Israel's military stunned by the failure of its air war

[plasticsundance]

TEL AVIV — Israel's new chief of staff, an air force general, believed that most of Israel's future operations would be conducted from the air.

Military leaders were convinced that with superior communications and air power they did not even need new U.S. "bunker buster" munitions to root out terror leaders in underground hideaways.

Today, this vision of air power as a panacea has been shattered.

Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz and his advisers have been stunned by the failure of Israel's air war against Hizbullah, which has shrugged massive air bombings on its headquarters in Beirut to maintain the rocket war against the Jewish state.

"Air power is not the answer here," a senior officer said. 'You have to go from one Hizbullah bunker to another. Some of these bunkers are seven meters deep and can't be destroyed by aircraft, even if you could find them."

More ...

[wtmusic]

1. Bigger bombs should do the trick

:eyes:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. and after that, even bigger ones.

Once Beirut glows in the dark, THEN their airwar will have been successful.

[katmondoo]

2. Wasn't that the same thinking for Iraq

[hadrons]

seems like someone took the Dumsfeld book of wisdom too seriously

[malaise]

4. Israel and her backers

made a big mistake here.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Are Israel's military planners really that delusional?

Anyone with even the most cursory grasp of strategy and tactics knows that wars are won on the ground, not in the air. And history shows that concentrated bombing campaigns don't work against a reasonably well-organised and ideologically motivated guerilla force; all of the US bombing in Vietnam didn't put a dent in the willingness or ability of the Vietnamese to fight.

[Binka]

7. But Hey Now The Pentagon Insists We WON Vietnam But

The "liberal" media and the dirty hippies stood in the way of TROPHY. "WE WON WE WON WE WON wah wah wah."

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. Yeah...

all those people on the roof of the US Embassy scrambling to get aboard the last helicopter out of Saigon sure LOOK like a victory celebration, don't they?

Guess they're going to insist we 'won' in Iraq, too.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. It's not Israel's military planners, it is Air Force generals.

Ever since air power came to the fore, the air force generals of whatever nation have believed they were not only indispensible, but all tha was necessary. LeMay said the same things about Viet Nam. Our propaganda says that US air power won WWII, rather than soviet troops. The air force types believe the propaganda.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. In other news, scientists puzzled at failure of machine-gunning

as a cockroach extermination method.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

8. One word: Shocknawe

They were so busy they forgot to learn from recent history. :shrug:

Somehow it all sounds very familiar...

[Peace Patriot]

9. Vietnam deja vu! You can't win against a people in their own land, if

they are determined to oppose you. The Vietnamese did it with the lightest of weaponry, almost no air force, and living in and communicatng through a million tunnels. Little brown people wearing straw hats and sandals defeated the great U.S. military machine--because they loved their country and all they ever wanted was self-determination.

I pray that Israel, in its frustration, will not use nukes. According to Carl Sagan, in "The Cold and the Dark," even a limited nuclear exchange will destroy our planet's atmosphere. That was the choice in Vietnam as well. And our leaders (Nixon, apparently moved by the huge anti-Vietnam war demonstrations) wouldn't do it. We still slaughtered some 2 million Southeast Asians and over 55,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in that war, but at least we didn't poison Asia for all future generations and destroy the planet. Nothing is worth that. Nothing!

Je me plus la guerre!

[KittyWampus]

10. Steve Clemons also posted Israel is shocked at Hezbollah's capacity

to score hits.

[Skidmore]

13. Were they taking advice from Rummy...

our own DoD genius? Mr. Shock&Awe and CrepePaper&NuttyPutty Strategist.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. I hope this dashes the US and Israel's wetdream

of getting rid of Syria and Iran. It they can't get rid of Hezbollah, they don't stand a chance against a country like Iran.

[Xenotime]

15. That's what happens when you take a page from *'s playbook

[plasticsundance]

16. Israel rembers the last time they faced Hizbullah ...

Israel is definitely desperate.

Part of the aim is to ensure, as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has insisted, that Israeli forces never again face armed Hezbollah fighters nose to nose across the international border. Part of the aim is to clear routes for any larger ground incursion. The army also hopes to pull Hezbollah fighters out of hiding into firefights, the officer said, “so we can kill them.”

The fighting has been intense, the army admits. Hezbollah has had six years to prepare its positions, ambushes and minefields, including buried explosives that can destroy the underbelly of even the most modern Israeli tank. Hezbollah forces are also well equipped with Syrian and Iranian infantry weapons, including laser-guided anti-tank rockets, that far outclass what the Palestinians can muster.

Hezbollah is also believed to possess the Russian Kornet missile, laser-guided and with a thermal sight, designed in the mid-1990’s to attack the most modern tanks equipped with explosive reactive armor, the officer said. Russia sold the Kornet to Syria.

Reading emphasis, this might be a wake up call for the neocons that Iran is as prepared as they state in their saber rattling. Israel even refuses to learn from history, because they've used Lebanon as their whipping child for so long. Iran and Syria are watching, knowing they are even better armed than Hizbullah, and they're also learning how Israeli military tactics unfold.

Many Israelis compare their 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, which began in 1982 and lasted until 2000, to the American experience in Vietnam. Israeli commanders do not want to get sucked back into the “quicksand” of Lebanon, as one of them described it, leading Mr. Olmert and General Halutz to emphasize the “limited” and “temporary” nature of any Israeli raid.

But if there is a major ground operation, the senior officer said, it would be almost useless to go just a few miles into Lebanon, and necessary to go up to the Litani River. “The Katyushas have a range of 20 to 32 kilometers,” he said, and Hezbollah also has Syrian and Iranian missiles with ranges of 40 to 70 kilometers, or 43 miles, with a few Iranian Zelzals that can go 100 kilometers, or 62 miles.

Troops Ready, but Israel Bets on Air Power


As someone keeps stating here at DU, Israel really needs that water supply from the Litani River. Israel is smarting from the deal I read about some years back where Saddam after the end of the first Gulf War had promised to Israel to run water from the Tigris to Israel. National Geographic did an excellent piece a few years back about the scarcity of water in the ME.

[Jacobin]

17. Those pushbutton video wars don't work so well against

guerilla warriors.

What will it take for the industrialized powers to understand that?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. Iraq Redux.

Bet they weren't expecting to lose that ship and those three helicopters either.