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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel rolls out new wartime plan to reform armed forces |
| 2020-02-19 |
| [DEFENSENEWS] Israel has announced a new multiyear plan to restructure its armed forces to face existing and potential future adversaries for decades. The plan, called "Tnufa" in Hebrew and "Momentum" in English, has been a priority for Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of the General Staff, over the last year. The plan envisions fighting a multi-front war and harnessing the latest technologies to bring the most effective firepower from the largest number of different units to the forefront of the battlefield. Momentum also seeks to shorten the time of a conflict while achieving more success on the battlefield and lessening the impact of war on civilians. Forces will be streamlined with the goal of a "swift and massive use of force against enemy systems," the IDF said during a briefing about the plan. The Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University had noted in the summer of 2019 that political upheaval in Israel may "delay and limit the plan’s launch." The country currently lacks a government after two elections failed to bring a majority for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. But concerns about the need to confront a complex Iranian adversary drove the plan through bureaucratic hurdles toward a January announcement that Defense Minister Naftali Bennett had approved it. It was officially rolled out in a briefing on Feb. 13. IDF front man Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the military built Momentum based on the last plan, called Gideon, which was announced in 2015. Having shrunk some land forces units and made them more efficient, the idea now is to address new challenges in the strategic and tactical environment. Israel wants to "extend drastically the gap in capabilities between us and our adversaries in the framework of available resources," the IDF said. The emphasis is on being "multidimensional" and "multi-force," combining all arms of the naval, land, air, cyber and intelligence forces. "We face various terror armies," Conricus said, including organizations that combine both holy warrior and holy warrior qualities, behaving like armies. This includes both Paleostinian-based Hamas, a regional Iranian catspaw, and Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... as well as Leb-based Hezbollah. The challenge in battling such organizations is that it’s difficult to determine who is a combatant because members assimilate into urban environments and civilian areas. |
| Posted by:Fred |