Air Power and the Challenges of Israel

The Sixth Annual National Security Conference: Air Power and the Challenges of Israel May 10-11, 2010
The Fisher Institute For
Air & Space Strategic Studies (cc)
The Sixth Annual National Security Conference:
Air Power and the
Challenges of Israel
May 10-11, 2010
Publication No. 46
August 2011
The Fisher Institute
For Air & Space Strategic Studies
Air Power and the
Challenges of Israel
May 10-11, 2010
Proceedings
Publication No. 46
Published Aug. 2011
Table of Contents
Opening Remarks
Brig. Gen. (Res) Asaf Agmon, Head of the Fisher Institute
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Air Power and the Strategic View
Lt. Gen (Ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs
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Air Power Characteristics, Lessons, Challenges
Col. USAF (Ret.) Dr. Philip Meilinger
16
Developments of the Military Concepts of the Adversary
Brig. Gen. Itay Brun, Head of Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Thinking, IDF
25
Changes in the Nature of War: Warfare and the Implications on Air Power
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dr. Dov Tamari
32
War - Continuity in Change
Dr. Colin S. Gray, Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies,
University of Reading, UK
35
The Evolution of Modern Terror and the Challenges of Addressing this Phenomenon
Dr. Boaz Ganor, Founder and Executive Director, the International Policy Institute for
Counter-Terrorism and Deputy Dean, Lauder School of Government,
the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel
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The Challenges Facing the IAF - first session
Lt. Col. (Res.) Ron Tira, military writer and theorist
50
The Challenges Facing the IAF - second session
Roni Ifrach, Project Initiation Manager, MLM, IAI
58
Force Structuring - Priorities and Balances
Gen. (Ret.) Chuck F. Wald, former deputy commander, US European Command
65
The Future Combat of Manned Aircraft
Stephen F. O'Bryan, Vice President, F-35 Business Development and US European Command
67
Missilery
Uzi Rubin, CEO, Rubincon
71
UAVs
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Ran Carmeli, Head of air division, Aeronautics
77
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It is About Aircraft and not Air Forces
William Owen, military writer and theorist
82
Space
Tal Inbar, Head, Space and UAV Research Center, Fisher Institue
86
Integration between Air-Land Powers
Dr. David E. Johnson, Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation
91
Air Power and the Asymmetric Conflict
Brig. Gen (Res.) Ephraim Segoli, Head of Airpower and Asymmetric Conflict
Research Center, Fisher Institute Raphael Rudnik, researcher,
Dado Ceter (IDF) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
96
Annual Address by the IAF Commander
Maj. Gen. Ido Nechushtan, Commander of the IAF
107
Emerging Technologies
Yair Ramati, VP marketing, IAI
114
Technological Developments in Tactical Missilery
Dr. Dan Peretz, Corp. VP for R&D and Business Development, IMI
121
Platforms
Shlomo Tsach, Director, Advanced Programs, IAI
125
Command and Control Systems
Col. (Res.) Dror Ben David
137
Air Weapons Systems
Yuval Miller, Director, Air to Surface Systems, Missiles and NCW Division, RAFAEL
161
Concluding Panel
Chairman: Maj. Gen. (Ret.) David Ivry, Chairman, Fisher Institute
Moderator: Lt. Col. (Res.) Ron Ben Yishai, Defense and National Security commentator, Ynet
Maj. Gen.l (Ret.) Herzle Bodinger, former commander of the IAF
Air Marshal (Ret.) Geoffrey David Shepherd, former Chief of the Air Force, RAAF
Gen. (Ret.) T. Michael Moseley, former Chief of Staff, USAF
Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi, former Chief of Air Staff, Indian Air Force
Gen. (Ret.) Chuck F. Wald, former deputy commander, US European Command
Discussion
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184
Closing Remarks
Maj. Gen.(Ret.) David Ivry, Chairman, Fisher Institute
189
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Member of the academic board
Brig. Gen.(Res) Asaf Agmon
Brig. Gen.(Res) Ephraim Segoli
Tal Inbar
Administration
Shany Niv Palmon
Sharon Ram
Conference Coordination: Herling - Weinberg
English editor and translator from Hebrew: Dorrit Landes
Graphic design and production: Oded Marom
Cover: Yigal Gabai
Photos: Sivan Faraj
The authors' opinions do not necessarily
reflect those of the Fisher Institute
c
2011. All
rights reserved to the Fisher Institute
P.O.Box 303, Herzlia, Israel 46103
Tel. 9-9510260 Fax. 9-9510261
www.fisherinstitute.org.il
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Opening Remarks
Brig. Gen. (Res) Asaf Agmon, Head of the Fisher Institute
The Fisher Institute is marking its first decade these days. The institute as envisioned by its
founders has been operating for ten years without any support from the state thanks to the
dedication of the members of its board of directors, its staff and its researchers who have
been doing their utmost to promote and contribute in theory and research of all subjects
pertaining to Space, aviation and the Israeli air flank of Israel as well as to broaden our
youths' knowledge and curiosity.
It is only right to thank our founders, the Air Force Association, Maj. General David Ivry,
Maj. General Amos Lapidot, Maj. General Avihu Bin Nun, Maj. General Professor Isaac
Ben Israel, Brig. General Oded Erez, Col. Jackie Shporan, Mr. Eli Zohar, the late Zeev
Schiff and the late Brig. General Raffi Har Lev, the first head of the institute.
Instead of marking our first decade in some glitzy events we decided that this conference
will be a celebration of re-thinking conventional wisdom, creative thinking and mutual
inspiration of different opinions expressed by guests and hosts alike, elaborating views
from all over the world.
This conference does not aim to provide some significant answers to those very complicated
problems the Israeli air flank is facing when considering the future. We wish to raise
questions, points for discussion, examination and rethinking. The daily grind makes it
difficult for our senior officers to make time in order to listen, discuss, think and even
write about the broader problems both in scope and in range. When I read CVs of senior
officers in other air forces I am filled with envy at the long list of articles, researches and
even books they authored. True, the conditions over there are vastly different but the result
is expressed in the profound knowledge and understanding of the strata above the tactical
and operative levels of air flank's functions especially in view of the future.
You will hear from almost every speaker here that the air flank is a first class strategic
asset of every country, and as such the problems it will have to contend with especially in
a place such as the state of Israel are most complex and complicated.
Speaking for myself I am often horrified when I hear leaders, both political and military,
especially retired very senior officers pronouncing some immediate and seemingly simple
solutions. We face an equation systems with numerous unknowns, a few are second or
third degree equations, when you have more unknowns than equations. That is to say there
are several possible solutions, there are many uncertainties and great wisdom is needed
in order to know which combination of solutions should be applied. Even after having
thought we found the right mix vis-à-vis the big, compounded array of threats facing us,
even when we have succeed in building a stable and balanced air flank we shall still have
to contend with the strategic dilemma of when and how to operate it.
Strategic circumstances, international public opinion, economic, media and legal
circumstances as well as others will dictate a different employment of weapons and
measures from that same air flank. Openness, creativity and flexible thinking are among
the required qualities need for constructing and operating an air flank these days, all the
more so when facing the future.
As a member of the Israeli Air Force family I can testify in all modestly that on the tactical
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level, the level in which one knows and operates the technological systems the IAF is
indeed one of the world leaders. I cannot make the same claim for our strategic level is
concerned. To my mind there is still a long way to go. As to the criticism leveled at the
Air Force for its performance throughout the Second Lebanon War the answer is: just
what do you want from the Air Force? - the government did not declare war; I think
that something is wrong with our conception if the IAF boasts that all its operations in
supporting land forces in the Second Lebanon War were not carried out in accordance
with combat doctrine but resulted from improvisation, this is actually a compliment to our
capability to improvise at both staff and field level, yet it is a blunder where it concerns
our looking ahead to the battlefield and the role that the air flank will play in it. If the Chief
of Staff at the time, incidentally an airman, writes that the Air Force executed everything
it had said it could do, it points to a sober vision of existing capabilities but not at the
relevance of the air force in future conflicts to befall Israel.
The Winograd Commission writes in its concluding report in relation to the question of
supplying by air, for example, the IAF's availability to carry out this duty for all the risks
involved and the impressive heroics involved helped to blur the severity of the blunder
committed by land forces in this instance; I wonder if it is not obvious that the air flank
can do complicated things, respond to challenges, react swiftly and flexibly to changing
outlines, to failures in planning and operation, this is in fact the reason that Israel invests
so many budgetary and human resources in the air flank, and still we have not answered
how to correctly build and operate this flank so that it be relevant and give all the necessary
responses at both strategic and operational level.
We are going to devote considerable time, relatively speaking, to the technological issue
– as air flanks and technology always go together. Quite often when presenting future
threats to Israel a rather bleak picture is painted, and when one gets to asking what is the
response, the main item almost always is our human resources. My conclusion – I am sure
none of you would dispute it – is that in the physical comparison of people with people and
also in the mental sphere of motivation and cognitive abilities, we have no advantage over
our enemies. Our human advantage is in the education generally and the technological
education specifically that we give our future generations and the technological systems
we give our people to operate in the battlefield. As one who deals here within the Fisher
Institute with the technological education in Israel in the framework of the First project
aimed at encouraging youths to get involved with science and technology I can tell you that
the technological education in Israel is suffering major setback, similar to that experienced
in most Western countries. By the way, in every annual call-up for military service in the
IDF generally and the IAF specifically we manage to recruit for the technological domain
only 60 percent of the conscripts who have any technological background, even the most
rudimentary. The other 40 percent do not have the minimal background in technology, they
do not know what a screwdriver is, they know nothing of Ohm's Law or how a cog-wheel
works and after an enormous investment is made to train them, they serve efficiently for a
very short while doing their compulsory service and are then released.
In dealing with technology I adopt what President Peres said at one of our preceding
conferences here, "in technology and science there is no second line, you are either at
the forefront or you do not exist". Therefore when I hear suggestions of alternatives
to developments and systems which are the latest word in technology in the shape of
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improvements and upgrades – less expensive, true – of technologies and systems which
are bound to leave us at the second and third line of technological progress, I am concerned
and worried.
The air flank in general and the IAF in particular have always been ahead thanks to systems
and innovations at the apex of technology. I once heard the late Brig. General Asher Snir
saying "the air force needs weapons systems which will pull it upwards by the hair." He
said that in the middle of a discussion and even demonstrated it visually. Now we find
ourselves next to another junction – how should we implement the technology, how should
we keep our feet on the ground when thoughts and ideas soar into Space? Recently the
message one kept hearing was that all future systems will be unmanned, slogans such as
"the last manned aircraft" have been widespread, active defense took a central place, and
that was apparent in the logo of a conference held last week by the Ayit Association and
the Association of Flight and Space Sciences in Israel, whose slogan was "the best defense
is active defense" So, can we say not only that we changed the principles of war but also
that from now on one should not say that offence is the best defense but rather that defense
is the best offence – did we actually mean that?!
Let us drop for a moment all the fixations we have about certain ideas, the systems we
developed and fell in love with, the interests, some of which are legitimate, and wrestle
with the question what is the advantage of a manned aircraft over an unmanned one; what
are its disadvantages.
I should like to quote here something General Dunlop from the American Air Force said,
that the history of human conflict is full of examples showing how militaries reached results
that no algorithm could ever predict. What is the right mixture of defense and offence,
how do you count in the element of early warning when you structure your air power? – I
believe that at the end of the day the answer a rational state would give, for all the criticism
we have – I think that until now the defense establishment of Israel has generally given
good answers for the problems and constraints we encountered - the response would be the
optimum for decision makers above a narrow partisan outlook, because we all understand
these decisions are crucial for our country.
We shall also want to check the importance of jointness of the air flank with other branches
of the military; does the IDF still hold that a fighter plane is not meant for support of
ground forces in general and close support in particular even though in each and every war
we are required to provide such support, quite possibly we shall be required to do the same
in future too. Will today's technology not enable us to do what we could not efficiently do
in the past? – how does the assault helicopter come into this equation and what will its
function be – if any – in the next decades? Maybe the time has come for us to get out of the
ongoing debate of budget sharing among branches and adopt an outlook of converging, as
it exists now in all the most advanced technologies of the world, and if it is too difficult for
the separate branches to achieve it maybe it is time for convergence to be imposed from
above – look at what is happening in the Armed Forces of the US.
True, in an academic discussion devoid of all budgetary aspects it is much easier to reach
theoretical conclusions, life is much harder and full of constraints, we know that, but if we
have no idea as to the right direction, what is the right way then every way and every step
might look as right to us even though they are unlikely to lead us to our goal.
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Air Power and the Strategic View
Lt. Gen (Ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs
The following are self-evident truths – from my point of view, and I need to mention
them because at times I find myself in an argument about the solution when we do not
necessarily agree as to the definition of the problem. As to the definition of the political and
defense challenges facing the state of Israel at this time – in my opinion from the dawning
of Zionism – I would refer to the unwillingness of many actors in our region to recognize
the state of Israel's right to exist as the national home of the Jewish people.
If asked to define the internal challenge we face at this time and throughout the existence
of Zionism, I would say it is first and foremost the capability of Israeli society to withstand
external threats – I shall elaborate how it connects to air power.
When referring to the resistance to Zionism one can look back at 120 years of Zionism and
talk of the development and change in the nature of the threat – you will be discussing it
today. Before the inception of the state the major part of the threat was a threat which was
not then pronounced as such, but it was terror; at the time it was called the Events, attacks,
the Great Arab Revolt etc.
From 1948 until the Yom Kippur War in 1973 the principal threat the IDF had to cope with
was the conventional one, that of armies in the battlefield – in the War of Independence it
was the invasion of Arab armies, then the Sinai Campaign, the Six Days War and the last
conventional war initiated by the Arabs, the Yom Kippur War. Since the Yom Kippur War
and for the last 37 years, they have turned to two sorts of threats; I shall call the first threat
sub-conventional and the second a super-conventional threat.
In the sub-conventional I include terror, guerrilla, rockets, terror in the form of bombing
attacks, suicide bombers, guerrilla typical of the Hezbollah and the development of Hamas
in the Gaza Strip today and the characteristics of guerrilla and rockets – those relatively
conventional ones such as Kassam, katyushas, Fajer and the like.
I count missiles and WMD as super-conventional threats, as well as the Syrian Scud, the
Iranian Shihab and various other sorts introduced in the last few years, as well as chemical
weapons of mass destruction and the Iranian aspiration for a nuclear bomb.
The other change worthy of note before discussing air power is the change in ideology
which is feeding the offensive against the state of Israel: Arab nationalist ideology has
been replaced by the ascendance of Islamic-Jihadi ideology. Naturally, being religious
the Islamic-Jihad ideology knows no compromise; but even the leaders of this ideology
are rational eventually when it comes to their own survival. The good news is that this is
not a problem between Israel and its neighbors because when Israel has to cope with this
ideology, against these elements, whether it is the Islamic regime in Teheran, Hezbollah
in Lebanon or Hamas supporting the Palestinians, all of them see Israel as Satan whilst
America is Big Satan. Well, I guess we could say that a problem shared is a problem
halved.
When considering the threats and challenges from the territorial point of view, we can
definitely talk of a change from conflict with the Ring states, those encircling Israel who
share a border with it as a dominant threat, to a conflict which has been gaining strength
within Israel's borders since the Oslo Accords were first implemented, the conflict with the
Palestinian Authority, with the terrorist organizations and the threat of a third-circle state,
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Iran. These are dominant to my mind, although the conflict with our neighbor states is still
there; the conflict with Syria, even thought the border has been quiet since the cease-fire
following the Yom Kippur War, the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamastan in
the Gaza Strip, acting nowadays as hostile entity.
When considering the picture as a whole, it is clear we are already in a military conflict
with Iran – Iran is the central mover behind aggressions against us, but it is by no means
the only one. Iran prefers to use proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic-Palestinian jihad.
Iran is the one who arms, finances and trains them. Incidentally, Iran's involvement is not
necessarily aimed against Israel since it is involved in challenging the Coalition forces,
in some instances in Afghanistan, certainly in Iraq by supporting the Shiite militias and
some of the Sunni elements in Iraq. The Iranian involvement is evident in Yemen too
and some other places we have no connection with whatsoever, as part of the ideological
weltanschauung of political Islam, that is trying to acquire regional hegemony and it is in
fact challenging the West, America as Big Satan, and Israel as the Small Satan.
In response to these changes and in addition to other modifications in technology, there
is no doubt that the role and potency of air power in Israel grew in proportion to other
branches of the military. Air power grew in importance and influence due to the immense
increase in its capabilities, as well as the need to tailor Israeli response to the strengths and
vulnerabilities of the Israeli state, society and the IDF itself.
Technological developments respond to strong points as well as to vulnerabilities, thus
satellites or unmanned air vehicles respond to one of the major social susceptibilities in
Israel, our extreme sensitivity to human lives, no less than to the need to collect intelligence
over target states without risking what is considered as infringing the sovereignty of enemy
countries.
No doubt the technological capabilities which have improved in the last few years
augmented the radius of operation without the need to refuel in the air; they have brought
about an enormous improvement in the precision of munitions. In WW 2 precision was
1000 m for a bomb, whereas today when a missile is launched in order to hit a vehicle in a
"focused foiling" mission in the Gaza Strip and the missile hits the bonnet rather than the
passenger cabin, an investigation is promptly held.
Thanks to the power of technology, intelligence has marvelously improved and the
practical capability to locate a terrorist, an enormous intelligence challenge since he looks
just like anybody else in the Gaza Strip, mostly drives a civilian vehicle, yet Intelligence
should finally be able to say: this is the one, this is his vehicle. Naturally it is much easier
to locate a tank, an artillery battery, some HQ or any palace belonging to some Arab
leader and most of all, here we deal with a moving target: the terrorist wants to survive,
tries to escape, to change his routine so as to avoid being intercepted, and here comes the
great additional technological capability adopted and absorbed by the IDF in its various
components, command and control or C4I as it is better known.
The actual capability of relaying a piece of information about the terrorist in real time,
a very short time, to the operating component, be it Special Forces, mostly manned or
unmanned air power, and bringing the munitions to the target is in fact an enormous
capability neither the IDF nor other armies had before, a capability developed over the last
few years. When talking of command and control one may talk of a network, of planes in
the network, forces in network, there is again a mighty force multiplier that allows a much
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higher utilization of the available force for efficient operation of every mission.
Israeli technological power is well embodied in all of these and the Israeli Air Force is
justly praised for having adopted, implemented and absorbed it in its operation systems
thus creating the tremendous advantage that air power has acquired in the last few years.
These technological developments are mostly expressed these days in the capability to
destroy targets by air power, an unprecedented capability to destroy targets in a focused
operation as well as high-supply targets of conventional forces. This capability has in fact
changed the importance of air power in relation to the land power in the IDF. This response
has several advantages, firstly it is generalized, generic – when you acquire a capability
of this sort you can use it to fight terror in Gaza, rockets in Lebanon, conventional Syrian
forces and in a war against a third circle state such as Iran because intelligence capability,
if such is in existence, has only to be adjusted to the theatre, precision fire capability –
if it exists – can be applied at any theater and a command and control system fits any
theater. Therefore this response, generalized and generic though it may be is also flexible
and multi-purpose, this force can be allocated to various missions in accordance with the
challenges the enemy poses.
Referring to the conventional challenge we face there is no doubt that nowadays air power
can annihilate military forces at greater scale than in the past. I think we should not talk of
land forces in this context but about air power as a component by itself, capable of great
achievements against the conventional forces opposing us. Naturally there is the capability
of hitting quality targets wherever they may be, the leadership or the military leadership of
the other side, or their sensitive and critical systems.
At the sub-conventional level there undoubtedly is a capability of focused targeting, as
already demonstrated by the IDF that has brought considerable achievements in the war
on terror.
As to fighting rockets and missiles, there is a certain capability of damaging the other
side's launching capabilities and it is clear that this capability is more efficient vis-à-vis
bigger and heavier launchers with a higher signature, and it is reduced when the launcher
is smaller or single-shot like the Kassam or katyusha. The benefit of hitting a one-time
launcher is rather negligeable, it certainly has no significance after the launch so the
challenge from this point of view is great.
Active defense came into being as a partial response to the challenge: it is more efficient
against missiles and heavy systems. When we started dealing with the katyushas and
Kassams I said ironically ' let us give the Palestinians Scuds, because we have the Hetz to
counter Scuds but we do not have similarly adequate active defense against the Kassam'.
Yet active defense does not provide the ultimate response even with the new systems such
as Kipat Barzel (Iron Copula) and Sharvit Ksamim (Magic Wand) at our disposal. It can
lessen the pressure on the population; I referred earlier to the importance of resilience;
while it will not prevent genuine alarm nor the need for citizens rushing to shelters
when need arises, it can certainly lessen the extent of the damage so when we talk of the
capability to cope with rockets and missiles the important thing for us – again, air power
has an important role – is the capacity to exact a stiff price from the other side so that those
who launch rockets and missiles at us will very soon realize they are in a dilemma, should
they or should they not continue this shooting in terms of cost/benefit. Therefore as far as
I am concerned the best defense is offense, certainly not active defense.
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Looking at the positive results of the Second Lebanon War or Operation Cast Lead there is
no doubt that Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south are deterred as a result of the
price they paid – and that price was extracted by air power operations.
It is possible to reach some achievements under the title of striking quality targets when
facing an enemy that is a state, and a non-state enemy. Achievements such as decapitation,
striking at the leadership, blinding it, damaging the command and control capabilities of
the other side - air power has pride of place in such missions.
As for intelligence, air power is a central partner in the collection of intelligence; whether
by satellites, UAVs or by fixed wing planes. Fixed wing planes are still needed for those
intelligence activities.
One cannot talk of air power without mentioning its classical missions – air superiority
and the defense of the country's skies. No doubt the air superiority that the IAF enjoys
vis-à-vis all our enemies is more prominent compared to other periods in the past. As to
defending Israel's skies, the threat of penetration by manned air vehicles, unmanned planes
or vehicles, still exists. Hezbollah has done it several times in the north, but one can say
in historical perspective that this threat has become less acute and the rockets and missiles
threat has grown.
In fact we see our enemies' conduct as an attempt to find a response to the IAF superiority
as well as an attempt to strike our vulnerable points. When trying to explain why our
citizens are targeted by terror or rockets attacks, why Sderot or Ashkelon in the south,
Haifa or Kiryat Shmona in the north are deliberately singled out, it is clear they aim at the
most vulnerable point or the weakest link in our chain of national resilience, our society's
inability to stand firm.
The change they went through in the transformation from the conventional to the subconventional and the supra-conventional can be explained by their recognition of the IDF
superiority on the conventional battlefield but also in the theatre in which we have been
for 37 years of sub- and supra-conventional threats which only build up; there are some
developments deserving of our attention.
Firstly of course the question of air supremacy, as early as the 1970s they tried to curtail our
air supremacy by developing surface-to-air missiles or receiving SAMs from the former
USSR. This attempt was partially successful until the IAF responded to the threat both
on the technological and the operational level. Nowadays there is an attempt to reduce
our air superiority by threatening our airfields with missiles and rockets. Inasmuch as the
accuracy and efficiency of this weapon improve, we shall have to find a better response to
the threat and it is one of the challenges on our agenda.
Looking at the advantages of Israeli air power a rather significant one is the availability
of the force and for a military whose main strength lies with the reserves, it is clear that
the question of availability is even more important. Even in situations of surprise like the
Yom Kippur War but also when there is no surprise, such as when we decide to start an
operation like Homat Magen [Operation Defensive Shield] or the Second Lebanon War
the first available force before the reserve array deploys is the Air Force. The same applies
to surprise attacks like the Yom Kippur War – it was the first force that could deploy in
the Golan Heights and stop Syrian tanks; naturally it is the first force able to act and react
if the political echelon so wishes even before the reserve array, which is mainly a surface
power, is called up.
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Another advantage of air power in the Israeli case is the ability to shorten the duration of the
fighting. From a political-defense-strategic perspective the Israeli interest at any military
clash is undoubtedly to shorten the duration of the fighting. Even in those instances when
we have no ultimate solutions like attacks with rockets and missiles, the dilemma of the
continuing military clash, extracting a price from the other side is assigned mainly to the
air force and in our case it is up to air power to cut short the duration of the fighting.
The sum total of these capabilities in the last few years brought about a change in the
equilibrium of air power and surface power in the IDF. True, in some situations there is
no alternative to the ground maneuver, but the modern air power at Israel's disposal has
enabled some hitherto unknown capabilities, thus air power can participate in land warfare
more significantly than in the past. Examining the last few armed conflicts, Operation
Homat Magen stands out in some respects because land forces bore the major part of the
effort as we had decided to get into house-to-house fighting without operating any air
support nor any artillery; therefore the IAF participation in this operation was mainly in
the gathering of intelligence and in some very few cases assisted the land forces.
During the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead air power was clearly the central
actor. Even before Operation Cast Lead, in operations which took place the Gaza strip in
the 2000s, any land troops which entered Han Yunis, Rafah, Jebaliah benefited from an air
umbrella of precise intelligence and precision fire. In fact, the brigade commander or the
division commander and in most cases the brigade had an air umbrella of intelligence and
precision fire so that the company commander who moves at the head of the troops would
receive an advance warning to the effect than someone is laying an explosive charge at a
junction, and on top of the warning in most cases he also got a report that the problem had
been dealt with because an assault helicopter or some other element had already attacked
it; so the company commander got the report and also the solution to the problem and
in many operations of this kind – including in Cast Lead – it prevented many incidents
of face-to-face fighting. Consequently at the conclusion of these operations there were
relatively few casualties. That air umbrella actually proved its capability to prevent faceto-face fighting.
m the commanders' point of view – GQ, air flank, ground forces, regional commands, one
of the developments is the notion of the Air Force Commander as an integral part of the
system, as an operator – not just as a contractor executing operations for GQ or missions
requested by regional commands. Throughout Operation Invey Zaam [Operation Grapes
of Wrath] for example, ground forces did not go into Lebanon and the central challenge
was the need to suppress rocket launching, in this case there was every reason to give this
mission to the Air Force Commander as an integral part of the system. This applies to the
Second Lebanon War as well. It was quite obvious in air superiority missions – this is an
air force mission. The same applies to the defense of the country's skies, nowadays the
Air Force Commander should be seen participating in ground missions, land missions,
not just as a contractor of ground forces commanders but as an operator, an integral part
of the system.
The classic terms of the Israeli defense doctrine are deterrence, warning, resolution. When
dealing with deterrence, air power contributes to eliminate the enemy's ability to hurt us
while air supremacy provides defense of the country's skies, active defense from rockets
and weapons; this is the assignment of the air force. No less important or maybe even
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more important where deterrence is concerned is that offensive capability I mentioned
which inflicted damage during the last wars on the Hamas in the Gaza strip and Hezbollah
in the north as well as on the Syrians in the past. In fact, Syrian recognition that we have
a capability whose consequences they saw in the activity of the coalition forces in Iraq
with the demolition of a military in very short order; all these add to deterrence to which
air power makes a very considerable contribution. As for deterrence, air power takes an
active part in intelligence operations and as for resolution, it is an available force that
can be adjusted for striking the core capabilities of the enemy – infrastructure, economic
assets, leadership etc., that is, extracting a price in a way that makes the enemy accept a
ceasefire on our terms.
As to force structuring, the air force naturally requires some very high allocations but as
I see it, having held a fair number of discussions on this subject when I was in uniform
and during the present budgetary sessions, air power is worthwhile in cost/benefit terms:
investment in air power is worthwhile. A defense project such as the Fence, for example,
may respond to a certain threat yet cannot be employed for other threats in other sections;
the Fence around Judea and Samaria applies to that region and for all its importance one
cannot take it and throw it at the Iranians, it cannot be moved to the Egyptian border in
the south or to the northern border, yet air power is power that gives a generalized and
generic response; it is flexible, multi-purpose so in cost/benefit terms it is most definitely
worthwhile. That is why in recent budget discussions as well as in the force structuring
plans of the IDF in which I participated when in uniform and now as a cabinet minister I
always prioritized three elements – intelligence, air power and R&D.
In conclusion, I shall go back to what I said in the beginning when referring to the political
and security challenge Israel faces when so many actors in our region refuse to recognize
Israel's right to exist as the Jewish people nation- state, to my mind this is the reason for
the wars we were forced to fight from the beginning of Zionism to this very day. When we
ask ourselves how long we must go on fighting, we can go back to an article by Dr Moshe
Beilinson published in Davar on June 23rd 1936, at the beginning of the Great Arab Revolt
titled "Until When". He says, "until the most enthusiastic and the most daring in the enemy
camp and all enemy camps wherever they may be, know that there is no way to break the
force of the Israeli people in their land because the force of life is with them as well as the
truth of existence and there is no way but to accept it." It may be similar to the Jabotinsky
conception of "iron wall". Air power has a central role in persuading our enemies to accept
the existence of the state of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people in the land of
Israel.
In response to questions from the audience about the possibility of adopting lessons from
other militaries and how to optimize the use of active defense, Deputy Prime Minister
Ya'alon said:
Israel is uniquely placed as to political and defense challenges; I know of no other country
in the world whose right to exist as a nation-state is on the table. But when examining
various theaters we can indeed learn from others just like other militaries learn from us.
As to operational capabilities one can find some mutual issues, whether it is air supremacy
or issues of defense from missiles or rockets which is a unique challenge as well as the
matter of our capability to cope with conventional threat, the threat of terror, guerrilla or
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the unconventional threat. I think there are open channels benefiting all actors – the US,
NATO, European countries, our friends in the East like India, so we are able to actually
cooperate, exchange views, and learn from the challenges that every country and every
military cope with.
I think that when you consider developing or acquiring active defense systems, the cost/
benefit question has to be addressed. The most conspicuous is the Kassam issue: if the
response to the Kassam costs an enormous sum of money then those Kassam could hurt
us badly financially speaking. So the cost has to be taken up vis-à-vis the possible gain. I
do not take lightly the fact that a system like Iron Copula can alleviate somewhat the lot of
people in Sderot, but one cannot say this is the ultimate response or that it can guarantee
peace and quiet. But you have to ask if it is worthwhile in cost/benefit terms: maybe we
should invest more in offensive capabilities – offence still being the best defense, in
intelligence, precision fire, etc. every such system should be examined separately. One can
look at the Hetz (Arrow) as a relatively effective system capable of intercepting missiles at
very high percentage, and compare it to the pretense to take out Kassams and katyushas –
this is a worthwhile investment if not too costly. If eventually we have to decide whether
we should ascertain freedom of movement to the Ramat David Air Base or Sderot, then
surely it must be Ramat David – I do not think that we should get cornered in those
situations; if we have effective capability to respond we shall know how to construct the
appropriate systems for both aforementioned needs.
As to the question raised here about shooting at civilians, as a military we operate in the
tension between 'thou shall not kill' and 'he who comes to kill you, hasten to kill him first"
and when this touches on the question of having to take into account the possibility of
injuring civilians then there are proverbs such as 'your town's poor come first' or 'Being
merciful to the cruel is tantamount to cruelty to the deserving of mercy' and I agree to
this stance. But you finally have to weigh this separately; the example of disabling the
Fajer launchers in the first night of the Second Lebanon War is a question I thought of as
chief of staff because the operational plan was prepared during my tenure, so beyond the
operational aspects and the splendid achievement of the air force which took this array out
of operation in 40 minutes, the considerable intelligence achievement of locating these
launchers when this was a highly classified sophisticated project on the other side, they
purposely installed the launchers and the rockets in civilian residences. In fact it was an
Iran-Hezbollah project to build an extra room mostly in Hezbollah activists' houses; these
houses had already been built, families lived there and they just built another room with
a movable roof which can be rolled back to enable the launch while the launcher and
the rocket were already targeted at Safed or other targets in the Galilee. Then there was
the ethical discussion during the preparation of the operational plan if we should hit the
launcher when we have to assume that members of the family would be hit, including
women and children. What can you do when you have a house, a family with a kitchen
and toilet, a living room and a bedroom, nursery and a rocket room? The decision a-priori
was that we shall be prepared to execute this plan and it was carried out on the first night of
the Second Lebanon War and justly so because the alternative was that innocent civilians
– ours – would be hurt in Safed; so we said: he who goes to sleep with a rocket will get
up the next morning with an Israeli missile; what can you do? Ethically it is right, it
is justified but here again it is a dilemma, a question of balance. There were situations
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when we decided to operate air power on the assumption that the other side would sustain
injury – but the alternative was that our citizens would be injured. There is the well known
incident of Salah Shehade and there are other such examples. This dilemma has to be
examined in and of itself, as a moral dilemma and as an internal Israeli question. When
you make the decision to go through with such an operation you have to put Israeli society
in the equation just as well, you need to persuade it that it is the right action and that you
are not shooting yourself in the leg and nowadays we also have to cope with international
opinion.
In addition to the Goldstone Commission there have been charges leveled against us in
the world – I have personally experienced it. This is a separate question that needs to be
addressed, the attempt to de-legitimize us when we act in order to defend ourselves, so
the answer is one that needs to be provided vis-à-vis the given situation balancing values
and considerations; still there are those situations when we have to strike at citizens on the
other side.
As to the question of Space, I think it is one of our near-misses. I have meantime been
recruited by Maj. Gen. (res.) Isaac Ben Israel [then Chairman of the Israeli Space Agency].
In my opinion Israel should immediately invest some hundreds of millions of shekel in
the development of Space because the capabilities are existent, be they satellites or minisatellites; we are members of a most exclusive club, but we have not surged forward
sufficiently. We do have technological capability in the Technion [Israel Institute of
Technology] for example, in industry, the IAI. But there must be a scientific infrastructure
investment by the state, a considerable one. There is a concrete proposal and I am one of
the lobbyists trying to push it through and I sincerely hope that we shall endorse it in the
government.
15
Air Power Characteristics, Lessons, Challenges
Col. USAF (Ret.) Dr Philip S. Meilinger
I wrote the following propositions regarding air power nearly 20 years ago, soon after the
first Gulf war, the one we called Desert storm. At the time they summarized for me the
changes in war especially as witnessed by the use of air power.
Over the years these propositions have been attacked by various people, who said they
were exaggerated, parochial or just plain wrong.
Yet looking at them now I honestly think that they are still fairly accurate, Today, I shall
be looking at modern war as we see it occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan and to some extent in
Gaza and Lebanon. I will also highlight some of those propositions, the ones which have
become even more important now than they were 20 years ago.
Let me begin with the basics. What are generally considered to be the fundamental
strengths and limitations of air power? Here are the inherent strengths of air power that
have been recognized since the beginning of flight. Even in World War I, scarcely one
decade after the airplane was invented aircrafts were able to fly higher and faster and
further, and deliver greater ordinance than could surface forces. The aircraft was not so
constrained by geography and impeded by mountains, rivers and oceans. This granted the
aircraft tremendous flexibility, a flexibility not possessed by surface forces.
Yet at the same time I will recognize that aircrafts had clear limitations, they were expensive
and technically very complex; not all nations had the ability or the resources to build great
aircraft. Aircraft are transitory; they take off, fly until they are low on fuel and then land,
they cannot dig a foxhole in the sky and remain there for days or weeks at a time. They
cannot drop anchor off an enemy coast and remain there for months. It was difficult to fly
at night or in bad weather. Rain, snow, fog, sand storms, all inhibit and usually ground
aircrafts and make them of little use. Finally, the criticism we constantly hear from our
brothers in the army: aircrafts cannot hold ground, and after all – so say soldiers - that is
what warfare is all about, holding ground.
But I would argue that aircrafts now fly higher, faster, deliver vastly greater amounts of
ordinance, more precisely than ever before, granting astonishing flexibility to our political
and military leaders. In other words, over the past century the strengths of air power have
gotten stronger while the weaknesses of air power have grown weaker. The limitations are
not as great because air and space crafts are expensive, which is why not all countries can
afford them. This means our superiority is greater now than it was in the past because of
air refueling aircraft that can stay aloft for many hours. B-2's can take off in their base in
Missouri, fly halfway around the world, drop bombs and then return non-stop. The longest
such flight, during the war against Afghanistan in 2001 was 44 hours. Unmanned air
vehicles can stay aloft for over a day after taking off from their base, staring at the enemy,
and of course satellites are above us 24 hours a day for years. Because of radar, infra-red
and GPS, the weather is not as great an obstacle as it was in the past. In 2003 there was a
huge sandstorm that halted all ground operations south of Baghdad; the Iraqis thought they
were temporarily safe. And then their tanks and vehicles began to blow up - aircrafts and
satellites saw through the sand and GPS-guided munitions destroyed them.
Finally it has become a paradox that air power's supposed greatest weakness has often
become its greatest strength. Often our political leaders do not want to hold ground. It is
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too dangerous, too bloody and too politically sensitive and so in Kosovo in 1998 NATO
leaders never seriously considered invading Serbia. Instead, they relied on air power,
specifically because of its alleged greatest weakness, its inability to hold ground and
threaten Russia with its presence.
Let me now discuss what I call enduring themes of air power, ideas and realities similar
to the oppositions noted earlier. The first of these is the strategic nature of air power,
this is significant because ground power is inherently tactical, generally armies fight each
other in tactical engagements, sometimes large ones, in an attempt to move deeper into an
enemy country, occupy territory and in doing so hope that eventually an accumulation of
tactical victories can combine to produce some kind of strategic effect.
From the outset of war air power can operate directly at the strategic level of war while
also operating on the tactical and operational levels as well.
In fact, a single aircraft can strike both tactical and strategic targets on the same sortie.
This ability to operate strategically grants air power the quality of ubiquity. Mountains,
rivers and forests are not the impediments that they usually are to ground or naval forces.
The air and space are the ultimate high ground. This also means that air power can
dominate the strategic commons. This is a fairly new term for an old idea; the world
moves both physically and electronically through and across broad and strategic avenues,
the commons. Air power and by extension space power dominates these commons, in fact
the mere time commons are generally dominated from the air as well, usually by sea-based
air power. And I might add that if one controls the air and space over a piece of contested
ground such control goes a long way towards controlling that ground as well.
By rapidity I mean more than speed; rapidity connotes an ability to act and react more
quickly to counter an enemy's moves, ideally to anticipate an enemy's moves. It is a
mental as much as a physical concept. Airpower has always been able to operate orders
of magnitude more rapidly than can surface forces. The addition of space and now cyber
space permits movements at virtually the speed of thought. If used properly this capability
grants us unique advantages. Precision has also been one of the inherent characteristics of
air power from the beginning. Despite the problems of accuracy during World War 2, it
is important to remember that perhaps 60 million people died during that war but only 5
million military and civilians died as the result of air attack. More than 90% died by being
shocked, shelled, starved or gassed to death.
Less than a decade ago the United Nations and the World Health Organization stated that
over 1 million Iraqi civilians died between 1990 and 2003 as a result of the UN sanctions
embargo, enforced largely by sea power and a majority of those 1 million innocents
were children. Air-delivered precision-guided munitions now allow us to do much, much
better than that. The emergence of precision-guided munitions has been one of the most
revolutionary aspects of modern war. PGM allow true effect space operations. Airmen
have always striven for such, but frankly the accuracy of the air weapon was not good
enough for much of the 20th century to allow it; the emergence of PGM towards the end
of the Vietnam war but more spectacularly in Desert Storm finally offered the ability to
conduct true EVO, at the same time PGM allows the conduct of parallel operations, this
too became apparent in Desert Storm. But what has become routine since then, rather than
a sequential type of warfare that was prevalent in air warfare in the past and which is still
the norm for surface warfare, PGM allows parallel operations in our air campaign. For
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example, during the first two days of Desert Storm in 1991, the coalition struck nearly
50 different strategic targets, about the same number of individual targets that the entire
American Air Force was able to hit in Germany throughout 1943. This ability to strike
targets across the theater at strategic, operational and tactical levels and to do so virtually
simultaneously is almost totally a function of PGM.
The old question used to be how many bombs and sorties will it take to neutralize a given
target. Now the question for air planners is how many targets can a single aircraft, carrying
several dozen individually-targeted PGM neutralize on a single sortie.
The new revolution in PGM is profound. In an old slide that I show there are some
inaccuracies and exaggerations, but the basic concept it is attempting to convey are still
valid. The strike package depicted on the far left was an actual mission flown against an
air field near Baghdad during Desert Storm, about 70 aircraft and 200 personnel. The
next package shows the reduced size if the strikers which were F-16s were carrying first
generation laser guided bombs, then we see the differences of using F-17s and finally
B-2s.
Now the exaggerations I was referring to, because the B-2s will probably not be stationed
in theater, they will need tankers and prudence dictates that if we have electronic warfare
aircraft available we will use them, so the package will be greater. On the other hand, a
single B-2 can now carry 60 individually targeted JDAM with 5 meter accuracy. Eventually
it may be able to carry over 200 small diameter bombs, all of which can be targeted
individually from the cockpit with an accuracy of 3 meters. So today, only one strike
aircraft would be necessary. Think of the implications regarding the number of aircraft,
air crew, fuel, munitions, ground crews, spare parts required for one or two B-2s even if
they are accompanied by a few tankers and EW aircraft versus the former generation of
fighter craft.
Do not forget the enormous support facilities required in theater, which must be shipped
from the US to sustain all those personnel. It means that a small number of aircraft will
be flying into combat; it also means a greatly reduced risk to our most precious asset,
our personnel. Instead of hundreds of lives at risk, only a handful of people will be sent
into harm's way. More importantly PGM dramatically reduces the possibility of collateral
damage and the number of civilian casualties incurred.
Mistakes will still be made and even PGM will miss their targets occasionally but today
it appears that most of our errors are the result of faulty intelligence, not the result of
inaccurate weapons.
In today's ear this emphasis on collateral damage and civilian casualties is becoming ever
more important. Yes, air superiority is essential, but in truth we must realize that it is only
essential for the way we fight, not the enemy.
There is a well known image of a large base area in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm
showing about a thousand trucks. That is what a typical F-16 pilot would refer to as a targetrich environment. That is what you can get away with when you posses air superiority.
There is on the other hand another image, that of the so-called Highway of Death: 1400
aircrafts were destroyed or immobilized within 30 minutes from the air. This is what
happens when you lose air superiority. We want to make sure we always have it.
However, there are two components to air superiority. The first is that we prevent the
enemy from attacking us. The second one is that he cannot prevent us from attacking him.
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If you ask a soldier they will tell you air power or air superiority is defined by number
one, but it is number two that is really most important because air superiority allows us to
conduct closer support, interdiction, air lift, reconnaissance, all of the air missions upon
which our ground forces are absolutely dependent. If we lose air superiority and cannot
conduct those other air missions we would probably lose the war.
The problem is the vast majority of aircraft lost by my air force and yours as well, have been
lost to ground fire and not air-to-air combat. I am not sure that my air force is sufficiently
worried about the ground threat of advanced SAM missiles. However, remember that
we are the ones that rely on air supremacy. The Vietcong, al Qaeda and Hezbollah seem
to be doing just fine without it. There are still challenges, but most of them are tactical
challenges. Most, although certainly not all, are of the technical variety. I have listed the
traditional technical challenges facing airmen from the beginning of flight, for nearly
a century these were often serious problems, so engineers were constantly striving for
greater speed, greater range, greater payload, greater reliability, greater accuracy, a greater
ability to operate at night and in all kinds of weather, greater responsiveness, etc. In my
view these challenges have been addressed and in most cases have been conquered. We
can now build our craft at exceed Mach 3, but we now realize that very seldom do we ever
need to go that fast. Now we have an F-2 that needs only half of that speed.
Partly due to PGM, payload is no longer a serious problem; GPS, radar and infra-red
have similarly largely solved navigation and accuracy problems. A combination of speed,
stealth, craning, electronic counter-measures etc., have dramatically reduced the threat
to our aircraft. Since Vietnam the number of our aircraft lost in combat has totaled only
around 40. There is however one exception. In my view, range and persistence is still a
concern, air refuels will help, however I worry about an Asian scenario where the distances
are extreme, much greater than those experienced in the European or Middle Eastern
scenario. There are far fewer bases available in the Pacific region for our aircraft and those
are often at extreme distances from the mainland. Guam, for example, is a ten hour round
trip flight to China, for a fighter aircraft, and for a single seat airplane that is a long time.
Then there are the double digit SAM missiles with ranges approaching 250 miles. These
SAM missiles which may be present in large numbers will keep our non-stealthy tankers,
fighters, bombers and ISR assets well off the coast.
In the event of a crisis will we have enough long range stealthy bombers to penetrate that
sand belt, neutralize targets inland and also take down those SAM missiles so that the vast
majority of our combat aircraft that is not stealthy will be able to operate effectively? That
is something I worry about.
Let me now turn to the nature of war and some of the challenges of modern war. Insurgency
seems to be sprouting up all over the world. A Rand study says there are currently 80
insurgencies taking place worldwide. There are terrorist training camps in 20 different
countries. But most of them are not relevant to the United States, that is, our vital interests
are not at stake but it is not like the Cold War which was a zero-sum game with the Soviets
where every common insurgency had to be addressed and contained. We have to be very
sure that we pick our fights wisely, not all problems are our problems. Intelligence is
crucial to everything we do militarily, that is absolutely the case in modern war, it is not
just traditional information regarding the enemy size, location and capabilities that we
need to worry about. We must be especially sensitive to the culture, traditions, morals and
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the religion of the nation, something that my country is usually not very good at. Too often
a farm boy from Kansas serving on the ground in Afghanistan is ill-prepared to deal with
the situation he faces. We have to fix that, but that may be nearly impossible. As my mom
used to say when I would whine that something was not fair, she would say tough, life
is not fair. Many things in life are not fair, including international law. One photo clearly
showed Hamas in the Gaza Strip hiding amongst teenage boys. This is illegal; they are comingling military and civilian targets. Well, we must get used to the reality and I am sure
that you are even more aware of this problem than we in the US are. Another one of my
Mom's favorite lines was two wrongs do not make one right and that certainly applies here
as well. We must not overreact to such provocations as illegal co-mingling by attacking
them all and blaming it on the insurgents. The world will not see it that way. Again, I know
you have had much more experience with this problem as well.
A picture is worth a thousand words, certain photos from the Vietnam War and Iraq define
to a great extent those wars in the minds of millions of people worldwide. They are not
the photos we would have chosen to illustrate our gone in those two wars but the US
military did not have a vote. We cannot control the media but we must always be aware
of the effects it can have on our policy and operations. Strategy is far more important
than tactics, there is an old military saying that brilliant tactics will not overcome a dumb
strategy. Classic examples are Germany and Japan in World War 2. No matter how tough,
how professional, how disciplined the Germans and Japanese were, they could never
compensate for the lunacy of Hitler and the foolishness of the Japanese High Command.
Kosovo in 1999 was a rare example of an exception to this rule: despite a horribly flawed
strategy imposed by NATO leaders; NATO airmen were able to overcome this with their
ability, professionalism, creativity and sheer competence. Our soldiers, airmen and marines
in Iraq and Afghanistan are equally professional and creative. They have to be: their lives
depend on it. But we need to give them a hand by not putting them into an impossible
situation in the first place.
Now to some thoughts about this new modern war. The problem that faces us today tends
to be insurgencies and there are several supposed true-isms regarding insurgencies and
how to deal with them. One of them is that all of this is new, we hear of a new war, a new
environment, a new type of enemy, a new type of war, but all of this is not new. Insurgency
and terrorism have been a part of war for over 2000 years; we just do not like to remember
those events. Another old saying that is not always true claims it is all about poverty
and repression, the idea is that the insurgents have a legitimate complaint that they have
been oppressed by greedy colonial or imperial masters or by foreigners, that is why this
argument goes. There must be an overall strategy that includes things like land reform,
economic development and an end to corruption; we must eliminate the causes of the
rebellion. But in truth that is not what al Qaeda and the Hamas are all about, they have not
overthrown an outside evil power, so as to end repression. Often they bring the repression
and poverty themselves. Similarly you often hear that winning hearts and minds is crucial.
But the Vietcong and al Qaeda were not trying to win any hearts and minds when they
slaughtered 35 000 South Vietnamese civilians or flew planes into the World Trade Center
or when they bombed the London subway. Rather, the insurgents often use terror, they do
so deliberately and they do so against civilians, so although it may be important that we try
to win over the population, apparently it is not necessary for the insurgents to do so. They
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instead use terror in order to neutralize the populace and to goad us into over-reacting.
We must also realize that not everyone wants freedom and democracy. We assume that
everyone has a fundamental yearning for freedom and democracy because that is true
in our culture. It never occurred to us that millions of people seemingly have no such
desire, rather, they willingly submit themselves to what seems to us an oppressive way
of life. Some people do not want freedom of religion or diversity. They do not want their
women to have equal rights, they do not want freedom of speech and the ability to watch
whichever movies or television they want, or to vote as they see fit. It is western hubris that
assumes freedom, as we define freedom, as a universal desire.
This is an illustration of the problem of illegal co-mingling that I referred to earlier. The
square yellow lines are schools. The right stars within the red circles are where rockets
were launched from. The blue triangles are Hamas bunkers and the orange triangles are
Hamas military facilities. It is illegal for the Hamas to do this, but so what? What are we
to do? If we decide to attack these military targets which the law enables us to do, but kill
civilians in the process, who is at fault? The news media worldwide simply assume that
it is our fault. If we do not attack out of fear of hitting the civilians, are we not rewarding
bad behavior and encouraging the enemy to continue these illegal and immoral practices?
How do we escape this dilemma? Again, General Ya'alon answered this specific question.
Some targets are very high value but are fleeting. An aircraft drone sees a vehicle that
appears to be a Scud launcher headed for a tunnel, do we hit it or do we wait because it
might actually be a fuel truck? They look alike. If it gets into the tunnel and stays there,
the aircraft overhead will eventually run low on fuel and leave. If the vehicle was a Scud
launcher and then it emerges to fire at one of our cities, how do we trade off the risks and
dangers that follow from our decision whether we should strike?
Similarly, what if we confirm the identity of an enemy leader, and we see him enter a
civilian residence, do we hit it or do we wait for him to leave? But what if he does not?
What if he leaves after our overhead aircraft are gone? And then there is this major issue,
the troops in contact dilemma.
Most targets today that are pre-planned undergo a rigorous examination at the air operation
center to ensure that they are military targets and that they can be hit with minimal collateral
damage. Some targets because of their nature or location require very high levels of
approval. Some targets, for example, are approved only by the air component commander,
the theater commander or even sometimes politicians back in Washington DC must give
the approval and the OK to strike a certain target. Although this may take a great deal of
time we nonetheless usually feel that it is worth the delay.
Troops in Contact or TIC are another matter. When friendly ground troops are under fire
our Air is directed to support them. All the safeguards just noted are then by-passed. The
soldier on the ground may simply say that he is taking fire from a particular building and
ask an aircraft overhead to hit that building. He may or he may not be able to provide GPS
coordinates or laser designation on that building. He may not know or care if there are
civilians in that building. Given the high importance placed on TIC situations and friendly
casualties, air strikes are often left up to the discretion of air crew above and the soldiers
actually under fire below. Mistakes often happen in this type of situation. Human Rights
Watch which is a major humanitarian group did a study in September 2008 which looked
at two years of the war in Iraq. During that time they came up with some amazing statistics:
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the Coalition flew 5342 strike sorties, but as to sorties that actually dropped bombs during
that two-year period of time there were only 35 of them. That is less that 1%, 0.65%
caused collateral damage. However this is even more astounding. Of those 35 air strikes
that did cause collateral damage only 2 were pre-planned, the other 95% were TIC. This
actually is a great success story for air power. Well, how do we avoid collateral damage
then in TIC or troops in contact situations? The simplest solution is obvious: do not put
the ground troops there in the first place. If they are not present they cannot be attacked by
the enemy and cannot therefore call for help from the air and it cannot therefore result in
collateral damage. Obviously troops on the ground are sometimes necessary. But we need
to think more clearly and seriously about how often boots on the ground are part of the
problem rather than part of the solution. Cluster munitions whether air-launched or shot
from artillery can also be a serious problem to civilians. Human Rights Watch found that in
the initial stages of the war in Iraq most of the civilian casualties were caused by artillery
launched CBU. I understand that you found the same problem in Lebanon in 2006. One
study I saw indicates that nearly 25% of the CBU fired by artillery were duds. That is
a terribly high percentage because unexploded CBU are essentially anti-personnel land
mines. This is a major problem; similarly, depleted uranium that is a very hard substance,
ideal for munitions designed to penetrate armored vehicles has acquired a bad reputation.
American tanks fired DU rounds and so do our A-10 aircrafts. Some believe that those
rounds poisoned the ground for years thereafter. The verdict on whether this is true is
still out. But again, we need to ask ourselves if such weapons along with CBU with their
potentially bad publicity worldwide are worth their use. Is there an alternative?
Remember my comments earlier regarding media attention, we cannot afford to have our
policy and strategy undermined by the use of weapons that cause more problems than
they solve. These to me are the heart of the matter; all four of these activities, sieges,
land mines, blockades and sanctions are legal under the laws of war. Although there has
been a treaty passed regarding land mines, their three largest makers and users including
the United States have not signed that treaty. Some 20 000 civilians died in the siege of
Sarajevo in 1993, that siege was legal. Recall also that in World War 2 well over one million
Russian civilians died in the siege of Leningrad. That too was totally legal. Blockades
and sanctions are still imposed on countries worldwide; as noted earlier, the UN imposed
them on Iraq in 1990 because of its invasion of Kuwait. They were not lifted until the fall
of Saddam's regime in 2003. According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF
over one million Iraqi civilians died as a direct result of these sanctions, the majority of
whom were women and children, yet those sanctions were totally legal. Sanctions have a
percolating effect, they begin hurting the lowest levels of society first and only very slowly
do they rise to harm the leaders in charge. It was not Saddam Hussein and his generals who
went to bed without their supper, as one expert referred sarcastically to sanctions of mass
destruction and he was right. In my view it was these indiscriminating weapons, not air
power that should receive much scrutiny by world legal organizations.
Here are the string of United States successes that are to a very great extent attributable to
the strength and effectiveness of air and space power. In Desert Storm it was a requirement
on the air component by General Schwarzkopf that all 48 front line Iraqi divisions be
attired below 50% effectiveness by air power before major ground operations would begin.
This astounding result was in fact achieved. That means by definition, the Iraqi army was
22
combat ineffective before major ground operations even occurred. For the next ten years
the coalition flew over 300,000 sorties without a single combat loss keeping Iraq and
Saddam Hussein contained. As we now know, this air blockade was extremely effective.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor were there facilities for producing
them. Al Qaeda terrorists were not present in significant numbers in Iraq before 2003. The
watches kept Saddam in the box.
And then there were the operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq itself again in
2003. Yet in all of these operations, air and space power played the key role in achieving
politically desirable results with an extremely low cost in blood and treasure, both to us
and amazingly to the enemy as well. Even so the truth is airmen have been surprisingly
reluctant to trumpet their successes over the past 20 years. In the current situation in Iraq
and Afghanistan we have allowed ourselves to become a minor player, and only in a
supporting role.
The fact is airmen need a new big idea. We need to come up with some totally new solutions
rather than simply thinking of ways to do old solutions more efficiently. I do not pretend
that I posses any good big ideas, but here is one that has interested me. We saw after the first
Gulf war what may be a new paradigm of war, one that relies on air and space power along
with special operation forces, indigenous ground troops and robot information operations.
This model worked. No, it will not work all the time but its stunning effectiveness ought
to make it one of the first things our planners consider in future crises.
Here is another, what if the real war on terrorism is between the moderate Muslims and
the radicals attempting to hijack their religion? What if our real challenge is to assist the
moderates in their civil war? What if that makes the war first and foremost a psychological
operations campaign? How would we use military force if the Intelligence chief was the
supported commander? In our country that would be Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA,
in other words what if we approach the problems that we are facing today from a totally
different position from the one noted here? What if that supported commander was the
head of our intelligence apparatus and his campaign plan was for psychological apps? If
that were the case then I would guess that the last thing we would have done is to insert
hundreds of thousands of conventional ground troops of infidels into Islamic cities.
Let me conclude by saying that we as airmen have much work to do, by institutionalizing
innovation. I mean that those of you who are commanders and supervisors must devise
a method of identifying and encouraging those working for you who are creative and
original thinkers. My experience has been that there are not many of them around. Most
of us are administrators, we take a situation and perhaps improve it slightly or make it
work a bit more efficiently, but few of us actually devise totally new solutions. Yet most
organizations, my Air Force for example, tends not to reward people who are original and
creative thinkers, we say we want new ideas but in reality we seldom do, and too often we
tend to punish subordinates who think outside the box. You as commanders need to protect
such people. I would also note that the few original thinkers that I have met mistakenly
think that all of their ideas are good ones; actually they are not, and so you as a supervisor
or commander must protect such people from themselves. You must protect them from
becoming loose cannons, you must filter out the good ideas from the bad. And after you
have done this you need to understand air power itself, all of you. You must understand
its strengths and weaknesses, and communicate that knowledge to those around you. We
23
must write, talk and explain so that the public, our leaders and even our fellow soldiers
and sailors will understand what air power can bring to modern war. When a crisis occurs
and members of the services sit down at a big table with their civilian supervisors and the
President or the Prime Minister asks what can air power do to help us, he is not going to
turn to the individual dressed in green, he is going to turn to the airman in blue, you had
better have a response.
24
Developments of the Military Concepts of the Adversary
Brig. Gen. Itay Brun, Head of Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Thinking, IDF
I shall risk starting with a quote from John Lennon who taught us that life is what happens
when you plan other things. I shall talk of what happened on the other side when we were
planning other things, so I shall try to summarize the development of Western conceptions
from the 1970s and 1980s with the ideas of Earle and Battle, then John Warden with
the air campaign, the discussions held in the 1990s as to the RMA, the Revolution in
Military Affairs, and all those further deliberations as to its derivatives, EBOs (EffectBased Operations) and the Net-Centric Warfare of the present decade.
The principal contention of this lecture is that parallel to these conceptual developments
some organizations and states they also developed militarily and I shall try to present this
parallel development in Syria, Iraq, Saddam's Iraq – up to 2003, Iran and a list of non-state
entities such as Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda.
I shall try to describe the characteristics of this conception; the concept of threat against
whose background it developed, as well as its ideas, the way it is reflected and more
tactical patterns of fighting. In the context of this conference I shall attempt to identify
the place which Israeli and American air power took in the framework of this conceptual
development, that is, the conception of threat; finally I shall add a few words about what
might happen in future.
I should like to mention Ms. Karmit Valency, a PhD candidate in Tel Aviv University and
research fellow at the Dado Center who was a major partner in this work and translated
a large part of the texts. This work is based on texts, aiming to connect those texts with
ideas, despite the possible problems which might arise. I shall show six quotes by six
persons from six different entities. I think the most interesting thing is to see the common
denominator of these affirmations, made at different times by different people.
In a fascinating speech he gave in January 1991, just before Desert Storm, Saddam largely
outlines in an Islamic conference he convened in Baghdad the basic principles of the
conception that would further develop in the 1990s. This conception was elaborated mostly
throughout that decade. Saddam describes the threat rather extensively. America has an
uncontested lead in missilery, planes, the capability to disrupt, but the most important
phrase in Saddam's conception is the claim that all this supposed superiority will be tried
finally on the battlefield. The main message of this speech is that America indeed has an
advantage in air power but in order to win wars one should go for land warfare and 'we
know how to fight on the ground, the war will revert to the patterns we know from the
Iran-Iraq War that we won only a few years ago'.
Bashar, a very short time after he got the job, still marveling at the Israeli retreat from
Lebanon also refers to the disparity he perceives, as the balance of power was in Israel's
favor, it also has advanced technological measures, satellites, but how did Hezbollah win
in May 2000? What Bashar emphasizes is will power and the power of religion.
Ja'afri is a rather central figure in Iran, he belongs to the mafia of the Revolutionary Guards,
and nowadays he is their commander. His is an interesting pronouncement because he
makes use of a term, he calls this thing by a name, he called it asymmetric war, and he
intentionally uses a Western term because it is connected with the West but he says 'this
is our strategy', that is, he is already explaining that there are some ideas here, there is a
25
strategy, this is not a collection of tactical patterns; 'an asymmetric war is our strategy to
cope with the enemy's higher capabilities'; again, this disparity is mentioned and he too
describes something that has to do with our region, the Second Lebanon War.
Now to Nasrallah in 1999: 'when you do not have the weapons,states use against the
enemy's air power you have other options'. He describes those options as people's options,
connects it with the term guerilla war. We shall see shortly that at a later date he developed
a broader outlook about this concept and he emphasizes the issue of hiding the targets
and refraining from appearing in the open. One year later, standing on the podium at Bint
Jebeil he spoke of the best air force in the region and the theory of the spider's web we are
familiar with.
Osama bin Laden also stresses in the famous fatwa of 1996 the disparity and the need to
adopt adequate weaponry.
Hania of the Hamas declared during Operation Cast Lead 'our people do not have planes,
tanks, submarines, nuclear missiles, phosphor bombs, but it has willpower'. I note these
two issues whose centrality I shall go into presently – the sabr and the sumud – the ability
to be patient and stand firm.
All these six affirmations describe disparity on the one hand, while they take that disparity
as a basic assumption and on the other hand speak of the need to develop a conception
against this disparity, making use of the adequate measures and the relevant outlook. I
shall talk of the way we understand the development of this conception. It all derives
from the upheaval and turmoil in the Middle East in the 1980s, the big crisis affecting the
states, the growth of organizations still leading the struggle against Israel, the West and
the US. The 1990s were the backdrop for the development of these ideas which I call the
conception.
A few words on the conception, what happens to it in the 2000s and how it might further
develop. In retrospect I think it is interesting that in three rather dramatic years 1979 –
1982 the Middle East changed quite radically. This happened with four momentous events:
the Islamic revolution in Iran; the Iran-Iraq War; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and
Shlom Hagalil or the First Lebanon War, as well as several other events I shall mention
presently.
The Islamic revolution in Iran transformed pro-western secular Iran to an Islamic republic
ruled by a Shiite cleric, cut Iran off from the sources of its doctrine in the West, cut it off
too from those who provided its weapons in the West and thus becomes an inspiration
for other elements in the region. Iran took up the principle of exporting the revolution
and made it a central motive in Iranian strategy; many years later Iran would become the
central generator of the ideas I shall talk about as the synchronizer of the radical axis,
an appellation usually referring to the present orientation of some of these states and
organizations.
The Iran-Iraq War of 1980 is in many ways the source of a considerable part of the
doctrines we see today and the weapons, this was the place where surface-to-surface
missiles appeared and claimed their central place in urban warfare, together with rockets
and suicide-attacks and this was a formative experience, a place where the present senior
officers in the Iranian military acquired their combat experience.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in Christmas 1979 turned the internal conflict in
Afghanistan into jihad, made Moslems from all the world go to Afghanistan - a most
26
fascinating development, young men went to fight in Afghanistan "where theory combined
with reality" as one of the leading figures in this band would later write. A jihad actually
took place there, against an atheist rule assisted by a foreign invader; this was the motive
to set out and fight there. Afghanistan gave the Mujahideen the narrative of their victory;
it trained a whole generation of experienced and highly motivated fighters who would in
time find their way to other places in the Middle East.
The First Lebanon War primatily demonstrated to the Syrians their military technological
inferiority, it dealt a temporary blow to the Syrian hegemony in Lebanon and created the
very same vacuum which would then enable the Iranians to set up Hezbollah, of which we
shall talk later.
There were other developments at the same time: the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty which
impacted on the issue we deal with, but first and foremost it removed Egypt from what
we refer to asl 'circle of fighting' with Israel and largely left Syria alone. It was a rather
traumatic development in a series of dramatic events that befell the Syrians. They had
always seen Arab solidarity, the Arab coalition, as a central component in their concept
of security yet they were left alone with a great deal of embarrassment and they had to
respond to this situation. The Israeli attack on the Iraqi reactor which happened around
that time exposed our capability to execute long-range missions, the motivation to operate
force when significant interests are at risk and although it was a single event, it dramatically
changed the way targets looked in the Middle East from 1981 onwards. The CNN started
broadcasting around at that time – I shall explain later how it is connected to our theme.
I have described the strategic environment of the Middle East between 1979 and 1982,
when you look at this group of people whose greater part is no longer with us – this group
that developed the ideas I am talking of, and ask where were they from 1979 to 1982 –
these were their formative years, that is, the time when they acquired their perspective
on the Middle East, their combat experience. At the end of the decade these people set
up al-Qaeda – Nasrallah, Abbas Musawi, Murniye. Nasrallah and Abas Musawi were on
the more religious-ideological side, Murniye joined the PLO at the end of the 1970s, got
the institutionalized guerilla training the PLO imparted to its combatants and then this
grouping set up Hezbollah. Their military conception was formed in those years, and they
would elaborate their ideas during the next decades.
If asked to pinpoint the one moment that captures the low ebb these countries reached in
the 1980s militarily as well as other aspects, it is this moment of Artzav 19 (the operational
plan directed against the Syrian air defense system) the most clearly event revealing the
capabilities of precision attack, the new methods for gathering intelligence causing the
collapse of a whole conception based on the capabilities of the surface-air missiles of the
other side throughout the 1970s.
If asked to choose one text expressing this feeling about the superiority of the other side, it
is this letter from President Assad to his forces after the first ceasefire, June 21, 1982 – the
picture is already clear: dozens of planes were shot down, the batteries demolished. This
text expresses most clearly the recognition in the other side's superiority. "Should fighting
recommence, we have to fight without paying heed to the superiority of the enemy air
force. The ideal is to die as a martyr; we have to prove to the enemy that his air force will
not win in battle just as the American air force did not win in Vietnam". I shall soon get to
the heritage of Vietnam that is rather central in the story.
27
Following the Lebanon War, Syria turned to strategic parity, devoting a few years to the
absorption of new weapons for land and air, but in 1986 Assad stated in another dramatic
speech that "we cannot keep up this rhythm any longer, Syria is in the throes of an
economic crisis and from now on it will no longer buy any major weapons systems for
the air, not even for air defense, but invest its resources in surface-to-surface missiles,
non-conventional weapons, defenses'; in those years they understood the dramatic change
on the battlefield with the entry of precision guided munitions and the end of the decade
sees another traumatic event with the breakdown of the USSR, their arms supplierthat also
provides their doctrine and in many other ways is a source of inspiration.
Iran and Iraq fought throughout the 1980s and against this backdrop it may be interesting
to see in retrospect that the three organizations that nowadays lead the struggle against
Israel as well as the US are the end product of these stormy years, with the decline of the
states, their military, technological and economic crisis; it is then that the organizations
come to the fore with Hezbollah in 1982 as the result of the power vacuum produced in
Lebanon, profiting from Iranian involvement, Hamas in 1987 and al-Qaeda in 1988.
During this decade the Syrians got air weapons systems, the Mig-29, Sukhnoi-24, air
defense systems, thanks to deals which had been signed in the early 1980s, but there
clearly is a shift to other weapons systems, surface-to-surface missiles, rockets, etc.
The 1980s are the backdrop to the development of the conception in the 1990s. In his
eulogy to Murniye, Nasrallah described the way Hezbollah developed over the years,
dividing it to three eras personified by the three whom he considers as central. He mentions
Abbas Musawi, killed in 1985 and characterizes it as the period in which a completely new
conception of warfare was shaped. It was unlike anything that had existed before, it was
something in between regular military to guerilla, yet it was neither one nor the other, nor
did it combine the two: rather, it was at the center. This approach develops in the 1990s
and the central thesis of this presentation is that it does so vis-à-vis the armed conflicts of
the 1990s: Iraq, Somali, Lebanon and Bosnia, the offensives in Sudan, Afghanistan and
Kosovo.
CNN diffused many of the photos depicting those conflicts, thus a big part of the learning
process took place while watching a common world picture broadcast by CNN. They learn
through analyzing military ideas in a very general manner; that is to say this is not the
riveting dialogue between Russians and Americans who steal each other's secrets. These
organizations have a general understanding of military doctrines, a different, independent
conception of reality and a lot of friction, the evolution of a conception connected with the
constant friction with Israel in Lebanon, and with the US.
What do they learn in the 1990s? undoubtedly, Desert Storm was a major event: an air
campaign lasting some 38 days preceded by the ground campaign on Kuwait city, the
central and dominant part played by air power stands out in the First Gulf War, together
with the new weapons systems, innovations such as the stealth technology, new precision
weapons systems, whose efficiency was demonstrated in the attack on hangars in Iraqi
airfields in 1991. The contention is that in many ways the conception develops as a
result of insight gained from the analysis of these photos. We have already seen Road
80, the Highway of Death, running between Kuwait City and Basra, with the systematic
termination; the understanding of this new capability of systematic annihilation of forces
28
and weapons, but in the meantime the First Gulf War teaches other things too: the bunker
at Amariya in Baghdad with its influence over the delay in the American assaults clearly
explains the problem of environmental damage, the inability of the American Air Force
to successfully deal with the ground to ground missile launchers in western Iraq and the
influence of those launchers on Israel and Saudi Arabia greatly emphasize the role of
surface to surface missiles in what was called here modern war. Even the way this war
ends in some attempt to rehash scenes resembling those of the Japanese on the Missouri
or General Jodl signing the surrender 65 years ago; this ritual did not really succeed in
producing a real surrender and the commentaries of the two sides in the First Gulf War
have remained unalike. A little later there were the pictures of the American Rangers in
the streets of Somali and the influence it had on the way President Clinton would operate
American air power during the 1990s, the years of Cruise missiles, long distance assaults,
advanced airplanes, precision bombs.
Kosovo was a very central event which really moves the process that brings Milosevic
to Hague and also exposes the significant capability of destruction and precise attack but
here again with a different perspective. There were other prominent issues in Kosovo – the
influence of the bad weather on the frequency of assaults and on the capability of precision
assault, the use of advanced weapons; the famous presentation of Clark at the end of the
conflict in Kosovo explaining in effect that the number of damaged tanks and APCs was
very small while decoys and other motorized vehicles were badly damaged, that is, the
capability of causing some real damage to a military force ready for assault, which is
camouflaged and dispersed, gets into the midst of civilian population and the accumulated
influence of public pressure on decision-makers as it is also reflected in Lebanon.
This analysis leads to an idea that has three components, in many ways it is the gist of the
conception. Firstly, as the lethality of air power was the principal thing that happened in
the 1990s, its operation was the major development. That same lethality made it imperative
to improve the capacity to withstand, which means camouflage, dispersal, low signature,
bunkers, tunnels, smoke, decoys etc. Secondly, one should concentrate on deterrence,
principally in order to deter the other side from messing with you, and if that general
deterrence fails, one should take the war to those zones more comfortable to the weaker
side; having concentrated on these capabilities you finally achieve the effect of attrition.
The other side – that is, us – the West, will blink first because of its social structure, its
inability to cope with long wars with numerous casualties. This is not a novel idea – it
appeared in Vietnam and also much earlier but its application during the 1990s was most
pertinent in view of unfolding events. The additional element in this perception brought
about the combining of states and organizations, thus enjoying the advantages of both,
reducing the separate disadvantages of states and organizations.
In texts connected with this issue, Bashar talks of the ability to endure even if the enemy
destroys "many of our infrastructure facilities". They do recognize this capability of the
other side yet there is also belief, confidence in our ability to hold out.
Naim Kassam is Nassrallah's second in command and in a book written in the 2000s he
expounds many of these ideas very succinctly and plainly talks of attrition, while a senior
Iranian figure ties the idea of asymmetric war with the idea of deterrence.
All this has to do with two other ideas; the first one is what the Israeli Intelligence calls
the idea of victory through non-defeat. The assumption which gains prominence in the
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1990s – that Western conception as to the essence of war, what is victory in war, still feeds
on these pictures of surrender and victory celebrations of WW2, which concluded in an
emphatic and unequivocal victory – and if war is not concluded in this way, it counts as
a victory for the other side. Victory as we see it, so says Nassrallah, is for the resistance
to continue, without being dispirited, that Lebanon will not be defeated, that it keeps its
self respect, and the fact they are still there to this very day is a victory de-facto, the very
fact they have sustained this blow is victory, and going on with the struggle is victory.
He brings up again the idea of a war being fought, won and then you go on, and the idea
espoused by the other side is taking these pictures, blurring the outcome of the war thus
diminishing the conception of victory held by the West.
The second idea of this conception is that of disappearance; 'you will not find us' as
Nassrallah explains very eminently in 2005 following a quote from 1999 about hiding,
he compares himself to the Lebanese military. "The military is structured as such; it has
a shape while we have no shape, the military cannot hide but I can hide and even if Israel
should look for us in southern Lebanon, it will not find us, but where can the military
hide?"
These ideas are translated into a conception of force structuring that I think is common
today in various variations to all the entities I talk of: emphasis on the acquisition of
non-conventional weapons for deterrence, surface-to-surface missiles for attrition and
deterrence, rockets for the same objective, investing in anti-tank weapons, developing
generations of explosive devices, as well as camouflage, hiding, protection, tunnels,
bunkers, air defense measures in order to neutralize our air defense capabilities and the idea
of taking munitions deep into enemy territory not by air power but by suicide terrorists.
In short, when you look at where it comes from, that is – what they read, what are the
intellectual sources of this conception, assuming one accepts the central thesis of this
lecture that these are not just a collection of tactical fighting patterns which randomly fall
into some kind of order; even though in many ways this works in both ways and there is
development in the tactical domain and also thinking in the systemic and strategic level,
there are numerous references to war as seen by Islam, to the written word of the Koran as
a source of inspiration as well as means of communication with fighters who know what a
pit is when told to get into one because this is a very central myth in Islam. Writing about
jihad over the years also serves as the foundation for this thinking – there is considerable
recapturing of classical guerilla through translations made by the national Palestinian
movement in the middle of the last century. The PLO dealt with it extensively and other
organizations almost obsessively translated works on classical guerilla by Marx, Lenin,
Mao, Che Guevara as well as lessons derived from wars in the Middle East and other
places. External influence was relatively limited; it came from the USSR until the end of
the 1980s roughly while North Korea provided ideas together with arms.
When examining the ways these ideas develop, one may consider suicide attacks. It actually
started in Iran, during the Iran-Iraq war – one of the dramatic events I referred to – goes
on to Lebanon where it was formally expressed. They do not write operation manuals like
the Americans, they write Fatwa and these ideas are circulated through the Fatwa [in the
HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic" \o "Islamic" Islamic faith, a religious
opinion concerning HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia" \o "Sharia"
Islamic law issued by an HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulema" \o "Ulema"
30
Islamic scholar] these are very special connections among various factors communicating
knowledge like the meeting of Hamas exiles and the Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Guard
in Lebanon. Thus it is distributed to other places as a way of developing knowledge in
the framework of the conception. The same goes for tunnels and bunkers; where do they
come from? It comes from all sorts of places but the axis of the development can be clearly
sketched – surface-to-surface missiles and rockets appeared in WW2 and even earlier,
continued in Vietnam, and much practical experience was added in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq
war, the Gulf War and Lebanon again,
The Israelis are left with air supremacy only; if the air force equation changes, the whole
equation of the conflict will change. I think not by chance it is the conclusion Nassrallah
drew from the conflicts of the 2000s, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead
as well as other occurrences.
I think that when Nassrallah says "I was wrong" at the end of the Second Lebanon War and
again some months later he understands the complexities of the situation he got himself
into. I think that just like our soul searching there goes on a similar process on the other
side, examining the complicated consequences of these conflicts and pondering if the
conception developed is indeed efficient, applicable; indeed, it had some achievements
like more than three years of quiet in Lebanon. The present policy of Hamas in Lebanon
however shows the inability of this conception to cope with everything you will talk of
in this conference, or the relatively limited ability to cope. So when the people on the
other side ask themselves where do we go from here, I think there are three opportunities
all of which should be considered because we really do not know what the future will
be like. One possibility is more of the same, more or less keeping with the same ideas,
staying with the same tactical patterns, they have their advantages, they are suitable to
these entities, states and organizations alike and they have generally made some significant
achievements. In my opinion they are no longer there, they have moved on saying 'let us
stay with the general ideas but we have to significantly improve our capabilities, and I
think this is the reason for all the things we read of in the media and some of Nassrallah
remarks on the number of rockets at his disposition today. This is an attempt to deal with
the failings of this conception as reflected in the battlefield through enlarging the crack,
improving precision, improving the explosive charges launched by the rockets.
I think that the most interesting possibility is that all I said is yesterday's story, the situation
will change, it will proceed in various creative directions that will challenge us from
different angles. In many ways – putting it in general and maybe simplistic terms – they
were one step ahead of us and perceived what we were doing in practice, they got it both
systemically and strategically just ahead of us and in this instance too we have to make
sure they do not get ahead of us. I think this is everybody's job, here and elsewhere.
31
Changes in the Nature of War: Warfare and the Implications on
Air Power
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dr. Dov Tamari
A good discussion is one that raises some troubling questions, a discussion at whose end
we find ourselves facing some new questions, hitherto unasked. That being the purpose of
our session I shall start with a series of questions, these questions are not necessarily aimed
at the two distinguished guests who will have their say presently but at all of us.
The first question has to do with the asymmetric wars we see nowadays, in this era of
weakening global order, when the bipolar world is becoming multi-polar, whereas
globalization formerly expected to rescue humanity has turned into a hothouse of infectious
diseases, both economic and social.
Has the appearance of new forms of warfare during the past 20 years together with the
coming into being of some irregular orientations in the political and strategic culture
brought about a change in the nature of small wars which has always been ambiguous, so
the major question to be tackled is if a complete re-think and a reappraisal of the traditional
paradigm of war are needed in light of the asymmetric conflicts between states and nonstate subversive organizations. It is a given that industrialized wars between states and
their respective militaries were not meant a-priori to kill civilians whereas in asymmetric
wars initiated by subversive entities against a state, the target for strike is their civilians,
while these entities intentionally drag those militaries into reacting and consciously hitting
civilians. These entities are fully aware that they hit civilians and they know their civilians
will be hit.
In WW1 some 10% of all casualties were civilians, in WW2 – 52%, in wars that can be
classified as asymmetric wars, civil wars, limited wars etc. about 90% of the casualties were
civilians. Where does it lead military thinking in this era of numerous violent asymmetric
conflicts, when the legalistic tendency frequently held now especially in Europe is pointing
wars to the direction of policing, less war but more policing. The historical retrospect
shows that various conventions of war from that of St. Petersburg in the 19th century did
not actually prevent the killing of civilians – they may have regulated the carnage but did
not really prevent it. Nowadays the orientation of wars in light of the logic of policing is a
function of cultural and political changes in the world but also the outcome of the rise and
proliferation of asymmetric wars.
The political and social culture in Europe is inclined now to avoid wars almost at any price
and also tries to impose this attitude on the whole world; obviously, it does not succeed.
The struggle against world terrorism challenges the law; after the strong international
criticism directed at Israel following the assassinations of senior terrorists in the Gaza
strip and elsewhere, lawyers in various places in the world have been targeting US actions
in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Recently the American Congress pondered if the use
of unmanned strike air vehicles can be construed as murder while discussing its influence
on the war on terrorism.
In the past 200 years many military and social theoreticians dreamt of proposing a universal
conceptual system of instructions, rules and principles for the making of a successful war.
Does reality prove that this orientation is still extant or maybe it has already collapsed, do
all the wars in the world have any common principles, common legality, common parlance
32
or would it be more accurate to think that every war is a law unto itself, a singularity that
demands appropriate practical theorizing, an appropriate conceptualization and a language
that might be different than the one in force?
When we voice the well known argument that war is meant to serve policy, everyone knows
the relevant quotation. We see more and more incidents in which wars, even the militarily
successful ones sometimes harm or disrupt policy or else push it into some unpredictable
places incurring some definitely undesirable results; by the way this is characteristic of
most Israeli wars if we think of it critically.
Maybe we should assume that the relationship between policy and war is more complicated
than we tend to think and the connection between policy and warfare does not really
exist as we might have liked it to. The accepted military knowledge in the West rests
on the tradition of the 19th and 20th century military thinkers, and that knowledge had
four logical foundations we all still hold to somehow. The first one is a hierarchical state
mechanism and the supremacy of the political level over the military. The second one
holds that annihilation of enemy military force is the only means of reaching resolution in
war. The third tenet talks of battle as the supreme realization of war, as was prevalent in
Israeli military thinking. The fourth and last one claims that the offensive maneuver is the
ideal form of warfare and I think that (Lt. Gen) Bogey Ya'alon still maintains it is.
Political and military establishments resting on these four foundations find it difficult to
cope with crucial questions that have been cropping up in the last decade or two. Is thinking
in organizations, customary for conventional, industrialized wars with an abundance
of human and technological resources also appropriate for that needed for asymmetric
wars? What are the desirable endgames in asymmetric wars? As to the victory we once
championed regarding both the rival system and our political and social system – what are
the operative ending situations that we are supposed to adapt from the strategic objectives
governments dictate or approve, do we resort yet again to conquest of territory and
obliteration of forces? Maybe a re-equilibrium is needed towards the operative defensive?
During preceding discussions we heard that an offensive is preferable to a defensive action,
why not combine the two?
There are phenomena that accepted military and political thought finds it difficult to adjust
to; is the accepted dominance of strategic direction, meant to reflect national interests
from which campaigns and battles are derived, still relevant when we think of asymmetric
wars between entities whose cultures are diametrically opposed? Those subversive entities
indeed have an abstract logic, they also have a long range purpose but their fighting force
feels free to go on from one way of struggle to the next; this was said in Itay Brun's lecture
too, and seemingly they have an enormous space of operational modes and combat.
The subversive element seeks to disrupt every mode of order a state needs for its normal
life whereas the leading concepts of the state and its military are a war that is as short
as possible, speed in operating power for the shortest possible campaign, a process of
strategic decision-making deriving from the accumulation of the performance time of all
tactical missions and when these do not succeed or fail, the state and its military go for
attrition.
The subversive acts in the opposite direction: attrition is a starting point and they wish to
hold on to it as long as possible. In this contradiction it led the state entity, not just here
but elsewhere as well, to quantitative solutions, such as the operation of air power which
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might be called successful in the Second Lebanon War and in Cast Lead Operation: the
quantitative is a very important component in the matter.
The subversive on the other hand adopts warfare that prevents the possibility to physically
destroy it unless genocide is applied and this is something we never think about. Therefore
maybe it is time to redefine asymmetric conflicts and their warfare and derive from it both
force structure and its mode of operation, because for the moment we are still chained to
the modes of force-operating of the big industrialized wars.
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War - Continuity in Change
Dr. Colin S Gray, Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies, University of
Reading, UK
The conference title refers to the change in the nature of war and I have written and argued,
as I will argue here today till I drop dead defeated, but I would never surrender on the point
that I do not believe that war and warfare ever changes its nature. It is always changing
its character.
Every war is unique. I am a great believer in change, but the nature of war pertaining to
human nature, what human societies need to do for themselves as I will try to explain if it
needs explaining, it is almost banal, but nonetheless, I think we are looking at an eternal
reality.
The reality of war and warfare was understood by Macedonians in times past and
Americans and Israelis today and I think it is the same phenomenon, even though the
character is unbelievably different. I think war can only be understood holistically, as a
whole. If you focus on continuity in change one is near certain to undervalue the change
in the continuity: you need to be bi-focal; Karl Von Clausewitz is uncompromising on this
matter. I quote the great Prussian who said that 'but in war more than in any other subject
we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole, for here more than elsewhere the part
and the whole must always be thought of together'.
The subject of most interest here is future war, all of it, and that future war will include
both change and continuity from the past. Many people seem to have some difficulty
understanding the relationship between continuity and change. I will try to provide some
useful guidance on that central matter. Similarly satisfactory grasp of the connection
between ideas, between theory and practice frequently is missing. I would like to think
that in my career I have tried to do both. These deficiencies in intellectual grip can be
really important, important and damaging to national security. Ideas do matter. Clarity and
definition matters, so if we are going to debate something, at least we understand we are
debating the same stuff, the same thing which is by no means the case when you talk about
air power or war strategy more generally.
The core problem for those who are charged with a strategic function, like conducting
defense planning for national security, is the need to prepare prudently for a future - almost
everything in general about the future is known, but nothing is known in reliable detail:
we know everything that there is to know about war. It is not really surprising that we
know everything about war, we have got variable historical access to 2500 years of bloody
history of war but we know nothing, literally zero for certain about the wars of the future,
even the fairly near-term future.
There are question marks everywhere as to why war, with whom war, when war, how war,
with what and of course what about the potential outcomes of these unknowns? Obviously
the further away from today you look and try to predict, the foggier and more uncertain
does the course of future events become. Crystal balls that work reliably are hard to find.
And where is the good astrologer or a good crystal ball maker when you really need them?
Yet astrology also tends to disappoint. So ignorant though you are, defense planners have to
make guesses about the future. Sometimes you have to appear in front of a Congressional
committee or a House of Commons committee and pretend that we have guessed the future
35
accurately, this is the right defense posture, and this is exactly the right number of defense
dollars to be spent, even though you and I know it is guesswork.
I cannot really stand in front of the people's representatives and say 'I am just guessing',
the burden is on me to say 'exactly this amount, I have got it right'. And if you say it often
enough you may even come to believe it. However, that can be dangerous. It is bad enough
to fool the people; if you fool yourself then you are in real trouble, so how do you intend to
improve guesswork for the future about war, warfare and strategy? The most basic answer
is that you can only educate, in the hope that judgment will be improved so that good (as
opposed to poor) better (as opposed to worse strategic choices) guesses will be made.
You cannot know today what choices in defense planning you should make that would be
judged correct in ten or twenty years time from now. Why not? Because you cannot know
what is unknowable. You do not know what people in ten or twenty years from now wish
we had decided to buy today.
However, rather than accept a challenge that is impossible to meet, in other words guess,
predict the future, we should instead try and pick one that can be met well enough.
Specifically, to educate your policy makers, your defense planners, your military executives,
at least they are intellectually equipped to find good enough solutions to the problems that
emerge, more likely the problems that erupt unpredictably years from now, and I must
emphasize: develop and maintain capabilities sufficiently adaptable on the material side
so that you are able to cope with a range of security challenges, since particular threats and
particular opportunities cannot be an anticipated with very high confidence.
That may be a little less true in the Israeli case than in the British or American case,
though in the American case we are a global power, we do everything everywhere. I
recall contributing to a particular defense planning document in the early 1980s, during
the Reagan administration where I think the basic political guidance we wrote was 'be
prepared to go everywhere, fight anybody and if need be win and do your best'. Basically,
do everything, be competent and try to succeed everywhere, which is nice if you can afford
it and if it is feasible.
I will present my argument this morning in the form of nine major points or claims and
I will conclude by offering some observations on the major current and near-time future
characteristics of war and warfare with some caveats.
Firstly, war has a constant nature but an ever changing character. War is always organized
violence motivated by political considerations. War is about politics, so what is politics
about? Politics is about the distribution of power. But actually it is about the distribution of
power so you can then do the right thing. It is amazing how much more right I am believed
to be, if I have the power to enforce it. Anyway, who has how much power, what do they
do with it and what are the consequences of what they do with it?
I think it is important to distinguish war and warfare singular from wars and episodes or
warfare plural. Thus far, there is no general theory of war that is very helpful in explaining
the why and the when of particular wars and the theory of war, dare I say it as a sort of
logical obvious, the theory of war has to be the theory of peace. The concept of war only
makes sense in relation to something else, the termination of not war, in other words. It
only makes sense in terms of its opposite. If your favorite general theory of war seems
good enough to explain why great wars occurred in 1914 and 1939 how good is this great
general theory of war that you have got in explaining persuasively, let alone conclusively,
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why great wars did not happen in 1913 or 1938? - Your general theory of war and peace
needs to accommodate both peace and war.
Many people who should know better confuse the nature of war with the character of war.
And the difference really matters as the nature of war is universal, eternal and does not
alter, but the character of war is always in flux. This is not just a fine professorial academic
point. It matters enormously if you believe that your favorite idea or innovative technology
is going to change the nature, as opposed only to the character, of war; for an obvious
example, a legion of theorists have argued that air power has changed or is changing the
nature of war- this is nonsense. At least it is if you are conceptually disciplined. Clausewitz
wrote 'the nature of war is complex and changeable' but then he also elsewhere says 'all
wars are things of the same nature'. In other words, he drives on both sides of the road
at the same time, at least on this subject. I believe he was correct on the second claim, if
you believe that different wars are examples of different species of political and social
behavior, you invite serious error in understanding the continuities amidst the more or less
obvious changes over time and in different contexts.
There is only a single general theory of war because war, past present and future, is about
a single species of subject. Air power has made a huge difference to the conduct of warfare
but in 100 years it has not altered the nature of warfare or the nature of war. I would argue
if you press me that even the advent and the maturing of a nuclear revolution has not
changed the nature of warfare. And this class of weaponry posses a more fundamental
menace to the nature of war than does air or missile power for the obvious reason that it
appears to disconnect ends, ways and means.
Political ends, how can they be served by nuclear weapons? Is the concept of nuclear
strategy a contradiction in terms, in other words? A second point: every war is distinctive
and typically every war is waged in several styles, so option purity, as they used to say in
the nuclear targeting business, is not what the history of war shows you.
Throughout history the belligerence function is strategically trying to achieve desired
ends by suitable ways using available means by the strategy function. Different security
communities make distinctive choices as to how they will compete and if necessary fight,
given their practical options, their circumstances and the discretion that their enemies
allow them. Let me emphasize that is the discretion that your enemies, staff and happening
events allow. It is not a matter of how we choose to fight; it is a matter of how we are
allowed to fight. Can we insist that we fight the war that is fought the way we prefer? How
weighty is the enemy's vote? Is his voice and my voice actually both thwarted and we fight
in some third way or third, fourth and fifth ways that we had not anticipated at all before
it started? Different security communities make distinctive choices and probably most
wars contain variants, both known as regular and irregular styles in combat. The menu
of warfare and the strategy options for style or if you like type of warfare, is relatively
unchanging over the centuries. The toys are always changing fashions and what preferred
change is.
Moral concerns and cultures will evolve, sometimes they will change radically but
nonetheless, the menu of choices of how you fight, although the toys change, the material
circumstances alter, is really relatively unchanging over the centuries. Technologies and
tactics change but ancient medieval and modern choices are comprehensible to us today.
We can make good enough sense in our contemporary terms, this is a bit controversial
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for some of my historian friends; in contemporary terms we can make sense, I believe,
intelligent sense, of Greek Roman and Byzantines strategic and political preferences. As
to the common theory or strategy, a common theory of war applies to them, as it does to
us, even though the languages, the words, are very different.
War has persisting and universal contexts that with historical specificity explain and drive
it. War is all about the context that gives it meaning. It is useful to explain war, with regard
to seven fundamental contexts. You may prefer 6 or 17, it doesn’t really matter just as long
as you capture what you need to capture. They organize the complex subject well enough
for holistic understanding. The contexts as I choose to identify are political, social, cultural,
economic, technological, military, strategic, geographical, geo-political, geo strategic and
finally historical; in other words even if historians and sometimes social scientists like to
write thematically nonetheless history actually happens, the past and the current and the
future actually happen one after another. It really is history, really is sequential, but that
is not always the way it is convenient to write your scholarly books. And this really can
matter.
I am sure all of you have been sometimes frustrated by a book, say a history of World
War 2, where there is a chapter on the Holocaust, a chapter on Air Power, a chapter on the
Pacific, a chapter on the Mediterranean, etc., and it can be hard to recapture the reality for
the policy makers at the time, as it was all happening at the same time. You know the Grand
Alliance had a common basket of assets: landing crafts that will go to the Mediterranean
could not be in the English Channel and certainly could not be there to invade Sampan
in the Marianas. The air war, the sea war, the intelligence war, the race to acquire atomic
weapons - it was all happening at the same time space. That is not always academically
convenient because we like to cut things up for neat treatment. But history is all happening
at once.
Every war has to be understood conceptually; it is not a standalone-come-from-nowhere
war that just happens, itself providing all relevant meaning. In every war the relative
waiting of importance among the seven contexts will differ. The general theory of war
tries to advise what to look for – it is education, they cannot tell you what will be found
in a particular case. This is not the fault of general theory. Rather, it is the nature of the
exercise and the boundary of general theoretical existence which is to educate those who
must make real world decisions.
War is eternally and universally possible. Why? Because human beings in politically
organized societies can always be sufficiently motivated by some mixture of fear, honor
and interest to choose to fight. Thus Thucydides in History of the Peloponnesian War,
his general explanation of the principal motives for statecraft and for war, which are as
relevant, alas, in the 21st century as they were in the final decade of the 5th century BC
2400 years ago.
We know that there will be war and warfare in the 21st century and alas we know there is
a need for strategy, grand and military strategy in the future. Why? Because Thucydides
is unfortunately alive and well and I believe, alas, always will be. Human nature and the
nature of human society have no more changed since Thucydides' time than has the nature
of war.
Clausewitz explained well enough the enduring nature of war in terms of two unstable
trinities; the first trinity, the primary trinity as we call it, is passion, chance, reason,
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which he associated by way of the secondary trinity, which is the people, the army and
its commander or government or policy. Sometimes this is misread to say that policy is
always most important. No, policy and politics should be most important, but quite often it
is not so. The relationship between popular passions, military command and political will
and reason is never likely to change. Clausewitz claimed logically that for war not to be
something else, that something else might be recreational violence, criminal violence, but
to be war it must serve policy. The word 'politik' in German can mean politics or policy,
given the way Prussian policy was made in Clausewitz' day, he almost certainly by and
large meant what we understand more by policy than by politics; but actually I think it is
probably better to interpret Clausewitz actually is saying that war serves politics rather
than policy. Because where does policy come from? Policy comes from politics. And if you
understand that policy always comes from politics and politics is always shifting, it helps
you understand that policy is not a case that we go to war because this is our policy, policy
is a moveable feast. Because the politics that drives it is also a moveable feast. Clausewitz
did not claim that policy has to dominate, either the popular world or the behavior of the
army. It should logically do so because policy is providing the purpose. But frequently that
is not the case. His primary trinity which you can translate as comprising popular feeling,
military performance and political direction, is the beating heart of the general theory of
war, and in common with Thucydides' trio of inferior interests. This Clausewitz threesome
can serve as the skeleton key to open many rooms in what Lawrence of Arabia called the
whorehouse of war that would otherwise be hard to understand.
In addition to passion, chance and reason, Clausewitz also provides such valuable items
for your conceptual tool kit as a proposition that war always has a climate whose principal
characteristics are danger, exertion, chance and uncertainty. Alexander the Great understood
that, and soldiers in Napoleon's army understood that, our armies in Afghanistan today
understand that.
The general theory of strategy so educates strategists that they are intellectually unable
to invent design and execute historically specific strategies that may succeed, the general
theory of strategy and those of us who try to teach it, educate those who must do strategy,
plural strategies, in the real world. Again, following Clausewitz' The General Theory of
Strategy does not specify what to do, but it does advise on how to think about what to
do. Education in strategy is a conceptual enabler; it is a theory of education for practice,
just as you must recognize that there is war in general, universal and eternal in its nature,
but ever variable in its particular character, so too strategy is both general in nature and
variable from case to case. Because general theory explains the whole enduring nature
of the subject it is both always authoritative yet always in need of translation to fit the
particular context of history.
It is important to remember the key singular/plural distinction between the one general
theory of strategy and the unlimited number of particular strategies that rivals and
belligerents actually devise. This general particular distinction applies to functional and to
geographically focused theories, for example, there is a general theory of air power, while
there have been many particular air power strategies geared to historically individual air
power contacts for particular countries in particular circumstances. The general strategic
theory of Clausewitz, Thucydides, Sun-Tzu rules over a general air power theory and
the general air power theory should educate for practice in the form of actual air power
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strategies.
Strategy is very difficult for many reasons, one of which is that strategy is not politics,
nor is it fighting power. Strategy is about the conversion of military effort into political
reward. That is a tough currency conversion to do, because the exchange rate is not fixed
and it cannot be fixed.
This is a universal and eternal challenge: what is the exchange rate for military performance
and how do you measure it into desired political outcomes? Somehow you have got to
translate the military, not only the military, the military economic etc, into the political
which is what gives war its meaning. That is what this is all about after all; the war is about
the peace that follows, otherwise what is it about? Whether you are at war with a state or at
war with an insurgency, whether you wage regular or irregular warfare or both, more likely
both, this is the primary challenge, the purpose of fighting is not to win a military victory,
even though that is usually necessary and is always desirable. Rather it is the purpose of
fighting to secure a better peace than you enjoyed before. To reject or neglect this logic is
when you find yourself in a situation of fighting a war that has no meaning outside itself.
At least in British popular culture there is the whole soldier ditty from the unduly Great
War of 1914-18 where the public ditty went "we are here because we are here because we
are here".
What is it all about because we are here? Strategy is hard to grasp as a concept. Politicians
are good at politics, soldiers, we hope, are good at fighting and directing the fighting but
turning the fighting into useful reward politically is something that neither side of the
strategy bridge is really trained to do. We try but it is a hard concept to grasp and very hard
to do well.
The guiding principle for defense planning is minimum regrets. The gold standard for
good-enough defense planning is not to predict the future accurately because it cannot
be done, so what you have to do is to get the biggest decisions right enough so your
successors, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty years from now will not lament 'if only, if
only back in 2010 they decided this rather than the other'.
Hopefully when they say if only, they will refer to a past mistake made by us today that it
is distinctly survivable. The defense planner has to balance the commitment of resources
to provide military capabilities that you need today and immediately tomorrow because
it is a demonstrated actual need with buying resources for the future as insurance against
more or less distant and uncertain and sometimes very uncertain perils. The former, the
demonstrated need is the same. Certainty, the latter, is guesswork. What will the country be
pleased to have available in its military tool kit five, ten, fifteen, twenty, years from now?
That question cannot be answered precisely though we have to try and pretend that we
can. I can assure you sometimes there are enough credulous colonels around who believe
that actually I do have a methodology that really will reveal what the future will hold for
us, but the question cannot be answered precisely. So the best you can do is cover some
very unwelcome problems that are anticipated as possibilities by means of planning to
buy the ability to cope with their kinds of challenges. You need to buy a military force
with the attributes of adaptability, flexibility, agility and fundability. So you say 'well, I
am looking at what Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and TRW and the rest are buying - I
think I will buy an agile system'. It is like saying 'what we need is to deter' and you say
'guess what, that is just what I happen to be selling or what I would like to sell you, you can
40
buy deterrence, you can buy it by the yard and you know, the more platforms I make that
you buy the more deterrence you will buy; if a thousand minute ICBMs will deter, guess
what kind of deterrence you will get from 2000 ICBMs'. But of course the real world is
much more complex than that. The scope for argument is how much flexibility is needed,
what is more flexible, or flexible to be what? When your successors many years from now
discover that what they have ready at hand is not a close fit with what they optimally would
require, what they would really wish you had bought for them that ought to be able to work
around the difficulty.
How do they do that? Well, they find compensation in other, sub-optimal perhaps,
capabilities. They look hard for strategies and tactics that privilege what happens to be
available, that is the fleet that we have got, that is the fleet with which we have got to fight,
but we will fight it in a way that the builders of that fleet did not really intend.
Thinking of the current British defense debate, are we going to remain in the nuclear
deterrent business? - we don’t really want to go to Paris cap in hand, you know the French
are going to stay in the nuclear business forever; so, if we need a nuclear deterrent can
we beg, borrow or steal it? - Certainly not. It is the sort of thing that if you get out of that
business you are not going to get back into. And friends might be loath to lend or help you
in that particular direction. Finally, there is what I like to call a conceptual carousel, a fair
ground like a roundabout, of strategic ideas, good, bad, and both. A particular idea can be
good and bad, good in one situation, bad in another. It depends on whether it fits the needs
of the moment or whether it does not but if you get to like your particular idea and most of
us who are strategic theorists get to like our ideas very much, my talk only has a hammeryou know the old story - so everything is a nail.
So large and industrious is the international community of defense and security practitioners
and commentators that you can feel really overwhelmed by the cascade of new-sounding
concepts, schools of thought as well as by some of the sheer volume of theories, analyses,
commentaries, instant theories on still-moving events. For an unfamiliar scene but actually
rather banal precept, consider the thought that history never sleeps; every passing moment
is a strategic moment. Thinking of familiar but still useful dictums, it is a thought that
just when we found the answer they changed the damn question on me. Just when we
understand the irregular warfare, the hybrid and the compound and all the other fetish
notions of the 2000s, it seems that the 2010s are probably going to be very different.
Are there historical discontinuities? The apparent non-linearity is sufficiently serious; is
the change sufficiently serious to invalidate most of what classical counter-insurgency
theory provides by way of an education and what dependant doctrine advises? Just as you
succeed, as they say, in grasping the character of the larger irregular strategic challenges
of the 2000s with its accidental guerilla thinking of Dave Kilcullen, you find yourself in a
foreign country at the 2010s and 2020s when the problems may be significantly different.
This means that yesterday's doctrinal wisdom is most likely going to get you killed
tomorrow and will lead to mission failure. Traveling full circle in this discussion I am
arguing on the one hand that there is a general theory of war, and a general theory of
strategy that is eternally and universally valid. But on the other hand I am also insisting
that they only have authority as education for highly variable translation for application to
specific changing historical circumstance.
This begins to be slightly controversial; there is a fixed stock, a fixed arsenal of strategic
41
ideas which you can think of as tools in your conceptual tool kit for use in the unique
strategic concept in which you find yourself. Triggered by the demand for new ideas to
deal with new problems, at least new for today, the concept of industry which I guess I
am a tiny part of, official and unofficial, the concepts of industry faithfully deliver newsounding ideas to meet new-looking challenges to people who have been newly promoted
and have not read the literature before. The ideas will not be new, I can guarantee it.
But their wording may be. The real world strategic challenges assuredly will be more or
less new to the people who confront them now, even though they are most likely to be
genuinely novel. If you are faced with a complex counter-insurgency problem, for which
you are significantly under-prepared, less than well-prepared theoretically, doctrinally and
materially, it will not be much consolation to be told by some smart-ass professor that
there is nothing really very new about this dangerous situation. Old wisdom is forgotten,
ignored and is probably hard to translate into useful guidance for now, so you have to learn
what already is in the library, but has not been accessed of late.
If you believe that the future shows in advance, if you believe that the future shows an
advance from rather than sticking with past wisdom, you are not likely to be open to
much strategic education and the classical theorists on war and strategy. If you think that
we are advancing, we are making progress conceptually. It is worth mentioning that the
roundabout of concepts brings round and round both good ideas and bad ideas and as
I said at the beginning: what was once a good idea may not be a good idea in today's
circumstances.
There is nothing of fundamental importance that I think is genuinely new about war and
strategy, the stage sets, the dress, the civilians, the military toys and some of the language
are always changing but the human, political and strategic plot remain all too familiar. My
argument is simultaneously profoundly conservative if also thoroughly comfortable with
recognition and even welcoming change.
I will close by citing five significant changes in the context of contemporary and near
future war and strategy and also point to three caveats that should help encourage respect
for more classical analysis.
Emerging characteristics of war and strategy, the development of cyber power that is
becoming ever so necessary for the creation of wealth and the functioning of armed forces
has already resulted in cyber warfare. With only trivial exceptions all future wars will
harbor integral cyber warfare: that is a reality, a fact beyond argument. Next the maturing of
orbital space capabilities for science, commerce and military power guarantees that space
warfare in common with cyber warfare must be in our future because of our dependence
on it and many countries' dependence on it.
The rise of a global electronic media with real-time access to events and the ability to
communicate that to audiences globally means a political and cultural moral audit of
behavior. That will be an enduing feature, it is here to stay, It is not a passing feature of
the 2000's; instant global media with instant if unreliable access is going to be part of the
strategy story.
An information-led revolution in military affairs, classic RMA of the 1990s discussion
is well underway and unstoppable; the strategic ramifications of this RMA include the
dissemination of relatively high tech weaponry and support equipment to non-state and
weak state belligerents as well as folks like us.
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The computer based IT led RMA does not mean enduring US military strategic and
political hegemony as some people naively believed. There are real competitors out there.
Belligerents who find themselves materially challenged will seek strategic compensation.
How? By means of adopting asymmetric ground and military strategies that might offset
their military disadvantages. It was always thus.
Irregular warfare, terrorism, threats by weapons of mass destruction are the most obvious
contemporary asymmetric options, there is nothing new about the concept of asymmetry in
war or warfare in strategy. A sensible combatant always looks for a winning edge that can
mask and offset deficiencies. And finally interstate warfare, the interstate war, continues
to plague the human race.
Even war between great powers is possible given the political fuel lurking in the 21st
century in the deadly familiar classic flaccidity and categories of fear, honor and interest.
But new technologies likely will retire and have retired the tactical relevance of modern
military experience; for a leading contemporary example I think contemporary kinetic air
and missile power is now so deadly in the precision with which it can be targeted to just
about any assets that can be located, a very important caveat is that what you can find can
be violently deleted from the enemy's order of battle.
Regular heavy ground forces will not clash in mighty battle. Why? Because rival air power,
or powers, will pre-empt such engagement. But nonetheless, future large scale and usually
even conventional, regular and irregular styles of warfare will still be possible. They will
be wedged by IT led and enabled military forces in cyber space as well as to and in and
from orbital space, to be waged in styles notably irregular when compared with most of
the interstates' strategic practice of the 20th century.
Three closing caveats: firstly, particular styles in warfare wax and wane and wax again
endlessly in irregular style, but that says nothing of much predictive value about the 21st
century beyond today.
Secondly every new set of technological marvels brings with it specific challenges. For
every shiny new solution there is a shiny new problem that will be discovered, the principal
reason for this is because of the high inconvenience that we know by the generic name,
the enemy.
My final point focuses on what warfare is: a dual, a dynamic unique unpredictable product
of interaction, a unique event between friendly and unfriendly forces together with the
working of friction and chance, and no matter what else changes, we can count on historical
continuity in the form of self-willed advisories.
Professor Gray said in response to a question
Yes, the question I am looking at here says 'how much do you think strategists' - it does not
say who the strategists are – 'are still preparing for the last war rather than the next one'. It
is a very good question, and not confidently answerable because one can really answer it
only if I was confident I knew what the next war would be.
What I do know from the history that I have read of ancient and modern times, is that
the 21st century will bring what we mean by irregular wars and as much as I respect the
presentation we just heard [Dr. Boaz Ganor's] I disagree with it. I think hybrid warfare is
not new; the notion, the effort in war is to influence the motivation of the adversary and
that is what Michael Collins, the great strategist of the Irish republic and army did from
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1919 to 1921. The first modern guerilla war by Michael Collins was to undermine the
motivation to fight of Lloyd George's Liberal government; he attacked the values of the
British government. It is entirely contemporary, there really is nothing new here but we
must be very careful of scholastic arguments so in fact you have almost no substantive
disagreement, whether it is a change in the nature or the character of war: it is almost
a matter of linguistic preference. But I think that if you believe that the nature of war is
changing, you will understate or you will not fully appreciate the degree to which there
are continuities.
I think strategists do prepare for the wars they know. We are going to have a generation of
military officers who have been trained and retained what they have learned painfully in
the 2000's from Iraq and Afghanistan, at least thinking in the Anglophone zone, and the
folks who are now very junior officers will take when they become majors, colonels and
brigadier generals, in some five, ten or fifteen years from now, and they will be caught out
because the conflicts of 2020 will not be Afghanistan and Iraq. The only protection against
this is what I kept trying to advocate - a general education in the general theory of strategy.
It is as Eisenhower once said, individual plans do not really matter, and you know they are
going to be wrong; it is the ability to plan on the fly, the ability to improvise that matter.
You have to have trained planners; it is a process and it is the quality of people doing the
process because they are educated people that matters and that is all I can say.
44
The Evolution of Modern Terror and the Challenges of
Addressing this Phenomenon
Dr Boaz Ganor, Founder & Executive Director, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzlia
I will do my best to challenge Professor Gray and present a different point of view. Is there
really a difference, has the nature of war been changing over the years, and what do we
face today, especially when we talk about the so called asymmetric warfare, that warfare
between a non-state actor and a state? Is it really so different than what we used to see in
wars between states? I believe Professor Gray and I agree there are many changes in the
characteristics of warfare, I would argue that when so many characteristics are different,
then the nature of the phenomenon is different altogether.
I believe that the change in the nature of warfare has an immediate influence, challenging
the use of military force altogether, especially maybe even the use of air force in these
new battlefields, in counter- terrorism and counter-insurgency. Overall, I would suggest
understanding this change as an evolutionary rather than an evolutionary one. That
evolutionary process has created a new nature of war, one that we need to understand
and take into consideration. In order to understand the dynamics of the new modern war
or post -modern, if you wish, we need first and foremost to understand the nature and the
strategy of the actor, the non- state actor, namely the terrorist organization.
Terror is a dynamic phenomenon, it changes all the time. What we know about terrorism
today is not necessarily what we will know about it tomorrow; we see a change in the
type of actions the terrorists are conducting. In recent years we have seen the use of
suicide attacks, when people are ready to kill themselves in the process of fighting, not
just ready - they are actively looking for that opportunity, and that is a new breed of
warfare. You have people who are not reluctant to use non-conventional terrorism, CBRM,
chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear terrorism: that is a new challenge. There has
been a change in the structure of the terror organizations. We used to see in the 1960s and
1970s what I refer to as skeleton terrorist organizations, with a few dozen activists, like
the Red Brigades. Then we saw the popular organizations, starting with the IRA moving
on to Hamas, Hezbollah and today we are facing another breed of terrorist organization
which is the most dangerous in my view. This is the hybrid terrorist organization. A
terrorist organization sitting on the fence: one leg is deeply involved in terrorist activity
and the other leg is involved in the political arena, in the welfare arena, the religious, the
indoctrination activity etc.
What we used to see in the past was war between states, war between armies. You were
winning the war by defeating the military force of the other side. The battlefield was the
location in which you conducted this war. And then a change started around the mid-20th
century.
Modern terrorists are not just interested in defeating the military force of the other side,
they wish to defeat the motivation of the other side to use its military force. That is the
whole concept of modern terrorism: to create fear and anxiety and to paralyze the capability
of the state to fight against terrorists. But now we are witnessing a third evolution, a third
wave of evolution and the most dangerous one because it is on top of the others and it
is not only about defeating the military force of the other side, and the motivation of
the other side to fight, but the legitimacy of the other side to fight. What hybrid terrorist
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organizations are trying to do today is to limit the capability of the state to use its military
force, transferring the battlefield from the field itself, if you wish, into the legal battlefield,
paralyzing the capability of the state, shackling the military capabilities of the state.
Let us refer to the definitions for a moment. I do agree with Professor Gray that definitions
are important. We were in the habit of using the term low intensity warfare. I beg to differ.
How can we refer to an act of terrorist atrocity as 9/11 as low intensity warfare? Many
scholars now use the term asymmetric warfare. Again I would beg to differ because when
you talk about asymmetric warfare what you have in your mind is the picture of David
and Goliath. The state is Goliath and the organization is the David. But what is really
happening in this type pf warfare is a reverse asymmetric warfare in which yes, the state is
Goliath but Goliath's hand is cuffed and his leg is shackled by his own liberal democratic
values and international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague protocols
and so on, and this shackled Goliath is facing this lunatic David who does not give a
damn about those values, misusing these values in order to attack the shackled Goliath.
That is the reversed asymmetric warfare we are actually facing. I would suggest using a
new term to describe the nature of the new war – multi-dimensional warfare. Why multidimensional? Because this warfare has many dimensions: sometimes guerilla warfare or
insurgency or at other times the war is conducted on the military arena, the criminal arena,
the economic arena or the psychological arena. Sometimes it is low intensity while at other
times it is high intensity.
On top of that we have dynamics within the dimensions of this warfare. You could find the
same organization sometimes active in one dimension and at other times active in other
dimension. Sometimes it is using criminal activity and in other cases using military activity.
Sometimes it is insurgency while in other times it is terrorism, by the way you can find the
same person, the same activist sometimes active in one dimension and at other times in
another dimension. This is a huge challenge for anyone trying to counter this phenomenon.
So the question is who are the people involved in this type of multi-dimensional warfare.
You know the Geneva Convention - the international humanitarian law distinguishes
between two types of people who have something to do with the type of warfare we are
discussing, civilians and combatants. You are either a civilian or a combatant; I suggest
differentiating four groups of people based on the level, the nature and the characteristics
of their involvement in this type of warfare. Each one of those groups will be divided
to two sub-groups, so on one hand of the scale of involvement we have the combatants.
This group has two sub-groups: those who belong to a hierarchal military framework
and those who do not. I refer to this framework because the Geneva Convention refers to
it. The militia combatants will be divided to those militia combatants who are called to
active duty, they are actually combatants and those who had their basic training but for the
time being they are either before or after their active duty. The third group is the combat
supportive civilians and here I would suggest to differentiate between those engaged in
non-operational activity like civilians serving food to the terrorists or giving them nonoperational services, administrative services and so on, and those active in the operational
arena, those combat supportive civilians who conduct operative support or give operative
support to the organization; the taxi driver taking the terrorist on his suicide mission to the
target place, who is fully aware of what he is doing. That is a combat supportive civilian
who is conducting operational activity. Last but not least there are civilians - and here I
46
suggest to differentiate between two types of civilians, the non involved civilians, the
bystanders who just happen to be there in the battlefield when something happens, and
the force involved civilians we usually refer to as human shields, those are basically noninvolved civilians, who had been forced into involvement by the terrorists themselves.
So we can see that there is a scale of the level of involvement in the insurgency, in the
combat. This is a huge challenge for militaries who are trying to distinguish between those
groups, trying to ask themselves who is the worthy target, who is a legitimate target and
who is not?
The international humanitarian law and some judiciary systems, including the Israeli
Supreme Court have suggested a third group, in addition to civilians and combatants, and
that third group is the unlawful combatants. Again I beg to differ; I think it is a mistake,
because when you ask if their activities are lawful or unlawful, they are on a different scale.
You have a vertical scale and a horizontal scale and the two differ as to the level of lawful
activity. So you might find a combatant who is conducting an unlawful activity and others
who conduct lawful activity but the same could be in reference to militia combatants or
civilians supporting the terrorists.
The first question I ask myself after categorizing those groups is who should be regarded
as a legitimate target for attack by the army at a time of a multi-dimensional warfare and
what I suggest is that every combatant is either part of the hierarchal organization or
not; every militia combatant who is on active duty and every combat-supportive civilian
engaged in operational activity.
Who should not be regarded as a legitimate target? - All the rest. But unfortunately when
you try attacking a legitimate target, sometimes innocent people, bystanders, non-involved
activists get hurt as well. Here of course the international humanitarian law demands
proportionality.
Everybody is talking about proportionality but what is proportionality? Nobody actually
took up the challenge of analyzing it, giving a concrete measurement, defining how to
measure what is proportional and what is not proportional. This confused situation was
captured on a short video clip that we took from one of the websites supporting al Qaeda.
This web site was shown on the American television program "60 Minutes" that dealt
with the moral question of what is proportional and what is not, and al Qaeda supporters
subsequently made fun of the considerations expressed.
So what is proportionality? How can we fight the insurgency which takes shelter in crowded
civilian places, when we do not really understand or agree on what is a proportional
military action and what is not a proportional one. I think that most of the people in this
room would agree that we are at war, but in the international arena a debate is still going
on, many think that this is a case of law enforcement, that it is a criminal act that has
nothing to do with the military sphere.
But when you see how many American troops are being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan
as an outcome of this challenge, you understand that this is not just a war, this is a world
war. But this is not a war or a world war as they used to be. It is nothing like what we know
from recent history. This is not a war between armies or not just a war between armies.
This is a war on hearts and minds. This is a war between cultures, some refer to it as a
war between civilizations, and I would say this is a war between cultures, the culture of
Islamic radicalism against the rest of the world. So war is being conducted and it is being
47
won and lost by the ability to win hearts and minds, but of whom? - Of the public at large,
but mainly the Muslim masses themselves.
In that respect I do not underestimate the importance of the use of military force. I do not
underestimate the importance of the use of air power, sometimes it is needed, sometimes it
is the only way to deal with the challenge, but you can win battle after battle and still lose
the war if you do not comprehend the nature of the war on hearts and minds. You can find
yourself demolishing the military capability of this terrorist [group] or another but in doing
that you plant the seeds of so many future antagonisms and create different challenges,
bigger challenges using this dynamic nature of international terrorism.
So this is a war between cultures, a war on hearts and minds and in order to understand
this challenge further I shall touch on the strategy of modern terrorism. The terrorist act by
itself is no more than a tool by which a message is sent. The most horrific terrorist attacks
are meant first and foremost to send a message, actually they are meant to send three types
of messages to three types of audiences.
The message directed to the internal public opinion, the constituency of the terrorist
organization itself, is about raising their morale, gaining their support and so on.
The message sent to the targeted population, the civilians or citizens of the state attacked,
is meant to create fear and anxiety which is the whole concept of modern terrorism, and
with the message to the international community they try to gain legitimacy by conducting
this terrorist act; that was classical terrorism, but now the whole idea is to wrap the anxiety
within the targeted population, transform it into public pressure on decision makers so that
they use military force against the terrorist organization.
Now when you bear in mind that those people are using human shields, as they shelter in
crowded civilian targets, it is clear they direct the fire at their own citizens and civilians, so
the outcome is that by itself this creates hatred again, and helps them again to achieve the
ultimate goal of winning hearts and minds.
I am not saying that we are paralyzed and that we should not conduct military operations.
I am saying that when we plan those military operations, refraining from the boomerang
effect on internal public opinion or the constituency of the organization is crucial to the
planning itself. The use of human shields is in my view a good example of how the nature
of war has been changed.
To sum up, terrorist organizations are becoming more and more hybrid, growing on top of
the military wing, they also have welfare apparatus and political arms and they are active in
those three arenas. The welfare activity is meant to buy the hearts and minds of the people,
this is being translated to political activity and through use of free democratic elections thus deceiving the international confused community - they are taking political power and
gaining the establishment, then use the local governmental apparatuses in order to induce
more indoctrination, more welfare to buy more hearts and more minds. If this would be all
I would say OK, we can live with that, but the problem is that on top of it what we see is
that hybrid terrorist organizations while active in the political arena do not abandon their
terror tactics, continue to implement it in order to assail the state, make it resort to counter
terrorism against their human shields, thus gaining yet another opportunity to influence
hearts and minds and buy those hearts and minds.
Many characteristics of the wars we knew in the past - let us say a century ago - have
changed; the wars being conducted today against non state actors are different. There
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is a change in the type of the actors to a non-state actor, there is a change in the modus
operandi, there is a change in the use of weapons, there is a change in the dimension of
warfare, the concept of defeat and victory and how you define them has changed. There
has also been a change in the overall logic of modern warfare the warfare between a state
and a non-state actor and if we would not acknowledge that change I am afraid that we will
not be able to win this war.
A member of the audience asked about the mechanism of generating hate in the civilian
population that Dr Ganor mentioned, specifically if there is an offensive counter- mechanism
in place, like the use of some infrastructure and if he believes in such a mechanism.
Dr Ganor: If I need to summarize what I understand about terrorism in one sentence I
would refer to it as the formula of terrorism, comprising two factors, motivation plus
operational capability. From the formula of terrorism we can conclude what is the formula
of counter terrorism, effective counter terrorism, it is the same formula.
In the formula of counter terrorism and effective counter terrorism one should at the same
time to lower the operational capability of the terrorists and that is why we have militaries,
police officers, air force and so on, but also lower the motivation that leads and breeds
terrorism. It is easier said than done because there is an internal contradiction between the
two. Once you are fighting the terrorists, you kill them, you apprehend them, like it or not
you raise their motivation to retaliate, so this is one of the biggest challenges and I think
that the question is actually referring to this challenge. I do believe that if the planners of
the strategy of counter terrorism, whoever those responsible for countering operational
ability may be, will bear this in mind, at first they can conduct activity which will not be
counter productive to the counter motivation effort and can be very helpful.
As for the counter motivation effort, there are many things that can be done and should
be done. They need to imitate what the Islamic radical movements have done for so many
decades, buying hearts and minds, using all the indoctrination, education and welfare
activity without violence; that is why we all turn a blind eye until they reach the point
where they transform it into violent activity.
I believe that even in military operations you need to have the concept of counter motivation
in your mind all the time.
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The Challenges Facing the IAF - first session
Lt. Col. (Res.) Ron Tira, military writer and theorist
My presentation deals mainly with the challenges facing the IAF and it does not touch on
the responses to those challenges, therefore the picture I am about to paint will look sharper
than reality: I shall present the problems without referring to their solutions, hoping these
will be discussed in other panels. Moreover, the discussion of said challenges will be
somewhat abstract since the material is rather classified, and the abstract rival is always
more ominous than the concrete one.
When an enemy has certain limitations, certain characteristics and some weaknesses in a
familiar terrain compartment with some familiar characteristics, we shall eventually find
the solution while this discussion about the abstract enemy cannot get to the same level of
concrete coping and I think that one of the advantages the IDF enjoys is that it deals with
a defined and well known threat, unlike the Americans who may need to contend with
anyone anyplace.
I think it is an error to look at the threat we face now as one of asymmetric warfare, terror
or any such names that significantly lessen the power of the other side. This way we are
perceived as the strong, while the adversary is the weak one and eventually, with this
limitation or another, the strong invariably overpower the weak.
It seems to me that the correct way of looking at it is as a competition between two strong
parties, though very different ones. At times I am inclined to dub it a match between
Lance Armstrong, the champion cyclist, and Tiger Woods, the famous golf champion;
both of them are very good at what they do but are very different and when they are
to compete with each other one of them holds a golf club and the other rides a bike, it
becomes a complicated, interesting competition. In such a contest it Is unclear what they
get their points for but I think this way of reference is more relevant to the threat we face;
our enemy is wise, he adjusts, he changes, he changes more quickly than we do – we
change once in about 15 – 20 years and he changes every few years, which might cancel
our relative advantage. He is very conscious of himself and very aware of us, acutely
perceiving both advantages and disadvantages of each side, trying to direct the campaign
and the encounter between us to those parts of the envelope which he knows as his strong
points and our weak points. He tries to drag us from the classic campaigns of resolution of
the past to those of attrition, he tries to produce reciprocity, using strategic blows to match
the qualities of his hits to ours, to annul the advantage we used to have, when the strategic
blow was unilaterally in our favor; he attempts to create such reciprocity in the strategic
capability trying to shape wars in which the ultimate test has to do with the effectiveness in
the field, nor with the tactical effectiveness of the fighting forces but with the resilience of
the political and civilian system; he intentionally involves civilians on both sides, he drags
the war into the media scene, provokes legalistic debate about legitimacy etc.
Brig. Gen. Itay Brun [Head of Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Thinking, IDF] concluded
his lecture with a quote from Nassrallah who said the only relative advantage Israel has left
is the air force and if they could find a way to neutralize the air force as well, the regional
equation would change altogether. I am not sure I agree with Nassrallah but there has
undoubtedly been an attempt to cancel out the IAF and it is being done today and we shall
see its consequences in future. There has been an attempt to analyze the value chain of the
50
IAF and to somehow see to it that every single component in that chain will be somehow
annulled.
I should like to start with some banalities – they may not be intellectually stimulating but
it is important to point them out as part of the same offensive on the IAF value chain – I
shall mention them fleetingly and go on to air defense and EW, and later we shall discuss
methods which are more strategic and systemic, rather more interesting.
Those air defense systems we know in the theater have been there for 30 years – some
even for 40 years and while there has been no real modernization of air defense systems
for some decades, we now witness the beginning of a process of renovation of the enemy's
air defense systems. Three qualities of those new systems deserve mention: a) capacity for
silent operation, even at the stages of detection and those of engaging targets; b) extreme
autonomy of the single launcher that can operate almost completely independently; c)
capabilities of operation against weapons – intercepting weapons systems during their
flight.
In addition to this technological development, there have been hints pointing at the
implementation of a different conception of operating air defense systems, based on the
Serbian experience against NATO in Kosovo whose central idea does not hold that an air
defense systems is going to battle trying to desperately defend a terrain compartment in
full engagement but that it mainly deals with disappearing, then shows up from time to
time, engages, shoots down if successful, subsequently goes out and disappears again. In
fact this is some sort of a guerilla idea of operating air defense and a different conception
of how to operate air defense systems.
Consequently we see a lengthening of the air defense' life; while in the past after half a
combat day – or a whole one - the issue of air defense was behind us and we could go on,
in future we shall have to continue living with air defense systems for a very long time, as
the price of war is hiked up, here and there a battery goes on, engages, shoots down if it can
manage to and resumes activity. Another by-product is a significant decline in the quality
of mission performance not because every plane is effectively threatened but because one
cannot exclude the possibility that it can happen in any place, under any circumstances,
anytime during the war, even in its later stages.
Another issue I shall refer to is that of electronic freedom of action. Whereas in the past
platforms or formations operated by themselves, nowadays the air force operates in synergy
with many elements and it reaches its peak performance when it succeeds in combining
all these elements: several platforms operating together, the correlation of controller,
aggressor and the data gatherer, the satellite, the GPS satellite or another satellite that
assists and the weapon itself which is in communication with the satellite or with the
aggressor, the gatherer or the controller and a significant counter-effort is undertaken to
reduce our freedom of action in the electronic space that enables this synergy so as to
disrupt communications.
There are two significantly vulnerable points here, the first is the GPS which gets virtually
everywhere nowadays and the second is the vulnerability of the unmanned platform or
the weapons that communicate back with this or that element, and any obstruction of our
freedom of action with communicating weapons and unmanned platform will be quite
significant.
51
Let us proceed now to some even more important issues, the foremost being the status of
the rocket weapons, the surface-to-surface rockets and missiles, which allow some of our
enemies to neglect most of their other arrays and focus on this one. The emphasis on the
surface-to-surface rocket holds quite a few ramifications, primarily because for the first
time in many years there is a significant, massive and continuous threat to the majority of
our airbases and other IAF bases; most of them are within the range of those rockets, the
shooting is massive and continuous and when considering a base under fire we have to
ask ourselves first not how the spearhead of that base will operate – I am sure that those
aircrews and others will carry out their missions just as ever - but how will the weakest
link in that base function, that corporal who needs to drive a van with munitions or the
kitchen which must feed everyone when the continuous functioning of air force bases is
being challenged. Naturally if the civilian and military hinterland comes under fire various
national infrastructures may be damaged, and it might cause disruption in the mobilization
of the reserves.
The more interesting issue pertaining to surface-to-surface rockers is the fact that this
rival is not easily surmountable, the numbers are enormous, and I shall later refer to the
significance of the change in numbers but one should start thinking in terms of three digit
numbers, hundreds – not just several hundreds - of medium and long range launchers are
doing the rounds in this theater and it is difficult to find such large numbers of launchers
and deal with them efficiently, especially as they operate autonomously and their numbers
and autonomy augment each other. There is no critical junction, no fire management
center or logistical centers – you deal with them and you influence large parts of the array;
the array operates almost autonomously so it connects directly to effectiveness; this is
different from the logic we knew in the 1970s and 1980s when by obliterating 30 percent
of a Syrian or Egyptian division you neutralized it, while with the launchers all those you
did not manage to destroy go on functioning.
The signature of the surface-to-surface rockets is extremely low and the first time it
appeared with a more significant signature was during the launch. Following the Second
Lebanon War they were mostly eliminated after the launch, but the enemy understands this
idea, so in many cases – though not all – he intends to work in a self-destruct mode. You
assume from the outset that a launcher which is exposed and launches will be destroyed
and indeed your fire-plan takes it into account a-priori, still it does not mean that you
should concede and refrain from destroying those you can destroy; but the added value of
destroying the one that has already launched in order to disrupt the fire-plan of the enemy
is a very modest added value, because it had already taken into account that every launcher
is a disposable asset, after one launch it goes off the order of battle.
Another implication of the surface-to-surface rockets is that they are operated mainly
in the midst of civilian population in urban spaces and the enlargement of the range to
much longer ones than we encountered in 2006 also means deeper penetration into Israel
and a much deeper operational capability in enemy territory. We call it the cauliflower
allegory (the credit for the name goes to Col. (res) Gur Layish, the then IAF head of
operational planning) – if you take a cauliflower and cut it in the middle it will still look
like a cauliflower, in fact even one single flower still looks like the whole head. So what
is the moral? On the one hand the characteristics of the signature etc. prevent us from
destroying high percentages of launchers; we will not reach 100 percent or 90 percent. On
52
the other hand we might get to 30, 40, 50 or 60 percent and this is not enough because the
array functions after the elimination of 60 percent almost as well as when it is 100 percent
whole. It is like cauliflower and its strategic effect and the effect of sirens in the Israeli
hinterland together with the disruption of daily civilian life is achieved in the same way
whether on that day there was an attack of 1000 missiles or 2000 missiles or 500 missiles
or 300, the very pressure, the effect it has on the strategic hinterland of Israel, the civilian
hinterland is the same so a partial hit on this array will cause little damage relatively in its
strategic effectiveness.
In fact if we examine the development from 1967 until today and consider the future we
see that in 1967 the first waves of IAF planes attacked 11 targets in Egypt, 11 airfields,
the number is 11, these are big permanent stationary targets that are not going anywhere,
and the result was that the threat was directly removed. When the missile batteries in
the Baq'aa [in Lebanon] were attacked in 1982 there were 23 batteries, concentrated in
a limited terrain compartment, so it was possible to concentrate weaponry and collect
intelligence and the result was once again that the threat was directly removed.
In the Second Lebanon War things changed – an enormous number of targets, they
were still concentrated in one terrain compartment which gave us some advantage as to
capabilities of gathering and attack; the targets did not radiate and in the final analysis the
threat was not removed. The air force hit the enemy, reduced the threat but the threat was
not removed. Next time there will be some hundreds of mobile targets in an enormous
terrain compartment, much bigger than the terrain compartment that makes it possible to
concentrate gatherers and aggressors in a such a way that quantity becomes quality, but
then quantity turns into a new sort of problem, those hundreds of low-signature targets
will be very difficult to hide, very difficult to removing the threat by direct measures will
be tough.
The Israeli Air Force usually competes with moving targets; the hunt as it is called, is a
conception requiring another examination at least. The launcher is designated to operate
only once and if located and reached the added value is limited, because it was exposed for
the first time during the launching – the spaces are enormous, unlike in the past, the depth
is very large and in fact you should be able to gather and attack vast spaces deep in enemy
territory, while the availability of both aggressors as well as that of intelligence resources
create a challenge. The mass is tremendous while the hunter consumes resources – you
need great resources for hunting such as various sensors and advanced munitions; when
an arms race ensues the enemy enlarges his arsenal of cheap, numerous weapons whereas
I have to increase my expensive and complex weaponry - my situation is uncomfortable
and eventually the hunt demands a long time: when you hunt you have to go and collect
the enemy one by one with a teaspoon or tweezers and even if I manage to secure a
certain achievement, it will require a long time. You cannot avoid the question if the hunt,
that tremendous effort of going to look for the enemy one by one, is in fact worthy of
reproduction in a theater whose characteristics are very different, where there are hundreds
of targets, the theater is very deep and wide and the targets have minimal signature – this
requires at least some additional reflection.
Another aspect is the entry of launchers into urban space. In 2006 Hezbollah operated
mainly from open spaces, this will change considerably in the next war and we shall
see the main part of the force, the principal part of its launching capability inside urban
53
space, which will oblige the decision maker to directly calculate the possibility of hitting
launchers and assets which support them or the arrays supporting them vis-à-vis that
of hitting innocent bystanders. This calculation is a complex one in the Goldstone era
[referring to the South African judge chairing a UN commission examining Israel's alleged
war crimes] and it is very unclear what you get the citation for – do you get the better mark
for having done away with the launchers or for having minimized the injury to civilians
while not involving Israel in an international mess. So the question here is about your
managing these two parameters: it is a complex question, in this instance compromise may
not necessarily be right – that is, saying I annihilated only 40 percent and by the way killed
only 2000 civilians – it is uncertain this is the correct optimization. It is possible that in this
instance you should choose one of the two extremities as the 'better' solution.
Summing up the change at the technological and the tactical levels I have outlined as
a systemic and strategic change, the picture looks more or less like this: the enemy has
changed preference from war of resolution to war of attrition. The war's objective is to
wear down the public and political system of Israel in the long run and impair Israel's
legitimacy, the enemy operates mainly against our civilian hinterland, largely out of his
civilian hinterland, so he operates from hinterland to hinterland, he is in the midst of
his fellow citizens and that leaves us two possibilities. The first one is to recognize his
civilians as a human shield and refrain from operating and the other is to operate and
compromise our legitimacy – while the enemy avoids getting into big battles so we do not
have the opportunity to overpower him even if we wanted to.
In the past, one of the added values of the IAF was the direct removal of the enemy threat
– we did it twice in annihilating the Egyptian armor in Sinai. We shall be very hard put
to repeat this achievement with an enemy that shirks big battles, structures his forces for
disappearing, operates in a rationale that makes it difficult to find him: if I do not know
where the enemy is I cannot remove his threat which is why we shall have great difficulty
to remove the rocket threat, that is, we shall not be able to get to a resolution. Still, we
shall be able to accumulate an achievement against the surface-to-surface rockets but it
will take a long time. Indeed, the lesson derived from the last two campaigns, the Second
Lebanon War [in July 2006] and operation Cast Lead [Dec.2008-Jan.2009], is that the air
force eroded the enemy's strength, it dealt him some very heavy blows but did not remove
the threat and the enemy was not overpowered.
Therefore one should ask in what optimal conduit the IAF should channel its forces. In the
past other players were similarly challenged. Thus for example in Kosovo the American
and NATO air forces found it difficult to operate against the Serbian field disposition. Their
solution was to go for national targets, national infrastructures, the regime and national
resources supporting the fighting. This is a familiar pattern well-liked by air forces; in
WW2, during our War of Attrition and Lebanon 2 according to some non-classified
publications as the Winograd Report; the central idea Lt. Gen. (ret.) Halutz advocated
for the Lebanon 2, as he wrote in his book, was operating against the Lebanese national
infrastructure – not against Hezbollah.
This change, adopting the position that I should either give in or lower the threshold
at which I compete with the field disposition of the enemy, going instead for national
infrastructures and the government, is a change one should be wary of; it is dangerous,
turning the air force from the flank that resolves conflicts to one of strategic attrition. It
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may be inevitable but it should be applied only following extensive discussions and heartsearching and not as an afterthought. In our case it is dangerous because of several reasons.
First, these strategic attrition campaigns take a long time to mature. The Americans attacked
in Kosovo 78 days before the end of the campaign, we know how the War of Attrition in
the Suez Canal continued – a strategic assault does not bring about the enemy's surrender
in a day or two. Second, we are on the verge of an era in which there will be an equation of
strategic assault; our capability to get to their strategic centers of gravity will be balanced
by their capability of getting to our strategic centers of gravity with the rockets. True, there
are gaps in precision and gaps in the operational efficiency as well as other factors but the
in the final analysis the center of gravity is different too: the enemy does not need to get to
the GHQ building of the IAF - just getting to Tel Aviv will be enough - it does not matter
where in Tel Aviv – thus he can produce a mutual equation even if those centers of gravity
are different.
Consequently, the result of going for this strategic attrition war is mutual long-term attrition
whose result will not be determined by the effectiveness of the fighting force but by the
resilience of the political system, the civilian system, the public system and the economy;
the question is if in that war of cities, when I attack enemy cities, perhaps the targets
are more precise in his cities and the infrastructures as well as GHQ are precise, while
the enemy shoots at the centers of my cities, I have a relative advantage. Is my relative
advantage military, diplomatic, economic, legal, media-wise, etc?
To sum up I shall address the technical and tactical aspect, the techno-tactics, first;
Nassrallah has resolved, like others, to erode the effectiveness of the IAF value chain,
which can be done in several ways or by combining a few modes of operation, like striking
certain air bases with fire and other bases with rockets; a new generation of air defense
systems and a guerilla conception of air defense, i.e. the same launcher appearing from
time to time and executing a launch, or attempting to disrupt our freedom of movement
in the digital spectrum, especially against our "target-producing factory" by reducing the
signature, the saturation of targets, the target as a self-terminating means, absorption in
the civilian environment, descent to subterranean and very deep penetration into enemy
territory. If we go up one level to the systemic and strategic echelon, two orientations
characterize the next war; the first is autonomy redundancy, we cannot remove the threat
directly and completely; since owing to the autonomy of the launcher I am also unable to
create some functional paralysis so there is no resolution.
Another orientation is the strategic fire that the enemy is developing, his ability to reach
the Israeli hinterland, both civilian and military, which is why this is a very important
point which must be understood: there will be a change in the value of a combat day. In
2006 the weight of a combat day was not very important; it did not matter if the war took
34 days or 33 days or 35 or 37 or 32 and during Operation Cast Lead it did not matter if it
took 20 or 25 or 30 days. Enemy firepower in the next war makes the marginal combat day
very important so a situation in which on the one hand I do not know how to overpower
the enemy quickly and on the other hand every combat day is important because of the
strategic firepower which might produce a very problematic war, a mutual attrition by
strategic fire. I do not know how to end it, I do not know how to remove the threat, I do not
know how to resolve it and in that mutual attrition when both sides bleed for a long time
I am not sure the relative advantage is mine, certainly not when the sensitivity of civilian
55
population, the political system and the public system are being questioned and not the
resilience of the military, therefore to my mind the question the IAF has to address is how
would it persuade the enemy all by itself to end the fighting rapidly. If assumptions are
needed, we can create some criterion of 24 to 60 hours, it is possible to define a different
time frame but this one is adequate.
I should like to emphasize three nuances in my question: a) how could [the IAF] end the
war all by itself since the pace of concluding a war is in fact the result of air force activities
plus the ground maneuver and other factors as well? – it is about a few days, not weeks,
and I am not sure that in light of enemy fire I am keen to fight for weeks so the air force is
the only one that can operate with such speed, thus it can bring us within a day or two to
the conclusion of the fighting.
The second point has to do with the term I used in this context: persuasion; persuading the
enemy to end the conflict. Why persuade? Because I cannot bring the fighting to a definite
resolution, but I can do this, now what is the nature of that persuasion?
The third point is the function of an advantageous position or a militarily dominant
position because in 2006 Hezbollah was willing to end the fighting any day, the first day,
the second day – any day at all but we perceived this as a disadvantageous ending so the
question is how will the IAF by itself persuade the enemy to conclude the war quickly at
what is perceived to be our advantageous position. This applies to 2006 and also to a part
of the possibilities for a future war, the Air Force gets to utilize its capabilities very fast
and actually by the end of the second or third day the targets begin to be exhausted and
the it starts to lose its effectiveness; we saw it in Cast Lead too, beyond the first few days
the target-bank starts to run dry, we do not know how to produce new targets because the
enemy disappears and we lose our effectiveness somewhere at this stage. On the other
hand, the land maneuver demands considerable time – until land forces mobilize, organize,
deploy, move, invade, until they take the terrain, clear the terrain; so we are effective
and the maneuver is effective – our efficiencies are not synchronized. Hezbollah on the
other hand, as an organization whose modus operandi is attrition can benefit from another
combat day, it continues with the attrition and time works to its advantage and so it slowly
consolidates its achievement.
One of the major mistakes we made during the fighting in 2006 was having concluded it
in a situation in which the IAF was no longer effective, the maneuver was not yet effective
and Hezbollah collected points slowly and got sufficient tools to gain effectiveness, and
this is how we finished the fighting in 2006. It is the wrong point for ending.
In the next war Hezbollah might raise the bar of his firepower from the low point to a much
higher one and there are those who maintain that is so because it is accumulating precision
and its fire rate and efficiency are already very similar to that of the IAF; at any rate it
knows how to get value out of additional combat days.
Thus we have two possible spaces for ending warfare, the first one is the contiguous:
the advantage of ending warfare in the contiguous space is in minimizing the exposure
of Israel's hinterland to enemy fire; the hinterland will be exposed to fire for a day, two,
three, not more. But the down side will be the lack of resolution, we shall not overpower
the enemy in such a short while, though we may take the lead in points. The question is
how do I persuade the enemy who may have high hopes of getting somewhere – how do
I persuade it to end the fighting within a day, two days or three. There certainly is another
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possibility: going for a full ground maneuver which brings potential for resolution but its
significance is that for long weeks the Israeli hinterland will be exposed to strategic fire.
As I said, I deal with the challenges – not the responses, but I was asked to provide some
sort of roadmap, to pass the baton to the next session, whose participants will examine the
response to the challenges. So I divided the response to two parts; the first is technological
and tactical and the second is systemic and strategic. On the technological tactical level
the question is how should you operate in deep battle manner, hundreds of kilometers
from the frontline, where hundreds of launchers operate, when the launchers are quiet and
non-radiating; the first time a launcher is exposed is when it launches, then it is obliterated
and this is the fire plan. How do you operate more effectively in a dense urban space
where there is a launcher in the basement and three floors on top of it are populated by
civilians? How do you contend with the technology of air defense and the new EW and the
air defense conception which is more like guerilla and how will IAF pilots function under
continuous rocket fire.
The systemic and strategic challenge is how to get a resolution in such circumstances and
if resolution is not practical, what are the alternatives to resolution? Without getting a
resolution how can I refrain from getting into urban warfare, because I do not think I want
to be in a situation in which the enemy shoots at my cities and I shoot at their strategic
targets - how do I deal with the growing strategic fire potential of the enemy? Finally, what
is that paradigm I shall use in the next war to enable me to persuade the enemy to end it in a
day, two, or three, with me at an advantageous position when I cannot resolve the fighting
nor wish to get into a war of attrition?
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The Challenges Facing the IAF - second session
Roni Ifrach, Project Initiation Manager, MLM, IAI
I wish to state at the outset that I took it upon myself to unnerve you because up till now
things have been relatively relaxed. Earlier I heard lectures whose gist is that things might
get difficult but our situation is not bad at all and as I walk through the corridors of the
IAF HQ this is the feeling I get, that Syria is going to be just a walkover and I think this
is a terrible mistake.
I am about to express some pretty controversial views, quite contrary to the consensus.
Until this morning I thought I was at 90 degrees from the consensus and now I understand
I am at 180 degrees. Since I work at the IAI- MLM plant, I should clarify that I am about to
present my personal opinion and I do not speak for the organization in any way. The time I
was allotted does not permit me to present all the detail I wanted, so my presentation with
the slides will be uploaded to the internet site and you are welcome to read the numbers
and the arguments.
Conferences and discussion do not make it possible to bridge the enormous gaps separating
the insights and the conclusions of the presentation from the consensus. My personal
assumption – it is entirely personal and it is not supported by any piece of intelligence
or any intelligence estimate – is that the next round of conflict is too near for us to make
any essential changes. It is just too late and we shall have to live through the next round
with what we already have. What I propose is to file this presentation in the safe and run
it through a reality check when the time comes. After the next round, should it turn out
that I talked nonsense, we shall shred it and forget all this silliness. However, if it turns
out that my insights at least proved right then maybe the conclusions are right and then it
may be worthwhile to discuss them. The reason I am saying it is that my personal belief
throughout many years of work in the defense establishment is that we have an amazing
talent to draw the wrong conclusions from events, debriefs, analyses – but that is my
personal view.
Since this conference deals with air power and Israel's challenges let us look at the
definition of the IAF mission. Most of the members of the audience who served in the Air
Force are familiar with the fundamental document dealing with the mission – defending
of the country's skies and acquiring air supremacy; it was formulated three or four times
but the defense of the country's skies was always at the forefront, an almost sacred value,
a supreme value. Surprisingly, I discovered only recently that in April 2003 the mission
wording in the document was changed. The Winograd Commission mentioned it in the
interim report but it just disappeared from the final report. The mission was changed to
'operating at the air dimension for the defense of the state of Israel by fighting in the air,
fighting from the air, carrying out antiaircraft operations and fulfilling its part in deterrence
and in the acquisition of targets'. So I ask why the definition of the IAF mission was
changed, what was wrong with the former mission? Was it wrong or did we lose the ability
of executing that mission? So there is a problem. As my friend Dr Rami Aharoni, an
engineer, would say, what does an engineer do when there is a problem he cannot solve? –
He solves another problem. Maybe that is the problem, maybe not.
Was the change discussed in the plenum meeting of the General Staff and the political
echelon or is it only a document that got out of the Chief of Staff's office right into the
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safes? Who took it upon himself? By the way, there is a semantic problem of terminology,
the difference between mission and task in Hebrew but I shall not get into it just now, and
if there is any difference between the definitions of "defending the country's skies" when
it is tested against the end results: did we manage to defend the skies or was it penetrated?
The effort test may be likened to telling your sales manager to up the sales to $100 m or
tell him 'your target is to try and up the sales to $100 m.', so this is roughly the difference
and I leave this question open.
Another question is whether the defense of the skies is still our main mission; I mentioned
that the people who shaped security policy during Israel's first years saw it as a supreme
principle. In 1956 Ben Gurion would not agree to take part in the Sinai Campaign until
the French squadrons landed here because at the time he did not rely on our Air Force; in
a later period it would not have happened of course but it underlines the intensity of this
matter, just how sacred the defense of the air seemed at the time. One possible response is
that there is no such mission. One may accept the definition set by the 1992 chief of staff
who said it is not the military's job to defend civilians – it is to reach resolution on the
battlefield. Well, so this is the battle and it has come home to us, and this is the battlefield,
but it is still possible to say that there is no such mission, we have given up this mission,
and the sky is open to all and sundry. You certainly know that some of the Kassams flying
in Gaza now are launched by renegades who do not obey Hamas – it could be just for show
but let us say that every Tom, Dick and Harry can shoot a rocket at the state of Israel – the
skies are wide open and you might say 'there is no such mission, no, in the modern era it is
quite impossible '. I shall later show that one can do it. But in case it is impossible, then the
very mission of defending the country's skies is no more: the sky is open to whomever, the
discussion is over and I can take my seat and give over this time to the next lecturer, but
assuming that there is such mission is it a mission of the air flank? Again, one might say
no, it is not, since 2003 there is a formal document defining a new mission so I am asking
who then is responsible for the defense of the skies. But suppose it is and we all know the
answer is affirmative, this is a mission for the air flank, does this mission include defense
from rockets? - this is a real and interesting question, not just a provocation; please note:
the new mission as defined by the IAF Commander in 2003 says 'against planes' - this
emphasis is not unintentional in my opinion, it does not attempt to explain the term AA, it
is there for a reason.
Now, does the mission include defense? And the question could be negative, as we said,
just anti-aircraft defense so I am asking this respected audience, who then is responsible
for the defense from rockets if this is not an air flank mission? But if it is, then some 40
years after the first rocket hit Beit She'an and thousands of rockets followed over the
years, do we have an efficient response in deterrence, annihilating launchers, intercepting
rockets? If the answer is yes, we have an excellent response, we can go to sleep, I am
giving you the all-clear, thank you and I can take my seat; but if the answer is negative, we
have a question mark again.
I shall make a few assumptions and we shall go on. Air power in its present structure
mainly based on manned fighter planes cannot protect the skies from missiles and rockets,
cannot deter, cannot prevent launches and cannot intercept rockets and those who think
that there will not be another round of fighting, because that is over and done with, we
have beaten them so hard that no rocket will ever fall again in Israel, are very wrong, and
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since any other air threat is relatively minor even though they naturally continue training
intensively in air battles then air power can fulfill only an offensive role.
On the other hand, an attack against national infrastructure could be problematic because if
we take out their oil refineries and all their power stations whereas we took even a partial
hit and already there are kilometers-long queues in petrol stations here and petrol coupons
are being issued, then the Syrians won and this is a lesson from the Yom Kippur War – it is
a fact recently disclosed in Air Force Quarterly: why did we not make any strikes in Egypt
but did so in Syria? Because the Egyptians already had Scuds and Sadat made a specific
threat, depth for depth and there is a very detailed description of this subject.
As to defense and offense, there seemed to be some consensus here that the best defense
is offense; we shall strike, destroy, kill and there will be quiet and the enemy will stop
bothering us. There is a wonderful American book summing up all wars in history and you
see first off that all those who won are those who excelled at both defense and offence.
For example, the two most critical campaigns that shaped the outcome of the WW2 were
defensive campaigns, the defender became the victor in the Battle of Britain and it was a
matter of sheer luck that they produced Spitfires in vast numbers just before the Battle of
Britain. It might not have been so and if Britain had decided that the best defense is offense
and when the Germans attacked they would have gone for Berlin, we would not be sitting
here today. The same goes for the Russian front. The one who won was the defender, not
the one who went on the offensive. Placing all your chips on the strike is a serious mistake
in my opinion and history bears it out. Assault as the unique method is right only if it
thus serves the defense in the best way; if you are not an imperialistic army whose goal
is creating lebensraum e.g. Germany etc, if your basic objective is first of all to defend –
by the way our very name, Israel Defense Forces attests to it - we are not the attacking
nor invasive force, we are a defense force, so if the attack serves defense as an exclusive
method it might be true – but this is not the case.
As to balancing defense and offense Israel has mostly succeeded to preserve an excellent
defensive capability simultaneously with the development of a strong offensive force.
In the context of air power we remember that the spear head of the IAF has been the
interception squadrons whose role was defensive. Nowadays Israel is totally exposed,
lacking any protection from the principal threat; when I say lacking any protection it
applies fully to surface to surface rockets. When it comes to surface to surface missiles
there is a quantitative test. I cannot elaborate because it is classified but this is a problem
of quality; we are protected exceedingly well, I tell you as an IAI/MLM employee,
exceedingly well as to quality, yet quantitatively there is a problem. I cannot say more
but we invested almost all our resources in offense and left the country exposed. Now let
us look at it platform-wise, every platform that took the central place – what is dubbed as
Queen of the battlefield, changed in the end. In every such platform there were per force
firepower, as expressed in power and precision, and a maneuver expressed in speed, range
and agility, with protection of the combatant and/or the platform, either by armor or by
evasion that can be produced by quick dynamics or hiding, while the first two – firepower
and maneuver - serve the attack whereas the maneuver and the attack serve the defense;
so even on the platform level we see offense and defense, a platform whose efficiency is
reduced or whose vulnerability is augmented, vacating its place in the middle of the stage.
World history shows the causes for resolution in the battlefield – from the light cavalry
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who even then already had spears and shields, through the Roman legionnaires who wore
armor from top to bottom and had excellent offensive weapons, through the heavy cavalry,
the Goths, the Crusaders, the light cavalry like the Mongols who beat the heavy cavalry
but were still armored – they had leather armor and helmets and some mesh shield, there
was always defense through the tank of course, the plane whose defense was by EW or
maneuver, through the missile whose defense is by being hard to get because it is too rapid,
again through dynamics and hiding before launching, to the energy weapon.
By the way, there is an interesting phenomenon in that the speed of the weapon of decision
in the battlefield climbs exponentially from 4 km per hour to 15 times more. I also wish to
tell the missile lovers - I count myself as one of them - that even this King, about to take
its central place, is on the demise because the energy weapon is making some stunning
breakthroughs, whether in lasers or the operating capabilities in bad weather and clouds.
It is very clear this will be the weapon of the future and it will take the middle of the
battlefield, but it, too, will not survive for long, so even in platforms we see defense plus
offence. Now let us see what happened to the fighter plane and what its defense problem is.
First, it is clear that the fighter plane relies on evasion and not on armor simply because it
has to fly. If we had cased it in armor it would have been a tank and stayed on the ground.
Evasion is made of three components; high dynamics – once when going against SA-2
surface-to-air missile it would have been sufficient to make some high G maneuvers, and
the missile was lost its patch.
The defense of non-stealthy planes is based on EW, entailing very steep prices and delay
in timetables, and then a new system comes in – I do not recall one instance in history
when a new system came in and the EW was ready: you have to learn, you have to get
intelligence, if you can buy it you do, you experiment, in short you are at a few years' delay
after the introduction of every new system and just as Ron [Tira] noted earlier we are going
to be left behind and this will be a problem.
In the third case, the other stealth is low RSC that produces some prohibitive prices, we
see the prices – it is madness; and anyway nothing lasts forever, the battle has begun for
discovering stealth with radar, and other detection systems. Something that is common
to all stealth and low RCS planes which are still exposed to optical AA, there is no EW
against a shell and a FLIR - the airfields are still vulnerable, it only gets much worse
in the era of surface-to-surface rockets, that is, what we see is that the central platform
is suffering, in striking its performances are quite fantastic and they keep getting better
but when it comes to defense it has a very hard problem in the era of surface-to-surface
rockets. In this conference we have already asked whether it is right that manned fighter
planes will not be developed anymore – this is the talk in Washington corridors; if they
will not be developed it is clear the underlying cause is the spiraling price, which made it
patently prohibitive. With the same amount of money much more efficient things can be
done as you will momentarily see. I do not say one should give in – there will always be
missions that fighter planes will perform better than anyone but the center of gravity must
be moved.
The possible conclusion – mine – and you may agree or not, like I said the test is after
the next war, is that we are left with air power that has considerable striking force but is
devoid of all defense capability, both defense of the country and in a large measure its
own defense, while its striking capability was affected not because of the platform but
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because of the enemy: it has dug in. Let me remind you of the 3rd Army - about a third of
the munitions spent in the Yom Kippur War were thrown at the 3rd Army with very few
casualties because the enemy had been dug in there. There was the combination of sand
which is the worst possible for bombs and the same goes for Lebanon 2 and Gaza where
the enemy was dug in.
As to infrastructures, there is no problem at all: the IAF can erase infrastructures of every
state in the Middle East very easily but there is a balance of terror. They can respond in
the same manner, especially as with Lebanon there is a big asymmetry; there is symmetry
vis-à-vis Syria – you will not touch my refineries and I will not touch yours but Hezbollah
does not care if he lights up the refineries and he does not give a damn if you burn down
the refineries in Lebanon.
The threat to the plane itself is growing more serious as well as the threat to the airfields.
Let us place the fighter plane on the operating table and try to analyze its qualities and its
suitability to each one of the identified threats. As to the broad picture, I have no news for
you. This can be presented in several ways; one can divide the modes of coping with each
threat into four. The first one is 'do not do this and that to me', for example, quite a few of
us used to think that if Saddam shot missiles at Tel Aviv the sky would fall down, some
terrible, horrendous things would happen. But then it happened and 'do not do this and that
to me' did not help at that time or later. The second method is to demolish the threat before
it could be operated by the enemy - just as in Operation Moked [at the outset of the Six
Day War] or the Iraqi division in the Golan Heights which was wiped out. Interception,
destroying the threat when activated as in shooting down planes, like tanks destroyed in
combat or just before, and extracting a price – which we tried to do, exacting punishment
which would cause the enemy to stop using certain measures worked well during the Yom
Kippur War with the Frogg missiles and the Syrian HQ, but it does not necessarily work
out.
In the face of every threat we shall look at the plane's capability to deal with that same
threat. In the matter of deterrence I think there is an interesting insight: it is as though we
were saying, look, we have managed to create deterrence against a war of destruction; this
is the basic assumption of the Arab countries and Sadat said as much in his speech at the
Knesset, the Arabs' assumption is that one cannot destroy Israel because it means total
destruction of its enemies; this is their assumption which is why all plans for the Yom
Kippur War were limited a-priori.
Nevertheless, we did not manage to produce deterrence against limited wars; thus for
example one could assume that following the enormous shock of the Six Day War the
enemy would not recover from the shock for quite a few years, but before long the War
of Attrition broke out and soon after that came the Yom Kippur War, which means we did
not manage to produce deterrence. Thus the destruction of the Hezbollah compound in
Beirut and twice the amount of munitions thrown at Hiroshima rained on Lebanon did not
stop the rockets – 200 of them on the last day of the fighting, everyone remembers it, and
all this will not prevent the next war. My conclusion or the insight I at least have is that
conventional deterrence does not work – never worked – total deterrence worked very
well, and I say it did work until Ahmadinejad and maybe all this does not deter him.
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We took models from the past and other models which might occur as an example of the
future and scrutinized every model: what is the threat, what is the response needed, what
is the severity of the threat, that is, what happens if it materializes, what is the chance it
would happen, what is the suitability of the response by fighter planes and the conclusion
is that this investment is worthwhile; you can find it in greater detail in the internet.
The following are three future outlines. You may agree with my conclusions or not; the
manned combat tests are very suitable of course to outlines of the distant past whose
chances of revival are very slim, for example, a tank offensive crossing the Suez Canal or
the Golan Heights were found unsuitable to recent past outlines. Let us see why I argue they
are unsuitable to the recent past, first of all if we consider the original mission [of the air
force] which somehow vanished in 2003, it seems that we did not accomplish the original
mission of protecting Israel's skies and we reached extremely low efficiency in striking
Hezbollah, for example, if we look at a parameter called body count, the number of those
killed per how many kilograms of munitions: we threw some 20 000 tons of munitions and
if we are willing to attribute the entire number of the of assumed casualties to air strikes,
we shall get the amount of some 40 000 kg. per one casualty, while Hezbollah with its not
so efficient rockets reached an efficiency 21 times better with the numbers of rockets, this
is the average kilo of the warheads, the number of casualties, that is if we are 20 times less
efficient than Hezbollah it seems that we are indeed very inefficient because we constantly
claim that these rockets are terribly inefficient, it is a statistic weapon, it is inaccurate, it
is worthless, so what we did is just 5% of it, but these are numbers – my former boss Uzi
Rubin said that gentlemen do not argue over facts, they may argue about opinions and
convictions but never over facts. I should mention that this was in luxury conditions of
clear skies to an extent we are unlikely to see again in the future.
Let us look at another analysis of the fighter plane; the fighter plane comprises several
advantages that endowed it with its enormous power to decide a campaign or a war; by
the way, there is no doubt in my mind and most commentators will agree, that WW2 was
decided in the air, and the Six Day War was decided in the air. The fighter plane undoubtedly
was the king of the battlefield, the deciding factor, there is absolutely no question about
it, and the problem has to do with the advance of time. So what gave the fighter plane
these fantastic qualities? A pilot in the cockpit which means aerial observation above the
battlefield, a high-grade optical sensor, there still is no camera that can even come close
to the eyes of a pilot, a photo processor and an excellent system of data processing – the
pilot's brain – there are no algorithms of decision that can compete with the human brain as
yet, though there will surely be, but it is still way off in the future. I should add speed and
range, the capability of carrying munitions, precision shooting and versatility.
Another slide that I will not dwell upon analyzes the neutralizing factor such as massive
ground to air missiles and anti-aircraft defense. Reaching the planes from stand-off ranges,
aiming the camera etc, you will see that through a gradual process of erosion the plane,
an efficient instrument able to hunt every target and destroy it with immense force, has
become too expensive, too susceptible, releasing munitions from a distance without eye
contact with the target.
I should like to show you just one example of an alternative. In a classified paper that
obviously cannot be presented here it is demonstrated that if we gave up two F-16I
squadrons and one F-15 I squadron in a life cycle cost we could have equipped ourselves
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with thousands of Arrow missiles providing a airthight closure from any number of surfaceto-surface missiles, with 2000 David Sling missiles, with 10,000 Iron Copula missiles.
3000 Lora missiles and other classified systems. I hereby suggest that the Fisher Institute
hold a war game with this arsenal and the order of battle of the IAF, minus those two F-16I
squadrons and one F-15 I mentioned above and confront it once with Syria, Hezbollah,
Hamas with or without Iran and in the next game the present IAF will confront them, what
this gives is a considerable number of combat days in which the enemy cannot manage
to strike and gets repeatedly hit and does not succeed to cause us any damage or almost
none. If Ron [Tira] speaks of persuading the enemy to conclude the fighting speedily then
maybe the only way of doing it - by air – is combining defense and offense and these are
numbers that can be attained.
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Force Structuring - Priorities and Balances
Gen (Ret.) Chuck F. Wald, former deputy commander, US European Command
We never predict the future right, we get kind of close; still, prediction is very difficult. The
United States has a really bad track record at predicting what will happen in the future.
Recently we went through what was called a quadrennial defense review. Every four years
we have to review our strategy, look at the force structure and decide what we think the
future environment will be, and then we try to adjust our acquisitions and requirements
based on what we think the future most likely holds.
Historically, we have looked at the spectrum of conflict being low end to high end, low
end being peace all the way through previous acts of terrorism and then up towards nuclear
power or nuclear war. As you look at the spectrum it is increasingly expensive when you
get towards the high end, and that has changed today a little bit.
The low end of the spectrum, which we used to call low-end terrorism, terrorism with a
WMD, a weapon of mass destruction, is now very high, so irregular warfare that could
lead to a loose weapon is now something we have to pay quite a bit of attention to.
One of the things that struck me over the last few years about the international community
and how we think about conflict is that we have unfortunately devalued air power. I am not
parochial; in my last two assignments I had all services under my command. I have high
respect for all of the services, Navy, Army, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard for that
matter. But I think it is really dangerous to devalue one part of the military over the other.
In America we have a tendency to devalue air power a little bit. Frankly - and this is not
meant to be critical- after the 2006 Lebanon War I think air power was devalued somewhat
as a deterrent force, there was a lot of criticism about air power. I think our adversaries
really liked the idea that the Israeli Air Force did not do as well as some people thought
they should have. I think the Iranians actually were heartened by that. That has changed
over the time but for a moment there it was not good. So today I think we have some
comparisons that we need to look at for example. In our QDR the United States today
is emphasizing irregular warfare. You can argue that today we are in two conflicts that
are basically irregular warfare, and if we do not win those conflicts the rest of it does not
matter much, although I do not think it is not existential to the United States if Afghanistan
and Iraq fail. We are not going away. Yet it is important for our credibility so we should
emphasize that.
But over-emphasizing our irregular warfare is not a very healthy thing. Yet we should
not shake our responsibility to go for the best technology we can have. We should have
a technological edge over our enemy, it is important to have that technological edge and
we should not be embarrassed about that. We are getting ready to start losing our space
to symmetry. We depend on space as all of us do, all the services do, the air force with
particular precision. On space for GPS, I know the Israelis are working on non-GPS
precision weapons, which is a good idea. But for the future we are going to depend on
GPS navigation not only for precision but for timing and communications etc. so we have
to watch that.
Adversaries are catching up on technology. In the United States we have a big issue on
import-export, what can we export or cannot export. I am a big believer that we should
look at exporting in as much technology as we possibly can to our friends. Often, there is
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a problem with that in the United States, the adversary is catching up and you can get an
80-90% solution out there in the globe on some of the technologies today, so we have to
be very careful of that.
As to the $750 billion defense project - that is more than the entire world put togetherthat is pretty good size defense budget. Unfortunately the pressure on our defense budget
is becoming significant, so we are going to add 100 000 troops to the military this year,
which is $10 billion additional funding. If oil goes up to $140 a barrel like it did in the
past, it will add another $10 billion dollars. Medical costs to the United States military
are significant, personnel costs are significant as well. So the pressures on budgets in the
United States will go on much as they do in every place. They will be felt in Israel, they
already are. They will happen in all our ally countries, as they do in Australia, Air Marshal
Shepherd can tell you that. So we shall have to start looking at what do we really, really
need and one of the more controversial issues is that we do not need duplicates of effort
to the services. As the US military we have basically three or four air forces and there is
going to be huge pressure focusing on whether we can afford this and that or not. Missile
defense is a huge issue that we are all going to have to look at in some cooperative way. I
think ISR as was mentioned earlier today, in the war we are in now in Afghanistan, in Iraq
for that matter - against insurgency ISR is number one. ISR is not an enabler anymore. ISR
is a mission, and we need to treat it as such and we all need to share. Unmanned versus
manned: it is a red herring argument, we need all the armed men we can get and we are
still going to need man to foresee the future. If anybody in here thinks that a computer can
fly a fighter, you are in the wrong world. But we should proceed down the path as fast as
we can to go unmanned. It is a good idea.
We need to continue to work stand-off weaponry. We talk about the new missiles coming
out, the SA20, the S300-400, whatever the case might be. I think Phil [Meilinger] talked
about the fact that you cannot get within about 250 miles of that weapon. That is true and
we will need stealth as much as we can get, within reason. But we need to work on standoff in a big way as best as we can and we still need to work the EW and the electronic
warfare part brings you to the cyber part which has gotten a lot of attention around the
world. In the US, if you give a briefing today you must say cyber- that is just the way it
is. Still, it is important and very sophisticated and it has an electronic warfare part. So we
should get better at that.
Lastly I would say adaptability. The weapons systems, I think it was mentioned earlier
again that whatever we get we need to look at it from the standpoint of potential growth
and adaptability.
In Afghanistan when we first started out on 7 Oct. 2001, we inserted TACP (Tactical Air
Control Parties) into Afghanistan and embedded them with the Northern Alliance. We
were employing B-52s that were 60 years old, using GPS precision weapons in a close
air support role. The B-52s have been subsequently upgraded with lightening targeting
pods. On the ground, the TACPs with laser range finders and satellite communications
(SATCOM) were taking laser range designated coordinates of the targets and sending the
coordinates via SATCOM to the B-52s with JDAM weapons on board, all from a guy who
is riding a horse with a wooden saddle on it. That is innovation real-time!
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The Future Combat of Manned Aircraft
Stephen F. O'Bryan,Vice President, F-35 Business Development and Customer Engagement
My personal experience drove home the future of air power and why it is important,
because I led a mission off the Mediterranean and in the Navy off the theater Roosevelt
when we were attacking in Northern Iraq.
You may recall that the Turks did not let the US Army land forces in Turkey to invade
Iraq from the north. So all that was fighter aircraft and we actually could not use fighter
aircraft and some special operations troops off the Turkish shores. What happened seemed
pretty incredible to me, because it was different from any other war I had been involved
in. We would fly by day, bomb targets, land on board the aircraft carrier and you would
watch the CNN or Fox News interview with the ground forces that night. What I saw
was very different; you would talk to the forces on the ground and instead of saying we
are outnumbered, there are some 100 000 Iraqi troops to less than 500 special operations
forces, the special ops guy would say: I could bring the wrath of God with this radio and
those aircraft to any place anytime.
That is the power of air power to me: it is different from what land forces can do in terms
of the speed and the effect you can achieve.
So I would like to talk about why it is important and it really has not changed for years.
Air power certainly allows power projection - that does not change; it allows freedom of
innumerability mentioned earlier today. It also allows the command and control and ISR
intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance forces freedom to act within a theater. Without
air power these things cannot happen. The way we fight wars without air dominance is
really coming into jeopardy and if you look at the threat today, the air to air threat is clearly
continuing to increase. 4th generation fighters have great ISAR radars. They have IRS
T-systems, they have superior long range active missiles, and when you look at the air to
air fight, what we are seeing today is almost symmetry of the technology of the threat or
the adversary and the US technological or Western fighters that we have today.
Meanwhile the advanced SAM missiles, certainly the SA20, the S300, S400, continue to
proliferate, you can actually see the advancement of that technology in more and more
countries today.
You can also see the detection capabilities improve and the ability to engage multiple
targets continue to grow. We also see that a threat adapts, any time you take a look at
Desert Storm and beyond, every single fixed target that was there on the first day was
basically destroyed within hours, the threat moves, and there are more mobile threats now.
If it is a threat it can be a threat to an aircraft, right now it is likely mobile. We see them
hide in the weather and camouflage themselves much better than they ever have before, so
we have a choice for re-capitalization. We have a choice in the United States, we have a
choice in most Western countries right now, and we re-capitalized the F-5s the F-6s, F-18s
that are out today. One can re-capitalize with a capability over time.
We took a fighter, one of the F-16 that General Wald flew in the late 1970s and we did
amazing things to it, we gave it radar, we gave it precision weapons as well as IR sources.
We continued to upgrade that platform until it really reached a plateau where the body
of the aircraft is now stuck in terms of the upgrade capability. You do not have an open
architecture, you do not have the ability to grow in terms of the net-centric capabilities of
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the aircraft and you certainly cannot retrofit the stealth air, so you have to make the next
leap and what it is going to be. Right now it is the F-35, stealth, sustainment, net-centric
operations and a number of other attributes. But in the same way that we upgraded that
F-16 in the late 1970s we are going to do great things with the F-35.
When we started the F-6 at Lockheed Martin, one of the great things we did was have the
Israeli Air Force buy the jet, because they did things to the aircraft that today still make it
the best multi-role fighter in the world, because they continue to work with it, continue to
upgrade it today, and we will see that out of the F-35 for years and years to come.
The real question that we have right now is when do we go to 6th generation, at what
point do we make that next technological leap? And today we can do it with an unmanned
version, if that is the definition of 6th generation; we can do it to the F-35 right now. If it is
increased range and payload, we can do it to F-35 with upgrades and it is certainly quicker
and cheaper than doing it again.
So you have to look forward to what is the next step. We see it in the labs today, right
now, but it is still years and years beyond 2035 before we see advanced palpation systems
that give us the hypersonic. It will take years before we get to morphing structures or
advance really all aspect or all spectrum stealth. It means years of investment and years
and years of technological changes before we see that kind of capability. So we are up to
capitalizing the 4th generation right now, between now and 2035 we are going to invest in
5th generation technology in the United States Air Force, Marine Corps and the US navy.
So what does that mean? As I look at 5th generation, certainly we had the advantage of 4th
generation but we have combined a number of things. It is not just stealth. Stealth alone
will not win the day in air to air or air to ground combat. It takes an integration or sensor
fusion, the ability to take all of the sensors in the F-35 and combine it into a single coherent
picture, not only to the pilot but as you offload it to the theater commander. As you offload
that information single picture, best data of a group of fighters to the command and control
element, to the ground element, to the sea-based element, that is where the advantage is,
you combine that with sustainment, advanced sustainment.
The current requirement of the F-35 is to be twice as reliable as a block 50 F-16 and late
block F-18, the ability to repeat sorties, the ability to sustain operations. When I look at
the block 50 F-16 it is likely the most reliable fighter in the world today and in the near
future, that is the true capability they have. When you combine that with net-enabled
operations and the sensor fusion as well as the stealth you can do things that we have not
done with aircraft in quite a while; in the air to air regime it is fairly simple, you combine
best available information and stealth for a first look, first shot, first kill. They cannot see
you, you see them, you fire the missile, time it out and explode it before the threat knows
you are there.
In the air to ground regime imagine having an aircraft with an EW system better than
aircrafts specifically built for that purpose. Better than F-16 CJ for the US Air Force. Better
than the F-18G in terms of its ability to attack out there. Now you are able to isolate the
threat better. Weave your way through defensive assets, in the double-digit or S20 regime
and use the electronic attack inherent capability of the aircraft to neutralize the threat and
execute deep-strike commissions and the ISR capability.
Imagine now over 3100 aircraft netted together. When you have big-wing fighters they
have to stand off 200-plus miles away from the threat. Now imagine a distributed F-35 all
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with ISAR radars, all linked together in a low probability detection high band with data
link, the ability to build the picture not only for the air picture to the AWACS but the ability
to build the picture from the ground up, know where the threats are and pass them back.
That kind of data is so much better than a J-star standing off 300 miles away, an AWACS
standing off 200 miles away.
How do you quantify an operation analysis? Certainly from the air-to-air capability it is
six times better than the best 4th generation fighter out there. Air to ground capability
in suppression and destruction of enemy defenses (SEAD/DWAD) the stealth and the
combination of those other attributes and the ability to generate sorties on a recurring basis
in terms of its availability and its sustainability gives you better than a 1 to 1 and strike
and SEAD/DEAD. IPAD survivability, all aspect stealth plus built-in electronic attack in
the aircraft gives it the ability in advanced double digit SAMs to do what other aircraft
cannot.
Finally, there is the NTISR, the ability to suck up information.
One statistic: a single flight, a single three hour sortie on an F-35 will compile more data
in terms of terabytes of information than there is in the Library of Congress today. The key
today is to be able to take that data and analyze it, but no other aircraft can generate it from
all the different electronic warfare, the different radar and the different IR sources that are
inherent in the F-35 that we have ever seen before on an aircraft.
And finally, its cost: the F-35 cost in terms of the purchase price, the average URF is
approximately the same as an F-16 today. What gives you also the economies that most
people do not realize, is, imagine the US Marine Corps, necking down its entire attack air
fleet, EA6Bs (Prowlers), Harriers and F-18s to a single F-35. It is replacing its electronic
attack aircraft with an F-35 that is seven different air crewmen, three different aircraft and
seven air crewmen being replaced by to one pilot and one plane with one training pipeline
and one logistical pipeline. That is the true savings and where the cost lies for more aircraft
today and more air forces. That ability to do that and leverage the economies to scale that
is really the inherent philosophy of the F-35 going forward and its flexibility. Certainly
the F-35 can handle the double digit threats and the capabilities growing out there in the
Iranian, Chinese or the Russian different weapons manufacturers.
But consider the stealth it gives to start with. Then, over 5200 pounds of ordinance inside
a stealth airplane. You can carry 8 SDB plus AMRAAM so you are air to air and air to
ground capable no matter what. Finally, you give what Dr Meilinger talked about today,
the range capability you have. Compared to an F-16 internal fuel, 7200 pounds on an F-16,
or when you look at an F-35A, 18 thousand 500 pounders and instead of having the drag
and the range associated with carrying all those weapons externally, now you have 18
thousand 500 pounders in a slick or a very efficient aircraft.
If you have to take the F-35 in less than an hour with a team of four you convert it from a
stealth airplane to a non-stealth airplane. That gives you over 18 000 pounds of ordinance
to carry. The difference from current or 4th generation aircraft out there is that even with
18 000 pounds of ordinance you have over 18 500 pounds of fuel, all the time. If you have
to convert it into a cruise missile defense, which is one of the core missions of the F-35 or
an air to air fighter where stealth does not matter, you can carry over 14 missiles as well
as an air to air gun, so you do get an increasing capability and the flexibility allows you
to do different things in different missions. So if you look at the spectrum of operations
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for the F-35 it can operate as a niche in low intensity conflicts, it can operate in irregular
warfare, the amount of sensors onboard combine it with the data links and the advanced
sustainment and then leverage that with the great amount of fuel and persistence it is able
to help or provide capabilities that we have not seen in a fighter in that low-end conflict.
Certainly its ability to operate over the spectrum of conflict from the high-end all the way
down to low end, make it what we think is the best value going forward.
Air power is important and while the threat is going to advance and proliferate the reason
why we enjoy a huge asymmetrical advantage over the threat and over the world today
is because we have invested in air power, we have invested in technology to maintain an
advantage.
One day always sticks in my mind and that is April 15th 1952 for US pilots, the last day
an aircraft dropped a bomb on US troops, and the reason why is that investment we are
talking about.
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Missilery
Uzi Rubin, CEO, Rubincon
I will take two minutes of the time allotted to me to respond to some of what we heard
today that has put me in a very somber mood. We heard over and over again some self
evident truths like 'offense is the best defense'. Luckily as Lt. Col. (ret.) Ifrach said the
British did not heed it in 1939. I did not hear that missiles and rockets do not win wars.
Thanks to the excellent, brilliant presentation of Ron Tira I learned that the only alternative
Israel has is either to avoid a war of attrition by airpower or to avoid a war of attrition by
ground power - of course the ground people are not here, they would argue it should be
done by ground assault, but the hidden message was that we should avoid attrition warfare
because Israel is unable to extend attrition warfare. Now, since I strongly believe that no
matter what happens we will have attrition warfare here, that assumption is a very somber
one, and I believe it should be re-examined. The purpose of my presentation today is not
to talk about missile defense but about another paradigm which is the close connection
between airpower or aircraft and precision guided munitions.
The question I was asked to address is whether missiles will replace planes and the answer
in my opinion is almost inevitably positive. Let us look at a little history: you should
always look back to see what happened. Precision assaults with the assistance of airpower
were first realized in WW2; everybody is familiar with the photos of Stukas (Ju-87 dive
bomber) during the blitzkrieg in France but people are less mindful that there was an
amazing strategic use of airpower and precision attacks by both the Japanese and the
American navies, but mainly by the Americans. One of the most conspicuous expositions
was the battle of Midway on June 4th 1942, with four Japanese aircraft carriers against
three American ones. The Americans ambushed the Japanese: in the morning of that day
they destroyed three carriers and in the evening they found the fourth aircraft carrier,
attacked it and destroyed it too and with this Japanese airpower was eliminated and the
war in the Pacific changed course, the defeats were over and the stage of gaining the upper
hand began.
You can see in the short film screened now – it is a recapitulation, not the real attack – the
aircraft carriers of those days and we see the Devastator, a bomber, diving - the technique
then was to dive as close as possible to the target in order to throw non-guided munitions,
24 planes attacked the aircraft carrier and managed to score four hits, four out of 24. Now
just where were those hits? The deck is some 222 meters by 22 meters, there was a bullet
group on the front deck and another bullet group on the rear deck, all statistics fans can
get the CEP out of it.
But if we see where some other 12 hits went to, it is clear the CEP was more than 222
meters. This is the best they could do in WW2, and it did not improve throughout the
whole war. Now let us fast forward 63 years and we are in Iraq in 2005, at a battle between
the American forces in the outskirts of Baghdad and a group of rebels inside this house,
and we can see a Bradley APC and an Abrams tank and they are trying to tackle a problem
and we shall see what happens.
The Bradley shoots; it is not very impressive and the fire goes on, and now we shall see
the Abrams shooting – nothing is happening, please note that there is not one plane in the
sky, not an assault helicopter and they call for fire support from the rear and look, this was
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a precision rocket fired some 70 km from behind, one shot, one hit, 63 years, that is the
power of technology today.
So how did we get there? First there was the dive bomber, the precision weapon of
the beginning of WW2, a plane carrying non-precision munitions and if we divide the
assault to stages then the first is the transport stage: the bomb has to be brought from base
somewhere to the vicinity of the target. The second stage is that of the direction, the plane
is doing the direction and it has to dive when the pilot turns from a transport pilot to a
biological head – he aims at the target and at the end throws the munitions as close to the
target as possible and it goes into free fall – there is the question of precision; we saw what
CEP is derived from this, the CEP can be improved by simply getting closer and throwing
it lower and lower – in fact it is possible to drive all the way through without throwing the
bomb and this is called Kamikaze, then you get very good precision but the price of every
assault includes the biological computer that takes 18 years to grow and I am not talking
of the ethical side of things, it is wasteful.
The other possibility since the AA fire is growing all the time and the plane needs to get
out of the dive, go back and transfer part of the pilots’ intelligence to the munitions; it
started in the Vietnam War and we see munitions taking over the tasks of the pilot. In fact
the plane was doing just the transport stage, while the direction was done by the sensor
itself with the plane actually just passing data and delivering the missile and as we move
forward to the modern world we see here the ultimate – F-22 dropping precision munitions
but actually munitions have become semi-autonomous, the plane carries the munitions to
an area that is not exactly the target, it could be very far from the target, it passes the data
over to it. But this is already gradually disappearing because the fact is that in the near
future, with the satellite-communications antennae which are flat and do not need to be
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adjusted, the munitions will be completely free from the plane and the plane turns into a
cargo plane and you wonder how this transport plane costs $250 millions apiece, what do
you need it for? The next idea is simply to take the munitions and give it some transport
means of its own: you take the same munitions and put behind it a rocket engine or a jet
engine with two wings and then you no longer need the plane, and consequently what you
have is a missile but I shall continue to use the term 'guided ground precision munitions'.
In the past there were legends such as the paradigms of the best defense being offensive
action, that missiles are imprecise – a missile can do everything a JDAM knows how to
if it is properly prepared for it; all these legends are over; once the price of guidance was
very stiff, a platform cost some $100-150,000 and it was a very large box. Now it is such
a small instrument made of optic fiber which costs $5000 and this is not the last word
on the subject, these are being manufactured at the rate of consumer goods. So price has
gone down and precision has improved and if this is the future then we have seen it is no
longer the future – it is already the past. You can see it in this photo from Iraq, they took a
simple rocket and put inside it a precision head and this is screwed onto the rocket which
from a CEP of a kilometer becomes a CEP of 10 meters; today this weapon is perhaps a
standard weapon in the American Army, the range is 70 and it seems they will increase
it to 105. But this is not all, the American Army has what is dubbed as 'one size bigger'
and again this is not the future but the distant past; 50 such were fired in the Iraq war in
1991 and 500 in the Iraq war of 2003 – an instrument that can shoot. It has two models –
the 150 and the 300 km, a warhead of about 500 kg and precision of 10 - 20 meters with
different sorts of warheads. Word of mouth has it that during the Iraq war of 2003 an Iraqi
division was dug up on the way to Baghdad with AA of its own disrupting the helicopters
capability to approach so they called in the support of either 150 or 300 km from behind
and they demolished the anti-aircraft missiles one by one and then the helicopters came in
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and began destroying the tanks one by one; so the crews got the message and left the tanks
and with that the system actually cracked the battlefield without as much as one plane in
the vicinity.
This separation between the munitions and the plane and the development that is moving
towards the future comes to a head with the Iskander SS-26 which has two models, the
720E which is the export, has a range suited to the limitations of the MTCR – 280 km, 480
kg, and CEP of 100 meters. This comes from a Russian source, a Russian publication. The
other model being a 723 type in the service of the Russian military, 500 km, 700 kg with a
precision of a very few meters – they are not specific about it. During the Georgian war of
2008 it served them well in destroying concentrations of Georgian tanks and in its precise
version it can hit airports, this is airpower from the ground. It is already fabricated against
missile defense systems, it shoots in flat trajectories and knows how to maneuver, at least
the article claims as much. But in fact not only the Russians are preparing; everybody is
preparing – it is now in fashion – this weapon is the next wave of missile proliferation
in the world, precision missiles for the battlefield, for ranges of about 150 – usually the
MTCR limits it to 300 km, the Ukrainians are developing the Grom and the Russians have
another model: they have two variants of this system: variant 1 is in a ballistic missile, the
second is a cruise missile called Club – in my opinion it is even more murderous than the
ballistic missile, it has the same ranges with a big warhead, with about the same precision.
The Chinese are offering for sale a system called P12 for 150 km; they have already sold
the B611 and it is now in our region – a precise rocket for 150 km in the service of the
Turkish military and our Indian friends together with the Russians are selling a supersonic
missile called Brharmos which is based on a Russian missile but again, this is a precise
supersonic missile for 300 km. All these goods are now for sale – this is not the future but
the present.
We in Israel also know how to make such things: two missiles are offered for sale, they are
the Israeli made LORA missile with a range of 250km and a warhead of nearly 500kg and
a CEP of 10 meters – this is taken from an official publication of the IAI, the Extra of IMI
for half of this range, again CEP of 10 meter is being marketed now in the world, so this is
not the future but the present. But if we talk of the present we are not limited to 300km. We
see [referring to the presentation] the very clever use by the Chinese of ballistic missiles
against ships; it requires extreme precision, at least the CEP that Devastators used to have
in WW2 but probably much better than this. As an illustration I included here the DF15,
a missile probably equipped with a maneuvering head designed to hit American airplane
carriers. There is an argument about the ranges – 1500 or 2000km. Just think, precise fire
from the ground at a moving target 2000km away – imagine, there is no plane in the sky, at
least no fighter plane, just now it goes through the relay of a radar plane, an early warning
plane that has to search for ships because they are an occasional target, once it finds them
the missile becomes autonomous.
Beyond all this there is the American conception of what is called Prompt Global Strike
– it originated in the Bush [jr.] administration back in 2006 when it was developed or
maybe not – the matter is still debatable. Just now it is coming up again in the Obama
administration, and it has to do with a meters-away precision from a distance of 9000km.
An actual realization of Trident missiles with multiple re-entry vehicles which do not
prepare their nuclear warheads but the conventional ones with some kind of steering
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device; there is also a supersonic Cruise missile and it is meant more for the American air
force – to calm it. According to various hints in the literature this system was developed,
proven and now it is buried. There is a very difficult political problem; the guns see it as
a threat not only on the silos of their ballistic missiles. There is some mention of it in the
latest Convention. So this is not the future but the present.
If we compare the advantages and disadvantages of air-launched PGM to ground-based
PGM, the advantages are that there is no need to wait for the clearing of all ground-toair missiles especially as Ron [Tira] talked of guerilla surface to air missiles of this kind:
you can begin to use it to hit targets directly, when you have targets, without waiting for
anything. This is clean, in fact you can use ground-based PGM with the precision you
have today as part of the suppression of air defense, if it is taken up by guerilla forces
you too can act in the same fashion. Naturally the downside is that the price per unit is
more expensive by definition but it is the same warhead because this is warhead against
warhead, but here you also need a rocket engine so in tactical ranges of 70, 100 even 150
km these prices are tolerable, it is a tolerable price delta. When you talk of intercontinental
ranges you find yourself getting into trouble, first with very big propulsion and then when
you enter hypersonic speeds you get entangled with thermal defense problems but within
the tactical ranges the differences are rather negligible.
I should note that PGM launched from the ground is associated more with the army than the
air force, its operation is more of the artillery kind, if it resembles anything in the air force
it is the AA and every attempt to compare prices is troublesome; I tried to do it once, you
run into a complex and complicated problem depending on what you put into the equation,
moreover, there are many concealed assumptions to base your hypothesis on – so you can
prove by such performance research anything you want. Therefore, if it were simple and
clear cut, there would not have been all this ambiguity, but it is not so. At any rate my
opinion is that robotics works. I did not speak about UAVs, this is just part of passing on
the missions; the robotics of missions carried out by manned planes. In this instance too
I have no doubt that robotics will function not just as a flying platform but also in ground
platforms. Man is just too expensive to send forward inside the weapons systems, he will
stay behind more and more and it was mentioned earlier during this session that one of
the possibilities of the sixth generation plane of the future is variations of the manned fifth
generation.
So now I am asking why then should they continue buying manned planes and there are
several answers. First of all there is the value; the mission of a manned plane is not just
precise ground strike – the primary need is to keep clear skies – there is also the issue of
occasional targets: even when you do not know that there are targets you have to be close,
for the moment there is no other solution than a manned plane. In future there may be
another if we have unmanned systems capable of seeing the environment the way a human
pilot knows, but this is one answer. The second answer is continuity. Airpower is very
expensive – think of the money invested in it, the plane is the most expensive war machine
together with the aircraft carrier: one single war machine, it is too extremely expensive to
change the infrastructure of this one, the airports of that one, the control systems are very
pricey not just as invested money but this is money withdrawn from the national economy;
just think what is the real-estate value of an airbase – it goes into billions and it is removed
from the economy because it is taken. By the way, it is the same with civil aviation: the
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most expensive item in civil aviation is not the planes but the airports, their “real estate”.
This is that same logic and General George Patton in one of his lesser moments wrote of
it in an article at the end of the 1930s – he was a cavalryman, indeed he founded the first
American armor unit in WW1 and then the armor was dismantled and he went back to the
Cavalry; he loved horses and in 1937 he argued in an article that the Cavalry should not be
taken apart – because it was already in existence, the money had been invested, the horses
were in place, the cavalrymen were trained, the weapons were there too, the tactics were
mastered and all the other things were new, so the Cavalry should be left in place; one can
get to such absurdities. One should be wary of this argument and usually conservatism
compels us into thinking that one should go on with what is in existence today even when
its worth has already deteriorated.
Another factor is organizational rivalry: changing to the ground based PGM means reallocating funds from air forces to the land forces and there is nothing worse than that
which is being fought over tooth and nail in the same service, say the air force, when AA
units are at loggerheads with airborne units – this rivalry is no less acrimonious than that
between two services.
This is a learning process – all militaries around the world learn from defeat more than
from an analysis of the sort we saw, Ron Tira's brilliant analysis. Analyses may convince
the middle echelons, defeats convince the ones who define the objectives up there in the
political and military echelon because it is clearly evident, it hurts and we remember well
the historical examples: the German military having been beaten in WW1 reinvented itself
on the way to WW2 while the French and British militaries who won the war prepared
their forces for another WW1 - and do not think we are immune. I should like to mention
only one example – though you can fill a book with them – that while the Israeli Navy
celebrated its big victory in the Sinai Campaign those backward Arab navies changed the
paradigm and reinvented themselves completely, they started operating missile boats and
after they did away with our destroyer Eilat, which has earned the infamous distinction as
the only destroyer ever sunk by a sea-to-sea missile, the Israeli navy transformed itself as
well and adopted missile boats. One can talk of the Yom Kippur War and who bent whose
wing [referring to Gen. Ezer Weitzman having said that "the missile bent the wing of the
plane"] and the IAF subsequently reinvented itself and did so brilliantly in 1982.
You learn from defeats. As long as there has not been a war which proved that a ground
based PGM can do the job just as well as air launched PGM and I am not talking of the
air force but of air launched PGM– there has been no change in the thinking of those who
determine the objectives.
In conclusion, if I consider the question why they go on buying planes, one of the answers
is no, not all go on buying planes. The Syrians and Iranians as has already been mentioned
have not been buying new planes fully intentionally for some 20 years; they have been
buying missiles. We have been pondering the significance of this fact all day and Ron Tira
has told us of a problem that is becoming almost critical for Israel and I leave you all to
think about it later.
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UAVs
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Ran Carmeli, Head of Air Division, Aeronautics
I regret I cannot bring up some of what I would love to present here in connection with
the discussion and I accept it with love, I think we all do. Some of my remarks may sound
sharp; I do not dispute the importance of airpower in Israel, as one who has been living this
issue for 30 years, since I was 18.
Another preliminary remark: a few of my commanding officers and teachers over the years
in the IAF are sitting here today and it is clear that one cannot extricate the cockpit out of
you but my objective is to prove that nowadays one can make a slightly different cockpit,
and you can keep yours with you and this is the purpose of my presentation. I shall deal
with the tactical aspect, unlike preceding presentations which were all about the systemic
and strategic dimension, I was asked to focus on the tactical dimension and I shall try to
approach the subject in a few words.
I am the representative of an Israeli company and I should like to talk of the UAV, then touch
the vision as it is seen by the American Defense Department and then get to conclusions
or insights from Ron Tira's presentation vis-à-vis the same tactical challenges. Tira also
presented the systemic challenges and I aim to express my own personal perspective as to
how the UAV can contribute in various domains.
Nowadays the UAV is a system whose platform is just a part of it; there are large platforms
that gradually become as pricey as manned planes, as well as small ones. The big platforms
get to 40,000ft and fly for 48 hours, the small ones move almost at ground level and fly for
a few hours in all. If we start from this point then maybe in the David and Goliath war we
keep trying to look like a big, quick, strong and expensive Goliath but I think that Israel,
a world pioneer in flying small manned vehicles, has produced some advantages for itself.
Yet it seems to me that we are trying too quickly to get too far, too high, too expensive,
relating less to the small platforms; in connection with small platforms one can talk now
of the concept of a dispensable platform so it is not too terrible if a 6 kg UAV falls in the
Gaza strip and we shall go on as usual. Sometimes one hears in the news of this or that sort
of UAV and immediately everyone starts asking how it can be and it is a 6 kg instrument
whose price is about 3-5% that of an advanced missile – not too advanced, and nothing
happened and life goes one and it can be taken as nothing out of the ordinary – this is not
a manned world, indeed, the platforms may look very low end but the system supporting
and conducting them is extremely advanced and if we know how to combine the cheap
platforms, maybe under the title of low end, with an advanced array or system we may
find part of the solution to the conflict between a missile that costs a few dozen dollars,
manufactured in some metal worker workshop in Gaza and the money we are willing to
invest in order to intercept it.
Regarding the UAV the current talk is of a structured contiguous operation. The concept
of separate, non-contiguous sorties, has disappeared: you do not send out three, four; five
flyovers and feel proud when there are six, the concept of flyover is nonexistent with an
unmanned air vehicle, this is a sequence of vehicles that fly and when their zone of work is
exchanged they transfer the mission automatically from one to another and they continue
working; what really changes is the crew sitting in the wagon who are being relieved every
few hours.
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The multiplicity of instruments even today in Israel as well around the world – the amount
of unmanned vehicles in the world is significantly larger than the manned one in the
military aspect but in fact the major part is small vehicles which are not counted according
to the concepts we know in the manned worlds we usually talk of; but there are many types
of vehicles in very large numbers and sometimes they work by themselves and at other
times in collaboration
As to the use of a runway, the smaller a platform is - and this can be taken as some rule of
thumb for platforms which weigh less than one ton - the use of runway is disappearing and
we slowly move to different methods of exiting from the work zone and returning to it.
Nowadays platforms have an independent capability of sensor-to-shooter and we know the
Americans are working hard at it. These platforms identify the target and attack it and You
Tube is full of assaults by Predator A and B in Iraq, Afghanistan and sometimes Yemen.
Another characteristic of the UAV today is the separation between the place where the
platform takes off and lands and the place from which the mission is operated. There are
two approaches and each is generally typical to a certain service in the military; thus
the army aviation may be operating this or that vehicle and the air force which exercises
central control so that no matter where you take off from, at the end of the line in some
underground command and control center some hundreds or thousands of kilometers
away, there are crews sitting and operating the platforms and you are flying the platforms
from some locations and the soldiers in the area who operate the platforms themselves.
Referring to Uzi Rubin's remark as to the missile launched from 70 km, let us project
that example to a UAV to which the control is passed, so that the tank commander who is
some 70 meters from the building gets control of the UAV and actually does with is what
he must so that the mission be accomplished. These things are done today, the technology
exists and it is in the hands of whoever operates UAVs.
Another function enabled by the same system and the same array to operate different
vehicles, be they of few kilograms or hundreds of kilograms, or even tons, the same person
who sits in the wagon can operate at a certain moment a 2-ton vehicle and half an hour later
a vehicle of 200 kg and as far as he is concerned it is the same, the system, the interface – it
is just the same and everything is done in a very user-friendly way.
Operating systems in the platform from the field
In the slide shown now there is a Predator A, looking in this instance at a tank and there is
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an enormous number of control possibilities in a platform where the change from one mode
of operation to the next is a matter of less than a second – from that of a wagon which flies
the plane and controls it in what is called line of sight at ranges of several hundred km to
that in which the wagon reassigns control to a satellite, and the satellite transfers it to some
control point in Nevada from where people work. Once it was known that aircrews go out
in the morning from the families' quarters, do some three to four flyovers and go home;
now in TV stories about the American UAVs you see the families' quarters in Texas, the
squadron commander goes out in the morning, does two to three missions several hours
long in Afghanistan and goes home in the evening – this is no dream but everyday reality
and these things are done very simply, very intuitively and they are in the public domain.
In parallel, the user along the way, the soldier in the field, the commanding officer in the
command post or the division commander in a rear echelon can receive the same picture
the UAV operator is getting whether he is near or far; this is one mode of operation of a
UAV that is daily and most these UAV operations in the American Air Force are done this
way.
Another example is a situation in which you are with a ground control station at ranges
of hundreds or even thousands of kilometers and using an optical fiber you transmit your
command signals to the antenna at range of some tens to hundreds km from the FLOT
(Forward Line Of Troops) – it controls the UAV and you can sit in a wagon, a car or a
command bunker thousands of kilometers away and control an air vehicle weighing 10 kg
- these things are frequently done today without any technological limitations and this is
an almost trivial modus operandi of a major part of the forces operating UAVs.
In the last seven or eight years I read several times the American roadmap to 2009 and
2034 - this roadmap is updated once in two years; I should like to highlight several
things.
First of all it deals with unmanned systems – not with aerial unmanned systems because this
is the definition of the American vision and whoever had the chance to read the 2003 and
2005 roadmaps [could see that] it started with UAVs and slowly went over to unmanned
systems – they see it as one whole, there is no separation like that you sometimes tend to
do in other, earlier, content worlds in historical retrospect. The view is a continuous one
of the whole unmanned domain whether it is aerial or maritime or land based; it is dealing
here with the joining up with manned systems, there is no intention to present the world
as completely unmanned – there is a jointness of the manned domain and the unmanned
domain connecting these content worlds in order to achieve the general objective of that
factor.
The last thing I shall refer to is what I deem as an error in that vision. It says here unmanned
systems – I maintain these are manned systems, the platforms are unmanned but it does
not mean that the systems are unmanned, they just took the cockpit and moved it some
hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, but the systems are manned, the platform itself
is unmanned.
I should like to talk of the challenges Ron Tira presented earlier and against that background
touch upon the advantages of the UAV on the tactical level. Ron spoke of a wide and deep
theater, hundreds of launchers, mobile, quiet and autonomous, operating continuously; I
add that the targets of surface to surface rockets and missiles are soft, they operate generally
in a densely populated region which may be densely covered with growth, the UAV as
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a platform that knows to stay at distant ranges can fly for many hours, it is a suitable
platform for it; many platforms can be used without fear of risking lives because at distant
ranges the work domain is not free of threats, the capacity for keeping the continuum is
built-in as presented at the beginning. This is an inherent issue when unmanned vehicles
are operated, the links, the connection of identifying these elements and others at a certain
point by an identifying platform that has some indication as to another platform which
might destroy it, is relatively very rapid and it can be done with central control, one factor
or several people sitting in one compartment, controlling a large collection of platforms in
ranges of tens to thousands of kilometers, or by the second method, allow the soldier who
has already been in the field for a few days to control the platform and he will close the
loop by himself, since he has been acquainted with the area for some days and as he is in
control of what is going on there, control can be given to him and he will accomplish the
mission by himself. I think that one of the things that the unmanned platforms do today is
canceling the present obstruction in continuous operation – which is Man - and nowadays
most of the manned platforms can fly for long hours, but generally even after one or two
refuels they need to be landed while in the unmanned platforms this issue does not exist.
As to targets in a dense urban space I wish to point to a few characteristics: many eyes
are needed in a relatively small terrain cell, the indicator of target creating is long and
expensive, usually made of several separate circles of costly intelligence, sometimes they
are almost endless when you need days or weeks, sometimes even more, to produce a
target and once you have produced it, one may say usually, its lifespan is short – like that
person who moves now from one building to the next and you have to strike him in a very
short time. Moreover, having decided to strike him, the environmental sensitivity to the hit
is very high indeed because just at that moment some children come out of the adjacent
building or some emergency vehicle drives by: these characteristics in a crowded urban
space as we know them almost daily from IAF activity, usually need smaller platforms with
slower flight speed and more delay time. A long delay is critical in order to produce the
targets, it is not an on the spot job – it requires lots of patience. In addition, the connection
to more ground systems integrated in the UAV array is more amenable in order to finally
acquire or create the target and one cannot ignore it because at the end the picture is
relayed and gets to the decision-makers, and the control applied by said decision-makers
of the very actions and operations of those people who decide at the end of the day if the
operation will or will not be carried out, is tighter and can prevent some of the mistakes
or mishaps which stem from the sensitive aspect of work in the urban space or any other
crowded space.
With new defense and EW technologies there is no doubt that the non-endangering of
human life is built-in in an UAV, it reduces cost in advance – you can use much smaller
platforms, fly much more slowly, make it difficult for those factors, especially if for
example just now we get some info that there is a new AA threat to the IAF and tomorrow
morning there is the technology that responds to this threat – let us estimate how long
it will take us until the decision-makers will be prepared to fly a manned vehicle in the
same threatened environment of the new threat, it will take a certain time, tests will have
to be made, models prepared, statistics checked, while in the unmanned world it is much
easier and much quicker to get that platform right into the heart of that new threat; true
enough, the platform might fall, still, it is only a matter of money and it is easier – this is an
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important component, especially at adapting to new situations, new wars; the capability of
the decision-makers to take a bigger risk with the unmanned flying vehicles in larger order
of magnitude and this is most relevant even when we wish to end a campaign and a war
at shorter periods of time. The autonomy is most important too: these platforms gradually
acquire the capability of robots and they slowly get more capabilities of doing things by
themselves without any connection to other systems or other people in the loop.
Keeping contiguous functioning under surface to surface rocket fire – most of the big
platforms today, the big unmanned ones know how to get out by themselves from the
hangar where they are kept, go on the runway, take off and land, it reduces the risk a-priori
when they need to use the runway – all the more so those that do not need to use the
runway and the people who operate them today, there is no need for them to sit exposed,
they can be in protected places so that even an attack by heavy ground-to-ground missiles
and rockets will not influence their functioning and work.
Trying to sum up these four challenges presented before and the UAV response I can
speak of not endangering human life, the capability to keep continuity, as to platform cost
I emphasize what I said before: I think we should look not just at big expensive platforms
but at the small ones, that we go on looking with David's eyes and not through those of
Goliath; it is possible to concentrate all those who operate in protected sites, unmanned
vehicles are better suited for urban warfare than the manned ones, they are capable of
staying at distant ranges and execute quick change, coping with new challenges, new
threats. All this brings me to the conclusion that the flexibility of an unmanned array is
much greater than that in the manned array.
During the second Intifada we were given a lecture by an Intelligence officer and after
briefing us about the situation – as put to us the situation was not very brilliant - he was
asked what was going to happen and he answered with a saying in Arabic "God favors those
who are patient" which means that not everything can be over and done with immediately,
you cannot make everything go away as if by magic, and I think unmanned arrays are
better suited to the era of campaigns or struggles which demand more patience both with
the character of the equipment as well as the type of the operation.
The biggest liability to the UAVs now is the lack of electronic freedom of action - Ron
mentioned it, and real-time analysis in the platform. There still is no alternative to a human
who sometimes sees the whole picture and makes his decision by combining understanding,
sight, sound, and maybe an estimation of all things and all those things are still not present
in the UAV; the world is developing in that direction and one day it will get there.
If you took a look at the opening slide running here all day, you may have noticed there are
six air vehicles, four are unmanned and two manned. I did not go so far; I think that if in
the next few years the IAF will not be able to find the right formula for transforming some
of the manned vehicles into unmanned ones it will be more difficult for us to tactically
cope with challenges in future. It is always good to know that the combination of manned
and unmanned vehicles is a winning one at least at this time and place, and the more
accurate this combination the easier it will be to win the next wars.
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It is About Aircraft and Not Air Forces
William Owen, military writer and theorist Space
Air power is the employment of manned and unmanned aircraft for military purposes. It
requires creating and sustaining air superiority. So air superiority and air power are two
different things. It is not how air forces win wars, it does not exist in isolation and it is
about trust.
The history of armored fighting vehicles dates less than a hundred years, while armored
fighting aircraft pre-date armored fighting vehicles. The history of armored fighting
vehicles – tanks and armored cars - is built on a mythology written by people who love
armored fighting vehicles. Unless you ask some critical questions about air power there
is a danger that what you get is that air power is the product of a mythology, of a history
written by people who are enthusiastic about air power and that serves nobody.
Every single one of those aircraft is an expression of air power within its particular
specialization.
Air power is not one thing; air power is the use of aircraft for military purposes. In the
Israeli Air Force the Apache is operated by the air force and I found it very interesting
when I visited an Apache squadron last year that the Apache pilots viewed themselves as
fighter pilots of rotary winged aircraft. In the British Army the Apaches are operated by the
Army, the cultural view is that we are soldiers who operate helicopters to provide direct
fire support or whatever particular role the helicopter is engaged in. The US Army owns
Chinooks, and operates Chinooks. In Britain the Chinooks are operated by the Royal Air
Force and the F-35 will be operated by a variety of air forces and navies depending on who
buys it and what they are going to use it for.
So it is about aircraft.
The British Army, the people who operate Apaches, should be interested in air power
doctrine because it is completely useless to differentiate the employment of an Apache
helicopter by the army from its employment by an air force considering the two helicopters,
in respective air forces or armies, have almost identical performances and weapons. The
British ones are almost identical to the more advanced models operated by the US forces.
Now, army or air force, we have heard about missiles. Here is an interesting statistic which
will factor whatever you may not know. The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, operated
the V-1s cruise missile. The rockets were operated by the German Army. For some reason
the Germans made this distinction. It could have been about resources, it could have been
about internal politics, it could have been about infighting. The fact is both those things
were expressions of air power but only one of them is actually an aircraft, the other is a
missile, an artillery missile. So even though we might say army or air force, things start to
blend, they were both firing at the same target and they were both designed to achieve the
same effect and this is where we get into a problem of the concept of air power, effects and
doctrine and what you teach about the ideas of what air power is supposed to achieve.
Looking at loitering munitions and the rocket [shown in the slide] both can be fired at the
same target, but only one of them could sensibly be operated by an air force. If you say
that all the UAVs in your army or all your UAVs in your armed forces or your loitered
munitions belong to the air force and the rockets have nothing to do with the air force, yet
they are all attacking the same target, you get to the central problem. The central problem
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is that air power is not about effects, it is not about the targets you strike, nor is it about the
distance the targets are or their proximity to your air fields, it is about the employment of
aircraft, be they manned or unmanned.
There is air power, the overall consensus or the discussion about air power has been about
dropping bombs, use of kinetic weapons killing people, doing whatever, to me as a former
soldier those focus my interest in air power.
You cannot drop parachutes or anything by parachutes, people, containers or anything
unless you can express and practice the application of air power. Getting a satellite in
space is an expression of air power; it is not some conceptual effect-based ISAR task that is
governed by somebody who has to put that satellite up there. Satellites are physical things
that cost a great deal of money. What I like best about air power is casualty evacuation.
When lives really matter, the best and quickest way for getting someone from where the
wound was sustained back to hospital is by helicopter, it beats all other methods hands
down. If you do not control the air and you do not have the freedom of air space to operate,
then that is it. But you very rarely pick up a book on air power that has a picture of a
helicopter with a red cross on the side. In fact, I have never seen it. You very rarely pick up
a book on air power and read about the US Army in Vietnam, even though the US Army
in Vietnam conducted the vast majority of administrative and tactical moves by helicopter.
Maybe not the vast majority, certainly the most visible and certainly in extremely high
percentage, and certainly a higher percentage than is being conducted by almost any air
force or army since, except most of the moves were done by the Army.
In South Armagh in Northern Ireland when the IRA started using so many IEDs, some 30
years ago, the British Army decided there will be no road movement by military vehicles
south into that particular area of the border. All the movement was done by helicopter.
That is air power. That was something the IRA did not have and they actually spent quite
a lot of money trying to shoot down British helicopters, and although they claimed they
had I do not think they did. The ability to look deep into enemy territory is air power; it is
the use of aircraft. The most successful use of aircraft by far in the First World War was
nothing to do with shooting down the adversary's aircraft. It was the ability to produce
maps very quickly and very accurately, maps that the artillery could use to strike and kill
the enemy. To me the idea that somehow air power is separated from ground power is non
seneschal because it never was, the first really coherent experiment in the use of aircraft
was conducted by the British, well, maybe not just by the British but certainly those are
the ones that I am most familiar with, as early as 1907, 1911, when Douglas Haig who
is presumed to be this witless general who slaughtered millions of British soldiers, yet if
you read what he wrote about air reconnaissance in 1911, he clearly gets it. It is not some
conceptually difficult thing he does not understand, but in 1913 he says the best way to
do reconnaissance is by cavalry. Given the very limited performance of the aircraft that
existed he does not argue that there is some trade off between ground power and air power,
they are completely complementary.
Let me use an example: an army helicopter carrying bombs. In fact, the Lebanese are
bombing a refugee camp somewhere in Lebanon, apparently they do it. Yet you are not
going to see that photograph in any air power journal or in any serious discussion of air
power; but it is air power, it is the use of aircraft for military purposes.
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It does not matter whether they were killed by M-1 Abrams or B-52. The only thing that
makes this picture relevant to air power is if those vehicles were killed by aircraft. Their
proximity to the target does not matter, their range does not matter. Where they were in
time and space does not matter, nor whether it is close air support or interdiction, if they
were killed by aircraft then that is an expression of air power.
The best way to sink a ship, engineering wise, is to blow something up underneath it that
sinks it quicker than anything else. The ability to sink ships only matters to airpower if it is
done by aircraft and whether by killing tanks or killing ships, if it is something that aircraft
can do, they should do it, and there should not be a debate. You should not delineate that
killing tanks is a close air support task and if they are this far or if they are in the enemy's
rear, if it is something you can do, aircraft should do it, and it does not matter whether they
are manned or unmanned. The same goes for buildings, it does not matter what the effect
is, and it is something air power needs to be able to do. I am picking on the obvious very
explicit kinetic effects. Let me put it this way: if you have a tank battalion right out in the
middle of Sinai or Sudan for that matter, if you can re-supply that tank battalion by using
heavy lift helicopters - that is airpower, and it is no good saying airpower ought to be this
or we ought to fund this and that.
In fact we do not see rational discussions about air power, what we see is a cat fight for the
budget which includes raiding the historical and operational record for various arguments
to support procurement ideas about what air power should be.
I think air power is fantastic. I think you cannot do without it, but I am not an air power
advocate. The whole concept of the discussions about air power has to be framed in the
Maj. Gen. (Ret.) David Ivry - Chairman of the Fisher Institute
and Air Marshal (Ret.) Geoffrey David Shepherd
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simplest possible question, which is how can we best use aircraft for military purposes.
The reason why the US Marine Corps has its own air force and the reason that the British
Army has its own helicopters is because fundamentally within the tribes that exist in armed
forces there is a lack of trust. People fundamentally do not trust the other armed force to be
there in the right numbers and the right quantity at the right time and that is because they
do not feel they have been able to defend the budget question before. So the pure thing I
ask is that when we talk about air power or whatever future conversations about air power
or when you guys are standing in a bar or sitting in a parliament in a café and someone is
poking you in the chest and telling you what air power is, just remember fundamentally
simply, and if someone can come up with a better definition I am all for it because I am
just saying this is a maybe. Air power is the employment of aircraft, manned or unmanned,
for military purposes. It is not about budgets, nor about how air forces win wars, it is about
what aircraft can and cannot do for the benefit of everybody.
General Chuck Wald commented:
In the US Air Force today things change and they adjust and based on the environment we
are in, the most important thing US Air Force does today is ISR, period, it is the best thing
it does for the US forces; number two is mobility, and then three is close air support. In
that very order. That is not necessarily going to stay that way forever but that is what it is
today. Someone mentioned earlier the B-2's flew 44 hours from Missouri to Diego Garcia
and Navy was out there with their fighter and there were some TLAM (Tomahawks) off
submarines, one was a British submarine and on the first night the other aircraft that flew
out there were C-17's. On the first night, the first evening of bombing they had SA-3s in
Afghanistan, they were not very capable, they were gone after the first few minutes, but
still they had weapons. C-17s flew all the way from Germany down through the Red Sea
around Yemen, round Iran up through Pakistan all the way to northern Afghanistan and
dropped 32 000 meals ready-to-eat in a humanitarian area the first night and then flew
back, because they could not fly over Saudi Arabia. That is air power too, that is a different
way of doing things. I think people are aware that we need all of it. We need a good
doctoral mix of that.
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Space
Tal Inbar, Head, Space and UAV Research Center, Fisher Institute
Space is first and foremost an infrastructure; it is not just a medium. We saw a V2 in the
presentation preceding this one, it was the first man-made vehicle that actually got to
space; space enables us to collect intelligence in a way that air power or conventional
planes cannot collect and when we speak of intelligence we speak mainly of a variety of
imaging, pictures in various wave-lengths but there are other things that I shall not go into
here.
Space is an essential and central infrastructure for communication, now mainly by satellites
at high trajectories but there are constellations of low-trajectory satellites which can
execute these operations: these are essential nowadays, no missile can get its coordinates
for the target, no UAV can communicate with the center from where it is being operate
without communication, and a great deal of that communication is being done through
satellites, among other reasons because the ranges in which unmanned vehicles operate
etc. and the planet's geography and physics do not allow a line of sight we must bypass it
by way of space.
As to the issue of navigation just mentioned, let me give a visual example I find amusing
in view of the development of technology, and navigation being most essential. The
obstructions and disruptions of the electronic medium also influence navigation, there is
some military to our north-east which is performing rather large exercises without using
satellite navigation aids and this capability should be noted.
One of the things the Fisher Institute does is serve as a forum for various opinions and
issues and makes it possible to quote from all sorts of conferences like this one and if I go
back to the Space Conference we hold every year in January and as the former commander
of the IAF – this is official – we shall later see what the present commander has said, space
is the strategic depth of Israel; geographically speaking, we did not manage to land in such
a comfortable place but as to the depth space provides – it does improve and compensate,
space is free of sovereignty and this is essential and important; a satellite crossing over this
or that country while on its missions, photographing and so on, is unlike any plane doing
it; space offers availability, survivability of various systems and flexibility in operating
power.
The present commander of the Israeli air force speaking at the same venue, the Fisher
Institute annual Space conference just a few years later, indicates that if he had everything
and could do anything he wanted in space –[referring to the presentation – this is a dreamlist] he would have wanted to get to improving satellites, taking space from the strategic
or operative level to the tactical, launch by request, these issues were dealt with in this
Institute years ago but only now we see some growing interest in that as well as in microsatellites at many places around the world and I shall get to it later and to the emanating
issue of data from sensor to shooter, naturally these issues and quite often in the domain of
targets with a short time of existence. Space enables us to do many interesting things. We
heard the Minister for strategic affairs speak of space indicating that Israel should do more
and that we can do many advanced things technologically speaking, so this also figures in
the presentation especially the fact that space is essential for national security.
I have included several things here pertaining to Israel, some have to do generally with
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the involvement with space in the world at large so if we talk of distant-sensing or of
photographs, then those are the things that need to be improved in our context, in the world
too, but what happens in the world is of a lesser concern at this moment. We need some
improving in resolution, even though it is very good today it can be improved still, as well as
shortening the time span between two passes of a satellite over the same target, this can be
done – among other ways – by several satellites and coordination of orbits and it is always
possible to improve in this instance. The switch to color, from satellites photographing
in black and white and the issue of multi and hyper spectral sensing – these are things
that Israeli technology can offer, some of them have been sold and are still being sold to
many clients in the world. We shall not elaborate as to SAR but the capabilities of SAR
satellites from the point of view of creating a photograph with a great deal of proximity
to the optical domain, with some essential additions naturally, it works at night too, also
through many sorts of accessories for hiding enables you to get accurate coordinates and
other worthwhile results; photography for military purposes from geosynchronous orbit
does not exist today but will be implemented within some ten years, already there are some
works being done in many places in the world dealing even now with getting resolutions
moving somewhere in the 2 and 2.5 zone from geosynchronous platforms which is not bad
but still not good enough for many targets we need for our air force or other branches of
the military, but this is definitely an interesting issue that deserves to be dealt with.
We know of satellite communication from our reliance on it in our houses, we all use
satellite communication – and means of communication in the military have many
problems, problems of obstruction, band-width and masses of information that can be quite
frightening transferred from a plane like the F 35 or even a UAV on a communications
mission sends an enormous amount of data and we already see a great deal of problems,
there is the need to make this communication resistant etc. [referring to the presentation]
This is a graph showing the connection between the number of troops in some conflicts
the US has been involved in compared to the band-width of the satellite communication
operated, and this orientation is only being reinforced as we now talk of a band-width of
some terra-bytes. Generally speaking, if we look at the US view of how information passes
from different military assets - it does not really matter if they are surface, maritime, aerial,
they all finally use these spatial resources and space itself for the purposes of air power,
fighting being one of them – also the matter of advanced meteorological satellites to name
a few. Navigation has been mentioned in several contexts: today there are four navigation
systems with capabilities such as these or different ones, and the one that is the oldest and
best known is the American GPS, only few remember it started as a military program and
one of the motivations to open it up for civilian use was the downing of the South Korean
plane by the USSR. The GLONASS system, the Russian parallel, suffered from years
of neglect and deterioration but now it is improving at an ever-quickening rate as in the
last two years the Russians launched six new satellites to this system. Europe initiated a
satellite navigational system for diverse purposes, security among others, named Galileo
and called upon two small countries to take part in that venture: the first was China and
the second is Israel, which proves the capabilities identified in the industry here. China has
a satellite navigational system of its own called BEIDOU part of whose rationale was the
need for being based on an independent system; naturally in any future conflict of this or
that sort it is always possible to turn off certain regions and then we or China or any other
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country relying on satellite navigation – among other things, in order to direct munitions
- will be in quite some difficulties, as to obstructions and disruptions; we have seen some
operational uses, the technology of obstructing navigational satellites is becoming more
widespread and cheaper – here is a GPS countermeasure which connects to the lighter
plug port in the car and this is designed for people who do not wish members of their
family or other relatives or whoever to follow them and know the exact location of their
car, we also have a slightly larger version which is the size of a cigarette packet. These are
quite essential and they should be taken into account: GPS is no natural resource; it can be
damaged, disrupted. When China talks of future war, one of the first things that come up is
inflicting damage to various spatial assets including satellite navigational systems.
The conception called Responsive Space represents a rather profound conceptual change
that started in the US and is spreading in all directions, even here, and has to do with
making space more available, cheaper, more responsive to changing events – if we have a
satellite in one orbit or another changing its course in order to respond all of a sudden to
some need coming up while that satellite simply does not cover some area or some object,
it is not always possible and if possible it shortens its life span because a great deal of fuel
must be spent. One example General Ivry frequently uses is about the need of intelligence
before the strike on the Iraqi reactor in 1981 – in fact there was no satellite in place at the
time, and a certain gamble was taken as to the weather.
The basic idea of Responsive Space is doing things quickly, cheaply while using a great
deal of technology that is on the shelf. One of the orientations talked of here at the Fisher
Institute since 2004 is the issue of micro-satellites; these are no alternative to everything
else but certainly have their importance. Small satellites can perform varied missions, they
can eventually also be constructed on an assembly line and in the long run also reduce
their price. We shall not dwell on it too long, I suppose we shall upload it to our site
later, but I have summed up different European and American orientations that deal with
the needs of the end user which are only the subject of conversations now but will be
realized soon – reaching the capability of launching within several hours satellites needed
for specific missions, even if that satellite's durability is no more than a week or two, that
is unimportant, because the urgent need is now and it can be responded by a satellite.
Anyway, the issue of small, light satellites for quick launch provides the capability of
quick recovery in case of an attack inflicting serious damage on the spatial assets of a
country. If attacked Syria will not suffer, it has no satellites but Israel has quite a few and
the more you have the more you want still and with these satellites providing excellent
products and then one begins to rely on them as something that has always been in place
and always will be there, which is a false assumption of course. The capability to recover
from assault on spatial assets can also be a deterrent to possible assailants.
Some of my best friends deal with tactical space; which deserves notice; these conceptions
are derived of the operational needs of the USAF mainly and the idea is get to the echelons
in the field in a comfortable, swift and easily available way their information and data
requirements, instead of having it undergo a very complex, slow and cumbersome process
from the moment someone in the field wants intelligence on something happening at a
range near him; a satellite can provide it but in today's processes these things are slow and
cumbersome.
One of the ideas talked about is using micro satellites moving at an especially low
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trajectory, with very advanced technology which can work in a constellation and do some
very good things for us. So having spoken of satellites working together, nowadays there
is a certain changeover from thinking of one unified, monolithic satellite, a satellite that is
of one body, doing all sorts of things, or rather separate it to a number of systems capable
of working together. This is very significant when it comes to survival, a situation in which
one important system goes completely out of order and the satellite's capability is seriously
impaired, one also talks now of the capability to position in space at different and new
orbits some of the existing components and develop a constellation per mission. One of
these conceptions has many disadvantages as well as many advantages but among the
aspects discussed is a satellite carrier, a sort of a big satellite which could take with it some
small satellites into space and launch them to their specific tasks according to need.
Space is also the discovery of enemy launches, everybody who resided in Israel in 1991
remembers the Al Hussein missiles launched at us from Iraq and the early warning coming
from those satellites, the American launch-discovery satellites. Nowadays the Americans
have gone over to a more advanced level of discovery satellites. These things are extremely
important; it is no secret and it has been said in open forums and in the media that we enjoy
this service offered by the US but it is definitely worthwhile to think and examine the issue
of independence as to launch-discovery as well.
Another interesting subject which is also relevant for us but in the world generally it is
being increasingly dealt with – it is environmental awareness of space: space today is full
of active satellites, more so with inactive ones and still more with debris, space debris.
There was one unintentional crash which ruined an active satellite of the American Iridium
system, a low-orbit communication satellite which crashed into some Russian satellite
which had gone out of control years before, DARPA in the US is developing among other
things more ground tracking arrays of various sorts, the idea is that there are also some
satellites whose job is to watch from high or medium space – a matter of a few thousand
kilometers, looking especially at the LEO environment, the environment of low-orbit
satellites – 300, 400, 500, 600 kilometers and give an updated status report. By the way, this
is true not only of the low orbits but the high ones and every satellite operator in the world
receives daily updates at to the possibility of crash with all sorts of space debris; so the
US– STRATCOM operates one whole system whose job is to see what happens in Space.
It is no accident that if one country or another launches a satellite, within minutes you can
openly see all the trajectory parameters of that satellite, the Americans do that. There is an
interface between that data base operated by the American air force and STRATCOM and
Google-Earth, and it is just amazing that today you can sit with a laptop somewhere, say
Kabul, and know exactly when the satellite will be passing and then one can refrain from
all sorts of activities you do not wish to be seen. Naturally, not all satellites are available
for this but it is important and just for general orientation where are some of these systems
that give the comprehensive picture that the US has as to space.
Uzi Rubin mentioned here the Prompt Global Strike, whose aim is to strike with conventional
weapons every point on the globe from US territory or maybe from a submarine and the
ground within an hour at most; a test was recently done with this vehicle, not an entirely
successful one, a vehicle which could move at about 20 Mach. Next year, a Boeing test
plane is expected to implement this technology.
As to space warfare – a most important issue – I shall not go into the technologies just
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now, disruption, blinding, kinetic weaponry, EMP, nuclear bombing in orbit height or
thereabout. What is interesting today is a dimension that in the past was classed as taboo;
there was a complete taboo on this subject which is currently being loosened. We saw it
with the test in which a Chinese satellite was destroyed in January 2007 and the limp and
hesitant reactions in the US which later amounted to the destruction of a rogue American
satellite in 2008 and now the Russians are beginning to talk of the revival of these systems:
we shall be talking of all these topics in future.
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Integration between Air - Land Powers
Dr David E. Johnson, Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation
I think we are in a very different environment than we have ever been before, one that
is much more nuanced and we have to start thinking about the capabilities we have in a
different way. I looked at Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq again in 2003 and
what I concluded is that as you look at lessons learning from the various institutions,
through journals, through after-action reports, the ground forces have a view that differs
from the air forces, which differs from a truly integrated understanding of what happened
in the joint context.
We had a discussion yesterday about how in Afghanistan SOF enable with ISR and GPS
enable air power to take out essentially the Taliban, the problem with that is that a deeper
understanding of that is our Alliance does not want the strategy of going after al Qaeda
and the Taliban, chasing them down and capturing them. The Northern alliance said: if you
want al Qaeda go find them. So our strategy was dependent on a capability that we thought
was there but never arrived and we are still there eight years on, trying to find these guys
and deal with them.
The important thing you can learn from this is that first, these cases show that there has
been a dramatic shift in the power of air during the last 30 years and it has changed how
we ought to think about conventional war fighting.
Quite frankly, air power in addition to doing the traditional strategic attack mission can
dominate conventional enemy forces on the ground, something we were ever able to do
until we had integrated ISR and JDAM.
Most people here remember the famous battle of the Bulge in World War 2 where 23
German divisions hid in the Ardennes, nobody knew they were there, they came out of the
Ardennes and created operational surprise for the Allies as air power could not be there
because of bad weather. That cannot happen again. If we maintain our strategic edge and
capabilities nobody can hide in armored formations larger than a company and nobody can
hide in the dust and the cloud and the night.
Second, I think the issue that we are dealing with now is that we realize ground forces are
really decisive at the tactical level, once major operations are concluded you are left with
creating a strategic situation that meets your political objectives. We failed at that, initially
in Afghanistan and Iraq and we paid a heavy price to learn how to do it again.
Finally in my view joint doctrine does not incorporate this reality in either Israeli doctrine
or American doctrine. We have a military that is less than the sum of its parts, much less
a synergistic joint force. Now in America we do have the voluminous and complex joint
doctrine and we have processes.
Now as to fundamental change what is important is that as we have learned to apply
these major conventional capabilities and very superb ISR capabilities, the enemy has
adapted and he has realized that if he is in a place that can be seen he is vulnerable to air
identification and air attack. What he has figured out as you all know is that these Kassam
rockets and the 107 rockets used in Baghdad and the 122s cannot be dealt with by an aironly approach. You have to maneuver to force this guy to open up if you want to deal with
the short-range rocket problem.
I have had discussions over the last three years in Israel saying that the short range rocket
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problem is a nuisance, not a problem. Well, what happens when the medium range rockets
can be hidden as well in this kind of operation, where you cannot find them from the air
alone?
Now as to integrated air-ground approach to future challenges, I am going to use the
term hybrid warfare. Nothing has changed as far as how people think about integrating
capabilities. What has changed is the ability of a non-state actor to acquire systems that
we associate with a state.
Our ability to deal with him - because there is not an ability to have a deterrence regime
necessarily - is really different than what we used to do at the high end. I think there are
three levels of warfare now. One is a non-state irregular warfare; the important point about
this is we should not say we are going to develop capabilities and apply them against
this. We need to think about what each one of these areas of warfare really means to our
capabilities and fine-tune our capabilities and doctrines so that they fit these circumstances
as we approach them.
At the lower end we are very familiar with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan before we started
providing aid against the Soviet Union, it is Judea and Samaria, Gaza before Hamas.
What is characteristic of these kinds of forces is that they are not particularly well organized,
they operate in small formations but they cannot mass because of vulnerabilities and the
weapons are short-ranged systems, small arms, RPG, maybe a few short-range rockets. This
creates a situation where you have to think about how you employ your air instrument, the
ground instrument and how you integrate these two instruments to deal with this problem.
The role of air power as you in "mowing the grass" operations is one of attacking high
value targets with air enabled by ISR. This is how Israel employed air power in the West
Bank, and the United States used similar technique in Iraq and is doing so in Afghanistan
using highly focused ISR mainly trying to find and attack small terrorist organizations.
Most of the air operations are against high value targets and the ground forces focus mainly
on establishing security, stopping activities and doing raids. This is a ground-centric but
highly air-dependent operation. General Wald said yesterday that the thing the air force
brings that nobody else can bring is an ISR umbrella that is beyond description, mainly
because it is classified. This is the piece I worry about, this piece in the middle that we
quite frankly created in the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s by providing training
and weapons, principally the Stinger.
I had a discussion with a colleague the other day who said, 'well, they were not so many
Stingers, but the fact that they were there changed how the Soviets thought they could
operate'. Aircraft had to go up to a much higher level, they could use attack helicopters as
freely as they had in the past. The organization starts to become larger and more coherent
and disciplined.
The weapons are the same with regular opponents with the addition of stand-off systems
and this is a thing that the maneuver folks do not always understand and air folks do - what
stand off does is create a space where a maneuver is under fire before it closes with the
enemy and it can be as much as 5 kilometers with some of the systems we are seeing. This
is the problem I think you have with maneuver inside of Lebanon and it requires integrated
air and maneuver.
I always hear that all these capabilities are available on the open market; they are
if you are a state. If you sell or give these weapons to an opponent who is not a state
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there are fingerprints. There was a concern we had when we gave these weapons to the
Mujahideen.
I wrote not too long ago that Iran has not given the weapons it has given to Hezbollah to
anybody other than Hamas on small levels, but they have not shown up in Afghanistan
and they have not shown up in Iraq, and that is a knob they can turn anytime they want,
because they have common borders as well. So the important thing about this statesponsored hybrid is that if a state makes this decision, it can be a very quick transition;
we saw a quick one in Afghanistan, and a relatively quick transition giving Hezbollah
these capabilities. But again, you can buy an event; you can buy a man pod on the market
to shoot down an aircraft. A capability requires a supply chain, sustainability, training,
the ability to replace batteries particularly in Stingers, so it is something a state has to be
actively engaged in. This derives from the research I have been doing in the last years on
Lebanon and Gaza. What you see is that hybrid opponents, although they do not create a
scale issue, they create a qualitative problem.
It is not division on division combat, but small units that are highly decentralized because
they realize their vulnerabilities and have advanced weapons in command and control. I
told folks in our ground forces that at the brigade level and below this is high-intensity
combat. I also believe that Lebanon and Gaza ground operations are a key component of
this and there needs to be a joint combined arms operations. What we saw in Lebanon is
that precision stand-off fires are critical, they went after the long-range and the middlerange rockets, but if you are going to deal with this short-range rocket problem and the
buffer on your border, you have to start thinking about how to force these people in the
open to deal with them. Because ground maneuver creates the operational pusher that
forces your opponent to react, if he stays in place he is ineffective, if he moves he becomes
visible and then he becomes available for you to target and hit with fire. But the real issue
there is that this is not a sequential type of operation. These have to be highly integrated,
decentralized, with the local commander dealing with something that appears 20 or 30
seconds. It cannot go through echelons up and then echelons down. I guess you know the
key to this is that as you get into this dynamic integration of fire and maneuver you keep
things on common purpose and plan, you have to rehearse it and you have to deeply know
and understand the people on the team. They cannot be ad-hoc picked up team operations.
Air is what gives you the ability to hit high-value targets, be they rockets or key leaders,
it gives you the ability to deny the enemy the ability to mass or re-supply his forces in the
form of battle area. Ground is the key to forcing this enemy reaction.
The key point is that this is a balanced highly integrated operation that you have to practice
before you execute. We all know what states are. States have widely varying capabilities;
there is a lot of talk about Russia and Georgia, how they executed complex compound
hybrid operations. Russia employed a Chechnyan paramilitary unit - a state can dial the
knob and keep dialing it up until it reaches a capability that is adequate to address the
threat it faces. Israel can dial the knob up against Hezbollah. The question is how far you
want to dial it and how effective you are.
The other thing that we are all going to have to face here in the future is how do you deter
state actors from giving capabilities to hybrid opponents. It is just as problematic in the
nuclear proliferation issue because it is below the radar screen in many ways.
I know your ground forces think about how to operate in an NBC environment. Our Army
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and our Air Force have not done this or have not really thought about it operationally
in a number of years. Air power is key to deterrence and deep strike and the ground
forces bring your political solution to your strategy in the aftermath and it is highly
centralized but the thing about the high end is we think we remember how to do this,
but we have not done it in a long time and I think this is an issue for both our forces:
how we think; when highly tied down in one area how to think about preparing and
training for other areas. There is always this discussion about centralized or decentralized
air power and ground power and there is a scale here, the further down you go to be
responsive, the less centralized you need to be and let the bottom deal with the problem.
I have been looking at this issue for a long time, wishing to trace the origins of why we do
not believe the other guy will be there for you; I mean the Marines are largely interested
and Harriers and VTOL F 35 because of an institutional need to have their own air support
that originate in World War 2 during operations on Guadalcanal. It persists in the culture.
So every force buys what it needs itself because it does not believe that somebody else
will be there for them. Every infantry battalion has mortars, brigades have artillery, we
have attack helicopters, and what I wrote is that the attack helicopter in most of these
environments is really problematic because of its vulnerability and it is not particularly
effective. These issues are also common in every military force that has strong institutions
and air forces and armies. And these different perspectives cause gaps in capabilities that
can affect operations. Let us look at who was responsible in Lebanon for the short range
rockets. The Air Force says it was not their job, the Army said they thought the Air Force
was doing it and the problem was never addressed. These are things you have to think
about particularly in hybrid warfare: who will accomplish these missions and how.
A quote from the Commander of the Israeli Air Force, I think, shows how far you came in
Cast Lead to resolve these issues. The real question is not that you were able to do it for
one operation but have you put the processes and arrangements, doctrines and relationships
in place where this is a routine ability to execute. You had an attack helicopter squadron
essentially direct each brigade. The problem with using Cast Lead as a model is that
you have 4 attack helicopter squadrons in your air force, you had 4 brigades, if you do
something like Lebanon again you cannot do that, you have to think about arrangement
and southern direct support or how do you do this in a larger operation.
Now to the challenge of urban operations: where we have been and where we are headed.
As we all know these urban areas create enormous problems, there has been, at least in our
system, a back and forth over the last hundred years about what cities mean. Initially it was
a Clausewitz thing; you have to take the enemy's capitol because it is the center of gravity.
In World War 2 in places like Aachen in Germany and in Hue in Vietnam, you know these
things are really dirty business, you have to stay out of them. We realized in Somalia that
you do not always have the option to stay in outer cities because that is where the people
are and that is where the power and ability to control reside. The two kinds of models that
evolved after the Cold War were Groznyy and Faluja where the approach was to tell the
city: you have two days, everybody who is here in two days, who has not evacuated, is
an enemy and we are going to treat you as an enemy, then you go door to door to door
and what you end up with is the situation like the Major in Vietnam who stood next to a
burning village and he said, what happens? Well, we had to destroy the village just to save
it. Groznyy and Hue and Faluja do not look anything like they looked before. The other
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question is what is it worth in these kinds of operations? We lost 70 dead Marines in Faluja
and had 600 wounded. I do not think the tolerance for operations like those is very high
every time.
I am doing the study now in Sadr city and I have looked at Gaza, what you see is that I
think there is an alternative here other than taking the city door to door, because what
you are trying to do is exert control over the elements that are contesting your authority,
in these two operations the focus was on the enemy fighters, not real estate, not holding.
It was on creating the circumstances where the terrorist threat or the instability or the
insurgency was requited. But what it took was highly persistent ISR, very responsive
precision strike and highly decentralized operations. In Sadr city, for the air power folks
here who think that only airmen can control air power, the brigade commander had two
predators 24/7 that he controlled, two shadows, an aerial weapons team of two Apache and
fixed wing and GMLRS (guided multiple launch rocket system) because the only way you
could find and hit these fleeting targets in this highly contested tight urban environment
was for someone to say "Do that right now". It could not go up through layers and down
again through layers. And the Air Force and the Army put together a highly integrated very
complex operation and they broke it up and we have not done it since. My study says if we
ever do this again those are the lessons we learned so we do not have to learn them again.
The other interesting thing I found quite ironic when I was looking at Gaza and at Sadr
city is that for irregular and hybrid opponents to be effective they had to become visible.
When Hamas took over Gaza and moved into the city hall, the police stations, all these
other things, they become visible and they become targetable. The same thing with the
militia inside of Sadr city when they started to fire mortar rockets at the greens; they had to
become visible to do that. And when the walls started to be put up to stop the rockets they
had to attack the wall or they would be irrelevant and they became highly visible: over a
period of two months we killed 700 of them.
I am going to close with a few final thoughts: the key messages out of my work are that
there is a new kind of adversary out there that kind of blends state capabilities because of
its weapons and its organization. If you look at Vietnam there is a hybrid war going on,
and the Russian partisans in World War 2 were a hybrid force; it is not new, but we have
not thought about how to adapt our capabilities to deal with this problem which is very
persistent for Israel and I think it is going to become a problem for us.
The solution is not for the air force to think about the problem or the army to think about
the problem, but for the IDF and the US Joint Forces to understand how we can bring the
capabilities we have across the force to bear on these issues and develop joint doctrines,
processes and relationships that are needed.
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Air Power and the Asymmetric Conflict
Brig. Gen (Res.) Ephraim Segoli, Head of Airpower and Asymmetric Conflict Research
Center, Fisher Institute
Raphael Rudnik, researcher, Dado Center (IDF) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Raphael Rudnik: The use of the concept of asymmetry is very similar to that of other
concepts, focusing on the description of what they are not, rather than what they are; the
same goes for post-modernism, unconventional or irregular forces. These concepts are not
absolute, they are blurred, tending to a wide interpretation, but so too is the reality they
aim to record.
We define as typically asymmetric those wars waged against non-state entities which
usually adopt guerilla and terror warfare. These patterns of warfare have not essentially
changed throughout history but the environment they occur in is the one that changes.
De Havilland DH9A
The principal insight derived from research of the phenomenon of asymmetric conflicts
is the understanding that typical asymmetry is essentially a state of mind, it is a matter of
conception, a conception describing a reality in which there are no absolute affirmations,
and anything may be simultaneously interpreted differently and conversely. Thus, power
in some domain could be interpreted as weakness by different actors, a situation of victory
will be differently perceived by rivals and so will almost any term characterizing armed
conflict – it could be ground, time, morality, honor, heroism.
We heard yesterday from Professor Gray that war is waged in order to gain peace. By
our assessment this is a problematic western perception; it is important to stress that in
asymmetric conflict even the essence of war has contrary conceptions; sometimes the
struggle itself is the purpose of war and not any peace settlement. I am not sure that the
concept of victory is adequate for use but our situation will be better when we understand
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– and I am talking generally of the enlightened world - that the threat is symmetric but our
way of coping should be asymmetric.
In order to explain it one might say that the means we use should be asymmetric – they
have to; the idea of proportionality mentioned yesterday by Boaz Ganor is irrelevant,
because it will never be proportional and cannot be proportional but so that I shall not
be misunderstood even in the matter of morality we have to be asymmetric, we shall not
adjust ourselves to the other side, we shall maintain our ethics and go by their rules: if
we understand that this is a kulturkampf then we understand too that we cannot lose our
own culture; this is part of victory and defeat. In our opinion the concept of asymmetry
contributes to the struggle with these conflicts because it focuses our attention on the
essential differences between the sides and it also pushes to original and creative thought.
This idea of asymmetry is not new, it is not related to a certain sort of actor, and still we
think it is the term that is the most relevant for use.
So what is the problem in these conflicts? An interesting argument about which there is
wide consensus has it that in general those states which are the stronger side won most of
the battles but at the end of the fighting they lost to the non-state entity which is in fact the
weaker side. In spite of the dominance of those conflicts during the last 100 years at least,
western militaries have not been wise enough to develop a relevant response to cope with
them.
Operationally speaking it will be more precise to say that one side will adopt an asymmetric
approach when either unwilling or unable to cope symmetrically and when wishing to
change the status quo or redress a certain balance of power; this is valid for the strong side
as well as the weak one.
A complete, profound conception pertaining to the coping with these conflicts was
put forward in 1975 in a trailblazing article by Andrew Mack, an Australian expert in
international relations. His article was titled "Why do Great Nations Lose in Small Wars;
the Politics of Asymmetric Warfare" – and it was written following the failures of the
French in the Indochina wars and the US in Vietnam and the influence on all wars by
the colonialism in mid-twentieth century, and it dealt with the difficulty encountered
by strong and advanced states to resolve conflicts against a militarily inferior enemy,
describing a spiritual as well as material asymmetry noting that limited military force is
used inefficiently against entities waging total war. Powers fail due to the differences in the
sides' will to fight, invest, sacrifice enough resources to reach victory and conduct fighting
that enables resolution. Mack specifies that the leadership of the stronger side, be it a
democracy or a dictatorship, tends to be politically sensitive and this vulnerability causes
the fighting to stop before achieving its objectives because of public pressure and that of
various elite groups. This is relevant to confrontations; I think that through this most of our
problems can be understood.
In the 1960s there was an attempt to develop a new strategy, President John Kennedy soon
after the inception of his administration in 1961 declares to Congress that he is directing
the Secretary of the Defense to quickly and extensively widen in coordination with our
allies the preparation of the existing forces for a non-nuclear war, semi-military operations
and sub-limited or non-conventional war: " …Directing the Secretary of Defense to
expand rapidly and substantially, in co-operation with our allies, the orientation of existing
forces for the conduct of non-nuclear war, para-military operations and sub-limited, or
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unconventional, wars." (B. H. Liddell-Hart: Strategy; New York, Meridian, 1991, p.364).
Still it seemed those directions as well as the literature in that context did not devote
enough attention and did not exert much influence and the example was given in October
1983 when a Hezbollah explosives truck exploded in the Beirut HQ of American and
French Marines; 241 Marines were killed, mostly Americans and some 58 French, to this
very day the largest number of Americans killed in a single assault outside the US.
The Americans and the French soon evacuated their forces from Lebanon – they had been
sent over in order to put a stop to the civil war raging there. The Americans set up a
commission of inquiry and two months later it filed its findings which were as follows: the
American forces were unprepared organizationally, conceptually and practically to cope
with this kind of conflict. The commission defined said conflict as a new kind of warfare
but in fact did not present a meticulous analysis of the new problem.
Toward the end of the 20th century a long process of technological development and
military thinking that many saw as a revolution came to fruition. The Soviets first called
it MTR, military technological revolution, and it was filed under the wider definition of
the revolution in military affairs, the RMA. The development of RMA can be associated
at least in the US with the air-ground battle doctrine; I think this idea has been mentioned
here, it came to the fore already in 1982, and the purpose of that doctrine was to develop
a NATO response against the threat of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, a superpower
conflict. It was an effective realization of the idea of the deep campaign maneuver
combining dominant fire effort and RMA was an attempt to create asymmetry around
what Clausewitz saw as the principal or striking characteristics of war, the fog of war and
the idea of friction.
A few important ramifications of this so-called revolution deserve mention. The adversary
understood it had no capability to symmetrically counter the mighty power presented;
therefore it developed typical conceptions of warfare and asymmetric resistance in keeping
with the era of globalization. A strategy of waging limited wars preferably by proxy took
root, a strategy of effects developed as an alternative to conquest and domination of
territories and there arose expectations of clean wars, precision hits with only minimal
collateral damage and minimum casualties in the ranks of the fighting forces. In the West
there were those who thought that the solution was found to the trauma of world wars and
the fear of weapons of mass destruction and together with the disintegration of the USSR
there was a feeling that the era of real wars was over but those ideas of the deep systemic
maneuver to the enemy's rear and extensive use of fire effort were quickly adopted in a
unique configuration by the non-state adversary as well; it could materialize as suicide
bombers, sabotage by planes and also by network warfare with the same original ideas as
the conception of warfare.
A paradoxical reality of typical double or inverse asymmetry soon developed; what had
been conceived in the past as a unique possibility to the capabilities of an advanced,
sophisticated military was adopted as the strategy of the weak. To a large measure there
is some crossbreeding of traditional conceptions of guerilla and terror with conventional
ideas of attrition warfare and systemic maneuver. Despite the propensity of many thinkers
to see the development of the nature of conflicts as a natural evolutionary process and
not as a revolution – take for example the approach of Boaz Ganor – in our opinion
the phenomena and processes occurring today are the making of that revolution, it is a
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conceptual revolution that we are witnessing, the combination of powerful technology
available to small entities, the change in the dispositions of power, the conceptions, global
norms and cultural changes in Moslem society lead to some sort of revolution or at least a
co-evolution that creates a new reality. That new reality is not the consequence of an event
or some unique, definite development. It is more accurate to define reality as a composite
reality combining the old with the new or as Mao put it, revolution is a process and not a
single constitutive event.
Brig. Gen. Ephraim Segoli: You can gather by now that our team is at odds with those
who maintain that no dramatic change occurred and we think there have been changes,
one of them is the very fact that the incidence of certain kind of conflict is being reduced,
while the other sort is flourishing and takes a much more central place, meanwhile all
sorts of things happen, some of which were addressed by Raffi [Rudnik]. Nothing started
yesterday; it all began many years ago, in the case of airpower almost from the beginning
of the operation of airpower.
I take you back some 90 years to a British attempt taking place in the then Mesopotamia,
better known now as Iraq and that attempt brought about the creation of a conception
called air control. Following WW1 three developments took place in Britain; the first was
the mandate given to Britain over territories formerly held by the Ottoman Empire; against
the background of the enormous price paid in the war there was a general aspiration to trim
down its military forces – the army as well as the navy and the air.
I am now specifically referring to RAF and airpower because this is the issue at hand - this
organization was merely a newborn. As far as the RAF was concerned the war was over
even before it could prove its centrality and its vital importance while both the army and
navy wish to swallow it back inside them and it needs to justify its importance and keep
its independence. Its motivation is clear: it is on the verge of a crisis and as Uzi Rubin said
yesterday – I think we know it too well – motivation often is the product of crisis, when
you are almost in a crisis or already in it you say OK, time for change and the RAF felt it
and sensed there was an opportunity because around the Empire there come up many foci
of disorder, of subversion, uprisings, extreme rioting and the RAF succeeds in the 1920s
to operate in the Horn of Africa, Somali and Sudan and it appears that theaters do not
change – every once in a while we go back to the same place and operate there again; they
operated but changed the traditional British handling of uprisings of this sort which had
been a penalty delegation; they assemble a military force, send out a convoy, it departs and
makes its way for some weeks or months, finally arrives, kills, sets fire, punishes and then
goes back. Order is restored for some time, but this is expensive and lengthy and the RAF
does it at a much cheaper rate.
In 1921 a conference was convened in Cairo chaired by the then Minister of the Colonies,
Winston Churchill who is a big maven of airpower, to discuss the British mandate in Iraq
and the unrest there. The RAF commander at the time feels there is an opportunity here,
he can assume leadership, go up one rung and take responsibility for a whole campaign
theater so he offers his services and indeed receives approval: they tell him to take Iraq and
deal with it as the commander of a whole campaign so this is the first time Air gets to be
responsible for a whole theater and the man who had this honor was Air Marshal Salmond
– for the first time an airman was the commander of a whole campaign and air power itself
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got a new assignment – to garrison the Empire or police the Empire – both relatively new
terms and it, accepts this as a full assignment .
The purpose of this operation is quite clear. It is to assist the political echelon to enforce
order throughout Iraq and the force at his disposal is 8 de Havilland squadrons and ground
forces. This plane later undergoes several changes; a relevant combat doctrine is evolved
especially for that campaign which is being written while engaging in some very advanced
discussions. They talk of effects, not of killing but how to use this force to produce effects.
There ensues an extremely successful combination and I shall shortly show you a simple
model of a few things: in our estimation only when this combination occurs can a significant
change take place. You encounter some undesirable reality causing a certain crisis which
brings about this strategic motivation to instigate change. In most cases if there is no crisis,
there is no motivation for change, but the advent of crisis causes fierce motivation for
change. Still, in order for the change to have effect several things have to take place: there
should be a theoretical framework comprising strategy - the strategic and the operational
level and certainly the technical level too. Without that theoretical framework nothing will
happen, there will be no changes but this is not enough, now an organization is needed,
matching those new conceptions. An organization already in existence cannot always
respond to a new problem so the third is the tools and technology. In this case, looking at
the British example, it all happened. The commander of the air force engages in a vitally
essential dialogue with the political echelon and together they produce a strategy. This
is the essence of strategy, this dialogue between the military and the political echelons
in a unique context. The operational conception, the organizational structure and the
employment conception derive from this, as the aerial force is the supported force in this
case and the ground force supports and since the operation succeeds, there is a new reality,
a desirable one.
Some people have it that this tale is a myth. A good friend of mine from the time I was
in SAAS [School of Advanced Airpower Studies) claims that all this air control is one
big myth, that the bombardment went on without discerning and that the number of
infantrymen there was much larger than the British care to tell, some of them were Indian
so maybe they were not counted in; even if those assertions are true we still see here some
different reality of an airman who understands differently his role as holistically observing
the campaign in its entirety while holding a constant dialogue with the political echelon,
creating a relevant strategy in that context, deriving a relevant operational conception and
eventually bringing in the goods.
: One of the conspicuous changes that could be identified on the battlefield from the second
half of the 19th century is tied to the factor of presence, an enhancement of weaponry
made it impossible to wage war in big formations visibly facing each other; from the
middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th gradually military technology
scattered and thinned out the battlefield causing fighting forces to invest in shelter and
camouflage. This characteristic of change in the shape of warfare helps understand the
advance of the battlefield towards the characteristics of guerilla warfare and the tendency
to disappear. There are those who noticed the amorphousness of guerilla forces only
recently but the operational challenge regular troops when facing irregular ones, in other
words anti-guerilla warfare was expressed along the years by the contradiction between
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presence and disappearance. Guerrilla and terror organizations are customarily seen as
amorphous, evasive enemies, forces which are difficult to hold while indicating targets for
attack, power sources, centers of gravity, often there is a tendency to describe their mode
of operation as disappearance but in fact this is not new: Lawrence of Arabia described
this reality as early as1926 in light of his attempt to assist the Arab forces: "…an influence,
an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas?
Armies were like plants, immobile, firm rooted, nourished through stems to the head. We
might be a vapour, blowing where we listed. Our kingdom lay in each man's mind, and as
we wanted nothing material to live on, so we might offer nothing material to the killing.
It seemed irregular soldier might be helpless without a target…" (T.E. Lawrence, Seven
Pillars of Wisdom, Ware: Wordsworth, 1997, p.1828)
The problem is a conceptual one: they do not disappear, they are present and they have a
shape but we treat them on the basis of paradigms or symmetric terms, this is our mode of
thinking. Regular armies still do not manage to produce a conception capable of dealing
with this disappearance; the traditional solution of regular armies is based on resolution
and victory by conquest of territories and control of many dimensions. Numerous military
people and military thinkers frequently argue that resolution is reached historically only
by massive ground presence. Yet this presence consumes a great deal of human resources
while producing in parallel many easy, comfortable targets for guerilla and terror. This
reality obliges the regular military to constantly enhance its presence so as to secure itself
– not for the original objectives of the campaign. This is how a new problem was created
and has to be dealt with;
Brig. Gen. Ephraim Segoli: It brings us back to the advantages of the air service and now
in order not to keep things on the philosophical level I shall try to say a few words about
strategy that also have some operational insights.
Going back to what Raffi said about presence, I think something has dramatically changed;
there has been quite an upheaval as to one issue. In the wars of the past, fighting was
continuous and one division fought shoulder to shoulder with the next one; if a certain
force planned to execute vertical flanking it did so, the central issue was how to link
up with it in order to produce the continuous presence on the ground; I could acquire
resolution, I had the control of this territory through being continuously present in all
that territory. Wherever I was present I had control and could resolve the fight. This is
how wars looked and this is when air forces came into the picture: I go in the air, do
something and come back. This is how airpower was conceived at the beginning. The air
force is capable of offering more – indeed it has to. So there has been another upheaval
because ground warfare is no longer continuous having become decentralized, disjointed,
yet we are still required to maintain continuous presence, so airpower is the one obliged to
provide it if it understands is role, if it sees its role is not only bombing with fighter aircraft
but using the whole arsenal up there up to space, then you can produce that envelope above
the battlefield and this envelope enables you or whoever is in charge o‫ כ‬the fighting to
understand what is happening and operate forces accordingly. This is a sea-change, now
the decentralized force that does not keep continuity is the ground force and the air force
is expected or required to provide continuous presence.
Our first insight has some very powerful ramifications and though mentioned yesterday I
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wish to dwell a little on the subject. Dr. Meilinger was among those who said that the air
force is a strategic entity, as did Asaf Agmon and everyone would agree. I think that most
people who talk of the air force as a strategic entity mean that the air force knows how
to operate for a strategic purpose: it knows how to attack targets whose role is to bring
about some changes or achieve a strategic end. We think the air force is a strategic entity
because it is the only factor present in all of the fighting space, the way it is looking at the
fighting space must be that of the General Staff, of the Chief of the General Staff – he does
not come to the General Staff discussion asking 'what are my missions?' someone must
have already divided the battlefield and tells him, 'OK, this is your share and that is the
share of the Northern Command and that other one is the Southern Command's'; the air
force comes to this discussion – it must attend this discussion when it has a holistic stand
because it is there, it is expected to operate there and it is the one to learn while fighting,
so this is the central issue and in my opinion this is the main argument about the air force
being a strategic entity.
The other argument is that the air force can do all sorts of things and I am referring to what
Dr. Meilinger said yesterday that the distinction between airpower and ground power is
that when airpower performs an operation it does so and it is immediately for a strategic
purpose while ground power is the accumulation of very many ground activities which
finally add up to some strategic purpose; but all this story is just a matter of time shrinking,
as airpower too is an accumulation of very many tactical actions, and because the air force
can do it exceedingly quickly it is perceived as a strategic entity - but this is not enough;
it is a strategic entity because it is the only one looking at the campaign in its entirety
and if required to look at it in planning and execution too then this is the first affirmation.
How will it be done? In this instance too I shall rely on Dr. Meilinger who said it is
imperative to understand the culture, being the first layer; I need to understand the culture
of the enemy. I think that conflicts are especially complex and this is the uniqueness of
the asymmetric systems since there the parlance is slightly more complex; I know the
complaints we run into all too often that those who talk of systemic parlance complicate
things unnecessarily while we argue that situations are complex and those who simplify
them only delude themselves that this is a simple story while the story is complicated and
in order to deal with a complicated story you need to have a slightly more complex and
sophisticated approach. When I talk of conflict with Syria, for example, then when I look
at Syria there is identification between the Syrian people, the leader and the military, and
if Syria does not adopt all sorts of different patterns of fighting –it very well may do so as
David Johnson says, then when I fight Syria the story will be rather clear: it is I against
Syria, Syria is the enemy, when I fight Syria it is my business to defeat the Syrian military
in order to get to some resolution – a relatively simple explanation.
When facing Lebanon the story suddenly gets complicated; some will say that we face
Lebanon and since it is giving patronage to Hezbollah Lebanon is an enemy, there are those
who will say that since Hezbollah joined the political game in Lebanon, Lebanon equals
Hezbollah and Lebanon is the enemy. We say there is no doubt Hezbollah is the enemy, the
radical axis – no doubt as to the enemies' identity, Lebanon is context-dependent. But there
are those who will say no, parlance is quite clear. I repeat our argument: Lebanon's status
is context-dependent of the international environment and operational environment. In the
specific context we shall have to decide if Lebanon is an enemy or not. Who are we? I go
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back to my original argument – the air force has to come up with a position about Lebanon.
The air force knows how to bomb infrastructure targets, this is no secret, but the air force
has to understand or explain or recommend why it is should attack infrastructure targets in
Lebanon since it is an enemy and not because the air force knows to attack infrastructure
targets. So as I said, in order to be able to be a strategic entity you have to manage a
systemic inquiry and study, so in the end it is based on hard work.
The second example I wish to give as to this complexity of a rival system and David
Johnson touched this, is Afghanistan; I say this with caution because when we examine
test cases we do not know everything, it is very clear to us that we do not know everything
and still we proceed from some assumptions and maybe we missed something of crucial
importance; but this is the way – we accept with understanding and love the criticism
directed at us when foreigners analyze our systems and we hope the critique of other
systems will be also received with understanding as well. At the Asymmetric Conflict
Center at the Fisher Institute we looked at the war in Afghanistan from its very beginning
and wondered which analysis the Americans did when they looked at it, what sort of
analysis was it when they talked of the Northern Alliance, al-Qaeda and the Taliban. So
al-Qaeda is an obvious enemy, this is the entity that should be assaulted, and the Northern
Alliance as collaborator we wish to harness to us but the Northern Alliance itself is no
monolith; there was some debate if Taliban by actually being the patron of al-Qaeda and
refusing to accept the ultimatum absolutely turns into the enemy or maybe not, maybe
my business is create the barrier between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I follow what
David Johnson said and in my opinion owing to incomplete discussion there were some
operational ramifications as well, it was expected that the Northern Alliance would attack
the Taliban and al-Qaeda and rid the Americans of the need to operate ground forces there,
but this did not happen and the question is if indeed they made the analysis and more to the
point where was the air force in that analysis. I am carefully posing the question if before
the campaign in Afghanistan the Americans made the analysis as to the Taliban, what are
its linkages to al-Qaeda, either I connect them or I go into the wedge between them – what
are the operational ramifications of this action, do I employ the same force against the
Taliban as I did against al-Qaeda or not, whether by connecting to them or maybe I stop,
and again when looking with hindsight at what happened, the Taliban in the beginning had
no aspirations outside Afghanistan; now the Taliban claims responsibility for Manhattan.
Is there any connection? I do not know, again I say with caution, this analysis has to be
made, it is obligatory and the air force has to take a major part in the performance of this
analysis.
As to the combining of strategy to operation, we have already said that the uniqueness
of the air force is in its capability to minimize very many tactical actions and produce an
event or an action for a strategic purpose. All the commanders we talked to spoke in favor
of first strike; in fact, what is special about the air force when you conduct some operation?
This is even a generic saying, in many cases it is indeed true, going for a first strike but if
it not accompanied by something and you lose the effect. What can a first strike achieve?
That Shock and Awe we talked about ten years ago – I think we have all sobered up since
then, so it seems Shock and Awe will not take place, that is, a marvelous show of fireworks
will not make anyone fall on their knees and raise their hands. So what can happen if I
go for a significant first strike, an operational shock, the enemy pauses for a second as in
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'just a minute, what is going on here?' but if you do not use it immediately for the next
move which might be a diplomatic effort or a humanitarian effort or else the maneuver
which immediately gets in – it could also be a complete stop as in now I wait and see, but
if you do not plan it beforehand, if you do not plan this in advance, if you are not part of
the strategy and do not plan it, then you deal that first strike and you have done what you
have done, achieved this shock, and the next day the enemy adjusts as if nothing happened.
Let us look at the Second Lebanon War and turn for a moment to the operation in Gaza
[Cast Lead]. Both opened with very successful first strikes but when the strike was over
questions were asked as to what now? Will there be a diplomatic effort? All of a sudden
there was this initiative or that and for Cast Lead it was just like the usual operation of
force, airpower strike, after that the preparation of the ground, and then the maneuver. So
where is the ruse in this story? Again, [what is important is] the centrality of airpower in
the creation of strategy and its ability to connect it to the operation, to the campaign itself.
Finally I am getting to the issue of jointness.
Like the British experience I described, the IDF too has an extremely successful experience
with joint operations. It happened in 2004, with the Yemey Tshuva Operation in Gaza. It
was a divisional operation, a reinforced division, and airpower was harnessed with all
its might to this operation; at the end the body count was 100 – to my mind numbers are
secondary when fighting these organizations. There was no collateral damage and for a few
months the region was quiet. At the head of this air force operation was Brig. Gen. Amir
Eshel, now Maj. General and chief of the Planning Branch in GHQ and the commander
of the ground troops was Brig. Gen. Shmuel Zakai, the commander of the Gaza division.
When the operation was over Amir Eshel called me and two other people and said, look,
what happened here is a very special thing, very different. I am afraid we cannot render it
to the army, I do not know what to do with it, a very special jointness occurred here. By the
way, the then-chief of staff said it was the new conception of operation of the IDF and this
is the way we should fight, and he told me that if I do not know what to do with it, it will
just melt away. One year later we had a conference here and people talked of the operation
and from this podium they said the ground forces, once again regrettably the ground forces
are not here; we talk of the whole issue of jointness – but we can only talk. We cannot
force anyone to come, even the IAF is not really present here – but people said from the
podium: 'ground forces, your time is over, it is a pity you cannot hear it but we are happy
– or sad - to announce to you that your time is over'. Just like Meilinger said, from now on
it is airpower and Special Forces, they will solve the problems. There was this euphoria,
we have fixed it and we know what to do. In a way, it was indeed so, it was a very special
operation in which all the parlance of supporting and supported was quite marginal, the
air force was supported and the ground forces were to create the friction and as Raffi
said, force them to implement the configuration, force them to poke out in order that the
air force should go on the assault; then the complete opposite occurred and we were in
2006, a year later, and we do not talk at all to each other, doing close support. I repeat
what Assaf said yesterday, fighter planes do close support and claim it is not according to
combat doctrine and immediately after the war in a meeting with the former commander
of the air force he says, I have to remind my successor not to do it any more – no more
close support. One of the amazing things about close support, as far as I am concerned,
was that in conversations we had with senior commanders they spoke of CAS (Close Air
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Support) as if nothing changed from the early stages and that is the way they saw it, it was
as if technology had not changed, close support, complex mission, ever problematic, not
always worthwhile deal with it, fighter planes should not deal with close support - all those
arguments of the past; in all other domains there have been technological breakthroughs,
in close support we are stuck. In other words, something deep inside is always against
this mission. I refer to the issue of close support in connection with our argument that in
future there may be conditions in which there will be no alternative for a half a ton bomb
in asymmetric conflicts.
As to the assault helicopters in the Second Lebanon War I insist – I shall shortly tell you
why I dwell a little on this – that something has escaped the attention of the Winograd
Commission because they do not get to these particulars, but the support of assault
helicopters – the air force told the ground forces – no fighter planes, you get support from
assault helicopters – and the support by assault helicopters in the Second Lebanon War was
very hesitant – we felt it, but heard it in so many words from the former commander of AFB
30 who told us that after the war he participated in a debriefing of battalion commanders
who said they were most satisfied with the operation of combat helicopters during the
war and he said to himself, this is one of the saddest days of my life because I know, I
found it out too late in the war, that we gave them a very small part of what we could give,
we stopped, we obstructed, we were stopped and they still say support was extremely
successful; he says that debriefing was one of the sad days in his career, these are the
expectations we gave our partners and then came Operation Cast Lead, a most impressive
improvement, my fear was that if it happened after Yemey Tshuva who can guarantee that
if things there are quiet for some time or if something distracts us or if all of us look at
a terrible threat that everybody has to deal with, then in some three-four years we shall
be in that same situation again because the processes (as David Johnson said) exist, the
organizations exist and nonetheless we take one step ahead and one step backward, so we
can talk and he who has to go on and do something with it is another factor.
To sum up, I spoke of this jointness which occurred in the British experience in Iraq and
I wish to add a few words about how I see it. When looking at the IAF there is no crisis
but I go back once again to Uzi Rubin saying one should not wait for the crisis, we have
to keep asking ourselves if it is right to change and how to change and the other reality
for all the difficulty to forecast the future is quite clear. I think that after having heard
that the technology exists, maybe not the specific system but anything we want can be
available; resources do not keep us back, this is not the problem. It is in the conceptions
that could radiate to organizations, that is, I think the biggest gap in our air force, and our
military in general, is the conceptual gap, not the technological one. In the First Gulf War
many people said that technology had caught up with the conceptions of the first thinkers,
Douhet, Trenchard and Mitchell, until then there was a big gap between conceptions and
technology and then there was war and precision, evasion and range filled in the gap; to
my mind what has happened since then is that technology continued its climb and we are
stuck with the conceptions and now the gap is in the opposite direction.
Yesterday, when Steve O'Bryan spoke of the F35 and its capabilities to provide battle
space dominance no one jumped out of their chairs because it sounded logical to give
dominance to the battle space. Before the Second Lebanon War we were very creative
with new concepts, every day there was a new term; one of the terms that came up in a
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discussion with the air force was systemic control. When the war was over, there were
those who found the reason for the failure in over-creativity and the excessive expression
of words, they said: let us go back and speak plainly, be plain, go back to basics and this
is the way to succeed. I go back to what I said before: conflicts are complex, even if we
simplify our parlance it will not simplify conflicts, we need to think in a complex way
about the problem and I daresay the term battle space dominance that none jumped to
object to, I would say that the right term the air force should make its own is operational
dominance, if I understand the issue of presence, how do I provide operational dominance
so as to produce continuity in order to make fighting possible, enable continuous learning.
If the air force, in my humble opinion, understands it, embraces it and accepts it as its own
challenge, I think a big step will be made in the capability of building potential to win, to
reach resolution in war.
Left to right: Dr. David E. Johnson - Senior Political Scientist of RAND Corporation,
Brig. Gen (Res.) Ephraim Segoli - Head of Airpower & Asymmetric Conflict Research
Center at the Fisher Institute and Raphael Rudnik - researcher at Dado Center (IDF) and
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Annual Address by the IAF Commander
Maj. Gen. Ido Nechushtan, Commander of the IAF
This conference is examining airpower and the challenges Israel is facing, and as former
IAF commander Herzle [Bodinger] just said, every commander of the air force is given
an excellent force, built by generations preceding him and he needs to operate it wisely
in response to what is happening and what is developing and then hand it over to his own
successor in full readiness to what will come.
A great deal of thinking is devoted to the preparation of the air force for the future, just as
much thought is given to the current operations of the air force because both preparation
and operation are looking at the future, what we call structuring the force, and they are
integrated.
Often, the structuring of force influences the way the adversary develops its capabilities
and therefore has a bearing on its operation of force. I shall presently get to the current
challenges we face: they did not appear randomly, in my opinion, rather, they are a function
of actions – among them ours too -and airpower is special in that all this structuring takes a
very long time, it is a complex and expensive process which requires a great deal of vision
and thought as to how to do it. I shall say only this – once you buy a plane it stays in the
theater for 40 years; we are now operating F-15s bought in 1976. If you look at newspapers
from that year you will find the world was much different then, today we are living the
here-and-now. I assume that during this conference you talked of actual problems and the
nature of war and its characteristics but a F-15 bought almost 40 years ago is still flying.
Is it relevant? This is a key question. It cost a lot of money; we invested a lot of money in
those who fly it all this time, invested money in the plane itself.
If you look back some 15 years, to the mid-1990s and give your estimation of how the
world will look like 10 years from now, I think no one would have guessed what actually
happened, no one would have read extreme Islam as it really is, no one foresaw 9/11 that
changed the world, no one saw these kinds of missiles and rockets – even though those
existed before no one saw rockets with the close tactical characteristics of today, the way
Hezbollah and Hamas operate. But the weapons fighting them and the terror developing
in the first decade of the 21st century were manufactured much before that and in the
operational requisition then for the Apache helicopter it did not say 'capability to intercept
terrorists in real time', no one even thought there would be such a thing but the fact is
that the Apache succeeded adjusting to these situations; in fact, this is the art of force
structuring and force operation performed jointly.
I posed myself three questions, the first has to do with the nature of war – maybe the
characteristics of war have changed and the nature of war with it, if so, are we preparing
ourselves both conceptually, operationally and weaponry-wise and are we training in the
right directions, dealing as we do with the challenges facing Israel which sadly must still
fight for its existence, and fighting means operating military force; so, is Israel structuring
its force in the right way and operating it correctly vis-à-vis what is happening around it –
maybe Israel does not exactly see the slow change that the aircraft carrier has undergone.
The second question is whether airpower is relevant for these new wars: if there are such
new wars, maybe another thing is needed, maybe another dimension is needed; the air
dimension is extremely young in terms of the history of war. Land warfare has been waged
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for over 6000 years but war in the air is less than 100 years old.
The third question has to do with the challenges I see looming over force structuring in the
future, these truly build the air force in such a way that it will be capable to cope with all
those things to come. We need to look from this point in time, from today on to the near
and distant future.
The nature of wars changes, or the characteristics of war do, I am saying nothing new.
Today we are fighting wars whose characteristics are different than those waged in the
past, not only here but around the world too, but a word of caution is in order because
the wars of yesteryear, wars in which armies confronted armies, have not vanished
altogether, and this potential exists together with the military vision, as proved by the fact
that militaries in various countries still exist, not only do they exist but they invest in and
develop technology, they are not standing motionless. Just like every military the IDF is an
instrument in the hands of the political leadership and a country that wants to defend itself
needs an instrument in order to cope with threats and challenges. Our symmetric wars have
not disappeared, in my opinion we can never ignore militaries but nevertheless in the last
few years we have been preoccupied with wars whose characteristics are very different
and I maintain that these changes are truly deep and multi-dimensional. Firstly, there is
a change in weaponry, we are fighting against large numbers of missiles and rockets;
one can debate their effectiveness and their coverage capability but there is no doubt that
the other side regards it as effective because he invests in it, starting with conception
through protection, hiding, acquisition, re-equipment and the development of ranges and
additional capabilities.
But it is not just the matter of weaponry; the more essential change is the strategic and
political one because this kind of weapons used to be in the hands of states – the Soviet
military in WW2 had Katyushas, actually they invented it, and missiles were thrown at
London during the Blitz but now these weapons are in the hands of non-state organizations,
in fact these organizations reside inside states. It has been already said that Hezbollah has
a certain power that many governments do not have. When these weapons are given to
those in-state bodies that do not carry full responsibility nor espouse the proper conduct
required of a government or the leadership of a state, another dimension of danger is
added because the mode of operation of these tools may be different. Indeed, as featured
in our daily challenges this war in general rains missiles and rockets on our civilians from
within their civilians. This is quite a conundrum because in order to hit the weapon where
it was launched from, you have to know the location, you also need the capability for very
precise strike considering that the wars waged nowadays are fought over public opinion,
the hearts and minds of people in the world so we need to know how to strike only what is
necessary and avoid hitting what should not be hit. And if we wish to deal with the people
operating these things – well, they do not show up on tanks in uniform on the battlefield
but walk around neighborhoods in civvies so they can hardly be distinguished. In the past
25 years we did not fight divisions, ships or planes in the air and this is a multi-dimensional
change, it demands a lot from us. As I said this type of war has not replaced the other kind
but supplemented it.
Another remark about the nature of wars – I strongly believe that the relative quiet we
live in most of the time is secured thanks to our deterrence, acquired through the way we
operate our force and the successes we have had. We never know what we prevent: but
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when there is no deterrence we might not know either and this too is associated to the
nature of wars because in the final analysis deterrence is the most effective factor. I think
that the deterrence achieved in the north as well as Gaza in the last few years is part of it. It
could definitely affect the IAF capability to operate since missiles and rockets might get to
the depth of Israel – that is what we tried very hard to prevent when the IAF was founded.
In fact, the first defense against depth operations was when our fighter bomber planes shot
down the bombers over Tel Aviv in 1948. Years later those were replaced by missiles and
rockets which are slightly harder to shoot down on their way.
I am most definitely aware of the efforts to curtail IAF freedom of action both by countermeasures and by measures of concealment, assimilation and escaping those targets which
are more amenable to the air force thus reducing the effectiveness of fire from air or at least
intending to curb the effectiveness of fire from the air and the IAF freedom of action.
Airpower has presented itself from its early history as a most effective instrument, that
is most significant in the battlefield and it needs two conditions: the possibility to work
in relatively comfortable circumstances as well as precise intelligence, and these two are
constantly under attack through this change in the nature of wars; as I said it is much
harder to find launchers dug in the ground in an urban area and in a non-urban area too,
if it provides good concealment, it is much harder to fight a system of well-concealed
tunnels and bunkers while mobility is an impediment as well because these targets move
all the time. This is not new to us, these are not challenges that the IAF is not familiar
with, these are not challenges that the IAF does not prepare for and in fact it effectively
copes with them but this is part of the transformation we see in the nature of wars or their
characteristics.
Is airpower relevant? I need to go back to the essence of airpower and connect it with the
basics of the Israeli doctrine of defense which are by no means exclusive to Israel alone.
Airpower can be operated anywhere, that is its quality, if we sat down now and tried to
invent some weapon which could get wherever is needed, because that need might arise
here and there and all over the place, a weapon capable of bringing a lot of munitions or
a significant striking capability in a very precise manner, we would have come up with
this patent called air force, because it skips above the battlefield and goes everywhere
and this is its basic characteristic. Technology has successfully constructed it as precise,
nowadays the most accurate instruments are operated from the air, a whole variety of
striking capabilities, the creation of a battle-picture for the ground is done from the air, all
that essential intelligence gathering, both angle of sight and all-dimensional collection are
important, not just visint, not only photography, other data is collected from the air too,
all of which allow freedom of action; the air dimension provides space for those who are
to manage the battle on the ground too; airpower also prevents attack on our forces on the
ground. I maintain that air supremacy is mandatory in order to manage a struggle, a war or
a campaign on the ground, not only in the past but today and in the future. Air supremacy
is necessary not only in order to provide the air force with freedom of action, it is required
in order to give ground forces that freedom of movement, so eventually it is the air force
business to produce it, so airpower is relevant because it can give excellent expression to
its basic qualities like those that made it what it is, including considerable support to the
fighting on the ground: this has not changed.
Therefore the air force should have freedom of action – and the air force should see to
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it that it has; it needs to know how to work in an environment under threat, the air force
environment is under threat just as every battle environment is under threat, and it needs
to be able to produce for itself an operation environment it can function in – this is air
supremacy. In order to fight against planes and ground-to-air missiles threatening its
freedom of action, it needs to constantly develop its precision striking capability, indeed,
progress in this area is really striking; it needs to constantly improve the intelligence
collection capability and it needs to know how to rapidly connect between the two in
a matter of seconds to minutes, between precise intelligence locating targets and the
capability of striking them with a variety of munitions from small to large. These things
are in existence and they are developing all the time.
How will force structuring compete in future with the challenges looming over Israel? I
have to say that when taking a look at the future one always needs to be modest, firstly
because we do not really know what will the future be like because it is in the future,
or as the late Abba Eban put it once, forecast is very hard to do especially about the
future, so we do not know how the world changes exactly, moreover, the world and the
battlefield we are concerned with have a tendency to change as a function of what we do.
The IAF defined its motto as absolute supremacy in air battles because we thought it was
an excellent utilization of technology and good people so when the F-15 got here 25 years
ago, we stopped doing air-to-air missions, but after we succeeded to hit the airfields at
the beginning of the Six Day War the ground-to-air missiles arrived in masses, they are
still here today and after proving we could cope with them too in 1982, ground-to-ground
missiles arrived in the theater diminishing the capability of the air force to effectively
defend Israel's skies, because reaching Israel with planes is difficult today, so it is must be
even more difficult to return, while missiles do not need to return, so things are developing
in this direction.
Things we do, the abilities we expose initiate developments on the other side and the
tactics and strategy of the change in the nature of wars certainly are a function of our
successes – and it applies not just to Israel, the same goes for the American Air Force and
one may look at the wars of 1991 and 2003 in Kosovo; still, we should implement what
I said at the beginning: present a construction, a very sturdy structure that will be able to
cope with those unknown developments in some five, ten, twenty years because what we
build and buy lasts many years.
As I see it, we have the following foundation stones: various flight layouts, that of combat
being the backbone, many would advocate UAVs which brings us to the question of the
future, what is the role of pilots in the future as even in 2006 and in Operation Cast Lead
the main fire force were fighter planes conveyed by a whole array of aerial instruments I
shall elaborate on later. Fighter-bomber aircraft are now - and in my opinion for years to
come – the most flexible, versatile and powerful instrument in existence, this is one outlay.
The helicopter outlay, the assault and combat helicopters, these complement each other
and each one has its own missions – transporting and evacuating troops as well as assault
near the troops and depth strikes in dimensions that complement well the assault force. I
shall not go into detail as to the heavy transport outlay, it has many varied assignments.
The UAV outlay is undoubtedly the buzz word of the last decade. If I compare the amount
of flight hours unmanned flight vehicles in the IAF logged a decade ago with present
figures, then now they fly tenfold. The American Air Force did far more. In the last year
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it doubled the sum total of flights it had flown in all the years before. This extent of flying
naturally testifies to demand, as well as to the advantages of UAVs and their contribution
in the battlefield.
Now one may ask how it can be explained and the answer I found – I admit having
been troubled with it, as it comes up once in a while - is one replacing the other? Yet no
alternative can be a full and complete replacement, or maybe it is possible? I maintain the
UAVs are no replacement, rather, they are the complement; they went into a niche which
is already a wide aerial niche that had never been before because they bring other qualities
to the battlefield. Fighter aircraft and assault helicopters and planes generally do not linger
in the battlefield – they come and go, they make an incursion into the battlefield and for
this purpose they need intelligence for very precise pre-planning, unlike the ground forces
that arrive on the terrain, study it, prepare and then decipher it and lay out operational
plans. UAVs operate differently. Their characteristics make it possible for them to arrive
and stay. They get to the battlefield and stay there a long time. They can support and they
contribute to air and ground missions. The collection of intelligence, studying the ground
and the third dimension they provide are done in a different way owing to the fact that the
UAV can be built in a certain the way so that it can linger above the battlefield for a day
or two sequential days, the pilot does not have to go for a rest, the operators take turns in
the wagon so the move from raid to presence or stay which enables the supply of precise,
continuous and updated intelligence to all fire factors is a revolution consisting of a whole
new world of UAVs and it comes to the fore even without having planned for it. An analysis
of input of the IAF flight hours during the last two wars, shows that during Cast Lead the
Air Force flew 20 000 hours, half of them by UAVs. In the past this half simply did not
exist, it was not executed by anything else and the contribution to the battlefield is very
considerable, therefore the more capabilities the UAVs accumulate the more they improve
the IAF capability to perform missions that are being performed today by other outlays,
but basically they ought to be seen as supplementary, as something new added to the IAF
tool box or its capabilities, in turn adding more capabilities to the IDF as a whole.
I have to say a few words about the combat outlay because by the conception, I think
it appears in Herzle's document [Maj. Gen. Bodinger, former commander of the IAF]
written some 15 years ago, the IAF always wants to have the best platform of any outlay
it can put its hands on, this has always guided it and today we stand on the threshold of a
development of what is called in the world the 5th generation fighter plane.
A fighter plane is classed as a next-generation when a cluster of basic characteristics cannot
be surpassed by the former generation for all the many improvements done. If we take the
present one, the 4th generation and the last generation planes – the Kfir, Phantom, Ayit
which flew in the IAF, their parallels in the militaries facing us, all those Migs; as much
as one can improve planes, one cannot improve their aerodynamic efficiency, they cannot
be brought to maneuverability that can compete with the F-5 and F-6, the 4th generation
fighter planes have brought an improvement which is an altogether different league in
maneuverability as well as in range and endurance, thanks to much more sophisticated
technologies of engines and in what is called aerial electronics especially radar which
is the heart of all electronics, these things that are very difficult to duplicate in former
generations and reach the spectacular jump forward which is what the 4th generation
planes brought to the IAF – they brought extraordinary air supremacy – there are no 3rd
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generation competitors to the F-5 and F-6 in the air – and I am talking about platform
performances even before I refer to our pilots.
The 5th generation has brought something else and it is not different aerodynamic
performances than those of the F-5 and F-6 but a most impressive capability to adjust to
the future battlefield. The adjustment is twofold, first in its capability to survive in spite of
everything, in the meantime advanced ground-to-air missiles are being developed and they
find their way into the theaters, including the one around us and this is a change in the field
the IAF operates in and it would be very difficult to attempt catching up with those changes
by way of other changes in our field; this is achieved by its construction as a plane with
a low radar signature, but this is not the principal feature of this plane: a 5th generation
plane is a most sophisticated array of various sensors which produce a fuzzed situational
picture that gets to the pilot in such a way so as to give him an independent picture and
independent operational capability, better than those in any of the 4th generation planes
and together with the interconnectivity he is given the capability of seeing and knowing
what is happening around him in some very far ranges, both those that threaten him and
those he is seeking in order to assault in a way that cuts it off from those sensors which are
very difficult to reconstruct in 4th generation planes, thus operating as a net in the sea of
planes. Just think that you walk in the street as four people put together and each one sees
and hears all that the others see and hear, giving a much richer picture and the capability
to cope much better. I believe the 5th generation plane should be in the IAF if we can
purchase it.
I touched on the outlays, the challenges of force structuring – outlays are not everything,
then there is the next thing that to me is the most important force multiplier, that
interconnectivity between arrays, in this respect without elaborating too much, the
capability to add outlays as a composition, this is something we already do today and
it is being built even now. Everything has to be connected and our aspiration is truly for
everything to be interconnected, ground, air, sea, the outlays in the air, like some general
interest that does not confound people with surplus information but knows how to get them
the information, enabling them to find solutions in the quickest and most accurate way.
The world of munitions and sensors is constantly developing; it certainly is a most
important component in future force-structuring and inside it you need suitable command
and control capabilities I shall not go into for obvious reasons. This has always been the
heart of the Air Force and so it shall be in the future, these things need to be matched with
this developing network and I tell you it is one of the most impressive things, I take no
credit for myself because as Herzle [Bodinger] said people built this thing on the basis of
conceptions as well as ideas that came up not only in the IAF but to a large extent in our
defense industries. In order to keep up to date you have to keep going around and see those
things, to know what is happening and these young people are well in control of things – so
it all looks like a collection of extremely sophisticated things.
In my opinion it is right to see this construction of structuring IAF of the future; these are
the some of the challenges of the future.
To sum up, referring to the question if the nature of war has changed, if its characteristics
have changed, I say yes, they have, a new model of warfare has been created and it is very
problematic; it is difficult, difficult also in public opinion, we know it well but it obliges
us to act because it strikes at us; we do not seek wars but this does not permit the IAF to
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shrug off its responsibility to be able to cope with challenges as well as it did in the past.
The spectrum has widened but has not been replaced, just as the spectrum of challenges. Is
airpower relevant in this kind of war too? Absolutely, and it has proved it; in this country
things are proved mostly in the battlefield and in the last few years it has definitely proved
it. The inputs are enormous and I think that the outputs as much as they can be talked
of, and we have not yet gotten to the campaign level, what it does in the strategic level
– the answer is a resounding yes, because its basic qualities as a flexible force which is
present everywhere, is adaptable and acts effectively, are implemented and very relevant.
Naturally, air supremacy, the capability of precision assault and intelligence are essential
and they need to be cultivated all the time. I repeat – without air supremacy one cannot
manage campaigns on the ground either.
I wish to add one thing about the new wars. It is not new but I think this is one of the
important things that we learnt well in the last few years and we are making a great effort
to implement, it is the jointness between the services. First of all, if the IAF has such
capabilities then they must find their way to win the whole campaign and this connection
to the whole campaign eventually reaches the FLOT (Forward Lines Of Troops) and the
operation of land forces with air vehicles by land forces and their commanders on the
ground, this requires both understanding and acquaintance of both land and air people
but it emanates from the chemistry between people and commanders. This is the key to
everything, if commanders meet and one understands the problem and capabilities of the
other then this is an excellent utilization of what can give the commander on the ground
the advantage.
I think this is one of the recent developments and it seems that in the IAF at least we
take much pride in the fact that airpower has indeed been effective and assisted not only
throughout the campaign but also in the private war of the brigades who do it on the
ground, because this new war is new on the ground too and it is not simpler there, it is
quite hard.
As to the force structuring challenges in future, we need to stretch capabilities and update
them so that they suit the asymmetry as well while preserving the symmetric capability.
The IAF has not stopped doing dog-fights; by the way you may ask against whom, certainly
not against the Hezbollah UAVs but the war you prevented is always the war you do not
know about and we wish to get to a situation in which we shall never know any war
by preventing them all and I think the IAF has a central role in those campaigns and in
the defense challenges Israel will have to cope with in future, both by the strategic early
warning as well as in the capability of military resolution by the IDF as a whole and I say
again that the IAF is made of people, planes and technology which are always the best
but not always invented by us, of operational experience accumulated by necessity but
not by initiative, of a special spirit and culture that have developed over the years and are
still going strong – and the good people who make it function. Every commander of IAF
should preserve and cultivate it and pass it over to his successors as best as he can. 113
Emerging Technologies
Yair Ramati VP marketing, IAI
Every choice I made as to emerging technologies was arbitrary in nature – that is, it
represents my conception of things about to happen in the world at a reasonable time
frame. Indeed, there are some things we have been talking about for many years that
still have not happened; so we need a great deal of modesty. I think the technological
community we are part of tends to relate everything to technology – be it an operational
or a political problem or any other, we very much want to solve it with technology and we
entertain the illusion that we have succeeded in its solution. We have a better missile and a
better plane and better data networks and so on – let us be a little modest, see what can be
done and I shall go over the things we have examined and check at which point they are.
I should indicate that the central and conspicuous trends are the ones I choose to see;
the civilian sector reflects on the military sector, reflecting in turn on electronics and
communications which we know well, but also reflecting on the domain of structures
– cyber warfare is definitely a serious issue. I have had a great deal of assistance with
this subject and I should like to thank the security officers who vetted and rejected a
considerable part of this presentation, so if anyone feels that this lecture is not well
rounded or notes that certain subjects are missing, I refer them to the security officers.
As for countermeasures, we see them in air defense but there are other measures as well,
NCW for all its components: but I have some bad news for you, the net is not just at the
hands of the air force; the net is also at the hands of our enemies and these are gradually
emerging, that is, you can take civilian systems today and start constructing from there.
Low signatures are in the public domain of space and we have already spoken of it in the
past. I shall describe several current directions in air vehicles, then I shall elaborate on
these complex materials, as well as the reduction of the number of their parts; by the way,
this development is the cause of much displeasure to the people in finance – not those in
the marketing department - because one cannot collect so much money, while the goal of
reducing the number of parts is actually to reduce prices, that is the main purpose and this
is the first time I say in any lecture that I see this technology being adopted and it will be
adopted in the domain of structures , we expect it within a short time.
So firstly, enlarging is a process, not a revolution, with composite materials becoming
increasingly common in the military products as well as at the civilian ones, about some
50% of the components of aircraft are composite materials, So this is no revolution but
its significance, its effect, is wide though I shall not go into it. Whoever wants to see air
vehicles that are all composites [referring to the presentation] – we can see that the future
is already here, there is no need to wait for anything, we have reached that future, it is
here.
As to the number of parts, today when you assemble a plane it does not matter much if
it is a fighter plane or a civil plane, it takes some 10000 – 20000 sometimes even 30000,
the amount of adapters and components is such that one needs numerous computers to
control them, when we talk of systems that are all composites we can definitely reduce the
amount of parts. Part of the problem stems from the people in the audience: there are many
engineers here and they like to do new and different things all the time. If engineers could
accept a little production discipline it would definitely be possible to reduce the number of
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parts by an order of magnitude of 10 at least, this is the direction we head to.
The next thing is the polymers and the nano-tubes and all these parts; the message is
simple, the relationship is significant – not easy relations but significant and without going
into details let us say that the capability of getting to densities of under 1.5 and strengths in
terms of mega-pascal about the same order of magnitude or half of that existing now, these
capabilities will be significant in those air vehicles we shall see in future.
I have chosen here a NASA road map talking of nano-technology; mind, nano technology
is being talked about – we talked of structures, it will go to sensors, to actuators and they
are all joined in the same structure; if until now the plane wing looked as we see it [xxxx
up there in profile, down below behind the flap, in future the whole body moves and
becomes one homogenous body, it is more efficient – I do not want to talk of the significance
of assault angles, speed and other advantages it can give.
Even now the ABL lenses work just so, they adjust to the momentary need; the capability
to adjust the formation of a plane in a short time to the optimal matching configuration three
dimensionally in all directions will give us photographs and other things in a completely
different way from what we have known.
I skip to a completely different issue: stopping or reducing signatures, which is the
next revolution. So what is at its basis in effect? – Basically it is what we dubbed as the
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invisible man who sees. We want to be like that in the battlefield, all-seeing yet unseen.
This aspiration has a history of some 50 years, I think, or maybe more and its importance
goes far beyond its technological and operational significance, it is politically important
– indeed, the whole Space world developed because it enables us to be in places that
otherwise it would be difficult to be in; friendly countries, countries which are not involved
[in the conflict] that we want to photograph, it is possible that will become possible.
Since it cannot be obtained – I am saying it is unobtainable, it can be reached but not
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obtained, there are all sorts of compromises, the first says all right, we shall get close to it,
we shall be visible but we shall be able to survive in the battlefield – this is a characteristic
compromise and most of the present-generation planes know how to do it, while the
futuristic things really need to be kept secret; so, can it be obtained? There is a big debate
on the subject and I am rather convinced that in the coming decade or two we shall see
air vehicles – not all of them have to be manned, capable of surviving which may even
be covert in the battlefield. I should like to describe the three components – the acoustic,
optical and the radar, all three have do be dealt with. We talk of an air vehicle, so we talk of
munitions, we also talk of some things all of which have to answer to this technology and
if we look a little more deeply, the basis or the consideration at the basis of the battle – as
an illustration I have chosen one interesting photo of an air-to-air combat or ground to air
warfare, naturally if the space of my radar cross-section (RCS) is small, the enemy might
discover it and get to me, his bayonet gets shortened and I hold a long bayonet and if my
enemy has a short one I manage to win in air-to-air combats. These factors are significant
for other air vehicles or other weapons. I read the Russians – the "Pantzir" brochure, it is
not classified, it can be read and the manufacturer claims it can intercept munitions too,
no more and no less, and since not everyone believed this claim, he took one Pantzir and
intercepted something with it and everybody is happy, he actually succeeded.
If this is what is about to happen in the battlefield of air defense then even the means we
assault with, this bayonet, which is all ready to be fought with, maybe it is worthwhile to
compete for it too and we see the competition, the Americans started it in order to compete
with the double digit type of surface to air missiles, the covert air vehicles, there is a map
showing the covert air vehicles but when you look at it you can see the manned planes
as well and the unmanned air vehicles and the most important is that this is no longer an
American monopoly. For over 10 years – I should think more like 15 – we see the work
of air vehicles with low radar cross section, they are around the world, we see them in
Sweden, in France; this is the example of the Neuron UAV, it is seen in all sorts of shows
and it is about to fly; it is not the only one, we see the Chinese who appear in shows as
well as rallies, we even see an unmanned air vehicle, the Predator C flying for over a year
having started in April 2009. So there was the Predator A, a Predator B and here is the C,
the next generation is propelled by a jet engine, this is the trend in the world, make no
mistake.
I used to think that the Russians do not have anything like it, so first off we saw the new
Russian 5th generation fighter, the Pak FA, which flew in January, a Russian 5th generation,
very impressive – by the way, we talk of the Mig company; they must have said that if
Sukhoi make the plane we shall give Mig the UAV and here we see they have a Skata;
this is a pretty model. I do not know if it flies or not, I assume that sooner or later they
will find the finances for it and start flying it, here is a UAV with low RCS – these things
are not just in the US. The history of low RCS fighter planes is some 20 years long, it first
flew in the Iraq war of 1991, there were two squadrons of F-117 and all sorts of strange
air vehicles. Ten years later, twenty years later and we are in another world altogether, the
world is more and more occupied with this domain, that is both the configuration as well as
material and there are all sorts of cute things. So let us see the significance of this domain:
I shall take just one example of emerging technology and talk of its significance.
First, the inner volume of these air vehicles is limited. I talk of the inner volume because
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if you want to receive from outside you generally lose this quality for which you fought
so it has a bearing on the range, it can affect certain sorts of munitions, thus limiting the
cargo being carried.
Next, whoever thought that combining radar - you remember, that long bayonet, on a plane
that has low RCS – is an easy business, then let me tell you it is probably not so because
despite all that it whistles, it transmits.
Next, EW too in not trivial, nor is communication and I am told that the maintenance of
such a tool that you need all its shape to be accurate to the millimeter, and maintaining it is
difficult. So these vehicles pose considerable challenges for us. Besides the question if we
should buy them or not, there is also how we should operate them.
I go on to another revolution that is evolving right in front of us, the combination of three
elements, the effective command and control which will be talked of later, which is why
I have not gotten into the C-41 issue. Now to the long range sensors, even early-warning
AWACS planes – Israel has the G-550 which carries a long range radar with command and
control systems - invites killers to be long range and they effectively can be not just twice
but three times longer even than the ranges we know and we shall see air combats at ranges
of 100 and 200 km, this is possible, even when considering all the other characteristics and
other problems in the battlefield we definitely see it as possible, so I asked myself if there
are any such air-to-air missiles at all, so I chose one photo, this is a 172 Russian missile.
Going back for a moment to the issue of air defense, the commander of the IAF spoke here
of the challenge in air defense, not only the old one we love coping with, the SA2, SA3
and the 5, 6 and 8, but the world goes on and now we have short range air defense systems
and long range ones, missile defense systems – all these have to be reckoned with. The
competition is no longer more-of-the-same: now not only radars are brought in, there is
also electro-optic equipment on the air defense systems, we see networks as well, NCW is
beginning to be used in the West and the East, so this process will be a gradual erosion of
all the conceptions in use. Let us remember the bayonet, this process is being eroded: note
that the systems of the countermeasures I spoke of earlier are being reinforced vis-à-vis the
weaponry used for assault, in my opinion it does not mean that weaponry is getting eroded,
no one should interpret it this way, quite the opposite is true, [all of us] are required to use
more sophistication and think harder.
As to networks of data and communications there is a JSTAR project in the US, there is a
series of other projects which definitely should give us the capability to have everyone see
and hear and get a picture and information of all kinds, video and data and speech from all
directions, all services – air, navy, ground forces, everybody is receiving it, everybody is on
the net. It is not only our air force, it is going to be so all over the world, air forces, ground
forces and navies will be connected by networks. The extent of network sophistication,
efficiency and resilience as well as the amount of counter-measures will determine how
strong we shall be.
Now I get to the ISR platforms. First, they give more of everything, be it range, precision,
wide spectrum: these platforms create the capability to bring in precise intelligence in
any sort of weather, which did not exist before; in this case the aggressor's technology
has improved because all the assault concept of PGM, of precise munitions, relies
on intelligence – and by the way, that is their main weakness, so this is an interesting
development.
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As to EW, there have been numerous publications about cyber warfare and what happens in
defense and offense, at the state level and other levels. We read in the press wide coverage
of what happened in one of the Baltic states, we saw the Chinese activity, we saw a few
other places where it hit, these systems are going to cope with national infrastructures but
also with what I said – NCO, NCW which are exposed to assaults of this kind, this is a new
dimension in the battlefield, so if in the past we saw the media as a new dimension in the
battlefield this is definitely following in its footsteps.
As to the active EW domain, sigint no doubt knows how to give better results and I shall
say only that there are some breakthroughs on the threshold, very near.
I think that the commander of the IAF is right in saying that flying radar systems are those
that have mechanical electronic scanning; I can tell those who are not familiar with them
that they actually have dwarves in there; we in IAI put there many dwarves and they see
to it that this ray moves like the television ray and it gives us a simultaneous picture of airair, air-ground, and the special thing about it is that we are beginning to get some amazing
inputs including ground maps in radar, at any weather, from very long ranges, from air to
ground and air to air and in effect the pilot begins to see things he had never seen before.
Just think that ten pilots are in the air with an early warning plane and intelligence systems
and everybody gets data from everybody. Some of them should turn off the radars and save
the electricity; there is no need because they see the pictures from all sources. Combining
these systems with ever advancing technology – this is advanced technology using much
better chips, with improved ranges and precision. Regrettably, prices are still high, but
there will be a very special result.
Whoever thought that the Russians were behind – it was true, and according to press
reports they were interested in buying radar from Israel and in full agreement with the
Americans it was decided not to give it to them and the result is that we lost a deal and
the Russians had to invest a lot of time – they even went as far as to merge their two
electronics industries, two industries manufacturing radars. So they ask me what did the
Americans lose if you say everybody lost, and the point is they lost because now it might
get to China so at this point we have a problem, there is a European system, an American
systems, an Israeli system and Russian systems as well and there will be more, I am sure,
this is undoubtedly a future element.
We see robotics systems in intelligence, in the air, on land and in the sea – I skip the UAV
systems because they are getting all the attention they deserve here. Note what is happening
in intelligence, these are strong elements – in land and sea warfare too, these systems
still look for their place, their operational place is still not clear – we, the engineering
community know how to give them some amazing things, all sorts of capabilities, in fact
– this is a solution looking for another problem; in future we shall know how to solve this
too.
Very powerful laser and particle weaponry is a serious issue which has been the subject
of controversy here. After some extreme effort I think that an outstanding company like
Boeing has done excellent work and managed to perform the first interception of the ABL.
This is an extraordinary achievement, they have experts of the first order there – I take
off my hat to them; whoever knows the details will recognize just how complex it is.
Incidentally three American industries were partners in this. On land it will be suitable for
short-range systems and it will come into use; the moment we have solid laser we shall see
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the breakthrough of these systems.
As to Space, we have launching systems, communication satellites, satellites for
observation, space warfare; please note that cyber warfare is connected with space: there
is a clear connection and we foresee that not just technology but political orientations
will dictate the expansion to space. In another conference I presented the issue of spatial
fighting mechanisms - space is the fighting medium we can expect to see, so today we
see the damage done to Leo satellites: three countries have already demonstrated their
capability of intercepting satellites, we have blinding capabilites - everything we want is in
space. These are a few examples of blinding satellites with laser in China and Russia.
The combination of technology and media – the international media is a technological
component with technological ramifications that everyone should cope with, that is, if we
spoke of minimizing damage and the amount of casualties among innocent bystanders, then
it means that our munitions should be different, Intelligence should be different, but also
the way we talk and work should be different. Someone told me: if you take Intelligence
officers and cut off their line to CNN – this is what they look at in the background all the
time, it will cause a serious damage to Intelligence – just so, the media is influential and
is influenced by what is going on in the battlefield and I think we need to see well and
examine well all the moves we make, because at least in the community I am in there is a
tendency to belittle media influence and minimize its importance – but it is very central.
To sum up I chose to indicate a few things that we have been unable to deal with efficiently,
we do not know what to do with IED, there are some technologies that try at least to cope
with it. I do not see any big breakthrough in the subterranean spectrum, both intelligence
and assault. I thought we were going back to WW1 with all those dugouts, this is the way
it is, we cannot identify specific persons, we have to identify them globally because they
are all around the world. We have no efficient solution for it yet.
As to the high trajectory weaponry there is disagreement, on the face of it the technology
community has put forward the solutions and in Israel there are solutions. But do we know
how to give a sufficiently efficient solution in terms of manpower, price? This is not a
simple question and I think we have a long way to go in.
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Technological Developments in Tactical Missilery
Dr. Dan Peretz, Corp. VP for R&D and Business Development, IMI
I look at things from my point of view, being an ambivalent one; on the one hand I am
looking at technology which as Yair Ramati said does not make it possible for us to do
everything but enables us to do a great deal, instigating change for example.
This morning we heard that change arises out of catastrophe, when circumstances and
events cause extreme pressure, but it is not necessarily so: change comes when technology
makes it possible; yet when there is need of change and technology does not make it
possible, another solution is then found, so it is bypassed, but when technology advances
in a certain way it enables us to do things we never imagined before. I think that one of the
greatest technological changes I constantly see is when I go to the market on Fridays and I
talk on my cell phone with my son, who is in the US. Was it possible a few years ago?
On the other hand, technology comes in fact to serve a need so even though we are at a
conference dealing with airpower, concentrating on air forces and air combat, in the final
analysis air combat has to serve, as was said here, you bomb targets on the ground, you
launch missiles at the ground so it has to serve fire on land. Therefore let us try and see the
combination of the two; one is the combination of need, with the need being fire on the
ground, so this is the motivation for asking what does technology enable us to do today
or tomorrow? We already see the first signs today but we can try to foresee what it will be
in future and accordingly aim our efforts or maybe make a change following the changes
occurring in technology.
So I shall begin with the need; what is the need? First and foremost the need should be
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means for launch and variety of munitions matching the proposed targets, that is, what
dictates the need are targets on the land battlefield. The second factor dictating need is
action in every kind of weather and in poor visibility – by the way, air force has always
been the quickest to act, the other factor is actions in short circles at minimum time, a very
short time from finding the target until its assault and to this day the air force has been the
best for this task, from the sighting of the target to its assault, there is a pilot in the air, he
sees the target, pushes a button and attacks it.
We need efficient high power fire, we also need lethal precision fire at commando, infantry,
troop concentrations, artillery, buildings, headquarters, we have to be able to hit headquarters
even when they are dug very deep and are protected so we need precise, heavy warheads
and an immense destruction capability therefore the 1-ton bomb mentioned earlier, which
is extremely wise munitions, extremely efficient, until now only planes could deliver it
– not any more. We need support in destroying surface to air missiles so as to gain air
superiority and we need to perform missions of ground fire that will relieve part of the air
order of battle to undertake strategic missions. So what is it we say in fact? We heard today
that the UAV is not meant to replace the plane but augment its capabilities and enable it to
do what for the meantime only planes can do.
Let us see what the operational niche is – effective ranges of tens and hundreds of kilometers.
For close support we have standard artillery which has served and will be serving; for
medium range against AFV we have precision munitions and for long and short ranges we
have rockets, artillery rockets which makes it possible for us to hit infantry, commando
with anti-tank, headquarters, artillery, infrastructures, in effect they make it possible for us
to do almost everything we want to by an array of rockets.
Now there is a question and I think that Israel is almost the only place one has to explain
it. Why should we use artillery rockets? - Simply because those artillery rockets are most
efficient at carrying heavy warheads of various kinds. I can throw a 1 ton bomb from a
plane and also fire it by an artillery rocket; it is done at an extremely short time interval
from the decision to the effect by artillery rockets, at very high fire speed, long range, in
any sort of weather, simple and cheap operation, simple and cheap systems.
I think all countries in the Mideast have understood it not just because of air superiority, all
the rocket arrays we see around us stem from the understanding that artillery rockets are
the most typical munitions for the battlefield, while in cost effectiveness they are nearly
the most efficient munitions on the battlefield.
Let us see [referring to presentation] some existing artillery rockets; by the way, the
Russians did not invent them, the Chinese were the first, but the Germans were first to
use arrays of artillery rockets in WW2; the katyusha was the response to the German
systems and since then we have been seeing a lot of missiles and artillery rockets. Our
world changes and technology changes and looking at technology changes is transforming
our world completely which is why I think that two things have essentially come from the
civil and military market and their combining – nowadays civil and military technology go
hand in hand; take the decision to position a global network of GPS and I am not sure that
even those who put it up saw all the ramifications that would have, but the establishment
of the global network of GPS changed the world, certainly the world of artillery rockets.
We have precision at hitting the target regardless of the range and consequently there is
no need of big missiles with warheads weighing tons, small missiles are sufficient if they
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are precise enough. Everyone who has grown in the missile and rocket world knows that
generally speaking, the accuracy of a rocket is about one percent of the range, one and a
half percent – but not any more; today the range is unimportant as the precision is inherent,
inside the GPS. There are those who say that the GPS can be obstructed, so it will be and
counter-obstruction will be operated and then there will be a counter-counter obstruction;
every single weapon and stratagem ever invented has found its solution and the GPS was
and is changing our world.
The second thing imported from the civil market is electronic miniaturization which
enables efficiency in artillery rockets as well, that is, today I know how to put into rockets
of 160mm radius the same capabilities once put into ballistic intercontinental missiles or
artillery rockets so the artillery rocket as we know it is about to change, it will change
beyond recognition, the beginning of this process is already here – Uzi Rubin's lecture
yesterday showed it. The SS-21 is already getting to almost absolute pinpoint accuracy.
The American ATACAMS appeared and is almost out because of its price, the GMLRS is
about to take its place with accuracy of meters for ranges of tens of kilometers. Iskander is
doing it for strategic ranges, for 280 km precision is 30 meters and less. The Israeli Lora
also has precision of meters for ranges of 280 km, still expensive, and extra ranges of 150
km with precision of 10 meters. The next thing is Magic Spear with precision of 10 meter
and a 160mm rocket, a small artillery rocket, a simple, inexpensive rocket driven not
by winglets or canards but by thrusters which are the simplest, most credible things and
every time you see a pulse you know a thruster is at work, when we see a deviation from
the trajectory there is a thruster working; the ranges are tens of kilometers, the warhead
weighs tens of kilograms, precision of very few meters. [Referring to the presentation]
We see the hit; this is the hit – much less than 7 meters. The appearance of the Fateh 110
missile in Iran – there are Iranian precision missiles; if there are some tens of thousands
of missiles over the border, as long as they are not accurate it is one thing, when they start
being precise it will be a completely different story and we should prepare for it.
This precision makes other things possible; this precision makes possible the penetration
into fortifications. You see a warhead capable of going through one wall, then through a
second and a third and it advances in a straight line, not deviating and not breaking. As to
the urban combat, it is possible to hit a house and not just blow it up, I am thinking of the
incident when in order to take out one person a whole neighborhood was blown up, in this
instance in order to hit a person these munitions can enter a room and blow up only in the
very room where he is.
These technological changes transform our world but this example shows us just the single
artillery rocket, so let us see what happens to systems. Like the commander of the IAF
said, we have to be systemic. Several things have happened in the world and one of them is
the wide-band communication system enabling communication from every point to every
point on the globe. Today a commander who can walk around in the field may do so with
an instrument of this size equipped with a GPS and call back to a launcher stationed some
tens of kilometers – maybe more – behind and get close, precise fire support; he can call
arrays everywhere - that is, suddenly he has at his disposal not just an assigned single array
but a whole disposition that can be in many places, with many sorts of munitions and it is
at the disposal of the lone soldier out there.
Another addition is the entry of unmanned planes into all levels of the military, big UAVs
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in the air and smaller ones from the battalion echelon and almost to that of a company
which can find targets indicate them and tell you immediately what you did to the target
and whether you need to shoot again. These developments completely transform the arrays;
we stop speaking of a single rocket and start talking of arrays and those arrays which
contain UAVs and others with meteorological arrays and a large amount of launchers
and communication to any point at all, the receipt of information and having your needs
responded to from any point we wish on the battlefield.
We supplement it with a plane [referring to presentation] though it does not look like
one, it is a plane capable of carrying all the munitions we want; it has a modern array
of command and control, an advanced mission computer, it knows where it is and it can
launch any rocket, it launches a rocket up to hundreds of kilometers in ten minutes. I can
also put different munitions on the same launcher.
So at the end I get a concept of an adjusting array of rockets which is a rocket array
standing at a certain place; so that when I want support instead of the way I had to ask for
support in the past either from the air force or the helicopters whether I was content with it
or not, this is now at my disposal. I am a soldier in the field, this is at my disposal and I can
choose if I want some really small missiles of 122mm, 160mm, 160mm precision, I can
choose the type of fire I want, long ranges, the sort of effect I want. That is, I determine the
sort of effect I want, if it is an explosive effect, it I want to get into a command post. Now
we go back to what I defined earlier as need, and I have a response to every one of the need
problems, I can delay troops, I do not have to attack or to destroy, I can delay and paralyze
troops by mining, I can destroy dispersed forces, there is an array consisting of the mission
computer, munitions direction, laser guidance and damage assessment.
The improved technological capability enables the transformation on the battlefield. If
until today a rocket or artillery array gave us fire for the saturation of the terrain – today
we start talking of a capability possessed by other services. A precise hit deep into the field
with different ranges and the required effects and influence on the battlefield – we are not
yet there but I think that the influence will be a great and there will be changes.
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Platforms
Shlomo Tsach, Director, Advanced Programs, IAI
First I shall give a short introduction to the Engineering Division of IAI, which has been
dealing with platforms since 1970 – it is something of the platform house of IAI. Then I
shall talk of technologies: from my own point of view most often they are the driver to
developing an air vehicle; true, there is need, there are requests but many times it just
stems from the technology.
I shall refer to the manned platform issue; the IAF still has manned planes and will have
them in future – we heard the commander of the IAF. I shall give a briefing about unmanned
platforms, and talk about future directions.
I am not supposed to give details about what I do because it is classified due to commercial
and security considerations, so my talk is based more on what is published around the
world, this will give you an analogy of similar things we also do.
You can see the wide variety of platforms we develop, from training planes to executive
planes, fighter planes, helicopters and numerous UAVs. I daresay we are one of very few
divisions that deal with all the scope of air vehicles under one roof and we are inspired
by civil technologies just as much as we inspire them; civil technologies influence the
military domain as well as the unmanned domain and can be combined in them. All in all
they balance each other.
On December 11, 2009, we saw the first flight of the executive plane. The advanced
technology of a civilian plane has a bearing on our work processes and the work methods
we employ on all other projects.
The UAVs have a long history, their beginning was in 1973, with numerous activities and
tests, many of those things never came to fruition, but in the end there was something.
In sum, you have to invest in many directions and [referring to presentation] these are
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examples of many things we did, including auto gyro that flew for 17 seconds and crashed;
so there is a great deal of activity on the way to a prototype.
One of our leading products is the Mahatz (aka Heron). This is an independent UAV, with
automatic landing and completely autonomous flight capabilities.
As to technologies, there are a few slides I habitually use in order to present the important
directions in technology that influence platforms and one of them is computing. You can
see the development of computing with growth of 10 in a magnitude of 7 from 59 and
another growth is expected in a magnitude of 12 for the next 30 years, that is, computing is
central to what is going to happen with air vehicles – and all systems actually.
Another significant technological issue is the miniaturization; I am showing how in 50
years the gyro went down from 1.3 ton to a single gram. Computing, as was said, is crucial
and today you can do much with nano microwaves, so it is possible to fly with a very small
computer.
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Another example: when we developed the Heron 1 we prepared an aerodynamically
advanced technology, an advanced engine with very many elements, so when we came up
with the Heron 1, we came again with this technology, pushing a new product that enables
a whole level performance-wise.
This slide shows the F-22 – it was designed 25 years ago; nowadays everything is different
and things can be done otherwise. This slide shows another aspect of a configuration in
which the emphasis was on 200 parts, as was the objective put to the engineers; they were
told to design a plane, and this is a 4 ton plane which has 200 parts. This is the philosophy
that we follow in all our works in the industry with attention to the next generation:
minimize the number of parts, it saves production, assembly, expense, everything, and it
can be structural and composite materials.
I move now to the next clip of fighter planes and this is a slide exposing the fighter
generation, we talk of those from generation 1 to generation 5, so this is the JSF, the
F-22, the 4th generation with F-16, F-15 – these are past generations, we now talk of the
6th generation, in thinking and in the industry as well, in the US too, the new technology
makes it possible to bring forth a revolution in the new generation of planes. The 6th
generation is in effect already being manufactured now. As to the 5th generation, the F-22
and the JSF, including the development of the JSF, this plan is not proceeding smoothly; it
is delayed price-wise and because of timetables.
The Americans talk of future bombers but there is no open, orderly information. There
are new configurations with low RCS (Radar Cross Section), manned and unmanned
so the orientation in the world is towards two options, a manned plane with an option
for unmanned flight. I am showing now a Boeing with low kit, again big planes with
technologies. We have no formal data as to what is happening, but here is an example of a
Boeing of the generation that will replace the F-18, and the FAXX is mentioned after the
F-20 and F-25; we have to get ready and think of those future generations.
The first flight of a 5th generation Russian plane was mentioned before and here is a
comparison between this plane, a Sukhoi 35 and a 22 which is much bigger in dimensions
in the 5th generation planes developed by the Russians. The Chinese as well as the Japanese
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and the Koreans are developing their 5th generation and all industries in those countries
wish to develop their independent capabilities where technology and industrial capability
are concerned.
I was involved in the development of UAVs in 1970 and I have noted a few landmarks
which greatly influenced us in our practical decision-making. [Referring to presentation]
The Yom Kippur War of 1973, this was the blow we took then in the war at the Suez
Canal. Later we started to consider what should be done. A major issue was to minimize
losses of fighter planes: put unmanned planes, low-signature planes, activity – this was the
beginning.
Now to the Lebanon war in 1982 – I remember the great success of UAVs in the era of
fighter planes. I remember too how after the war the army and the navy applied to the
industry with American cooperation, the Americans wanted to do some work together
and this is how the Pioneer and the Hunter were born. These are the projects we did
in cooperation with the American industry after 1982. During Desert Storm, 1990, we
followed what was happening in Iraq by the new elements in the evolution of the vehicles
and so on; the war in Afghanistan and everything that is happening today have a great
impact on inputs and the ideas pointing the way forward.
There have been many UAVs, I have a slide presenting many possibilities – many
configurations and all I wish to say is that the US makes huge investments and is leading
in some 80% of activities in the world when it comes to UAVs, in both development and
production, it invests some $40 billion annually.
I have brought some examples of the American activity; from 2001 to 2008 it grew by 143%
just for intelligence purposes. You can see the Predator and the Reaper which compared
to the U2 reconnaissance plane are much better in terms of endurance and intelligence
gathering capabilities. The use of UAVs for Intelligence has grown exponentially, one can
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see the scope of US activity and it has been said that in Israel it is similar. Another slide
shows the 660% growth in the past six years, proving greater employment of UAVs. The
ones most used by the US are the MQ1, Global Hawk; in fact it contributes to the Heron TP
that we developed. In fact the Americans lead in this market of big planes – noting that they
expressly wish to get to 170 planes, 54 planes, 60 planes everything is in development. We
competed over the Global Hawk in 1995, and now it has an advanced version, effectively
this is a mission UAV which will slowly replace all the manned mission planes. In 1995
we competed against TRW, an American company and did not win; why did we not win?
– That is another story.
Another slide points at the orientation of changeover from manned planes when the
objective here is to pass, the Global Hawk claims it can fulfill all missions, that is, the
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orientation of going over to unmanned vehicles is rather clear. Recently the Europeans
decided that instead of converting the Airbus, they are going to buy the Global Hawk,
the Euro-Hawk, a decision which is saving enormous financial resources and it has been
carried out.
This is the 2047 road map of the US Air Force: beginning with macro, nano, micro,
small, medium, large, special, this warrants a few hours' discussion, all in all it shows the
deployment of the American Air Force also for the Army, Navy, the Defense Department
– there are four plans, but all in all this is the most detailed plan.
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As to low RCS planes, these projects started back in 1995 and at the moment there are
two plans, the X47B – it is the Navy plan, a plane weighing some 42 000 pounds, a heavy
plane; there is the Boeing experiment that has advanced, giving you a feeling of how the
plane looks, low RCS with the configuration, with ranges of 2100, height 40 000, the
weight here is 45 000 pound, a plane designed as a regular fighter plane, a great deal of
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inner munitions, outer ones, the complete scenario. The Navy gives priority to aircraft
carriers, [which cost] a lot of money. Simultaneously, Boeing is going on with Phantom
Ray itself to develop its own competing configuration.
The press reports an increased activity of black program UAVs and here is an example of a
UAV seen in 2007, with low RCS, seen in Afghanistan in 2009 so all in all there are many
activities we do not know about. Another activity of big UAVs is an example here for a
position paper presented in October 2004 which may have been presented in a spur-of-the-
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moment decision, of a big UAV – its weight is 45 tons, endurance of 50 hours, ranges of up
to 10000 km, all in all these are capabilities that technology makes it possible to develop;
these are big UAVs. The bottom line is that they make it possible to develop heavy, big,
futuristic UAVs and there is more information about it.
Photo no 14
Now to another orientation: big UAVs with a program of Sensor craft making it possible
to put numerous sensors on these configurations.
Another example of this UAV appeared in the press – weight of 125,000 pound, endurance of
40 hours, a very interesting configuration, flying wing, low signatures and this combination
of very many sensors with low signatures which is a significant challenge; yet again,
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technology, combinations, possibilities, dimensions, I can say that in the background there
are possibilities of new generations of big platforms with a great many performances.
One example is of a work done at IAI here in 1993, a configuration called HA10, a similar
work we did together with the Americans. In the past we examined similar notions, like a
1991 UAV with an inner, cheap antenna.
The world of UAVs is very wide – again I am showing an example of the American activity
as they are the leaders. All these plans are financed today and actually operate; some
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hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in them. Another example – the Americans
put forth a VULTURE – very high ultra endurance loitering theater and elements, in five
years – no more and no less, not one week but five years at an altitude of 60,000 – 90,000
ft, technology indicates these directions and this is an interesting challenge; there is much
activity around it – three American companies have received a lot of money, some $50 m
each to deal with it.
The US is the leader in scope and IAI is the pioneer, Israel is a pioneer but it is now
proceeding at a much lesser scope, to my regret. The Europeans are slowly trying to get in,
they have no working systems – they buy them from us and from the Americans but they
do have some future plans of their own. Finally I get to see a European roadmap until 2030
with a whole list of projects.
As I said, Europe is working on many projects, especially technological demonstrators,
but there are no clear plans; the South Africans, the Indians, Italians, British and Chinese
are all at work on plans for UAV. The Chinese have gone into it in a very disciplined way,
there is much activity in the domain of UAVs.
So what are the future directions we now look at? There is the issue of autonomy; that
is, beyond the issue of UAV there is the autonomous aircraft, there is growing, widening
autonomous operation of planes and alternative energy, which is solar fuel cells, is actively
examined. A few examples of works we do together with the Europeans on personal
autonomous aircraft: you command the plane to fly where you need to get, the plane takes
off and lands – you do not need to touch a thing. The technology is here already, and the
limitations at this moment are all psychological.
This is the next generation of fighter-bombers as it appears now: some solar planes, some
electrical, in sum all these things are possible. There is even a passenger plane with no
pilots, completely autonomous; it lands in strong side wind. A regular human pilot would
have difficulty to land the plane in those conditions.
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So what is innovation for us? The best way to get a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
Throughout the years I have become used to work on many topics which finally yield
the projects; there is one thing that is stronger than all the armies in the world and that is
an idea whose time has come. We are dealing with innovation, new directions and a new
generation of projects.
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Command and Control Systems
Col. (Ret) Dror Ben David
The issues discussed here are quite large and some are classified – I think they are
fascinating because we are in the midst of a move which is dramatic in many dimension
and I should like to express three messages today.
I think that for the first time there is an orderly proposal as to how to weigh the level,
the capability and the result of command and control systems, published in February
[2010] in a NATO publication and I shall try to present it. There is a very interesting
conception of the joining of command and control systems and those called by some
network centric warfare. When I spoke here last time I was head of the weaponry division,
whose responsibility is to define the operational requirements. So I shall try to present
six challenges in the domain of command and control, extremely important ones in my
opinion, which have not been coped with, and since a considerable part of the solutions
comes from the industry itself, as was hinted here, I feel it is important to voice these six
challenges and perhaps someone who is either 20 or 60 years old present here could help
in finding the solutions.
Very many things have been changing; I shall try to present them in all kinds of crosssections. One of the most important things in my opinion is that our adversaries have
changed. As the commander of the air force noted it does not mean that the wars we had
in the past will not happen in the next 40 years which is the life span of fighter planes. But
we can certainly say that in the short run things are very different.
All the clips I am about to show are taken from the internet or the cinema so there is
no issue with security classification. I think that one of the most important things is to
show them as much as possible especially to non-Israelis. This is a clip from a film from
the Second Lebanon War: multi-story buildings from which katyushas are launched at
towns and cities in Israel. I must say that I am shocked every time I see it. We get to hear
people saying this side or that one is right but a person shooting from a civilian multistory building in a civilian town is not on the side of the angels. The enemy has sustained
significant change and as I see it there undoubtedly is a distinction between those who are
right and those who are less than right.
The systems themselves in the sense of the way the operational campaign is waged have
greatly changed and there is an important phrase – I think it is still being taught in military
schools – that when a state goes to war it expresses its political will by violent means. It
seems that this has been reversed and western countries, at least Israel, are constantly in a
secret war whose purpose is to reduce terror to a certain level or else government would
not function. Whoever remembers the periods when buses exploded in our cities or when it
was possible to shoot ballistic or Kassam missiles at us – it is impossible to plan the water
resources when you have to deal on a daily basis with the question if one needs to hit some
Katyusha or not, so in fact all the time there is an ongoing covert campaign whose purpose
is to reduce terror to such a level that the state will maintain its sovereignty and ability to
govern and fulfill all those civic duties it owes its citizens.
It is very important to connect these affirmations to some practical things and I think that
there is some technological orientation here – there is something revolutionary here, it
has already been mentioned by a few speakers today – I do not think there is any relevant
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country resembling us, perhaps with the exception of South Korea but today, according
to what they say on TV, tens of thousands of missiles are threatening Israel and there is
something that when I was in the IAF we used to think would bring a strategic change
which would necessitate changing the rules of the game. So today we are in its midst and
in my opinion this fact is not pronounced loudly enough. It is the arrival of precise ballistic
weaponry, and the enemy already has it. During the Second Lebanon War if memory
serves me right some 4200 katyushas were launched at Israel. Today the forecast has it at
an order of magnitude of 1000 a day. I think it is most interesting and relevant.
There are many problems we do not know yet how to solve. Some of them are new
threats on traditional aircraft. There is a very important thing which can be summed as
singularity, according to Ray Kurzweil whose calculations show that around 2030 many
things will happen simultaneously. Two of them are very interesting: one is that there
will be a revolution of the same caliber as that of the internet – a very strong statement
– and sometime around 2030 something will happen because the computer processors
are becoming faster and their memories have become cheaper and better and many more
directions on some 40 different parameters. He thinks that what will happen is some
convergence of machines and humans. It is not immediate but as has been said when
buying a fighter plane you buy it for 40-50 years ahead, that is, there will still be planes,
one must think what they will be doing.
There are many important directions, one of the most interesting is the smart phones which
bring in the relatively specific thing that never existed without them, namely, sensors in
sizes and prices one cannot imagine; today you can do with a UAV whose weight on
takeoff is about 15 kg what you had to do in the past with a UAV weighing several tons
because you can put on every one of them some 20 cellular phone cameras.
There are some cultural development such as the issue of social networks, the GPS and
other such things and the question is how all those things will work together with the
change that airpower is undergoing – because of the UAVs and the ballistic weaponry,
hopefully on both sides, and also because the energy weapons might also appear shortly.
So how does it all come to the fore both conceptually and technologically in the command
and control systems?
I should like to tell the guests from the US and India that the situation in Israel is very
different from what they are familiar with, since Israel is much smaller that any American
regional command and it is much smaller than any geographical region in India so the
decision made some time after the inception of the IAF, or rather the leading thesis,
was – to my mind it still hampers us – that there is just one central control. It has very
many variants and these variants when you think of what control actually is, who has the
information and who do I want to transfer it to. In very early stages of the land battle it
was understood that the sole control of the air force from a single locus is not necessarily
sufficient and set up what is called supreme command post. In some of those places and
some of the missions there is no alternative but to transfer part of the authority of decision,
part of those functions called command, control and intelligence to combined mission
units operating in the field.
As already mentioned the issue of reducing the duration of the operational loop and one
of the principal arguments is something that I think has not been identified yet, not even in
the US, in fact I have never seen it written of in an orderly fashion, not even in the NATO
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book in the writing of which the US had a leading role. Just reducing the sensor circles
time is not enough because there is a whole new array of problems, and targets have to be
engaged before they launch. A classical example is a launcher buried in the ground, this
is a launcher that shoots only once and it does not matter if you saw the launch and will
react, I suggested an objective of 9 seconds and we built systems reacting in 9 seconds, but
it will not help at all, you will not catch it now, you need to catch it when it is being laid
and for this purpose you need an air force which has different components and different
conceptions of command and control.
The authors of the NATO book analyze 12 case studies and I recommend it to anyone
interested in this issue. They say that one should check the efficiency of command and
control systems by the following parameters: do you succeed in effectively realizing the
operational intention, do you succeed in doing what they who want to operate military
power intended, do you do it efficiently; then it refers to agility, which deals with the
measure of your flexibility towards surprise and this is analyzed by five levels of maturity;
the lowest level being when there is friendly fire, while the one-upper level is when you
reach de-confliction; the still higher level is when things are coordinated, that is when you
can make a change in real-time, and one level up is collaboration, when for example two
planes operating in different areas can help each other and I wonder if you know that in
the 2006 war we spent consecutive nights over Lebanon – there were planes operated by
the IAF Regional Forward Command HQ and others operated by the Central Command
HQ and this raises a very interesting question: do they get in each other's way, because all
the time they almost clash, or do they know to help each other with the mission – it is not
trivial at all. The highest level is something that has been defined long ago, I think, but very
difficult to put into the systems, that is to manage giving your end forces, the people who
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fight, those fighting kits, the capability to synchronize without help or requiring help from
home; in order to get to the fifth level one should define radio and many other things.
Situational awareness and situation picture are very significant terms and now there is
an instrument with which one can measure how well you perform that command and
control. Think of a formation of four fighter planes which received an operational mission
to reduce the amount of launches on the northern part of the country during the Lebanon
war: did it carry it out effectively, was it done efficiently and at which of the five levels
did the command and control system function? By my judgment, at least, there is room for
improvement notwithstanding how it was actually executed.
So what do we have here from the conceptual perspective? One axis is the axis of
information – how much do we need to know in order to reach the right decision. Let us
take a bridge as an example. I can prepare well ahead, find a spy who was the engineer
who built the bridge and he will give me all the parameters so the measure of uncertainty
about intelligence relevant to decision making is very close to nil. Another axis is how well
one has prepared for the situations. In classic wars we were affected by fear and losses. In
current confrontations the information you have is very limited, quite often you and the
HQ will observe new situations in the same time, and lastly, the tempo of events is very
rapid.
In order to cope with that, so the argument goes, you need three courses of action. One,
you need to be able to delegate authority which is not trivial at all and requires mainly
trust; I assume it has been mentioned, because when the command and control center in
Tel Aviv has to transfer authority to that in the Northern Command it has to believe that
whomever they give the authority to operate planes will do it, so that no problematic things
happen. All interactions of information exchange should be net-centric, which is another
140
thing altogether, different machines, different instruments, different displays, everything
changes and as to information there are two basic approaches; the larger part of the air
force relies on intelligence agencies that do the searching, while deciphering and research
centers decide where are the targets and they diffuse that information to the pilots; it did
not work in the Yom Kippur War with the bridges [the crossing of the Suez canal] , it did
not work in the 2006 war when at least some of the targets were known to the Intelligence
branch and no pilot knew they existed at all; so part of the method for diffusing intelligence
should function in a way which enables the fighting forces to withdraw information from
data banks without being dependent on anyone deciding if that information is to be sent
over to them or not. One level above it - people have been hinting at it today too - is that
all the participants in that mission kit – say I take some 4-5 UAVs above that city, so that
all the operators can see what the others see all the time, that is what is called real-time
information sharing.
All in all we need to transfer the planning, command, control, intelligence, supervision
systems – all these contents, from the situation which suits managing stationary airfields
or airports to [to that dealing with] targets some of which are known as time-sensitive and
as I said many of those have to be attacked even before they operate – this is a new layer
which has to be dealt with.
[Referring to the presentation] This is a clip from a movie called Minority Report, I
recommend watching very successful films because they often express ideas that otherwise
are unthinkable. This is about the police arresting people before they commit a crime. It
is a philosophical dilemma, very interesting and very worrying. In this case we see this
mother ship moving the police, dropping two policemen whose mission is to find a specific
suspect, and this lady on the ship has a display whose source, the sensors, are not the
police in the area but what they call in the US 'theater detection planes', a radar plane or
something from that family. The police on the other hand have a control system which is
theirs and in this instance they disperse small spider-like robots, so the lady on the ship
can see things the police cannot see, she sees all the people in the building because she is
operating a theater sensor. Every policeman has a half-transparent screen like an I-phone
so he can see all that happens on the private level. The robots' behavior is extremely
important, when they walk they do not bump into each other, they certainly do not shoot
each other, they think. You can see a robot lifting up the cover of a manhole in order to
let other robots pass through – if you remember the analysis of command and control
methods this is a classical example of collaboration. The entire movie is about stopping
this person before committing a crime and since it is not a tank he has to be identified by
a laser scan of his retina. So the policeman sees something the lady did not: He sees this
fellow disappearing by going into an ice bath thus canceling his
IR signature and it is very much like reducing signatures mentioned today. The robots
are surprised, they start going around, widening their search; now the fellow exposes it
because of this bubble they hear the noise and now they have to provide the element of
casting suspicion, as well as the identification and incrimination. They are certain they are
going to arrest him, forcing him into a situation in which he can be identified, so does he
identify the fellow as the suspect? He cannot, because the suspect had changed his eyes
beforehand. All those things are the shape of C4I systems we have to reach in future and
as I indicated, part of the fighting forces must have, under defined laws of employment,
141
the capability of performing a function which is accepted as command and control. A few
things have to happen for this, one of the biggest mistakes the military in Israel – I said
military advisedly, not the air force – has made, there must be complete separation of the
layers like in the civilian communication world. Several names of projects with radio have
been mentioned here, tens of billions of dollars are being invested in them in the US, if we
make radios attached to a defined net, we commit a very grave mistake because we subject
the military to a specific industry for decades to come and have to make sure that all
networks will be in open architecture, that is all sensors, applications, contents, channels
and users speak to each other with such protocols that all industries can compete for all
components; this is critical.
One can separate observation from communication among all fighting vehicles, that
enables what we saw, those walking spiders, and the communications among command
posts and the fighting vehicles and from then downward. This observation helps very
much with the decision about investing, whether it will be in ground networks, at least in
Israel all this content is already networked with optical fibers so you can do fascinating
things. The aerial networks can use satellite communication even today as well as UHF
communication in numerous layers and reach those systems as I indicated. It is also
possible to disassemble the information one wants to pass and decide what part of it will
go in the ascending channel and what will go in the descending one.
Now I should like to present a few challenges that in my opinion have not been resolved
yet and I too felt that in many other places they have not yet come to grips with them.
The first is that of many vs. many and the clip I am showing is out of Matrix. There is a
city there, incidentally it is called Zion, which is about to be broken into by thousands of
robots called sentinels, and this city lives deep inside a subterranean concrete copula and
is the last one on earth that is not part of Matrix, the machine world. So the attackers are
those thousands of robots who work synchronously and with coordination against a certain
number of defenders because the idea of the attackers is that their functional role is only
that of the common thing, each one of them is separate and its specific weight as a separate
machine is not very high. Now that is what I tried to explain earlier about programming,
whoever wrote the program that draws it cannot do it frame by frame it is just impossible
but what he did was to put command and control algorithms inside each such robot
separately so that in mathematical flight they execute, they will not clash. Since they did
it, there is no problem to put it into real vehicles and several other things need to be taken
care of by the engineers – the size etc. – but it is soluble. So active defense from ballistic
threats of many vs. many, like I said, if one assumes there will be some 1000 missiles a
day, hopefully we will have enough interceptors, so care should be taken to ascertain that
the right interceptor would go to the right missile; we do not have this layer at all – how do
we make decisions regarding those problems stemming from many vs. many?
The autonomous automatic weapon has been mentioned here; I think that many people in
the audience know the JDAM in SDB a quartet of F15 could take about 50 SDB bombs,
every such bomb goes to another target, and every target has to define a coordination point
made up from some 14 figures representing altitude, the hitting angle and then verification
of the hit. Now think that you have to transfer to the quartet on the way to Lebanon, say,
which is about 18 minutes flight from Hatzerim, in these 18 minutes not only do you pass
radio from tower to control, but now they need to pass over to you about 50 times a 14
142
figure number with altitude, angle, azimuth, etc, this is something that is actually done
today but it is unsolved, far from optimization; even when you get such a thing you think
in your heart that the chance that Major giving it to you from Tel Aviv really knows where
each of those 50 bombs goes – so this problem of many vs. many has to be dealt with.
The same goes for the air, Yair Ramati mentioned it as if it were futuristic, but with the
plane I flew, F-151 called Ra'am in Israel, you can take some 8 BRV missiles so a quartet
of those planes can take 32 missiles and they can start throwing them at the enemy at 40
miles – such things never existed before, even in the annals of air combat, and they are in
fact what helps you define your priorities, so this is the first issue.
The second is a very fundamental conceptual subject – how do I move from a situation in
which I try all the time to reduce the circle from sensor to shooter, reduce it even more and
I claim it should turn to negative time, that is, I should lie in wait for the target. You need
other vehicles altogether for it. Since I am responsible for the licensing of UAVs for the
Ministry of Transport, I have brought a glider as an example for the philosophy I aim at;
the glider is a very problematic vehicle because by definition it has no endurance; a glider
by definition does not utilize petrol well at all. But if I see it as a platform which has to take
off from Northern Command and place a sensor in the Hezbollah "Nature Reserve" it is
a must, because that very moment I transformed the situation from my wishing to reduce
the sensor to shooter time when they shoot, to that situation in which I ambush them - in
my opinion there simply is no other way than getting into such systems - this is where
the question raised by the movie Minority Report comes up, the equilibrium between
preemption and response. These are rather weighty questions and they should not be taken
up at the technological level. At the technological level one should put the capability to
perform preemptive targeting in levels of the air force which are not necessarily those of
targeted killing.
The third issue is fundamental, it is exactly like the movie Minority Report and it says we
need to find a way in between the theater assets and the state capabilities, and at this Israel
has some enormous capabilities; I think we are the only country – the US excluded – that
has such serious tools in the SIGINT domain, as well as in the AWACS and hopefully
in the domain of SAR radars ad several layers; and exactly like those cops in the movie
– who send in the spiders and also get information from the mother ship, we need to be
able to create a situation that any air force should be structured in such a way that it can
be helped by national assets and things like the smart phone, which is supposed to have a
military application to all this content sometime in the future, so that we could empower
the fighting forces. A big domain, not sufficiently developed, there is one whole civilian
world called user-generated content – I have to say that while I was in uniform I thought
it had no military application, but user-generated content can get into military minds as
well; those who are familiar with the Matrix program in the IAF - today if we manage
to make this together with some of the things we have already done, such as every plane
knowing when the other is locked on it, for example; in fact this is a situation in which one
of the planes you are locked on is the sensor of the other one and we can transform it into
a situation in which each plane is concurrently a sensor.
Cyber space has colossal ramifications on the air force as well. IAF Commander Ido
Nechushtan indicated that to a certain degree one may say we responded in such a dramatic
way when attacking the airfields and then during the attack on the surface to air missiles
143
in 1982 and our enemies responded and adjusted by developing the ballistic weapons, so
it may be that this is dramatic in its significance and I call on all of you to energetically
deal with it.
Finally all the domain of real-time information sharing, the one in the example I gave,
assuming that there are a few dozen UAVs and that each one of the UAV operators sees
the others' videos in real-time and through it someone specific can be apprehended. The
example I always like to give is this: think you are on the top of Migdal Shalom or Empire
State Building looking at either Tel Aviv or New York saying, we now have to kill Yossi –
you do not know what street, nothing, you just see a city and the IAF has found a way to
locate Yossi and kill him in the middle of the night while making sure it is Yossi and none
else. It probably did not happen by accident and there is a non-negligible component of
real-time information sharing.
As to the question of how to call these new concepts to which I delegate some of my
authority in a dynamic way to the fighting troops, the suggestion in the book talks of focus
and convergence and in my opinion this is confusing and the young people in the squadron
will not understand at all what they are asked to do, so it has to be done cautiously, but new
conceptualizations are undoubtedly needed. I recommend talking of empowerment, so that
every person who sits in the Tel Aviv HQ will feel that it his duty that every pilot should
know what he knows, if it is relevant for the mission. We need to know how to pass from a
situation in which the mission is clear - the pilots have to take off on time and to gather the
attack formation into a situation which is much less clear, with many question marks.
There is an element that deserves attention, especially if there are some senior people
from the air force or those who speak to high-ranking air force people: when speaking of
networks some of the young pilots lose their focus and the will to kill. Every single one of
us here who has been in air combat knows that if you do not have the will to kill you will
not win. The responsibility for this at least in my opinion is on the squadron commander
and the people high-up should see that we are arranging such systems and tactics that will
enable us to win the war completely. It is critical that the architecture as a whole will be
open and all this networking issue has brought about a weakness – a weakness that had
not been there in the past and this is what made the whole thing fall down with one blow,
it is super-dangerous. In the PC it is done with virus, and in aerial systems by all sorts of
components, warnings etc, that we should prepare for. There are numerous examples; since
I was there at the time they started talking of the JSF I shall mention that I at least thought
that the issue of EW, munitions and the connection to networks is important enough so as
not to buy the JSF if the Americans do not give it and I still hold to this opinion. There are
very many different examples; I wish to talk mainly about friendly fire – in the recent war
there were quite a few incidents of friendly fire and by the same American criterion it is
one of the obvious signs of a command and control system which is not good enough.
Lastly, I think it is most important to mention that at the end the war is a struggle among
people and it is somewhat opposed to what some of the technology people described here,
so it will always get to this place, it may be seen as a definition. Whoever does not come
with the will to win will not be helped by a machine or a UAV and what is critical and very
important is that there should be a mutual vision and this was talked about after the 2006
war, that people go to pubs and see their future in going to the US and doing all sorts of
things by themselves without a mutual vision to unite them. This does not go together with
144
the katyushas that will – or will not – fall on certain parts of Israel. All in all there is much
to do, I call on everybody here to try and work together, define needs and allocate finances
and get results where technology is concerned.
Left to right:
General (Ret.) Chuck F. Wald - former deputy commander of US European Command,
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Asaf Agmon - Head of the Fisher Institute
Air Marshal (Ret.) Geoffrey David Shepherd, former Chief of the Air Force, Royal
Australian Air Force
145
Left to right: Tal Inbar - Head of Space & UAV Research Center at the Fisher Institute;
William Owen - military writer and theorist Space; Stephen F. O'Bryan - Vice President
of F-35 Business Development and Customer Engagement Lockheed Martin; Lt. Col. (Ret.)
Ran Carmeli - Head of air division at Aeronautics and Uzi Rubin - CEO of Rubincon
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THE FISHER INST. FOR AIR AND SPACE STRATEGIC STUDIES
ABOUT US
Aviation Safety & Security
The objective of the Center is to promote civilian and military aviation safety and
security in Israel and around the world by collecting information, conducting
research, and organizing conferences, supplementary studies and discussions.
The Center endeavors to develop ties with research centers and academic institutions
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in the field and locates companies and technologies that can contribute to enhanced
flight safety and security. The Center works with aviation organizations and
administrations in Israel to improve flight safety. It disseminates information on
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Contact with the head of the center: Col. (Res.) Itai Alon - alonitai@netvision.net.il
Tel: 972-9-9510260 ext.3
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The main objective of the Center is to study the role and contribution of airpower
in the fight against terror organizations. It also explores how the air force can
amorphous enemy, both optimize its considerable ability when countering an
independently and in collaboration with other bodies faced with the challenge,
in the IDF and beyond.
The center has initiated one study who deals with the role of the air force in
achieving the goals of any combat within the framework of asymmetric conflict.
The research addresses the problem of concern to many militaries: why doesn't
a strong country with advanced technology manage to beat and even defeat nonstate entities (organizations) which it fights.
Contact with the head of the center: Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Ephraim Segoli segolie@gmail.com Tel: 972-(0)52-3566965
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The Space and UAV Research Center deals with research into strategic fields of
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General information:
The Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies was established by the
Israel Air Force Association, and unites former Air Force personnel for the purpose
of developing public discussion in the State of Israel, in the fields of aviation and
space.
Whose The Fisher Institute was named after the late Zachary and Larry Fisher
generosity resulted in the establishment of the Institute. The Institute is located
at the Israel Air Force Center in Herzliya.
Contact the Administrative Manager: Mrs. Shany Niv Palmon:
shany@fisherinstitute.org.il Tel: 972-9-9510260 ext.3
Air Weapons Systems
Yuval Miller, Director, Air to Surface Systems, Missiles and NCW Division, RAFAEL
Advanced air and ground launched PGM is the domain in which I have been working for
some twenty years, and the emphasis is on the autonomous revolution, its technology, the
ramification it holds for the present as well as future battlefield and I shall do it by bringing
up systems as examples, especially those systems we deal with in Rafael.
A bit of history for a start: air and ground launched PGM developed from statistical munitions
by way of laser weapons in the 1960s and 1970s, through the entry of stand-off systems
in the 1980s - the majority of which are man driven – and at that stage, and it happened in
the last decade or two, there developed autonomous air to ground weapons systems. When
looking at the issue of stand-off weaponry (not at weapons for direct assault) we look at
two directions, the first is naturally that of Cruise missiles, autonomous systems for long
ranges and with the qualities and improvement in technology and performance the price
per unit naturally goes up, which eventually limits the possibility of acquisition and use.
Here we actually came with some idea to enable a system that is mindful to the price on the
one hand, but also makes a certain optimization for performances; so this is one aspect of
technologies, of technological development. Another aspect is naturally the employment
itself and you can see the difference between the First Gulf War of 1991 – there was 7.5%
use of non-precise munitions in all, and whoever thought this applies only to WW2 please
note we are talking of 7.5% and within a decade we reach a level of 85% use of precision
weaponry. Of course it refers to the Americans mainly, the world is seemingly at a delay
of one phase behind them, but we definitely wish to be there.
Generally speaking, autonomous stand-off munitions allow, according to our conception,
a revolution in the operational conception and the operation of force as a whole and the
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most basic thing is the possibility to enlarge the destruction yield of targets by an order
of magnitude than the existing and possible today. All this is based first and foremost on
the fact that there is no human hand in these circles all along the assault tour, part of it
is connected with the collection of targets through its preparation, through studying the
mission, the mode of operation in those stages of the flight which have to do with the
launch of munitions and last but not least, the free flight of that piece of munitions which
it performs completely independently.
The precision is that of pinpoint accuracy – of a meter or two, not even 10, at hitting
the target and this dramatically reduces the amount of bombs needed eventually in order
to kill a single target. The whole issue of stand-off range and the possibility to act in a
threatened zone significantly minimizes those constraints in the absence of air superiority,
those significant limitations in the operation of power - not just the survivability of planes
and naturally since it is an autonomous system independent of communication and GPS, it
is much more resilient in its actions against disruptions of many sorts.
[Referring to presentation] I shall show a clip from an experiment in which we launch two
such munitions from a F16, these are sliding bombs, they can slide to a range of several
tens of kilometers, a warhead weighing a ton, and in fact from the point of launch until
hitting the target the munitions act completely independently: the pilot goes on to the
next mission and the munitions – these pictures are broadcast by telemetry, of course,
but in operational reality they are not seen by anyone. The target is acquired, we lock on
it, everything is done completely automatically while comparing to intelligence referral
photos. Now the second munitions, you can see some weather disturbance – a cloud
which somewhat obstructs the operation of the system, but in the end the independent and
completely automatic system locks on precisely on the target and homes in, then through
this system we manage to hit the target at a distance of about 60 km in this instance with
precision of 1 meter, with a warhead of 1 ton, when actually there is no interference with
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the mission from launch to hit.
The basic technology that enables it is a technology by the name of picture comparison
and matching which has also developed in the civil sector; simplistically put we take some
intelligence photography aide, turn it to the direction and the angle of attack, mark the
target, the very pixel we want to hit and in fact, in real-time the homing head performs
a process of comparison, of correlation, of matching the real-time photo to that of the
referral picture, and the work here [referring to the film] was done on the ground at the
time the mission was prepared when the target was located or defined and in real-time the
action of the munitions is absolutely independent and no one interferes. You can see that
even though there are a few obstructions here - a cloud hides the target, there are changes
in the culture, unseen trees – it must be some settlement which exists in reality but does
not exist in the intelligence aide – all this does not hinder the algorithm from functioning
correctly and eventually hitting the target with absolute precision.
The technological advantage is that in addition to its functioning in a completely
autonomous and independent manner it is not influenced by errors in the coordinates –
naturally it does not require a GPS action, GPS can be resilient, can exist but it does not
interfere and does not influence the functioning of the system, it works well also against
countermeasures and obstructions of all sorts, copes with various cultures.
This is an example for weather: we see a cloud base at some 500 ft and the moment the
munitions emerge from the cloud, the same process of picture matching and locking is
occurring again, this is an autonomous system, at this moment without GPS, it got out
from the base of the cloud with some error and within a few seconds it self-corrected and
reached the place, this is a mission that a man cannot compete with.
The second element is an advanced homing head which has several sensors, these are
electro-optic sensors; the most important and interesting thing about this head in the final
analysis is its price and we managed thanks to correct planning to reach a system which
is some 20% of the order of magnitude of the homing head of the preceding generation
Popeye missile; this is most important for massive replenishment with these systems.
Precision hitting – you can see results of system tests we conduct, eventually getting to a
CP of less than a meter, I shall give another example of a test with a penetration warhead
and in this instance too there is a launch from a range of tens of kilometers hitting a cube
whose size is 3 X 5 meters and this precision is significant when a fortified objectives,
protected by a subterranean realm while wishing to minimize the amount of munitions we
can invest in any objective, so we can take in the comprehensive effect, again this is a very
big warhead producing the effect of destruction.
Now to a short description of how the system works – we take a ground infrastructure,
satellite pictures whose requirements are rather ordinary, put them into the mission
planning system after having defined the aiming point, the target point produces a mission
file which is loaded into the munitions and after the plane takes off it is launched from the
launching zone and from there it operates independently until hitting the target. Mission
planning by itself is an important element in the system. In this example there is some
facility, it may be a military one, we are interested in hitting three targets along its length,
we choose the direction the munitions will come from and the angle of the hit, precisely
correcting the pixel we wish to hit, exactly the same spot, note that the precision of the
coordinates here is not important since we eventually point to a specific pixel, receiving
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here a picture through which we ascertain that the munitions really go to correctly hit the
right point. The same process is repeated for additional targets, for example this one being
assaulted in a flatter angle, we can see here an angle of 15 degrees and this is actually how
the planning process is done, it is mostly automatic and human interference is limited to
marking the target aiming point.
The system enables the same stand-off range which provides us with a significant launching
envelope, here you can see the target region and a series of launching envelopes for each
one of the three munitions in this example: you can see that when the plane changes its
direction the launching envelopes change theirs too and the significance certainly is that
planes can get from all directions and assault the target without constraints.
This technology and this capability was taken from primary configuration and munitions
has evolved into a family of products, weighing from 3000 ton and half a ton to the weight
of 100 kg per system, this is the smallest system we talk of; there is high referral to the
issue of compatibility to platforms, in effect the development of munitions – if we can
see here the folded wings which facilitate very much the compatibility to planes because
the signature, the size of the munitions throughout the flight is minimal, there is much
communality between those products; the homing head is the same, the technologies
of matching picture and other communal technologies and finally we want this array to
enable us to cope with a variety of targets. I mentioned the fixed and the strategic targets
and the capabilities of penetration but there certainly are additional targets, various mobile
targets.
When looking at the issue of anti-aircraft missile-threatened zone which is developing in
our region too and this family is actually launched from this region with sufficient standoff range to enable action out of the bigger part of the anti-aircraft missile threatened zone
and on the other hand the price of such unit permits sizable purchase which is impossible
with cruise missiles, for example, whose price is considerably more expensive than this
system.
As to unfixed targets, I cannot elaborate much but I shall show an example of occasional
targets, sensor-to-shooter, and in this instance we are photographing the target through
an observation pod, prepare for an air mission and attack it in real time so you can see
the observation pod and the indication of the target. The preparation of the mission is
completely independent, all that is needed is indication of the target, you can see the
munitions in the air, now indicating the target zone and immediately and absolutely
independently locking on the target itself; you can see the resilience of the system, there
are some weather problems here, a cloud getting into the field of vision and breaks the
tracking but the system overcomes it in an independent way finally reaching the optimum
accuracy. In order to destroy a structure of this kind, when the precision is that of window
precision, one does not need a 1-ton warhead, smaller ones will suffice, thus carrying a
great deal more munitions on a single plane will make it possible to carry out more strikes
per plane, by an order of magnitude, so we can be impressed with the precision.
Another example now from the more algorithmic world we cope with: there is a picture by
auto photo, here we were required to hit a structure, hit a specific window in the structure
and what we do – automatically too – we build a target model giving the munitions another
set of algorithms dealing with final homing, finally getting again to the level of hitting a
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window in a building even though the intelligence infrastructure here is problematic for
use, all this is done autonomously without human intervention.
To sum up, just as the UAV and the autonomy it has introduced brought about a revolution
in everything that is connected to air vehicles, we see a revolution in munitions which
ushers in technology and is finally translated into a revolution in the operation of airpower
[in the air] and on the battlefield and the consequences of it all. We firmly believe in the
capabilities of electro-optic homing as a relatively affordable solution both as to precision
and resilience and it is based on the homing head and the advanced photo processing
supporting it while the realization itself done in the guidance kit also finally enables
performance which may not be optimal but gives a good ratio of price for capabilities both
is precision and in the stand-off range.
Left to right: Yuval Miller - Director Air to Surface Systems, Missiles and NCW
Division at RAFAEL, General (Ret.) Chuck F. Wald - former deputy commander at US
European Command and Shmuel Paz - RAFAEL
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Concluding Panel
Maj. Gen.l (Ret.) Herzle Bodinger, former commander of the IAF
When I was in basic training we had this gun called Czech gun which had five bullets,
manual loading and cocking and a bayonet – it was already 1960 – and after a short while
we changed to FN which held a clip of 20 bullets. Now you know that every soldier more
or less has a M16, mostly with telescopic sight: all these things happened in an extremely
short time.
I am the graduate of the first flight course that did all the training on jet planes, we flew
Ouragans with mechanical steering and went over to Mystere with hydraulic steering;
the Ouragan had radio with 12 channels, with crystals, a sight with which all hits had to
be manual, no computer at all, an instrument panel with grandpa clocks; the Mystere had
a UHF radio and at the end of my service I flew planes with computerized steering, the
whole plane was computerized, the standard instruments were replaced by TV screens
on which all data is screened, changeable according to need, all navigation systems are
automatic, all munitions laying systems are automatic, the radar sees all directions and
ranges, really sees what has to be done, the missile launching systems are excellent,
there are EW systems, full proof radio, communication systems between planes – all this
happened in 35 years and this is what we have actually talked about in this conference. So
where we heading, what can be expected?
I think the air force has been revolutionized during all that period. Over the years we
built an air force that is relatively very strong compared to air forces in our region and it
occupies a central place in the Israeli security doctrine, and this is an air force which has
actively demonstrated to the confrontation states around us it is capable of striking any
target in the Middle East as defined by the government provided it is within our planes'
range, in any weather, any illumination, and not only has the enemy been unable to stop
us – it was all the more amazing because they simply could not do anything similar in our
boundaries and not for lack of trying. I would say that we are completely sealed; there
were several instances of insignificant intrusions. On the whole we can fly wherever we
wish to and they cannot.
They tried all sorts of methods to overcome the problem that has bothered them. They
increased the number of their planes, they moved on to more advanced aircraft, they
purchased sophisticated AA systems – brought in anti-aircraft missiles and except for a
fleeting achievement during the 1973 war which took place too soon after their positioning
the missiles before the air force could get organized, they could not get to us.
The hardest blow struck on them in that period of time was the blow dealt to the Syrians
in 1982, during the First Lebanon War, when they lost a whole array of surface-to-air
missiles, an advanced array they were proud of, then they lost scores of fighter planes
which were downed in air combat with our planes while the IAF did not lose even one
plane, which was quite upsetting [to them].
Syria was the first and other countries followed in its steps in making a strategic decision
and surface-to-surface missiles as offensive weapons started to come into the Middle East.
That is not to say it had not been here before, in the late 1950s and 1960s there were
already missiles and in 1973 they shot at Ramat David and just one missile hit out of a
continuous three night long barrage of missiles they shot at the vicinity. These are small,
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insignificant things, that was before the decision that spelt out in fact they would start
equipping themselves with large numbers of surface-to-surface missiles and today there
are such missiles all over the Middle East but the Syrians are top of the list with thousands
of missiles if not more.
In fact we experience changes in combat systems which must be well examined and just
to give you an example a similarly significant change in military history took place in
the period when the rifle appeared for the first time in the battlefield against the mounted
knights. In the beginning the rifle was slowly loaded, just one bullet was loaded at a time
then it was shot and loaded again, and in the meantime the horseman would get over with
his sword in hand, then it was significant but not sufficiently so; still, things changed
rapidly and it became apparent that courage coupled with a sword, a horse and body armor
cannot withstand the introduction of new weapons.
I need not instruct the audience about the invention of the plane or the structuring of air
forces and the part they play in modern war. Still, I wish to state what is well known,
being so small Israel is in a high military risk, it practically has no territory, it is very
difficult to defend by any criterion because in fact one defends a whole region and what
we have done until today in defense of the country's skies is simply excellent, but we are
in the midst of a change which has happened because of the air force and for the air force.
One Syrian senior officer captured in 1982 said during his interrogation something to
the effect that 'if you did not have a plane right next to every soldier you would not have
defeated us tank for tank'. It does not matter if this is true – naturally we did not have a
plane on every soldier and it is not certain they could have defeated us tank for tank, but it
is important they thought so and it explains what they did, that is, for them the IAF is the
problem – we heard it in preceding discussions and therefore the solution for it was the
surface-to-surface missiles and also surface-to-air missiles of an advanced generation we
hear about which are to appear soon. All the countries around us are equipping themselves
with surface-to-surface missiles and the Syrians are at the forefront, these are thousands of
missiles which go on to become more and more precise and their principal target – true, up
until today they were launched at cities, but this is simple, because of the precision among
other things – is the air force base. They say as much and we assess that this is right and
that is seemingly the significant change on the battlefield in the present era at least in our
region.
One may very well wonder if the missile is about to put an end to the era of the so-called
“winged knights” [the pilots] just as the rifle finished off that of the knights in shining
armor – well, in my opinion it is not so.
In view of all I have said so far I wish to speak about the structuring of the air force and
its preparation for the future. So first to the assertion that raised some discussions and a
little debate, whether offense is the best defense, like we always said, and there seemed to
be a question mark in light of what has happened; to my mind it is still so. It is still true
today and the problem we have to address is the need to defend the means of offense so
that it will be possible to go on the offensive. It is no mistake to do so, I remind those who
think this investment does not get you anywhere that even an excellent football team uses
defenders and a goalie and they do not play without them.
Developing adequate defense systems and deploying them in order to protect air force
assets is important and it is underway as we earlier heard. A word about war: during an
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intensive war when the larger part of the country might be covered with missiles - as I said
we are concerned with what should be defended - the first priority should go in my opinion
to these assets which enable offense while all the other things can be put together under a
roof, you can evacuate regions, get people in shelters for a certain time, situations of this
sort have happened around the world, not just here, but if they strike your offensive assets
you cannot go on the offense and then your whole status changes completely.
As to the era of asymmetric warfare that has begun – well it has not begun and the wars
waged by militaries against militaries are not over. This is what is happening to us now:
first, terror has been with us for years, from the day Jews started coming back to this region
well before the inception of the state, and certainly following it, and it has been dogging us
to this day alternately waxing and waning by various methods. Terror hit its peak with the
targeting of restaurants and buses by suicide bombers from 2000. At the time they thought
there was no solution for the problem: what can you do to those who are willing to take
their own lives? Still, measures were taken and I shall not elaborate.
We are engaged in a long protracted war and one day it may come to an end and then it
will be regarded as an ongoing event like the One Hundred Years War between France and
England; there are ups and downs and there is constant terror and once in a decade we
also have another confrontation so there is a good chance it will go on and we should also
assume that we should or might see wars in which tanks will take on tanks. So against this
background, getting to the issue of force structuring, we need the capability to hit targets
with big warheads and I note it came up in this conference with the question if UAVs could
replace manned aircraft - we talk of 1-ton warheads, this is the central bomb one needs
to be able to carry and hit targets with it and you need a large order of battle in order to
do that. The ranges have grown and it has a bearing on the number of sorties we can do
because the distance has grown and you might do less with the same order of battle. So
if in past wars we had 5 turnarounds per plane, 5 sorties per day for a plane in war, it will
probably be much reduced and the question is if one should purchase planes to close this
gap and I think not. I think the development of other means, robotic ones, can close this
gap and a robot can at least go to every target that is a valued and important as well as a
fixed one – it could be an infrastructure and a man in the loop, at the end of the loop, not
a man launching the planes because the UAV also has a man in the loop, so a man sitting
at the end is required when the target is sensitive, or tends to change its position, or if
there are civilians around it and you need a judgment call in real time whether the mission
should be executed at all or if it should be changed.
The fighter order of battle should be the newest for that point in time, so every few years
the same question comes up: what should be purchased, if there is anything new and
modern we need it to be in the order of battle and the commander of the air force has
referred to it, when planes are purchased for about 40 years' service you always need to
have the best of the very best.
During the Second Lebanon War and Cast Lead Operation we made a marked progress in
coordinated employment of the air force and the ground forces and we almost succeeded
in implementing what that Syrian said, have a plane next to every soldier. It is not so, but
the cooperation is such that in many instances soldiers did not have to personally tackle the
target and if they knew its place and passed the information correctly then the target would
be dealt with and they got to the terrain when the tunnel has already been dug for them.
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This is very good yet it needs to be developed and enhanced. It is quite unique to what we
do here; I do not know other players in the world that got to such a level of jointness. We
always had a measure of it but now it is the closest I remember and we always yearned
for it. All control, communications and intelligent systems including the new domain of
wide employment of space infrastructures need to be adequately prepared for the missions
of the future, a stronger presence of autonomous systems working independently, and
naturally the question of energy weapon, the laser, has come up and there is no doubt that
in the next 20-30 years it will be the major weapon.
In conclusion I wish to say that trail blazing and innovations always happen against drag
and stiff resistance in systems at all levels, this is a global phenomenon, it is a fact and
it is connected to the nature of Man. Someone once said that the nature of Man is one of
the elements in nature, and in spite of all the comments and the friction we succeeded in
founding the air force and bring it to where it is now, and it is a very good air force and the
people are good and dedicated, and I know of all the issues that have come up and were
presented as directions with a question mark – I know they will be implemented and the
air force will continue to excel.
Left to right: Maj. Gen. (Ret.) David Ivry - Chairman of the Fisher Institute; Maj. Gen.
(Ret.) Herzle Bodinger - former commander of the IAF; Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi former Chief of Air Staff, Indian Air Force and Brig. Gen. (Res.) Asaf Agmon - Head
of the Fisher Institute.
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Concluding Panel
Air Marshal (Ret.) Geoffrey David Shepherd, former Chief of Air Force, RAAF
The first casualties of Australian military aviation occurred outside Basra in 1915, they
were force landed and actually killed by marauding Arab tribesmen; we had a squadron
here in those days, which supported Lawrence of Arabia, it flew this air space right up
through to Baghdad and we lost 90 casualties in the war against the Turkish Ottoman
empire in this part of the world, while in World War 2 the graves of Australian airmen were
scattered liberally throughout the Mediterranean, its North African coast and of course in
the Middle East.
In the 1970s and 1980s we had helicopters based in the Gaza Strip and in the Sinai in
support of UN peacekeeping activities; currently we have had air platforms based in the
Gulf States in support of operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan, since late 2002. So we
are not newcomers to this region. It would be true to say however that since World War 2
matters such as Korea, Malaya, Indonesia, Vietnam and the like have captured our attention
and we have become a defense force until Operation Iraqi Freedom that was very much
focused on our region, the southeast Asia to southwest Pacific region.
So what do I have to offer this country and this group of eminent people discussing air
power and the challenge to Israel? You could not find two countries with geo-strategic
situations more different than Australia and Israel, but as airmen of course we learn from
each other.
Let me give you a taste of the Australian air power experience and what I see as the
challenges and vision for my air force into the future. It may have some resonance with
you; I have certainly found great resonance in this conference over the last day and a half
with many of the things I have heard.
We are the second oldest independent air force in the world, formed in 1921. True, we are
a small air force today, but Australia is a rich country, we can afford good equipment, we
have a highly skilled work force, a highly skilled group of people and I believe airmen for
airmen and pound for pound we are as good as any air force in the world.
Nevertheless out credible capability pales into insignificance when you consider the
capabilities of America and my friends from India with us here on the floor. Our combat
experience has been wide and varied; over 15,000 Australian airmen were lost in the
service of our nation since 1921. But ours is a different experience, we have always been
a small player in someone else's war if you would like to think of it. We put forces into
World War 1, World War 2, and all the other small wars since. We have rarely had the
opportunity to provide leadership in those wars and we have become very good at tactical
operations. This did change some 20 years ago when we took a firmer stand on providing
for our own destiny with the defense of Australia, but this history of being a small player
in large coalitions continues right through till today, in Iraq - of course this is over now for
us - and in Afghanistan so that has colored our thinking.
Despite having our doctrine based on the sort of western hierarchal and historical model of
independent strategic strike as our basis for our air power doctrine, in truth what we have
provided Australians is the ability to reach, and I do not mean just mobility, since Australia
is a vast and very empty and sparsely populated continent. Most people live down the
southeast corner, Perth, our western capital is the most remote capital city in the world, and
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it is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. Sydney to Perth is the equivalent of Tel Aviv to
London and there is one capable military air field in between. Just being able to get around
our country right from the word go when our air force formed in 1921 was very much the
raison d'etre and very much a determinant in our force structure and organizational design.
So as a consequence of this history the utility of air power in the Australian context has
been to provide reach to our Australian defense force, to our Army and our Navy. Now I
do not use reach as I said just in the sense of mobility; reach encompasses our strategic
deterrence: we have operated the F-111 for over 30 years now, it retires at the end of this
year but the ability or potential ability of that platform to reach out over vast distances and
to touch any aggressor to Australia has added very much to our deterrent posture.
Nevertheless our Air Force now stands on the cusp of a new and exciting future and that is
where many of the concepts that I have heard here today and yesterday strike resonance. I
do agree with Colin Gray that as Clausewitz said the enduring logic or nature of war does
not really change, there is always individual context in which each conflict is considered,
but what has changed, as we have all agreed in the last day and a half, and is the grammar
as Clausewitz calls it, the grammar of war. We have moved from one of state-on-state
conventional warfare through to irregular, many examples have been given in the last day
and a half. No one is firing rockets on a daily basis into Australia. It is a long way and
there is a lot of ocean to cover, so in many ways the threat to Australia is non-existent. Our
Air Force, I should add, has never had to fight for our freedom, never had to fight for the
defense of the nation directly. We are under no threat in Australia, other than the threat of
terrorism that colors all of our environments. Consequently, many of the sort of traditional
Left to right: Maj. General Ido Nechushtan - IAF Commander and Air Marshal
(Ret.) Geoffrey David Shepherd - former Chief of the Air Force, Royal Australian Air
Force
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threats or traditional stressors in the Asia Pacific region still exist. The move to the new
grammar of war that you have here is probably not as profound in our environment as it
is in yours. But nevertheless, as we participate more and more in coalitions and look after
Australian strategic interests in wider reach around the world we will need to make that
change too.
I mentioned that we are on the cusp of a new exciting future, we share a network-centric
vision, we share the vision that the Israeli Air Force has in the Matrix activity, we have
good new equipment coming along, the F-35, airborne warning and control airplane and
the like. But I believe that this presents not only an opportunity for our air force but also a
challenge to break free from our tactical thinking.
I explained how we have always been part of someone else's war; we have never had to
lead a campaign by ourselves. And we need to break beyond that. We need to break out
of the constraints of just being a very good small tactical air force. We must move into
the strategic realm and it is not just about carrying out strategic strike. I am talking about
strategy and strategic here more than just range and weight of bombs and payload over
distance. I am talking about being involved in a thinking process, that agility of mind
to move into the new paradigms of warfare. To involve ourselves in the highest level of
government to effect the proper strategic decision-making process and not just leave that
as it often happens in Australia to our Army brethren who seem to take that high ground in
a natural moral sense. That is the challenge facing my air force - not becoming constrained
by the technology of this new equipment we have coming along, breaking free from our
tactical past, moving into a new strategic environment in order to be very much a part of
that modern future.
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Concluding Panel
General (Ret.) T. Michael Moseley, former Chief of Staff, USAF
There are no points for second place in the defense of the state. So, what does an air force
provide the state? First off, an air force is unique; it is unique from an army or a navy or in
the case of the United States the Marine Corps. It provides the symmetric and asymmetric
advantage to the country at a national level and a theater level, none of the other domains
are able to strike across simultaneously strategic operational and tactical boundaries on the
same day, on the same mission and do that over and over and over again. That does not
make an air force better, it just makes an air force different and it makes an air force unique
in the application of military force. Because it is the only domain that can impart strategic
paralysis and attack through the strategic domain against a set of targets that truly began to
change the fundamental outlook of your opponents' conduct of operation. It does that both
through strategic attack and through interdiction.
That notion of strategic paralysis is not an idle notion. Think in terms of a central nervous
system that an air force strikes into an opponent. If you can cripple the central nervous
system, which you can then paralyze you fundamentally change your opponent's outlook
in the next few days and of course the conduct of the operation. An air force can hold a
set of total targets at risk: not just tactical targets, or not just operational strategic ones,
but a total set of targets, or put differently, you can hold a set of activities at risk. If your
notion is to deter or dissuade, then you can potentially hold activities or targets at risk
across the entire target set. It also provides - unique to the other services - the quickest set
of options across those target sets. The ability to decide to respond to task, to move and to
hold activities or targets at risk across tactical operational and strategic levels provides a
unique capability to a prime minister or to a president, which is different than a Navy or
an Army or even the Marine Corps. So when you look at this in a joint setting, it is a set of
joint opportunities in the art form, in joint combined operations is to pick the right tool for
the right job, and to imply the right tool against the right set of challenges.
We have a seemingly insatiable desire to conduct counter insurgency or irregular warfare
or operations against terrorism. It seems that is the current fad all of us are wrapped up
into; I would offer caution in this respect, because it leads to the discussion and the debates
about future force structure, future operational domains and program decisions. If you
become so focused on counter insurgency and irregular war and so focused on counter
terrorism, you will sometimes miss the opportunity to think about the full spectrum of
operations required to defend the country.
Tomorrow's fight is no less important than that of today. The horizon out there is an equally
threatening and equally debilitating set of challenges as the local fight of today. We will at
our peril ignore tomorrow's threats. The challenge here is to be able to define tomorrow's
threats and get a reasonable discussion on what that means and how to approach those
problems.
Here are the immediate consequences of focusing on counter-insurgency or counterterrorism excluding all else: you immediately have a loss of focus on full spectrum
operations, that is full spectrum joint or combined operations, not just in the air force but
the joint team. You have an immediate loss of the skill sets required to conduct operations
across the full spectrum. Whether that is an artillery unit that has not pulled lanyards in a
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long time, whether that is an armored unit that has not manned up and taken to a range the
main battle tanks to fire, whether that is naval costal patrol craft that has not operated and
trained to a higher level or whether that is a set of the air force mission areas, pick one mobility surveillance, tactical strike, close air support, if you only focus on what irritates
you at the moment, in this case counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism, you will miss the
opportunities to define tomorrow's threats and you do that at your own peril.
Remember, I will speak for the United States, remember over the last 60 years, since the
end of World War 2, the US military and the leadership of the United States has a 100%
failure rate or put another way, a zero percent success rate at predicting where we are
going to fight next, zero, Who would have thought - Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq
twice, Mogadishu, who would have thought - Korea, who would have thought? They did
not see South East Asia coming either. So people who are so confident in the notion that
we only have to worry about counter-terrorism, perhaps have not read too many history
books, perhaps they have not really fought anybody or actually been shot at. So this joint
and combined business that you address in pursuit of today and tomorrow's threat is very
important.
I will speak as an Air chief now; the partnership with the Army and the Navy is a very
powerful tool. It is not to be taken for granted nor is it easy. As one of our previous
distinguished speakers outlines, there are cultural differences amongst the services that
sometimes lead us not to agree. We have to fight our way through it and reason our way
through it because you do not win wars necessarily by naval power alone. You do not win
wars by land power alone; you do not win wars by air power alone. There are circumstances
that play into it and you can leverage events and you can influence events and you can do
OK, but at the end of the day to bet the health of the state on 'only an Army can win a war'
or 'only a Navy' or 'only an Air Force' is a bit of false logic. The blessing is full spectrum
that really presents problems for an opponent. The ability to deal with the dimensions of
space, cyber space, air, maritime and land all at once is a powerful tool and an interesting
problem for an opponent to solve. The curse in joint operations is that it is like a marriage:
it takes time and effort to do it right, it takes faith and trust, which sometimes are hard to
get or to get back, after a set of events.
Let me go back to a couple of notions that I believe are important for a body like this to
consider as we look at the opportunities ahead of us.
I will not speak for Israel or India or Australia or anyone else here but the United States,
with its history of never getting it right at predicting where we are going to fight next. So
when people say let us only worry about this afternoon, it is a very dangerous notion. A
Military of joint Army, Air Force and Navy has to be able to walk and chew gum at the
same time. Think about that. You have got to be able to think about counter-insurgency,
you have got to be able to deal with counter-terrorism and you have to be able to deal at
the high end of deterring and dissuading any activity that is directly threatening to the
state and you have to be able to do that twenty four hours a day seven days a week, and
you have to do that thinking about the horizon of tomorrow and how long it takes to refuel
systems.
It gets us to the notion we talked about earlier, namely the modern systems called 5th
generation. Remember what an air force does best and that is to hold targets and activities
at risk on a regional scale or even on a global scale. No other service can do that. And the art
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form of being a successful general is if you can deter and dissuade your opponent and never
have to fight - you have been successful. How do you deter and dissuade the neighborhood
if in fact you do not have the latest and most survivable and lethal technologies that you
can bring to bear? Remember the neighborhood here; likely opponents can negate existing
systems by buying surface to air missiles which are available on the open market. The
neighborhood does not need 100 people in lab coats and manufacturing facilities to field
and build these systems, all it needs is a cheque book, so that it can write the cheque, get
the system, and create unbelievable problems - unless you can live in that air space and
survive using the 5th generation systems.
As to the 5th generation system we have talked about, the F-35 – it is incredibly important
to be able to penetrate, hold, operate in that air space and survive and do that hundreds of
times a day. When the US Air Force and other forces, including the Israeli Air Force, got
the F-5 and F-6 it fundamentally changed the game in the region.
When we, the US Air Force fielded the F-15 and the F-16 in Europe and the Pacific it
fundamentally changed the game because our likely opponents knew that they would have
no recourse if they fought us, relative to the equation of air superiority, air supremacy and
all the good things that happen from there.
When the Israeli Air Force got the F-15 it fundamentally changed the game, relative to the
opponents. Here is an interesting thought: if you have a system like that and you are able
to deter and dissuade, you never know what did not happen, you do not know which dog
did not bark because your opponents chose not to engage. If you cannot dissuade and deter,
then you go down a completely different road.
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Concluding Panel
Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi, former Chief of Staff, Indian Air Force
I often say to my Israeli friends look east, the first friendly face you will see is New
Delhi.
One of the things we have discussed here and my friend General Moseley has summed
it up again, is that the characteristics of air power do not really change. There have been
semantic arguments on the nature and characteristics of war while the characteristics of
air power have not changed actually. So in a sense I have nothing really to say to this
audience that already knows it all. What I will do is give my perspective as an Indian
because each situation is different, each culture is different and the way we would view
things is different. So if we were to stand in Tel Aviv and look around, you see one set on
nations, you see one kind of threats, but if you were to be in New Delhi and look at the
world around you, it looks very different. Then I look in one direction and I see the Middle
East which is perpetually in turmoil, there is a problem in Iran, there is a problem in Iraq,
while I have a western neighbor, Pakistan and we have been to war twice with them. Then
there is Afghanistan and I know that not one of you in this gathering will give it the label of
stability. Nepal is going through a major moment and the political future of Nepal is very
uncertain. Myanmar is being ruled by the army junta for a while; they promise there will
be some kind of elections, what kind we are yet to see. But it is not a more stable place;
there is an enormous Chinese influence there. Bangladesh has been democratic on and off,
just coming off a civil war. India itself has some problems, so actually in a way I come
from a fairly unstable region.
Now when I look at the other border there is China looming large, still stable, politically
stable, but ruled by a single party system. It is unclear whether the single party system will
last forever; will China's growth be peaceful or will they get aggressive?
In fact we are not really escaping the dangers that you are facing. In this situation, how do
we see the role of the Air Force, what are we going to do? I find that two of our neighbors,
Pakistan and China, with whom we have immense border problems, with whom we fought
wars in the recent past, are nuclear-armed. China has helped Pakistan in acquiring nuclear
capabilities. So what are we going to do as an Indian Air Force? General Moseley talked of
the full spectrum, well, the Indian Air Force has to be really ready and give the people of
India and the political leadership the ability to handle the full spectrum, which means antiterror, anti-insurgency, sub-conventional, non-conventional and conventional, you name
it, right up to the nuclear war and that is the big challenge of the Indian Air Force.
Now, we have to give the political leadership some options, if tomorrow, say, a political
assassination takes place in India - this is very hypothetical - and the people of India, who
can be very loud, demand certain actions from the government of the day, or if there is
another Mumbai [terrorist bombing], what are the options for the political leadership? I do
not know what options they will exercise but when I was the Chief I said I need to give the
political leaders and therefore people of India the option to do something, which means
I have to be prepared for the full spectrum, so I have to go and do a strike in a few hours
from the pressing of the button to then see if we will be able to control this escalation, will
there be a reaction from our adversaries and what kind of reaction, and will we then break
into a full war; that is one of the challenges of the Indian air force, the major one. But there
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are many others.
One of the other things is air supremacy or air superiority, call it what you like. We were
not born in 1921 as the Australian Air Force but in 1932. The Indian Air Force was formed
because the Brits were having a problem controlling the Afghans and they needed air
power, as the Army could not operate as efficiently. In some ways it does not seem to
have changed very much, there is a feeling of deja-vu. What happened was once World
War 2 broke out please remember that the Japanese were marching towards India and
they captured some of the areas in northeast India, and there were close to 100 bombers
ordinance operating in India, all of whom belonged to the Royal Air Force and the United
States Air Force and they were forever fighting. But there were no Indian Air Force
bombers. The Indian Air Force was asked only to do the reconnaissance missions, fire the
odd bullet here and do support missions, like blow up some three-ton truck. We were of
course given Distinguished Flying Crosses for that. But we remained basically a tactical
air force. When we gained our independence in1947 they said nonsense, you guys are
extended artillery. In fact, no strategic course had ever existed in India and no strategic
thought process existed in India because the military leadership was largely British and the
Indian officers were used to this business of reconnaissance from Spitfires and whatever.
It has taken us a generation to educate other services, but equally importantly the people
of India and the political leadership that air power is not meant as extended artillery: it can
be the game changer, this thought process.
One of the biggest challenges of the Air Force leadership has been the convulsion of the
mind sets that exist in India for historical reasons. You know all our wars were basically
boundary wars. India had no desire to go and occupy somebody else, we were always
trying to guard our geographical boundaries and the whole thinking was: hey, as long as
you can protect your borders you are all right. How do you protect the borders? The Army
said, leave it to us, we will tackle the Pakistani army and you guys just come here; when
we say fire you fire and we will tell you which target it is. So we said: ah, the fundamental
enduring fact is air supremacy, first we must do battle, win the battle for the air and they
said, what nonsense, the war is going on here at the border and this guy wants to strike a
target 300 miles away, he is crazy. This has taken us a full generation. Today I am happy to
report that whilst we are not in a perfect situation, the people and the political leadership
are now convinced that the game has really changed.
I have to acknowledge your forces have helped, because they read about what happened in
the 1967 war and one thing that happened in India was that in 1971 when the Bangladesh
war took place, the Indian Air Force had total air supremacy over what was then East
Pakistan and that made an enormous difference to the land forces operation and since then
the thought processes have changed. Let me quickly say that even in the border areas the
terrain that we fight is very mountainous, very hilly, armor cannot operate in that kind of
terrain, heavy artillery cannot move in and obviously the navy does not have much of a
role.
Slowly the realization has come that in all battles - if ever, God forbid we have to fight
- the air will take precedence over land battle. However the politicians are very worried
about one thing and it is the visibility of air power; you know that artillery shells can be
fired around and the Army will go and do a quiet operation and capture some posts and so
will the adversary's army. The moment the Indian Air Force does something, anything, the
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whole world knows. That is what the political leadership is more worried about, the fallout
of this visibility, of the use of air power.
There are some new challenges. Because of the changes in our economy we are slowly
going towards energy security, trade security, economic security, and therefore for the first
time Indians are saying our security interests are not necessarily confined to geographical
boundaries and therefore the Indian Armed Forces now have to have the reach to protect
our interests, not necessarily in our geographical territory. The Indian Air Force will
therefore play that kind of role because the reach of air power will always be there, and
so there will be navies. Our big challenge, which the Indian Armed Forces also will sell
to a political leadership, is that we will need that kind of equipment. When you talk of a
large region in the Indian Ocean or wherever, you have to say that automatically you think
that you cannot operate these forces without exploiting the space. Well, whilst I was the
Chief I would bang the table when talking to the political leadership every now and then to
say I want an aero-space come-on. The government agreed, sadly it is still stuck because
nothing moves fast in India, so those of you who do business with India will know that we
move at a snail's pace. I think it is caught up on who will command it, the Air Force, Army,
Navy want in and now the police do also.
The problem with India is that while it is not an industrial country it nevertheless has
greater responsibilities in the region, which is the reason you have to have your own
defense industry. Thus one of the challenges is how to set up the defense industry so that it
will meet the future needs of the armed forces. There is a lot of work going on, particularly
with companies in the US and Israel Great Britain as well forming joint ventures.
We have a great internal problem; we have a great Maoist militant movement which we
call the Naxal. These Naxalites just shot 76 of our police guys in the jungle - they were
ambushed and shot. There is a big debate in India about the use of air power against
the Maoists in India and please understand, US drones can hit something in Afghanistan
and the guy sitting in New York City might read it in the papers but might just skip it as
another piece of news. You have been involved in strikes outside Israel, but when you have
to strike your own people within your own country - you know you talk about collateral
damage in the Lebanon War but if the collateral damage is in your own country and your
own citizens are involved, it is a new ball game.
So there is a big debate as to whether air power should ever be used in such circumstances,
a lot of people have expressed doubts about it, saying we must find other means of winning
this war.
The next debate is quantity versus quality. Incidentally there is no debate in India about
miscellanea aircraft. We believe that everything is needed, if you are going to be prepared
for the full spectrum, manned, unmanned the whole works. But the debate centers on
quantity and quality, so many of our political leaders will say our air force' stand has come
down considerably, the numbers accordance today are far less than they were a few years
back, and they said, but listen, we have those fancy airplanes which can do this, this and
this, so why do you need so many? The truth is, and we were given the example of the
B-52 here yesterday, what a B-52 can do a whole squadron of fighters may not be able to
do and you can do it with great accuracy, that is true; but if the B-52 has a tire burst or one
tire change, the whole squadron is grounded, just remember that, and much of it. Their
numbers have it all to play, quality by itself will never do.
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I also believe that when I came here just after the Second Lebanon War, I had discussions
with the Israeli Air Force people and there was no air opposition in Lebanon and yet they
were short of aircraft because aircrafts are eating up hours and then going for inspections
and all sorts of things happen, so actually I do believe that when we talk of quantity versus
quality we need to be a little careful.
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Concluding Panel
Gen (Ret.) Chuck F. Wald, former deputy commander, US European Command
Speaking about jointness and knowing other people's services and having respect for that
and knowing how to do the joint combat with combined arms, I wish to say just as a
comment that I was in a joint job. All the Air Force generals get a joint job eventually in
some way shape or form, I guess for probably six or seven years, maybe eight, and I never
had an aide who was an Air Force aide or an executive who was an Air Force exec, because
I knew about the Air Force, I did not need an air force guy there, I needed an Army guy,
that is what I pick normally because I do not know about the Army, but I was going to be
in charge of Army things. We should think about things in those respects.
General Moseley mentioned this specifically but everybody in here alluded to it: you have
got to be ready for anything. I cannot remember who it was who asked earlier: have you
ever been cut short or been surprised about anything? And as General Moseley said "I do
not think we have ever predicted it right". I could not agree more: we try hard, we just do
not get it right, so in America one of the favorite things that people like to ask each other is
where were you on 9/11. That is a common thing to ask, just because we are preoccupied a
little bit in America with that event. But on 9/11 I was in the Pentagon with Chief Moseley
and I was briefing him on our changeover: he was going to replace me and Chief Moseley
was waiting to be confirmed by Congress, which is a kind of idiosyncrasy we have in
America; you have to go through this harassment and you cannot presume Congress so
you never want to go anyplace until you are confirmed.
So Buzz [Moseley] being the good officer that he is said: come up to the Pentagon, and it
was imminent that he was going to get confirmed. I just brought a team up to the Pentagon
to brief General Moseley on what was happening in the Middle East area we are responsible
for; it was a good meeting. About 9 o'clock somebody yelled from the outer office, 'hey, an
airplane just hit the World Trade Center', while the Chief and I are sitting there wondering
who could be that stupid to accidentally fly into the World Trade Center, it is clear as a bell
out there. Then, a few minutes later, the second one hit, well, it became pretty apparent
then the building got hit, which we did not know and did not even feel it, but we left the
Pentagon, went out in front of the Pentagon, what they call the River entrance on the grass,
looking up at the Pentagon kind of burning and we were astonished. I mean, what the heck
is this all about. So it became pretty apparent that we had to do something.
A week before that I was in Pakistan and the US lifted sanctions off the Pakistani for the
detonation of a nuclear weapon, and while we had sanctions on Pakistan we could not
travel to Pakistan as military people to have interface with the military there. But as soon
as they lifted the sanctions, I went to Pakistan for a visit, being the curious guy I am, I
wanted to meet the counterparts and I asked them if I could go to the Khyber Pass because
that is a historical place. They flew me up to Peshawar and we drove up to the Khyber
Pass. There the frontier corps gave us presentation, at the end of the briefing the Pakistani
colonel who was briefing me showed a chart and it had Attila the Hun, Alexander the
Great, the Roman Empire the British Empire, Russia and all the historical dates, and the
message was: you do not ever want to fight here. So I got it. Seven days later we are in the
Pentagon. That afternoon I left for the Air Force Base and two days later I was in Princeton
town air base and we were fighting Afghanistan.
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I tell you right now, I had never ever dreamt or thought anything about Pakistan or
Afghanistan. The CIA had but we had not, so there was no preparation. We prepared the
plan fairly fast; it was briefed in what they call The Tank. General Franks was roundly
criticized at that time for such a simplistic plan that he had briefed to the other chiefs and
then went and briefed President Bush who said it was a good thing, so all of a sudden it
was a brilliant plan and that was on September 13th two days later. On September 23rd
General Franks briefed President Bush we were ready to go into Afghanistan; that is some
12 days after 9/11, in a place that we never ever thought we would go to.
Maybe we would have done better if we had a little longer to plan, but we had to go, and
then by October 7th we went in after the ultimatum. The reason I tell you that is we were
not prepared, we were caught short a little bit, but I think the plan was pretty good. On
October 7th the first bombs were dropped, on October 5th the first airplanes took off,
and we talked about this yesterday, it was a B-2, a 44 hour mission. There were a couple
of those and the reason I tell you that is that you never know where you are going to go
and you better have the capabilities across the spectrum to respond to the threat, so for
anybody in here that thinks anybody can do anything alone, you are wrong.
I was the support commander and airman, if Buzz would have been there he would
have been the support commander, in fact he came over and replaced me later and ran
Afghanistan and Iraq. But I was support commander, the Navy guy named Wilmore was a
commander in the Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf for the US Naval Forces, he chopped
the Navy forces to me. I was an Air Force guy, the Army did not have any forces in there at
that time, so there was no chopping going on, the Marines had some aircraft they chopped
over along with the carrier, and the Special Ops guy named Del Daley who is a J-SAR
commander chopped all the Special Ops guys to an Airman - that says a lot. That was a big
lesson. Then Buzz came over and did the dirty work and I appreciate it and he did a great
job both there and in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the US Air Force and Military I think that the great asymmetry we have - we have a lot
of asymmetry frankly – like space we talked about, but the real large one is ISR, especially
the Intelligence part of it, but surveillance and reconnaissance is the big asymmetry that
western forces (in which I would include Israel) have today. But it is perishable.
The US Military and Government are looking at how to replenish space; we talked about
operational or ready space yesterday, which is a euphemism for if you lose a satellite how
do you replenish it. I will tell you that there are some capabilities in space which are very
thin, very important and very vulnerable, and you never know when you are going to
drop out of the sky for some unknown reason. Now generally speaking satellites stay up
there longer than we predict but there are some of those capabilities that you only have on
because of necessity. It is pretty scary when you think you are depending on that. So very
vulnerable but very good high ground and very expensive and I am glad Israel is looking
at increasing their space capability, but the US military is looking at augmenting existing
space capabilities with more air breathing because of the fact that we know it is vulnerable
and it is going to grow and I think that is going to be the next big game: how do you
contend with the fact that people are going to go out there and try to take away some of that
asymmetry and make you vulnerable, particularly in the early stages of a conflict.
We talked about unmanned vehicles that are a game changer, it is a big deal. I do not know
an Air Force guy who does not really love UAVs. Like somebody said earlier, you get 10
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000 sorties and 10 000 UAVs or maybe 20 000 but you just cannot get enough. The CNO,
the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead told me the other day, the thing
he wants more than anything in the Navy right now is an unmanned submarine that has
a battery that will last three weeks, which is pretty interesting. I will not tell you why he
wants that, I am just telling you it is an interesting capacity.
Data collection, again, you look at the asymmetries we have in the irregular warfare, we
have a lot of vulnerabilities but the asymmetry is the fact that we can collect more data
than you will ever be able to use in a way, and we have got to start being able to not just
collect it but analyze it in a good way. I think it was when General Moseley was there
or maybe just after, the US Air Force was hiring 2500 new analysts because last year in
Afghanistan the UAVs collected 24 years' worth of information, 24 years! A lot of that
information if you really get to it and put the dots together would probably give you a key
to where a lot of stuff is and you take a look at what your threat is here in Israel, with the
45 000 rockets in Lebanon, you are not going to find all 45 000 but you want to have a
pretty good data base so Uzi Rubin and Dan Peretz who talk about accurate artillery can
pop those coordinates in on day one and start those away; that is important. Analysis and
data fusion will be critical.
We talked about spectrum yesterday but I cannot tell you enough about it, this whole thing
about the low-end of the spectrum. Sophistication exists along the full spectrum, and we
have to be ready for that and so do not overshoot, do not overshoot for the low-end too
much, you have got to use a lot of high-end systems to get to the low-end but sophistication
is really significant. Now as to the lethality of the low-end, our biggest concern was in
Europe and I think in the US the consensus is [it is] the biggest threat to the US today.
There is some nut out there that gets hold of a weapon of mass destruction of some sort,
whether it be a radiological weapon or whatever, and that is not even close to beyond belief
and I know you live with that every day. But the high spectrum can help with that detection
I think. We talked about affordability yesterday and you live with this, the US is blessed
as we are, but the defense budget is really starting to feel the crunch, I mean talk to Steve
O'Bryan about JSF and the pressure the JSF is under for costing. I was told the other day
that the US debt, by the way the biggest strategic threat to the US today is the economy
which most people will agree with. The interest on our debt by 2012 will be as our defense
budget. In two years we are going to have 750 billion to one trillion dollar interest on debt
loan. So that is a bad thing. More importantly it is going to put a crunch on defense, so I
think we are really going to have to be careful there.
Whatever the predominance of the battle is, if it is air predominance you need an air guy, if
it is navy predominance you need a navy guy. If it is air predominance, you need an army
guy or ground or marine, I do not care. That is the way it has got to be, so just think about
that. The cyber issue is massive, it is unbelievable, we know about it, let me just tell you
this: I wish I knew more about it; I have studied it, I have read it, it is still way abstract
to me and we need to have people who really understand that working hard to explain to
commanders what that really means and that is a big deal for all of us.
We need to continue going after new technology. I would contend that the United States
and Israel the two best high-tech countries in the world for innovation and creativity and
that sets us apart. It really does, and we need to continue down that path because this
old Moore's law about being ahead of people technologically makes a big difference in
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deterrence and capability. We should not ever default to the dumb end of the spectrum.
General Moseley did not say it like that but hey, listen; we have got some big stuff to watch
for.
I think the real biggest threat in the world today besides that crazy guy out there with the
WMD or the economy is Iran. Iran is a threat today and that is going to be a high-end
threat. It is going to be an air threat from the stand point of who is going to attack, if we
had airmen running it, this issue about containing Iran with a nuclear weapon is total folly,
there is no way to contain like we did with Russia. I know you are thinking about it, we
think about it, it has got to be serious. I think the jury is out; most people think the US will
not support an attack on Iran, I think that is probably pretty close, but I am not sure. I am
not here to talk to the President of the United States, I am just saying that I think that Iran
is probably going to end up with a weapon and your world is going to change out here for
all of us and then we need to really start thinking about it.
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Concluding Panel - Discussion
Air Marshal Shepherd: Air power can win battles, it can win many elements of the war but
it will not bring a war to cessation, I reckon.
General Moseley: I think the question is interesting, especially the way you phrased it
because normally it is asked by an Army or Navy officer. Well, can air power win a war?
As opposed to being asked by a prime minister or president, it is a combination of the
elements of air land and sea that win wars. Can an army win a war on its own in the
modern age? No. Can a navy win a war by itself in the modern age? No. The same goes for
an air force. So it is a combination of the attributes and the capabilities that make this the
truly powerful tool and a joint success.
Moderator: Some people say that Kosovo for instance was won by air power, do you think
so?
General Moseley: Let me say this, I believe your Six Day War was won by air power, I
believe the game was over by lunch that first day and for the next five and a half days it
was a discussion of termination and surrender conditions, your Army would disagree with
that but I believe in a strategic sense the game was over by lunch. Was Kosovo that way?
Sure it was that way. But those are elements of isolation as opposed to a bigger question of
should an Army believe it can conduct a war on its own or a Navy or an Air Force.
Air Chief Marshal Tyagi: Largely I agree with what General Moseley has said but actually
we should have said when we talk a full-spectrum of war, from sub-conventional to
conventional, the wars are wars, but they are a different kind of wars, then again how will
we define victory?
Truly, some wars can be won only by the Army. They need not necessarily have air power
with them. A lot would depend on the circumstances, a lot would depend on how people
consider that they have won because you know it is defined in many ways; it is not a
football match - only if you are one goal ahead you are victorious. So I would like to
believe that in a general sense what General Moseley has said is correct, but there will be
special circumstances where it might be possible for a single service, not necessarily air
power, it could be the Army, it could be the Navy, to achieve the defined success in war.
Moderator: But if I would ask you for a yes or no answer, can an air force win a war what
would you say?
Air Marshal Tyagi: No.
General Moseley: It is a loaded question and since it is an unfair question I will push back.
We should not be apologetic for being airmen. We should never be apologetic for being
proponents of air power and what that does for our country. So the notion of saying can
an airman win a war is a bit insulting, in isolation from the same question being asked a
soldier or a sailor.
Moderator: No, it was not done on a personal basis.
General Moseley: You never try to take anything personally even though it is meant that
way.
General Wald: Yeah, it is a loaded question; well, I do not think you should treat anything
as an absolute, I think it’s a mistake. We talked about it earlier, so, things are more
complicated than yes/no answers. They are more complicated than "can you or not" and
I would go back to Iran again. I mean, somebody else is going to decide this, but if I was
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deciding on Iran, it would be an air power, go for it in Iran, the navy would be right there,
big time with us. Maybe a navy guy would lead it, I do not know, there would probably be
some special ops guys in there in certain places, there would be a lot of cyber going on.
There would be a lot of interesting targeting and then the question is, is that a win if you
put the Iranians back 3 to 4 or 5 years, and is that winning a war? I would consider it a
success but it does not win a war.
Major General Budinger: Some people would say that it does.
General Wald: Ok, then the answer might be yes, but on the other hand there will be other
people in there.
Major General Budinger: Do you think it is possible, by the way, to put away?
General Wald: Yes I do. And I am one of the very few. I think Israel should stay out of it, I
think the US should go in with the Navy and the Air Force and I think we would kick their
ass. I think it would put them back 3 to 5 years then that is good enough for me.
Moderator: Thank you very much. Strangely they agree with you. Air Marshal Shepherd: In your preamble to the question you mentioned hearts and minds
and then you jumped straight to the question about collateral damage - it is not the same.
The absence of collateral damage does not by itself win hearts and minds. Now I think
it was you who yesterday said about Cast Lead, why the Israeli Air Force did not deliver
by helicopter any humanitarian aid to some of the people in Gaza and so you use the
soft power of air force. We have not mentioned the soft power of air forces or air power
here at all and understandably so in the situation you are in, I would say in the Australian
experience of the last 20 years we have probably won more credit with our neighbors and
done more to win hearts and minds by using air force soft power, by rapidly providing
humanitarian aid in times of natural disasters, earthquakes, tsunami, etc., than by any of
the kinetic weapons we have expended over that time. So I think it is a mildly faceted part.
I can understand why you are focused on collateral damage here and I would defer to your
expertise in that area, clearly we have seen examples of technology where you can reduce
collateral damage to a very low level with intelligence and precision. I think hearts and
minds is more than just the absence of collateral damage.
Major General Budinger: But is it not exactly what general McChrystal did just now in
Afghanistan?
General Moseley: Which is a mistake. Spoken as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force because
dealing with hearts and minds is a bigger set of opportunities and activities than Shepherd
has talked about; but your question was one of strike. If you take the strike option off
the table or restrict the strike option then you play into the maneuvering opportunity and
the operational opportunities if your opponent in this business of counter-insurgency or
terrorism.
I agree with Shepherd about the hearts and minds, but let me take a bit of attack on precision
and on the distracting part. Joint activities have to be very careful and commanders have
to be very careful in tightening the rules of engagement down to the extent that you cannot
strike or that you are reluctant to strike. Because the one thing, from my experience, the
one thing in dealing with al Qaeda and Taliban and Iraqi insurgence is the one thing they
fear the most - the 500 pounder that comes through the roof in the middle of the night.
Because there is nothing they can do to defend against that, they do not fear land forces
going through communities because they can hide and they can escape, they do not fear
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navies because the navy cannot get to them; the one thing they fear the most which they
are absolutely impotent to do anything about is the precision strike through the location
that they are at - game over. So if you restrict the rules of engagement and begin to take
that option away from the joint commanders you actually play into the strengths of your
opponents,
Moderator: And what about the close support? Close air support in the context of counterinsurgency.
General Moseley: Sure, absolutely, but it is still a matter of precision,
Moderator: But this causes a lot of casualties.
General Moseley: It is a matter of precision and it is a matter of selecting the targets and
if there is a question of collateral damage against civilians then you withhold; normally,
depending on the nature of the target you may have to accept that collateral damage, but
the issue here is that you should not restrict the rules of engagement, do not restrict the
opportunity to strike because what these opponents fear the most is what they can do
nothing about,
Air Chief Marshal Tyagi: Sir, these absolute questions are extremely tricky to answer.
I just mentioned in my presentation that there is a big debate in India that they are your
people, but there are enemies of the state, now they could be holding your own passport
or they could be foreigners. The issue is that when you take a decision like that, there will
be times when you say I will accept the damage because the security of the state demands
that I take this action; there will be other occasions when you will say the political fallout
will not give us the kind of benefits that we are looking for, the long time implications are
worse than the short time, so I do not think military commanders should close their minds
and say yes, we will do it or no, we will not do it, because each situation will demand a
different response - I would like to believe so. There are occasions when in my system we
have let go the targets, but there are occasions when we have not done so because a lot
depends on who was there, how important it was to get him, etc. etc. I do not think I can
give you a very clear answer.
General Wald: These are really good questions. On the hearts and minds issue, I am pretty
contrary; I think we should have left Afghanistan way before we got into it in a big way, I
think we just should have blown away who we could have, maybe we should have tried al
Qaeda a little better, but I do not think our being out there is going to succeed at all from a
hearts and minds standpoint. I think just the contrary, I personally think part of the reason
we got in trouble in the Middle East out here is because we were here so long in a place
like Saudi Arabia. I am kind of individually out there on that one, but I do not believe we
are going to win the hearts and minds in Afghanistan one bit.
On the collateral issue you have got to be careful, I mean, in the heat of a battle I will
guarantee if you have got missiles, which you do in a big way, lobbying out of the Gaza,
you are not going to just sit there and take it and say I just cannot hurt somebody. You are
going to have to defend yourself, and one thing I would caution is, the two briefings on
the artillery being precise, if that is as precise as it is on that film, I would not be shooting
those babies into some house someplace. So you should have something that is a lot more
accurate than that.
Major General Budinger: It depends also on the intelligence officer who defines these
targets, he can make a mistake and the munitions can be very precise.
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General Wald: One thing I would add is that I wish I would have seen earlier is scenes from
the pictures of where the Hamas is embedded in Gaza schools. I think you ought to put
that on TV everywhere around the world, I mean, what do people expect if they are sitting
there? That is basically a human rights issue, it is a violation of the rules of engagement
law, and I would put that on the news every day around the world.
Air Chief Marshal Tyagi: The hearts and minds business is a very long one, you know you
do not end it one day, so whatever you are planning just remember the Irish problem, I
mean, how long did it take? How long has the Kashmir problem been going on in India,
how long is the insurgency going on in the North East [of India]? So I would like to believe
- and I believe - we are working very hard towards hearts and minds, it takes a generation
or more, so that is the other aspect that you need to keep in mind. Now each incident will
of course have an impact on it, but it is still a very long time.
General Moseley: There is another piece of this, I believe, that is incredibly important:
the media, in some cases in our own countries, have made war-fighting in the modern
world look so clean and so clinical and so precise that any deviation from that precision
is a failure of either the Army, the Navy or the Air Force, so what McChrystal has really
done is trying to dampen the effect through collateral damage that would negatively affect
his campaign; that was his decision, but the complicating case is the media showing the
Hezbollah or Hamas in the communities with damage done and the population believes
that warfare is other than what it is. Warfare is a savage, nasty, ugly activity and to make it
something that appears to be so clinical and so clean is a very dangerous notion in today's
world.
Moderator: The next question concerns the manned and unmanned flight vehicles. Do
you think that in the future, say 20 years from today, there will still be the normal, regular
manned aircraft or will it be mainly missiles and the new kind of missiles that are jumping
over the atmosphere or UAVs? The question is what are we going to see in 20 years from
now in the world and in Israel?
Air Marshal Shepherd: Well, if you can do that I am proud of you, I wish that we could do
that to Australia, but I do not think we would have the ability. Each country of course runs
its own higher strategic government interfaces processes in their own context, if that was
a war; as Colin Gray would say, it has to be looked at in the context of each country. You
have very different context in this country than we have in Australia.
General Moseley: My short answer is no, I believe an army or a navy or an air force has to
deal at any one time across the full spectrum of operations and across the full spectrum of
opportunities, and that includes programming decisions, that includes financing decisions,
thinking and educating young officers and it includes employment in combat. The danger
implied, the danger is a result of the question that you ask, that you isolate the air force
from the other two services relative to their normal mission task. If you take the Israeli Air
force out and say you only have a strategic role, go to your base and wait, then you take
the jointness completely out of the IDF relative to the team work between the Israeli Army,
Navy and Air Force.
Moderator: Why is the jointness so important when you do not work together?
General Moseley: I would suggest they do work together. I would suggest where there is
jointness It can always be improved, it can always be focused on exercises and after actions
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reports. I suggest it is there. The other danger is if you isolate the air force to a strategic
role only, you miss the opportunities in the rich discussion about what do we buy and what
do we field as a joint force relative to the mission task that the prime minister has given us.
One short example: in 1936-1937 the German Air Force was being forced into a tactical
role, in 1936 or 1937 they made a decision to stop the development of their four- engine
bomber and they did. I would suggest that at that moment they lost the Battle of Britain
because they allowed the British then in 1940 to provide sanctuary etc, etc. With that
program decision they lost the Battle of Britain which fundamentally changed the game,
so if you isolate the Israeli Air Force from the joint partners and you isolate them from the
full range, full spectrum of mission tasks, I think that is a very dangerous decision.
Air Chief Marshal Tyagi: I have this definition difficulty like Air Marshal Shepherd: what
is tactical and what is strategic? I am saying that an air power goes and hits a tank but in
the tank was that big commander of that army.
Moderator: But the big commander of the army does not go in the tank.
Air Chief Marshal Tyagi: Ok, but the commander of the army's son gets lost and then
surrenders. I do not know, I am saying it is very difficult to describe what is strategic and
what is tactical, it is only after the war that you realize what was tactical and what was
strategic. So that same air power, let us say your F-16 with the same bomb and the same
pilot, first goes and drops a bomb and the other bomb goes and drops over a strategic target
whatever that means, so what have we achieved, so the roles are both strategic and tactical.
Actually this debate itself is very academic, we normally distribute, at least in India, it
comes out of lack of trust - "the Air Force will not be there when we want them". I want my
own close support system. Actually it comes out of that, otherwise it is a useless debate.
I saw a television interview in Afghanistan of a young British Army officer - I think a
Lieutenant or Captain, who recommended that the RAF should be disbanded. Each soldier
wants an airplane on top, this debate is endless. But actually the most cost effective, which
includes the problem of jointness is to have two different types of air forces, then so be it.
But I do not think we will come to that conclusion.
Moderator: I am asking actually if there should be one type of air force.
Air Chief Marshal Tyagi: No, I am just suggesting this debate itself is normally brought
out because of lack of trust, at least in my system.
General Wald: I think it would be the biggest strategic error you can make in doing that
and for any of the aircraft and systems whether it be Navy, Air Force, Marines, no matter.
For example, we talked about the B-52 yesterday, I had never dreamt of using the B-52 for
close air support before Afghanistan, never dreamt about it, and never would have even
guessed it. It was a matter of necessity and again it was lucky because we are dropping
close to the Northern Alliance, we probably never would have gotten the Army to ever
agree to let us drop close to, in the initial part, now it is a proven weapon system. And
nobody would have ever thought of that. So you want to keep the flexibility of the F-16.
The F-16 we flew in the US Air Force, the block 50, we had a nuclear mission, we had
a suppression air-defense mission, we had a air- to- air mission, we had an air-to-ground
mission and air-control mission. We probably took the mail someplace too, I don’t know,
so you have got to keep it flexible across the board and I think absolutes again: the only
absolute I say is one should not get simplistic and make it one mission.
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Closing Remarks
Maj. Gen. (Ret.) David Ivry, Chairman, Fisher Institute
The participants have mentioned September 11th and it just so happened I was ambassador
to the US on that very day; I had been under the impression that I was going to Washington
to rest from suicide bombers and this was what I got. At that point the Americans as a
people were unprepared for terror and they were just dealt a blow by terror.
The first and foremost question is whether it is possible to reach military resolution in an
asymmetric war. In an all-out war resolution is usually possible; generally it would be
between air and ground forces, though this too is disputed. I agree with Gen. Moseley that
in this type of war all forces are mutually interdependent and Gen. Bodinger mentioned it
too; no single branch can reach resolution, while in general resolution was finally achieved
by ground forces with dominant air support; in some places the navy was not involved at
all in the resolution but the air force held dominance with support, as it enabled the land
forces to reach that resolution.
It can be defined in a formula: in asymmetric war it is quite impossible to get to a resolution
owing to numerous reasons I shall not get into just now, but if one cannot reach resolution
this holds a great impact on when the war will be stopped; consider what is happening in
Iraq and what happened to us in Lebanon.
So if one cannot reach resolution, one of the difficult questions is when do you stop it,
every point in time holds advantages for either one side or the other, so you need to choose
the time in which your advantages are most prominent.
The 'when' is a very difficult question. Usually the military tend to continue with the
operations while the political echelon is not always sure it knows what the military results
will be. Take the Second Lebanon War for example: the military started the war, there was
full political support, everybody, including the Arab countries as I would hazard saying,
supported our attack in 2006. The political echelon was on the receiving end of some
excellent political reaction from Europe and the US. The IAF attacked first, operated for
three-four days, achieved its targets in a marvelous way – Dakhia, air blockade, the assault
on the airfield, the Fajers, there were exceptional results; but from then on the question
arose if the IAF had enough targets at all, so even though the air force operated well and
efficiently, the military issue started to diminish in significance, whilst on the political side
– since the stronger was about to win, and the democratic world does not like the strong
very much - support started to dwindle and then the Kfar Cana happens and everything
went down the drain.
What is the question we need to ask ourselves: when to stop, is it worthwhile attacking
twenty more bunkers or demolish another two bridges, will it change the results of the
war? We need to reappraise if the war serves out political objectives, the end target is to
make peace with Lebanon eventually, the Hezbollah is trivial; so, should we continue
destroying houses and bridges? That is why the question of time is crucial. The issue of
the development of asymmetric war had not been properly prepared, so when is the point
at which I start losing from the political point of view? If I start losing, I should consider
whether I have a chance to improve my situation or not, and if I see that the situation is
deteriorating I should immediately put an end [to the fighting].
The formula is simple and normally you have some four-five days to operate; usually it is
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mainly air, special ground forces and possibly artillery support and some other units, there
is no need to do it in the air alone. But the question coming up in the asymmetric war is
when you should stop, because there is no resolution. Since these questions are not asked
time and time again before the start [of operations] you do not decide how to bring it to
this point when you make the right decision.
The second thing is that in an asymmetric war the two sides have different goals; we go to
war in order to gain military achievements and a military victory without resolution – there
are those who call it winning by points and others who call it partial resolution. But there
is no such thing as a partial resolution since resolution is final in itself. We want to secure a
military achievement which might have political ramifications. The enemy actually fights
for public opinion, which is why as far as he in concerned the more you attack him, the
better he secures his achievement.
Take for example a scenario in which two teams go to play on a basketball court, we play
according to the rules, we stick to international norms, if I do something I immediately get
a reprimand from the UN or somebody else, while the enemy plays hide and seek on the
court since his purpose is to disappear and if he is not found, then he wins. I exaggerated
intentionally in order to give you some clue to understand this state of affairs: I actually
fight for one thing and he for another. When he places those children on the roof of a
building in an urban environment after we had expressly warned them two days in advance
that they should leave or else we attack, the enemy is intentionally taking all the children
and leaves them on the roofs of those buildings about to be attacked. His objective is to
show pictures of children and he will bring television networks there to film and broadcast;
it is an altogether different war for different objectives and we try all the time to connect
between them, which is a mistake: we need to understand what his goals are and try to
allow him as few achievement as possible, seeing that he is fighting for public opinion.
What does it mean? Not a great deal of military activity, a very strong blow which is
legitimate at that time – I think the Dakhia operation [against Hezbollah] was excellent,
the demolition of Fajers was excellent, and the blockades on Lebanon – excellent too,
three days were excellent. From this point onward, from a military standpoint you either
get used to it or it begins to deteriorate, and then you start losing politically. In general,
the strong side is not popular in the democratic world even though we are a democracy. I
think that this principle can be applied to Lebanon and the war in Iraq. The first part of the
war in Iraq was not asymmetric but a war between armies even though this is asymmetry
considering it is a superpower fighting Iraq – but in this case, there was a real military
resolution in the first part. In the second part the US entered into a war against guerilla and
terror: there was no resolution nor can there be one.
The issue of Kfar Cana is quite poignant to us as a small country. We are never forgiven
if we hit a house full of children, nothing will help us even though we can bring up some
twenty justifications from any angle. Others can get away with more, so in this perception
of the asymmetric war we are much more limited and we must take it into account at a
much earlier stager, since every military operation eventually has its mishaps.
Someone referred to a strategic entity – the air force has always been a strategic entity
and it does not matter if it has strategic power or not. The Six Days War was a strategic
operation for all intents and purposes, and so was 1982 – all operations are strategic
entities; I make this remark to Segoli. Sometimes even two artillery sets are a strategic
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entity. When two shells were fired during Operation Invey Za'am [Grapes of Wrath] at
Kfar Cana they turned into a strategic entity. Two misguided shells killed 100 people and
we strategically ended the operation. There is no such thing as a strategic entity; there is a
strategic operation, a strategic mission, strategic activity.
The question if airpower can achieve resolution in the campaign all by itself has come up
in the discussion. I agree with what was said in the panel: no single service or branch of the
military can achieve resolution. What the air force can do is undertake intensive punitive
operations, pure airpower; the American Air Force attack on Libya yielded a very good
achievement, a punitive action carried out by airpower alone. The same goes for the raid
on the Iraqi reactor in 1981, there are other such missions you can do but this is not a war,
this is a punitive action that can be executed by airpower alone, for all the rest including
war on terror you need to have the land forces and you cannot do it by yourself.
Is it justified to continue preserving the air force as a separate branch or not? I shall bring
up two points. One is the issue of technology: in my opinion the only branch that can
really promote technological advance which is later implemented in other places is the air
branch. The orientation is such and the capability is such, together with the demand they
foster in the market – in fact the promotion of almost all military technologies starts in the
air force. True, it develops capabilities which can help land warfare, it is also true that later
one must help with the implementation of part of the technologies like UAVs and others,
to favor the land forces, but firstly the point is that should the developments of weaponry
be given over to the land forces it will not develop in the air.
The second point: some missions are purely air force missions – air supremacy, the defense
of the country's skies, these cannot be carried out by another branch. There may be those
who claim that the rescue of casualties could be effected by the land forces' helicopters,
but there are some missions which are absolutely air missions that none else will do, and
if they are not a priority of that supreme arm they will not be properly performed. That is
why in my opinion there is no room at all for this idea of again separating or reconnecting
the air branch today.
As to the strategic arm I agree with Bodinger and all those who referred to it. This might
be a strategic mistake, simply a strategic mistake, to split it because today in Gaza you take
a F15I and do with it what another full squadron can do, and why should I refrain from
letting him do it? A small country cannot indulge itself in such separation. Of course the
USSR had an Air Defense Command where they separated the tactical from the strategic.
It can be done in a military whose resources while not unlimited – everyone needs more
than was budgeted – are such that it can afford the allocations needed. For us versatility
is the main thing, not just in the type of plane but in its assignments, and every pilot has
to know [how to execute] so many missions, so many times over than in another air force
because one day he has to fight terror and the next day he has to do strategy and on the day
after it is air combats, this is the advantage of a small force and also its downside, still this
has to be done.
As to UAVs vs. manned aircraft, I agree with what has been said here, we are at a stage where
the equilibrium is changing, that is, there are more operations for UAVs at the detriment of
some of the fighter planes. In general they are complementary as Ido Nechushtan said [Maj.
Gen. Nechushatan is the commander of the IAF] but in some they replace them because
you can now assign many more photography missions to the UAVs. But I should add that
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no matter how versatile UAVs are or how numerous their capabilities, they will take some
more of the missions but they will not replace fighter planes altogether. Let us see how
the versatile plane, the fighter-bomber, developed over time. In the beginning it was a gun
and a two-engine plane which went up the air in order to see what was happening behind
enemy lines. One plane shot at the other, then with machinegun and they advanced to
rockets, bombs, radar, air-to-air missiles, laser, all those things, you add something every
time, a camera, leaflets to be diffused, the main idea being that you have the possibility to
develop and assemble on it many things including a ballistic missile or UAV and give it
more range and make it go further. This is an advantage of the fighter plane and it will be
difficult to solve or promote it in such a way so that from the budgetary point of view you
replace one with another and I am saying this is a budgetary concern because at all times
you consider what you have at your disposal, what training should be dropped and what
should I take as replacement, does it make a contribution or not, so I completely agree with
what was said here. Still, it is true that the balance is changing on favor of the UAVs while
the manned plane still has its own missions, rescue, transport – the UAVs are still a long
way off finding the solutions for doing all these jobs.
As to the issue of the risk of operating the air force because of the complexity of computing
and teleprocessing, Dror Ben David brought it up and I tell you one of the things that
worry me the most is this: the system is getting so very complex that it is becoming almost
impotent when the mouse is down so there are no more missions and no presentations,
nothing at all; you always call for the technician, you need him to fix it urgently because
this is the thing that may have to be operated that very second, it is that crucial; these
are small technical things but my problem is that someone might get in here and into the
system that sees all the region and four planes which radio all, everyone sees this, I give
them more information which is not correct at all about those things that should not be
done. These things may look very nice but I think they should be checked much more
cautiously because we may not even understand how this could turn into an Achilles heel
– we might not be able to operate force in this constellation, so I do not say that we should
not go on – I only say let us advance with proper control, with those rules and regulations
whereby you can separate yourself and do the necessary things, even when computers do
not operate as they should. It would seem that reality speaks for itself: on the one hand they
make JSF on the other hand they upgrade the A10 with its wing even though years ago
they said it will go out of service, not just on account of the computerization - it is because
the A10 is much cheaper for doing some of the things and it is much simpler to preserve
some place with no one even knowing, than put there a JSF or F-17 or B-2 - so what you
see is that suddenly the practice is creating several alternatives which try to amend these
things because we may be going too far and simple things have to be solved as well.
As to the issue of active defense vis-à-vis offensive, it was said here that offense is the
best defense; I agree with this outlook but I should tell you that if there is no defense
there cannot be any offense. Let us take the Six Day War for example: our first attack
was directed at the bombers and fighter planes base – we eliminated them, neutralized
all the offensive capability of the Egyptians in the very first flyover during the first hour.
What did we do? We took out the offensive capability because they were not ready with
a good enough defense: if you do not have the minimal active defense that enables you to
protect your offensive, the war is lost. Ben Gurion knew that, he said we should transfer
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the war to the other side of the border as soon as possible and he was right, but he also
said: you should have territorial defense so that you are able to put up a holding defense
of a primary invasion until I have called up the reserves, they will take the war to enemy
territory. In other words he said, I have time for defense and he was the first to buy fighter
planes, that is, there are Dakotas I cannot defend, they are carrying out the offensive - he
did not buy bombers first, he did not buy them and did not put them on interception alert
– he bought fighter planes and we loaded them with bombs for attack. The significance
of these things is that I need the most versatile tools I can have, thus the fighter plane was
so attractive, and all the time you changed it and fine-tuned it for your needs, offensive or
defensive. What we need now is to look for the versatile weapon of the future which to
me is the laser; it can work for both defense and offense and some things have been said
about it, but this is the direction to take; you will be able to put it on a transport plane as
well as on a fighter plane and on the ground as well, it has the speed of light, munitions
that need no maintenance. For the maintenance of munitions one needs to defend Kipat
Barzel (Iron Copula) against some 45,000 missiles in the north – just the maintenance and
the refreshing and the logistics – pose quite a problem. Therefore the formula should be
this and this is what we had in the past, we had the best fighter aircraft, by the thrust-weight
proportion and we got the F-15 and F-16 from the Americans, thanks to everyone, it was
just great but on top of it we had the Hawk, next to Dimona, in Abu Rhudeis, Ras Sudar.
In these places there was no point to prepare interception planes and bring them over –
they gave us gap-closing capability. What does the formula say? – maximum versatile
force, minimum assigned force, single-assignment, the surface-to-air missile is singleassignment only, it cannot go on the offensive. The same goes for missilery as well as for
Iron Copula, a complementary force but not the central one, the versatile should be the
central one, as this is also the one you will be able to improve, put more things on it and
do things you need done beyond the missions, like throwing leaflets. There are so many
options here that today even we do not understand what can be done.
The RCS as a long-term solution – I think it is a provisional solution, there is no single
RCS, and I shall give the example of the F-117 in the First Gulf War in 1991. At the end
they did not fly in daytime, one was hit during the day because the RCS had worked
only at night; the eyes, the electro-optics did their part, that is, are you going to RCS a
plane that does not work daytime? If so what you did is take half of your order of battle
out of commission: is it worthwhile to operate it in daytime or not? Maybe it is more
expensive? In in my opinion the F-22 is an excellent concept because the enemy cannot
come to air combat with much different radar systems, since it has those limited radars it
can carry on the plane and then the F-22 is really a stealth plane for air combat. When you
go to the ground I can put a radar in a half kilometer area and I shall also display a very
low signal, I exaggerate intentionally because there are other channels today and other
domains that detect all stealth aircraft, so stealth is a temporary thing – it also does not
cover everything.
The issue of 5th generation in avionics is very much in place – it has a new conception
but it has nothing to do with stealth, it refers to every plane that you can place, so the
question that comes up is how much I should invest in stealth, which is a very difficult
question; could a formula of 70% stealth and 20% active EW where you need it only in the
very short range and it has to be weak, very well tuned, responding only to those threats
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which are relevant to you; perhaps there is a better formula but I am not offering one at
this moment. This is not an ideal formula as I see it but it is an excellent solution when
you have it with the avionics, but in my opinion this is not exactly the right concept. What
happened with the F-117 is that it went out, B-2 came out with 20 pieces in all, the F-22
only 178 or 190 out of 700 they had wanted, so that reality is stronger, for all our efforts to
think and plan: all of a sudden the A-10 comes back to the order of battle.
Itay Brun talked of Hezbollah, which is one of the things we have to be aware of. Hezbollah
says that airpower is the formula changer and it is looking for a solution to the air issue.
It was said here that it is possible that the rockets are the weapons seen as attacking the
airfields and that this will neutralize the air force so we need to pay much attention to
the way we protect airfields from those rockets. The second thing we shall hear from
the enemy is ' Look, I, the provoking side am dictating the rules of warfare to the strong
side; I made a mistake and kidnapped the soldiers, I did not think they would respond the
way they did, that is, I challenged them harder than I thought I wanted to'. What does the
provocateur do? It challenges the strong side up to the point at which it cannot operate
its massive power. Let us think for example about nuclear deterrence; the US will not go
nuclear in Iraq, though is has nuclear deterrence but all this nuclear deterrence is worth
nothing in the Iraq war – though it is not worthless in the larger frame of things, yet it is
irrelevant in this specific war. What is the provoking side, the terrorists, attempting to
achieve? They wish to dictate your moves because although you are the strong party you
cannot operate your power against them. The enemy made a mistake with that kidnapping
and we responded with Dakhia.
They try to get you to a situation in which you cannot employ your power: you cannot
bring over a tank in order to, say, stop people in the passes, because immediately it will be
in a photograph, did-you-or-did-you-not kill a child. Your power and capabilities cannot
be expressed in those terror-ridden, asymmetric wars, so there is a problem here and it is
not a simple one. This is what I wanted to underline, that we need to be thinking about it,
and this is what I learnt from Brun.
I think that it is true one should always consider war in its entirety, not just a specific
campaign: one should always add the perspective of our political objectives; we need to
respond to the political objectives of the state of Israel as a whole, the objectives defined
by the political echelon and not just reach a resolution in a military operation. At times we
get a resolution in the military operation and spoil all the diplomatic process because of
two shells in Cana.
Boaz Ganor said when speaking about the war on terror, let us call it a multi-dimensional
or multi-task war, but all wars are such; I do not know why we should call which war a
war on terror – is the all-out war not a war on terror and the asymmetric war not a war on
terror? All of them are multi-dimensional and multi-tasking, so it is not term I can use. I
am not sure that asymmetric war is the only appropriate name, but Ganor's is definitely not
the appropriate one.
Turning to the discussion of the panel, the planning and structure of forces, I have already
emphasized we must think of versatile tools for the future, the replacement of the fighter
plane, and it is possible that with time it will not have the same component or critical mass
it has today and we have to find this thing. The second point is about the old method of
planning and structuring forces by which we define first the threats, prepare for responding
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to the gaps and if there is a gap between my capabilities in an all-out war I build up my
forces, I complete them; this is roughly the formula and then we leave the asymmetric war
on the side and do not provide any responses for it, and when we get to the asymmetric
war we try to improvise a response for this threat with the force we built up for the all-out
war. This is very difficult and many times we improvise or get support from other places;
I think that in this instance the method should accept some change in the planning and
structuring of forces.
Hezbollah has been defined here as an enemy whilst Lebanon is optional – according to
the situation. Look, our objective is to make peace with Lebanon, not war, therefore it is
a partner in many aspects so I need to consider what I am doing and vis-à-vis Lebanon
things are just different and I think it is more of a political objective than a military one.
Ben David talked of central control, and I think he came up with many important points
which are quite correct, his motto about decentralizing central control and giving it over to
authorities around so as to make you more efficient in operating force, seems very logical.
So what is the problem? it is that you then cut-off the political echelon as well as political
considerations from the system of decision-making; the more we get involved with
asymmetric wars, the stronger the political consideration for operating force will grow
so you cannot decentralize those things, therefore especially here the method of central
control is actually saying: it is not that you decentralize authority but you can take it back
at any stage and this is the correct rule of central control, not only decentralization as you
said or centralization alone. No, not one single entity will rule – you need to decentralize
them, keeping all the time your capability to take control back.
So, do we know to correctly change the structure of forces in time, with the right
equilibrium, because all of us, in my opinion, see things alike? Perhaps a representative of
industry would put it in an extreme way but we all know which way goes the trend. The
real problem with these decisions is that if I can afford to do it budget-wise - and you must
realize that changing, taking out one force and bringing in another costs a lot of money - I
consider how to correctly balance the budgets and capabilities and try to slowly go in the
direction I deem as the most fitting for today; that is why I cannot decide today that I am
taking out all fighter planes, replacing all of them with UAVs – you go through processes
of change according to the capabilities and budgets you have to keep to. The question is
if we make those balances and changes at the right pace or the right direction. This is the
question we need to ask ourselves all the time since we are the ones making those balances
and at the end war is becoming more complex, more elements dictate what is possible and
what cannot be done in the military; it is more difficult to define the targets of a mission.
To my mind it is more difficult to satisfy the wishes and expectations of others when you
go to war and you cannot fulfill them, nevertheless we must give these answers because we
perceive it as airpower. The main conclusion is that it is easier to say what has to be done,
what they have to do, what they have to do by themselves, this is the easiest. That is, it is
easy to say what we wish to do – how to do it is harder.
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The Sixth Annual National Security Conference: Air Power and the Challenges of Israel May 10-11, 2010
The Fisher Institute For
Air & Space Strategic Studies (cc)
The Sixth Annual National Security Conference:
Air Power and the
Challenges of Israel
May 10-11, 2010
Publication No. 46
August 2011