Israel’s Next Step Uncertain As Conflict Widens

A weeklong series of intelligence operations and mass air strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon showcased Israel’s hard-won military strengths.

Israeli Air Force fighters struck more than 1,500 targets in Lebanon with over 2,000 munitions on Sept. 23, accelerating a wider campaign against Hezbollah that risks triggering a larger war.

• Air and cyberattacks pummel Hezbollah
• Key Israeli ground capabilities are lacking after decades of cuts

Waves of air strikes hit Lebanon less than a week after Israeli intelligence operations that exploded at least hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies of Hezbollah operatives and three days after an air raid on Beirut killed top leaders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.

Hezbollah’s initial response was defiant but seemingly blunted. More than 300 rockets and missiles on Sept. 24 penetrated up to 75 mi. into Israeli territory, or one-fourth the length of the country. Hezbollah fired a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv on Sept. 25, but the Rafael David’s Sling air defense system shot it down. Overall, Hezbollah’s barrage caused little damage, as nearly all the missiles were intercepted or fell on uninhabited areas, Israeli military officials said.

But Israel still faces tough choices. A nearly two-decade-old strategy built up the Israeli Air Force and Aman military intelligence directorate, pouring billions into modernizing and expanding a standoff targeting and strike complex at the expense of other military needs.

Israel’s next steps are unclear. In the north, the government’s current aim is to secure the Lebanese border area from attack by Hezbollah and allow about 60,000 evacuated Israelis to return to their homes safely. In the south, the goal of the yearlong campaign remains to destroy Hamas and return dozens of Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip. Whether Israel’s ground forces can support the achievement of both goals is an open question.

“When you see the air strikes in Lebanon, what you’re seeing is the fruits of hard labor, elite intelligence and a supreme airpower machine,” Eran Ortal, a retired brigadier general in the Israeli army and former commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking, tells Aviation Week. “The thought was that this airpower [strategy] is a deterrent enough, so we don’t have to fulfill what we once called battlespace decisive victory.”

Israel’s ground forces sustained heavy cuts over the past four decades. The army now fields half the divisions and one-third of the tanks it did at its peak in the 1980s, according to the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Other critical capabilities have been lost, too. The army retired all Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Machbet self-propelled anti-aircraft guns two decades ago, Lt. Col. Dotan Rozili told reporters Sept. 17 at an IDF Northern Command observation post near the Lebanese border. Facing an onslaught of Hezbollah-launched exploding drones, Rozili said the army needs to bring back the Machbet—or something like it.

“The answer to drones is not only missiles,” he said. “It’s not only soft-kill electronics. It always also involves hard-kill [systems] and shooting them down. I have two soldiers that were able to hit drones with their guns, but it’s quite difficult.”

In raw numbers, the Israeli Air Force fleet of combat jets also has declined since the 1980s. But the IDF invested heavily in equipping a smaller force with powerful modern enablers, including intelligence-gathering, command and control, and a large stockpile of advanced precision munitions. The result is an air force capable of rapidly detecting, processing and prosecuting hundreds of targets per hour.

In preparation for the mass air strikes like those on Sept. 23, the air force held a snap exercise in February 2021 called Galilee Rose. Within a 24-hr. period, hundreds of fighters scrambled to launch simulated strikes on more than 3,000 mock Hezbollah targets.

The air strikes on Sept. 23 proved the high-capacity strike complex’s feasibility, but it remains controversial.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked approval for new fighter orders in May. The move created uncertainty over pending deals for up to 25 more Lockheed Martin F-35Is and as many as 50 Boeing F-15IAs, the Israeli version of the F-15EX. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant criticized the action to Israeli reporters as “an attack on Israel’s security,” but Smotrich charged that the focus on standoff airpower and intelligence capabilities had failed to deter Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7 and risked depriving the IDF of the forces needed to win on the ground in Gaza.

“I refuse to give the IDF and the security system a blank check of hundreds of billions of your money,” Smotrich wrote May 9 on Facebook, adding that it is “money that will surely come at the expense of other things, without promising as much as possible that the state of Israel will buy for you with this money maximum security.”

Ultimately, Smotrich partially backed down. Israel signed a $3 billion order for 25 F-35Is in June and received U.S. approval in August to import up to 50 F-15IAs. But the debate over IDF modernization priorities continues.

The IDF faces a new challenge in the escalating confrontation with Hezbollah. Although it is a paramilitary force, Hezbollah fields tens of thousands of troops. The group lacks sophisticated air defenses but boasts extensive defensive fortifications in southern Lebanon as well as an arsenal of long-range weapons.

Israel’s air strikes on Lebanon in September have focused on degrading Hezbollah’s munitions stockpile and launch capabilities. Estimates of the pre-bombardment stockpile vary, but the Alma Research and Education Center in northern Israel, which was founded by a former Israeli intelligence analyst, provided its latest assessment to reporters on Sept. 17.

Alma estimates that Hezbollah’s stockpile is dominated by 150,000 mortar rounds backed by 65,000 rockets of various types with ranges up to 80 km (50 mi.). Hezbollah also controls an estimated 5,000 rockets with a range of 80-200 km. Finally, the stockpile includes about 5,000 surface-to-surface guided missiles with a range of 200-700 km, plus about 2,500 uncrewed air vehicles and hundreds of various antiship missiles, cruise missiles and crew-portable air defense systems.

The day after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, Hezbollah started firing rockets and other munitions into Israel. The sustained assault prompted the evacuation of all Israeli communities within 4 km of the Lebanese border. About 100,000 Lebanese also evacuated around the same time from communities near the Israeli border.

The Hezbollah arsenal includes Iran’s Almas antitank missile, Alma President Sarit Zehavi says. The Almas is believed to be a reverse-engineered copy of the Rafael Spike missile. It features an electro-optical seeker that sends a live feed to a remote operator, allowing the missile to strike moving targets up to 10 km away.

“It’s a very advanced technology, as opposed to the rockets that are a very stupid and simple technology,” Zehavi says.

In recent months, Hezbollah strikes on northern Israel have crept farther south. Instead of targeting communities and bases within a few miles of the border, the group began firing more Almas missiles and longer-range rockets at targets farther south into territory with nonevacuated communities, Zehavi says.

The area falls under the coverage of the Rafael Iron Dome air defense system. The system’s short-range Tamir interceptor boasts a 90% kill rate, but only against a subset of the overall rocket attack. The IAI Multi-Mission Radar automatically ignores rockets that it has assessed do not pose a threat to humans, such as those set to fall on unoccupied land or roads. Iron Dome batteries launch two Tamir interceptors—each costing about $50,000—at every target. But the lack of coverage on roads exposes motorists to greater risks.

“We had two parents that were killed on the main road, and that’s why I was almost hit by a rocket,” Zaharia says. “This is a true problem, and I don’t know exactly what could be done.”