Ehud Barak reforms the IDF

This Ha’aretz article purports to be about a missile defense, but it’s chock-full of what Ehud Barak thinks is wrong with the current processes of the IDF, and how they can be fixed. This is why I point out that the IDF is a thinking army, and why I maintain my optimism about Israel’s defense capability.

Though Barak has declined to say so explicitly or to point an accusing finger at anyone, he has been unpleasantly surprised by what he has discovered about the Israel Defense Forces’ preparedness in the weeks since his return to the Defense Ministry. At a meeting Tuesday with reservists from an armored brigade, one tank gunner told him that his current reserve duty is the first time he has seen an actual shell in five years. “No one will wait five years before the next exercise,” promised Barak, who believes that live-fire exercises are critical, as they are the closest thing to real combat.

Last week, Barak met with a group of brigade commanders and was surprised to hear some of them say that during last summer’s Lebanon war, they had faced difficult dilemmas when they weighed the “value of their missions” against the danger to soldiers’ lives. Barak, like other former generals, has been critical of some units’ failure to stick to their missions during that war, and he told the brigade commanders that this is not an issue they should even consider during wartime. A single brigade commander, he explained, lacks a clear picture of the entire front, and must therefore act on the assumption that his superiors have good reason for their orders.

Each commander, he added, must behave as if the outcome of the war depends on his actions alone.

Barak has also met recently with several of the retired officers who led the army’s in-house probes into the Second Lebanon War. Based on these meetings and his studies of the material, he has concluded that the biggest problem was the enormous difference between a real war and counterterrorism activity in the territories, coupled with the lack of an “institutional memory”: Israel’s last real war occurred 24 years ago, and the IDF no longer has any officers who remember what that was like.

Operations to arrest wanted terrorists, for instance, are often halted in the middle if a soldier is wounded, as evacuating him is considered to take priority. In war, however, such conduct would be beyond the pale: An assault must continue even if the unit suffers casualties.

It sounds like Ehud Barak can fix things, if he doesn’t start running for office right away and sticks to managing the defense portfolio.