We are still in the early phase of Operation Swords of Iron, the name of the Israeli military response to the horrific Hamas-led massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has predicted a “long war.” Amid an intensifying aerial bombing campaign, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are gearing up for a large-scale ground invasion of densely populated Gaza. The IDF is expected to face stiff resistance on the ground by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other groups, which will try to leverage the urban terrain, civilian population, and vast labyrinth of underground tunnels—dubbed the Gaza metro—for asymmetric advantages in this fight.
The IDF, built around a system of universal conscription and reserve service, is considered one of the best militaries in the world. Its air force and special operations units are the envy of many a NATO general. A key element that makes the IDF a potent force is the United States’ long-standing commitment to maintaining the Israelis’ qualitative military superiority over potential adversaries by providing roughly $3.8 billion a year in military assistance. Coupled with the IDF’s lavish use of Israel’s thriving tech sector, this allows the IDF to field an expensive, high-tech military, including cutting-edge air and missile defense systems, stealth fighters, as well as advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.
Yet it may be exactly this IDF quest for high-tech superiority over low-tech adversaries, such as Hamas, that has clouded its vision. Not only did the IDF’s sense of technological superiority contribute to its failure to anticipate a sophisticated combined arms attack on Oct. 7, but it may also be a tactical disadvantage in the expected ground campaign in Gaza. This wouldn’t be the first time it has been a problem: Analysts have pointed out that a “cult of technology” contributed to the IDF’s poor performance in the 2006 Lebanon War.
The reasons the IDF’s high-tech focus can backfire are interrelated. First, at the level of strategy and politics, Israel’s trust in technological superiority helped policymakers and senior military officers fall victim to the illusion that there were no hard choices to be made in Israel’s military strategy. Second, overreliance on such technology at the tactical level contributed to a defensive mindset within the IDF that may have allowed important skills, such as the ability to conduct complex combined arms operations when attacking, to atrophy. These weaknesses in the IDF’s ability to attack have been identified by Israel’s defense community as an issue for many years, and the IDF is currently in the middle of a process of doctrinal and structural adaptation as it experiments with a new warfighting concept. This incomplete process makes the timing of the impending land campaign suboptimal, to say the least.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic myopia and hubris that led him to be blindsided on Oct. 7 was enabled by the trust that the IDF and Israel’s other security services had in their technological sophistication. It did so by creating the sense that Israel could have its cake and eat it, too, without the need to make any trade-offs: It could strive for better relations with its Arab neighbors while convincing itself that it was managing and containing Hamas and its allies—avoiding any need to deal with the immediate military threats posed by highly motivated, disciplined, and increasingly technologically sophisticated nonstate adversaries in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
The best symbol of this attitude is the “smart” border fence, a barricade along the Gaza Strip 20 feet high, 40 miles long, and fitted with sophisticated sensors and remote-operated machine guns. The fence, also called the Iron Wall, led to the tragically mistaken belief that there was no need for large numbers of IDF boots on the ground to guard against intrusions, which permitted more IDF ground forces to be deployed to the West Bank and elsewhere—or not to be raised at all. This false sense of security was compounded by the belief that Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, first introduced in 2011 and designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery, would offer adequate protection against rocket and artillery attacks from Gaza and southern Lebanon in the event of a larger-scale conflict. Further cementing the belief that there were no longer hard strategic choices to make were Israel’s sophisticated ISR capabilities, which make Gaza, southern Lebanon, and the West Bank some of the most surveilled and watched swaths of lands in the world. This, the Israelis believed, would provide ample warning time to respond to any emerging military threat.
At the strategic level of political and military decision-making, the fixation on high tech had direct consequences for the character of IDF operations. For one thing, it helped shape a more defense-oriented tactical doctrine relying on firepower (primarily missile strikes from the air) rather than maneuvering ground forces to achieve military objectives. This doctrine is best expressed by the IDF’s strategy of “mowing the grass”—attacking the Hamas leadership and some of its militaryinfrastructure to manage rather than eradicate the group. This strategy required only limited ground incursions into Gaza, the last of which took place in 2014.
One consequence of the “mowing the grass” strategy was that the IDF saw even less need to be ready for large-scale ground operations. As a result, the combined arms skills of its line units on the ground have declined in recent years. Instead of preparing for future wars, these units were busy policing the West Bank and protecting settlers.
In trying to remedy its overreliance on defensive tactics and limited attacks, the IDF is currently developing a new operating concept called Decisive Victory—which risks falling into the technological trap once again. Decisive Victory is built on the same sorts of premises as many new operational concepts of NATO militaries: multidomain, combined arms operations supported by artificial intelligence, where dispersed and more autonomous forces apply precision firepower to quickly defeat an adversary. This involves a combination of precision strikes from the air; smaller, more agile, and more rapidly deployable ground units; and the use of machine learning to help identify, track, and engage targets.
Decisive Victory, in short, is built on the premise that superior ISR capabilities paired with AI and smart munitions will increase the IDF’s combat effectiveness while reducing the size of the forces needed to effectively conduct military operations. As the Oct. 7 attack showed, however, if the technologies underlying your conception of warfare are destroyed or overwhelmed and you lack boots on the ground, overreliance on technology creates a single point of failure. Without traditional military assets such as larger-scale, rapidly deployable forces, the IDF risks having no Plan B to quickly respond to a dynamic attack or other fast-evolving military situations.
To be clear, the IDF has not yet implemented the new operating concept, in part because of delays in the five-year Tnufa program of military reforms initiated in 2020. Another reason is that the IDF is still testing and experimenting with its new operating concept.
For example, the IDF set up an experimental unit of special operations forces called Ghost to test some of the core tenets of Decisive Victory. (The unit’s commander was killed in combat on Oct. 7.) Elements of Decisive Victory can also be found across many other units within the IDF, and its tenets are certainly impacting operational planning for the upcoming ground invasion of Gaza.
What does the IDF’s continued fixation on high-tech solutions mean for an invasion of Gaza and beyond?
At the tactical level, the IDF never had the illusion that emerging technologies will make military conflict any less bloody or combat-intensive. As the IDF has acknowledged, casualties on both sides could be severe and the campaign protracted, despite the IDF’s preference for short and decisive operations. This could be compounded by the lack of combined arms training of both active and reserve units, with the exception of a number of elite formations.
Even if the IDF has shown itself to be highly adaptable to swiftly changing tactical situations in the past, going into battle right now could still prove risky. Its forces are in the middle of doctrinal and technological adaptation, premised on the belief of emerging technological capabilities such as AI. In practice, the half-abandonment of existing doctrine combined with only a rudimentary understanding of the new operating concept could lead to a marked increase in friction during IDF operations. This could degrade the impending offensive to little more than the familiar “mowing the grass” tactic but on a larger and more protracted scale. An overall victory could prove illusory.
At the political and more strategic level, the continued belief in qualitative military superiority based on superior technology could lead Israelis to be overly optimistic compared with the reality of the war. This could allow the Netanyahu government to muddle through despite the likely failure—at least for a while.
