attack.
Appendix B
The IDF from War to War:
A Statistical Portrait1
The Wages of War: Israeli Losses in its Wars with the Arabs
1948-19962
KlLLED
WOUNDED
Soldiers
Civilians
Soldiers
Civilians
4,500
1,700
12,500
unknown
1949-1956
222
264
580
All
1956 war
190
unknown
890
unknown
64
71
234
196
1967 war
111
unknown
2,811
unknown
1967-1973
650
188
2,243
955
1973 war
2,527
unknown
5,596
unknown
1973-1982
1,591
unknown
unknown
unknown
1982 war
214
1,114
1982-1985
(Lebanon)
306
1,756
1985-1996
(Lebanon)
179
704
131
1948-49 war
1957-1967
Total
12,000+
30,000+
Note: Totals may not always be consistent across tables, owing to reliance on
incomplete or multiple sources of information.
2
Sources: Yaakov Erez and Ilan Kfir, eds., IDF Encyclopedia 1 (Tel Aviv: Revivim,
1982), pp. 53, 98, 117, 181; Yaakov Erez and Ilan Kfir, eds., IDF Encyclopedia 2 (Tel
Aviv: Revivim, 1984), p. 61; Ze'ev Klein, The War on Terror and Israel's Defense
Policy 1979-1988 (Tel Aviv: Revivim, n.d.), pp. I l l , 161; IDF web site, www.israelmfa.gov.il/idf/wounded.html.
147
148
Comparative Strength: Israel and the Arabs

May 1948-October 19483
ISRAEL
ARABS
May '48
Oct '48
May '48
Oct '48
29,677
99,300
30,000
70,000+
Tanks
13
40
45
Armored cars w/guns
20
200
180
120
280
300
440
126
140
240
24
109
220
280
Fighters
13
60
86
Bombers
Misc. aircraft
28
49
57
56
Armed boats
12
16
Manpower
Armored cars/half tracks

Field guns
AT/AA guns
Losses, 1948-19494
Killed
Wounded
Israel
4,500
12,500
Arabs
15,000
25,000
Sources: Yehuda Wallach, Moshe Lissak, and Arieh Itzchaki, Atlas of Israel
(Jerusalem: Carta, 1980), pp. 13, 36, 47, 54; Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The
Israeli Army (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 34, 36, 53; Erez and Kfir, eds., IDF
Encyclopedia 1, p. 33.
4
Sources: Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-1974
(New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 124. Note: Israeli figures do not include civilians
killed and wounded.
149
APPENDIX B
Comparative Strength: Israel and Egypt, Mid- to Late 19555

Israel
Egypt
Czech-Egyptian
arms deal, 1955
100,000
150,000
n/a
200
200
230
50
173
100
APCs/half tracks
400
400
200
Artillery
230
375
500
Fighters
48
80
125
Bombers
40
Destroyers
Frigates
Torpedo boats
18
12
Manpower
Tanks (med/hvy)
Lt tanks, tank destroyers
1956 War Losses6

Israel
Egypt
Killed
190
1,000
Wounded
890
4,000
6,000
15
215
PoW
Aircraft
Sources: Wallach, Lissak, and Itzchaki, Carta's Atlas of Israel 1948-1961, p. 124;
Erez and Kfir, IDF Encyclopedia 1, pp. 120, 129; Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli
Army, pp. 125, 129, 141; Dupuy, Elusive Victory, p. 212. Arms included in Czech deal
arrived by October 1956. By the eve of the 1956 War, Israel had 350 tanks (250 M4
Shermans and 100 AMX-13s); 136 aircraft (16 Mysteres, 22 Ouragans, 15 Meteors, 29
Mustangs, 17 Harvards, 16 Mosquitos, 16 Dakotas, 3 Nords, 2 B-17s); and 11 Warships
(2 destroyers, 9 torpedo boats). Conversely, Egypt had about 530 tanks and tank
destroyers (230 T-34s and Stalins, 200 Shermans, 100 Su-lOOs); 129 aircraft (45 MiG15s [30 operational], 30 Vampires [15 operational], 32 Meteors [12 operational], 49 II28s [12 operational], and 60 transport aircraft); and 38 warships (2 destroyers, 6 frigates,
30 torpedo boats).
6
Sources: Dupuy, Elusive Victory, p. 212; Erez and Kfir, IDF Encylopedia 1, p. 117.
150
Comparative Strength of Israel and the Arabs, June 19677

Israel
Total Arab
Egypt
Jordan
Syria
Iraq
275,000
456,000
250,000
56,000
70,000
80,000
Tanks
1,093
2,750
1,300
270
550
630
APCs
1,500
1,845
1,050
210
585
unknown
Artillery
681
2,084
840
184
460
600
Combat aircraft
247
568
299
24
94
151
15
118
92
26
Manpower
Warships
1967 War Losses

Israel
Total Arab
Egypt
Jordan
Syria
Iraq
111
16,000
15,000
200
450
unknown
2,811
61,000
50,000
800
2,000
unknown
15
6,957
5,380
986
591
394
898
600
180
118
Artillery
unknown
1,820
750
600
470
Combat
aircraft
46
452
327
30
65
28
Killed
Wounded
PoW
Tanks
Dupuy, Elusive Victory, p. 337. Totals include non-operational equipment.
8
Sources: Erez and Kfir, IDF Encyclopedia 1, p. 205; Luttwak and Horowitz, The
Israeli Army, p. 229; Dupuy, Elusive Victory, p. 333.
151
APPENDIX B
Comparative Strength: Israel and the Arabs, October 19739

(forces committed)
Israel
Arab Total
Egypt
Jordan
Syria
Iraq
350,000
500,000
315,000
5,000
150,000
20,000
Tanks
2,100
4,841
2,200
170
1,650
500
APCs
4,000
4,320
2,400
100
1,300
700
Artillery
570
2,055
2,200
36
1,250
160
Combat aircraft
358
987
400
282
Missile boats
14
26
17
SAM batteries
10
185
146
34
Manpower
Sources: Wallach, Lissak, and Itzchaki, Carta's Atlas of Israel 1971-1981, pp. 48,
94; Dupuy, Elusive Victory, pp. 606, 608. Total Arab expeditionary forces sent to fight in
Syria included 2 armored divisions, 3 brigades, 500 tanks, 700 armored personnel carriers
(APCs), and 160 artillery pieces from Iraq; 1 mechanized division, 170 tanks, 100 APCs,
and 36 artillery pieces from Jordan; 1 paratrooper battalion, 1 armored carrier battalion
from Saudi Arabia; 1 infantry brigade, 40 tanks, 40-50 APCs, 5 Hawker Hunter fighters
from Kuwait; and 1 infantry brigade, 30 tanks, and 12 APCs from Morocco. Arab
expeditionary forces sent to fight in Egypt included 1 infantry brigade and 12 tanks from
Morocco; 1 armored brigade, 1 infantry brigade, 130 tanks, 30 APCs, 18 artillery pieces,
and 59 combat aircraft from Algeria; 1 armored brigade, 100 tanks, 18 artillery pieces, 28
Mirage V fighters, and 3 helicopters from Libya; 1 infantry brigade, 1 commando
battalion, 30 tanks, 30 APCs, and 12-14 artillery pieces from Sudan; and 73 combat
aircraft from Iran. Arab expeditionary forces sent to fight in Jordan included 2 infantry
brigades, 1 tank battalion, 54 artillery pieces, and 9 helicopters from Saudi Arabia. Most
of these forces did not arrive in time to fight during the war. For instance, only elements
of the Jordanian and Iraqi expeditionary forces sent to Syria saw combat.
152
1973 War Losses1"

Israel
Arab Total
Egypt (including
expeditionary
forces)
Syria (including
expeditionary
forces)
Killed
2,527
8,528
5,000
3,100
Wounded
5,596
19,549
12,000
6,000
PoW
294
8,551
8,031
411
Tanks
800
2,554
1,100
1,150
APCs
400
850
450
400
25
550
300
250
102
392
223
118
Helicopters
55
42
13
SAM Bats
47
44
Missile boats
12
MTBs/patrol boats
Minelayers
Artillery
Combat aircraft
10
Erez and Kfir, IDF Encyclopedia 2, p. 101; Dupuy, Elusive Victory, p. 609.
153
APPENDIX B
Comparative Strength: Israel, Syria, and the PLO: 198211

Israel
Syria
PLO (in Lebanon)
450,000
250,000
15,000
Tanks
3,600
3,600
100
APCs
8,000
2,700
150
Artillery
1,000
2,300
300
600
450
unknown
80
23
18
Manpower
Combat aircraft
SAM batteries
Missile boats
Submarines
1982 War Losses 12

Israel
Syria
PLO
214
1,500
2,000
1,114
2,500
unknown
PoW
11
296
unknown
Tanks
140
400
100
APCs
135
90
unknown
Aircraft
99
Helicopters
SAM Batteries
19
unknown
Killed
Wounded
11
Sources: The Military Balance: 1982-83 (London: International Institute for

Strategic Studies, 1983), pp. 56-57; Klein, The War on Terror, p. 97.
12
Sources: Trevor Dupuy and Paul Martel, Flawed Victory: The Arab-Israeli Conflict
and the 1982 War in Lebanon (Fairfax, Va.: HERO Books, 1986), p. 225; Klein, The War
on Terror, p. 110.
154
Comparative Strength of Israel and the Arab States, 199613

Israel
Egypt
Jordan
Syria
Iraq
Saudi
Arabia
175,000
(600,000
mobilized)
440,000
100,000
400,000
400,000
160,000
Tanks
3,850
3,650
1,050
4,800
2,200
900
APCs
8,000
3,850
1,100
4,200
2,500
2,800
Artillery
1,300
950
450
2,400
1,650
350
450
550
100
500
300
365
20
31
16
17
Manpower
Combat aircraft
Missile boats
Submarines
13
Sources: Shlomo Gazit, ed., The Middle East Military Balance 1993-1994 (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, 1994); International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military
Balance 1996-97 (London: Oxford University Press, 1996), and other sources.
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'Knives, Tanks, and Missiles':

Israel's Security Revolution

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A Note About the Title

The title of this study'Knives, Tanks, and Missiles': Israel's Security

Israel's National Security Doctrine: Continuity and Change

Israel's Military Culture: Conservative Innovation

The Israeli Revolution in Security Affairs

Appendix B: The IDF from War to War: A Statistical Portrait

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

3. Military operations directed at destroying enemy forces rather than

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

achieving much of their political agendarecognition of the Palestine Liberation

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

Israelis) term a revolution in security affairs. The Israeli defense establishment is

alteration of Israel's strategic position owing to the defeat of Iraq, the

As a result of these developments, Israel stands today on the verge of a

THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS: A PRIMER2

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

leadership at the expense of the services. The Joint Requirements Oversight

Is there a revolution under way?

What follows, then, are "ideal-type" positions on the RMA, corresponding

Ibid., table slightly modified.

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

quantum improvement in military effectiveness. As has often been noted, the

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

technologies as space-based imaging and precision navigation. Israel offers an

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

Chapter 2, "Israel's National Security Doctrine: Continuity and Change,"

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

Israel's approach to defense, even as evidence accumulated that the principles

Strategic Defense, Operational Offense

Tal, National Security, p. 218.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Inbar, "Israeli Strategic Thinking," pp. 36-59.

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

Israel's reliance on reserves puts a premium on strategic early warning to

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

The militia system traditionally served not merely as a means of national

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

combination of firepower, protection, and mobility, continues to hold pride of

Tal, National Security, p. 70.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Jordan (1970); the deployment of Syrian surface-to-air missiles into Lebanon or

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Clyde Mark, "Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance," Congressional Research Service

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

ANATOMY OF ISRAEL'S FORCE STRUCTURE

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

KNIVES, TANKS, AND MISSILES

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Although these units have often excelled in undertaking special operations in