Avishai Levi

Israel Is Preparing For A Third Lebanon War

By Avishai Levi

Quietly, the Israel Defense Forces is preparing intensively for its main war scenario – a potential Third Lebanon War against Hezbollah.

The primary threat posed by Hezbollah is its mammoth rocket and missile arsenal, which includes long-range and precision weapons.

In the event of war, the Israeli Air Force together with the Israeli ground forces will have to deal with this grave threat to the home front.

In the opening phase of a war, the IDF will need to be able to launch air and ground strikes of various types to target Hezbollah’s long-range projectiles.

If necessary, the ground forces will, parallel to these strikes, have to move into Lebanon in order to reach launch zones and suppress fire against the Israeli home front.

The IAF has a strong ability to operate under fire, even with Hezbollah targeting its airbases. Israel possesses the most advanced air defense systems in the world.

These defense systems will defend the State of Israel, including critical civilian infrastructure, and they will also be able to defend themselves in the face of expected Hezbollah attempts to harm Israel’s air defense batteries.

The IDF has an entire combat doctrine for operating under this type of threat and is fully aware that it would be a major target of Hezbollah’s firepower in a future conflict.

Offensively, the IDF has built up a large database of different types of targets. This is the product of hard intelligence work, aimed at enabling the IDF to strike during the opening phase, as combat progresses, and through to the end of the war.

Israel must be able to target Hezbollah’s precision and statistical projectile launchers, as well as its array of unmanned aerial vehicles, themselves part of Hezbollah’s precision strike capabilities.

One of the IAF’s main objectives in such a scenario will be to shorten the length of the war. This can be done by targeting Hezbollah’s leadership, its command centers, and other pressure points, including targets belonging to the Lebanese state.

The IDF’s meticulous preparations include such operational planning.

The IAF is able to strike thousands of targets per 24 hours and knows the precise coordinates for its targets. All it needs to do is prioritize which targets to hit first, and those priorities will guide the IAF’s actions on the given days.

In addition, the IAF will be able to gather information on new emerging targets in real-time. Even without such new targets, the IDF has sufficient numbers of targets in its databases to operate effectively for weeks.

In addition, in such a scenario, the IDF must be able to deal with disruptive activities from Syria, such as electronic warfare incidents. While the IDF has an interest in isolating the Lebanese arena during a future war, it must also be prepared for scenarios such as Syrian and Russian interference operations, though these are unlikely to be kinetic.

During a war, Iran can be expected to attempt to resupply Hezbollah with weapons through cross-border smuggling from Syria to Lebanon. This means that the IDF must be able to detect and interrupt these resupply efforts, just as it does during routine times in its campaign between the wars.

Russia’s presence in Syria cannot be discounted. Russia remains a major power with the ability to influence what Israel can and cannot do in the northern arenas.

This means that Israel will have to coordinate with Russia in the event of a war with Hezbollah in terms of communicating to it what Israel is doing, where and when, and to make it clear that this does not contradict Russia’s strategic interests. Doing so will minimize Russian interference operations.

If Israel reaches a situation during a war in Lebanon in which it must attack targets in Syria, such as in Damascus, Aleppo, or along the Syrian-Lebanese border, due to Iranian weapons supply efforts, its air platforms may face disruptive measures from Russia.

Israel will need to tread carefully in this kind of scenario.

A ground maneuver component in Lebanon will be critical to winning the war rapidly and effectively. This means being able to deceive the enemy and to land ground forces in ways that surprise it, while deploying forces to where they are needed.

The Lebanese state will also end up paying a price for being Hezbollah’s host. At the same time, the IDF will make every effort to avoid harming civilians.

Messaging the Lebanese population will be an important IDF goal, which will communicate to the Lebanese why they are being evacuated from Hezbollah-held areas, and explaining to them that Lebanese skies will be closed for a certain period of time.

The IDF will also communicate to the Lebanese people that Hezbollah is threatening Lebanon’s most critical infrastructure, and disrupting ordinary peoples’ daily lives.

As a result, communications will be a necessary part of the Israeli strategy, so that Hezbollah is held accountable for suffering caused to Lebanese civilians.

Communications with partners like the United States and United Kingdom will also be vital, and Israel is already preparing its Western friends for these scenarios

Israel’s current campaign between the wars, a shadow campaign to keep Iranian entrenchment out of Syria, contributes substantially to Israeli deterrence, and it is deterrence that may just be able to postpone a Third Lebanon War -- for the time being. 

Brigadier General Avishai Levi served for 30 years in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), a career that culminated as the Head of Intelligence and Reconnaissance for the IAF from 2007-2010. It was during his tenure that the Israeli Air Force successfully detonated the Syrian nuclear reactor. Read full bio here.

Preparations For A Possible Strike On Iran Leave IAF Better Prepared.

By Avishai Levi

The year 2022 has been designated as the year that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) prioritizes its readiness to deal with Iran and its nuclear program. This directive carries with it significant influences on the entire IAF.

At the organizational level, the IAF knows well how to direct itself and all of its internal units around a new order from headquarters.

Once the order is received to prepare long-range strike capabilities for Iran, a clear working plan is formulated and implemented. This means synchronizing the preparation efforts both internally and externally, with other branches of the military to ensure that this unusual directive results in new operational capabilities.

The ability to refocus around a new directive has existed in the IAF for many years, but when a new mission is defined, one that falls outside of the annual and multi-year working plan, this requires special new measures.

Creating new operational readiness against Iran obligates the IAF to make significant changes to its current working plan. This includes changes to operational capabilities, force build-up processes, weapons systems, ammunition, and intelligence – both within the IAF and in the wider Israeli intelligence community, which must be well synchronized with the IAF’s intelligence units.

Personnel resources and budgetary prioritization are all significantly affected by this directive.

All of these elements have to be oriented toward the mission of building a working plan that allows a suitable level of readiness within a given schedule.

Iran falls under the 1,000-mile mission range – a very long flight range that requires myriad steps in various domains. This means that the IAF has to stretch its abilities to the maximum in terms of intelligence, flights, the ability to deal with threats on the way, and weather forecasts – the length of the journey to Iran means that the weather can change by the time aircraft arrive at their destinations.

Intimate knowledge of Iran’s weather in all four seasons and the months and days of the year are factored into the hours that could ultimately be selected for the attack time.

Listening to Iranian television weather forecasts isn’t enough – being familiar with the weather conditions throughout the entire flight there and the duration of the activity is necessary. In addition, Iran is a big geographic country with varying weather conditions.

On the intelligence front, the entire intelligence community must be activated to ensure a good understanding of the relevant sites and threats, and the many changing conditions, including Iran’s air defense systems, and the nuclear sites themselves.

Such a mission means that aircraft will be operating on the edge of their fuel capacity – an observation that helps explain the complexity of the mission. The aircraft will always be on limited fuel supplies on such a mission.

Meanwhile, flight crews and their supporting arrays, including flight controllers, have to build a deep understanding and drill the potential scenarios and responses to them, including the ability to amend situations. All of this represents stretching the IAF to the limits of its capacity.

Deciding which munitions to take and knowing what their abilities and limitations are forms another critical part of the planning.

In addition, flying to such ranges is not a matter of being in the air for an hour – meaning that adversaries will have likely opportunities to detect the attack and prepare accordingly. This means that the IAF must not assume that it can conduct a surprise attack.

The question of whether one wave of aircraft or two will be used is a key factor. If the answer is more than one, the element of surprise would become irrelevant for any subsequent wave of aircraft.

Enemies that are prepared for attack form a much more complex challenge, compared to a successful surprise mission, such as the morning strike waves conducted by the IAF at the outset of the 1967 Six Day War on Egypt.

All of this means that the most meticulous planning and drilling are required, including the ability to adapt the plan during its design phase to reflect changes in enemy capabilities, and in Israel’s own capabilities, such as new weapons coming online.

The challenges are great.

In addition, the IAF’s directive of being ready for Iran also impacts its day-to-day grey zone campaign against Iranian entrenchment in the Middle East and its readiness against existing adversaries such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian terror factions in Gaza.

Building readiness for Iran inevitably creates a certain decrease in the depth of the readiness for other arenas that the IAF prepares for on an ongoing basis. However, it is fair to assume that when the IAF prepares for Iran, it does not prepare only for the Islamic Republic.

Modular, phased planning is designed to safeguard immediate readiness to defend Israel’s skies and to ensure they are not abandoned for a single minute.

In addition, preparing such capabilities – platforms, ammunition, intelligence-gathering, the most accurate weather forecasting, and maintenance – improve the IAF to a great extent.

Ongoing training and sharpening of dilemmas at the longest range mean that the IAF will be better for every kind of mission, and will further optimize its ability to find solutions to operational and intelligence questions.

The IAF’s core abilities in other arenas, be it in Gaza, Lebanon, or the gray zone campaign between the wars, are subsequently adapted and improved, and the IAF’s muscle memory gets stronger.

Hence, from the moment that the directive was received by the IAF, it began a process that improved its basic readiness significantly and improved its ongoing operations.

Ultimately, the complexity involved in planning for such a challenging long-range mission and synchronizing all of the required efforts is enormous, yet fully within the IAF's scope. The IAF will be planning the mission and drilling it, becoming better as a whole organization, while also not abandoning its continuous missions.

Brigadier General Avishai Levi served for 30 years in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), a career that culminated as the Head of Intelligence and Reconnaissance for the IAF from 2007-2010. It was during his tenure that the Israeli Air Force successfully detonated the Syrian nuclear reactor. Read full bio here.

THE SIX DAY WAR: ISRAEL'S AIR FORCE SEIZES THE ADVANTAGE

By Avishai Levi

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The Six Day War presents an exceptional case study of the Israeli Air Force’s ethos of military planning and preparation - something that resulted from the clear understanding that the country’s very existence rested - in no small part - upon the shoulders of its pilots, air crew and ground crews.

On land, tens of thousands of graves had been dug to be filled by the anticipated casualties of war. Our young nation felt like it was on the edge of the abyss, with powerful enemies rounding upon it in the form of several Arab militaries.

The sense throughout the defense establishment was that if Israel was to avoid what it perceived to be a looming second Holocaust, it must capitalize upon the first opportunity to push back the threats massing against it to the north and, much more forebodingly, to the south. Primary among those threats was the mighty Egyptian Air Force. 

A failure to preempt those dangers would have left us imperiled. 

It would rely upon intelligence gathering, doctrinal contrarianism, logistical daring, the exploitation of the mundane and communications discipline.

INTELLIGENCE

Israel acquired and deciphered detailed intelligence as it studied its enemies. As they built up their military forces and declared their intention to eliminate the Jewish state, Israel observed.  

In 1967, Arab militaries based much of their strategy and battle doctrine on Soviet concepts; a doctrine Israel closely studied. Combined with the ongoing intelligence effort, Israel came to receive rivers of information on the military capabilities of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan - both in the air and on land. 

As a result, we deduced the tactical and strategic calculations of enemy commanders, turning that information to our advantage. 

This was particularly true in the case of Nasser's Egypt; the leader of the Arab world. 

Compared to the air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, the IAF had to concede that it suffered from a massive shortage of planes. 

Because our forces were so scant, a strict prioritization of targets was required and priority number one was hitting the Egyptian Air Force - before it left the runway - in a daring mission known as Operation Moked. 

DOCTRINAL CONTRARIANISM 

Calibrated to a precision of seconds and meters, the strike required the dispatch of the maximum number of planes possible for a wave of attacks against the Egyptian Air Force; the first wave of which had to massively impede the Egyptian takeoff capabilities. 

If that first wave failed, Israel would have been exposed to painful aerial attacks at home. Israel’s need to incapacitate enemy aircraft meant very few planes were reserved for defense; far fewer than is endorsed by any known military defense doctrine. Israel went all in.

Every individual, from the mechanic to the pilot, knew their role - precisely. In most combat sorties, pilots typically learn of their destination just prior to take off. Every pilot in Operation Moked knew their precise location in the attack formation, and where they would be flying to, well in advance. 

LOGISTICAL DARING

The distance between Israel’s airfields and the more distant Egyptian Air Force bases made fuel efficiency a priority. Israel’s pilots had to practically drain their supplies in order to target Egypt’s Soviet supplied strategic bombers, which had the ability to reach Tel Aviv.  

Attack planes would need rapid turn around as well.

They had to land, rearm, refuel, and be airborne for the next wave, without delay, to avoid retaliatory air raids. 

The ground crew’s ability to rearm and repair aircraft had to be as rapid and efficient as possible. 

Because Israel needed the maximum number of planes possible for the purposes of the  bombings, while planning the mission, it logged the precise details of when enemy air forces conducted routine defense air patrols, and when those patrols changed over. It did so not with a view to downing those patrols, but to avoiding them and preventing dog fights, freeing up Israeli aircraft to concentrate on bombing stationery targets on the ground. After many months of surveillance, the IAF had a clear idea of the optimal time to strike.

EXPLOITING THE MUNDANE: RUSH-HOUR IN CAIRO

Even rush hour traffic in Cairo was exploited to Israel’s advantage. The first strike took place at the point when the Egyptian Chief of Staff and Air Force command officers left their homes bound for their offices. Israel thus maximized the length of time they would be in transition, without direct contact with their forces. 

Egyptian decision-making was effectively paralyzed, allowing additional time for the bombing waves to take place.

COMMUNICATIONS DISCIPLINE

On the morning of the attack, the IAF's flight school conducted training flights, creating a veil of normality for the watching Egyptians. 

To lull Egypt’s defense systems into a further sense of security, Israel’s June 5th air force radio transmissions were pre-recorded and transmitted over the airwaves as decoy communications for the consumption of Egyptian surveillance.

Radio silence was so strictly adhered to that Israeli air crews maintained absolute radio silence even as they conducted the initial bombing run.

In case of mid air malfunction, Israeli crews were instructed to leave their formations in silence, fly back to base at low altitude, and, if necessary, to eject. 

The attack squadrons flew toward Egypt at a sufficiently low altitude so as to evade Egyptian radar. 

Incredibly, every formation reached its target without a word being uttered over the radio. 

Israel’s planning, daring and clear understanding of the threats it faced resulted in the successful bombing raids it needed against Egypt, and set the stage for the remainder of the war and the lightning fast Israeli victory that ensued, one studied by militaries throughout the globe to this day. 

With Egypt firmly on the back foot, the IAF crippled the Syrian Air Force, and destroyed targets in Iraq after the Iraqis entered the fray. 

Those same attitudes and principles remain essential for victory in the modern era and will play a crucial role in combating enemies that threaten Israel today. 

Brigadier General Avishai Levi served for 30 years in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), a career that culminated as the Head of Intelligence and Reconnaissance for the IAF from 2007-2010. It was during his tenure that the Israeli Air Force successfully detonated the Syrian nuclear reactor.