Organisations, among them armed forces, continuously search for ways to function more effectively. This is a driver for change that may occur gradually or rapidly. There is always the risk that the doctrine or methods adopted will cause significant disruption and may even achieve quite the opposite of what had been intended.

Here is such a case, where an armed force dabbled in a new methodology that induced an overall breakdown in functioning. Time honoured standards, conventions, and mechanisms became ineffectual or were abandoned as the ship drifted, rudderless.

It is a sorry tale for a proud organisation, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), but the case study serves as a warning to demonstrate how no organisation is immune. Given the suitable circumstances, causes and drivers, it can happen to anyone.

Many specific examples are described here as they were experienced by myself.

During the Second Lebanon War, I served as Operations Officer of the Recce Battalion of the 2nd (Carmeli) Infantry Brigade of the IDF. The Carmeli Brigade is one of the oldest formations in the IDF, as old as its sister unit, the 1st (Golani) Brigade. Both formations were established in 1948, during the first desperate days of the infant State of Israel. The Carmeli Brigade is a reserve brigade, drawing its personnel from veterans of the regular Golani Brigade after these have completed their compulsory national service.

Unusual to many Western armies, an IDF infantry brigade has a Recce battalion in addition to three infantry battalions in its order of battle. The Recce battalion is made up of a company of engineers, a company of Anti-Tank Precision Guided Missiles (PGMs) (at the time with TOW missiles) and the elite company of the brigade – the Reconnaissance Company. Such a battalion is a rough equivalent of the Australian Commandos.

To provide some context

The five or six years preceding the Second Lebanon War saw the IDF pre-occupied with a nasty low intensity conflict known today as the “Second Intifada” which saw weekly and sometimes daily suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israeli civilians in their main population centres. The IDF dealt with an enemy embedded in a local populace that was mobilised to the cause and the lines between combatant and non-combatant were often blurred.

Combat engagements ranged from sharp little skirmishes and up to full scale battles when a brigade size formation of the IDF took on a (reduced) battalion sized Hamas force entrenched in the city of Jenin. Full scale war with any opponent was not considered to be a viable possibility, with potential enemies in this sphere being Syria, and possibly Iraq (via Syria).

The Hizbollah in Lebanon was viewed as another Jihadi terrorist/guerrilla organisation, albeit far more capable than Hamas, at the time. A conflict with Hizbollah was considered increasingly likely as it became clear that the group increased its aggressive posture. Intelligence pointed to the possibility of that group conducting a cross border raid to abduct Israeli soldiers or civilians. This culminated in an attempt by Hizbollah in November 2005 to abduct IDF troops in the border village of Rajjar. The attempt failed, with the Hizbollah losing four of its commandos in the process.

On July 12, 2006 Hizbollah tried again, ambushing a Humvee mounted border patrol, killing a number of soldiers and abducting two, whose fate was unknown until the moment that their coffins were received in a prisoner exchange after the war.

This attack triggered the war.

Systems Operational Design

In the latter years leading up to the conflict, the IDF had become enamoured by the application of Systems Theory to Operational Art, in what is known as Systemic Operational Design, or SOD. The US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies incorporated SOD into their curriculum and the idea gained traction there at the same time that it did in the IDF, where it was driven in part by Brig.-Gen (reserve) Dr Shimon Naveh of Tel Aviv University.

There is no simple way to explain this, so please bear with me. SOD is a strategic planning methodology that combines systems thinking with design principles to enable organisations to manage complex and dynamic environments. Rather than traditional linear planning, it maps the relationships and patterns within a system, to identify underlying tensions and opportunities. It provides a framework for creating adaptive strategies that are responsive to change rather than being rigidly predictive. 

To demonstrate in a different way, consider this metaphorical scenario:

You are in a large, darkened space. All around are stimuli of sound and light. You are concerned with your duty and your mission, but also with hunger, thirst, fatigue, fear, and danger. You are handed a rope that is stretched out in the space and you know that if you follow the rope, you will be led to navigation points and eventually out of this dark space and to success. Just follow the rope.

This is the traditional linear process used for battle planning and force preparation.

Now imagine yourself in the same space, at the same start point. Instead of being handed a rope, a large open net descends upon you. It is apparently stretched out to infinity on all sides. You do not know which way to proceed. You grasp a strand of the net and attempt to follow it. All of the other individuals around you, who would normally be following the rope as well are also following net strands, in multiple directions. Confusion and chaos reign. This was the effect of SOD on the IDF in the war.

A small cadre of general officers in the IDF embraced SOD with evangelistic enthusiasm, but the methodology was never brought to the officer corps in a digestible training package and many officers were thoroughly bemused by it, often too embarrassed to question or master its concepts. I was studying Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, under Dr Shimon Naveh at the time, and he frequently referred in disparaging terms to IDF officers as ‘idiots’ who struggled to understand the concepts.

SOD infiltrated all parts of the IDF, implemented with varying degrees of ‘success’ according to the extent that a unit commander had mastered the elusive principles. It shaped the thinking of many brigade commanders and up to the General Staff, its flowery prose coloured written orders and plans with post-modern abstract.

SOD was not the only factor in the debacle that was to follow. There were issues with the political leadership and senior command, all of which were detailed in the findings of the Commission of Inquiry that followed the war, and extensively covered and discussed in the public realm. All of the following is taken from there, as well as from personal experience.

In June 2005, the IDF saw an Air Force officer appointed for the first time in its history, as Chief of General Staff (CGS). Prior to this, every CGS had come from the Army, usually the infantry. Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz had been a celebrated fighter pilot, and commander of the Air Force. He was gifted with a sharp and intelligent mind above and beyond the mainstream. He was expected to introduce the famed order and discipline of the IAF to the ‘olive green’ army.

According to post-war evaluations, Halutz had a mediocre grasp on manoeuvre warfare. It would take a war for this to come to light. An example of a pre-war indication of his lack of familiarity with the Army was when he visited an artillery battery deployed close to the Lebanese border. The battery was tasked with responding to Hizbollah rocket fire that on occasion peppered the northern villages. The unit was prepared with a fire plan, and the 155mm ammunition was customarily stacked by the guns, at the ready. General Halutz became angry, as in his view, the ammunition stacked in the open in this fashion, was a clear case of crass negligence and disorder.

Unusually for Israel, the Prime Minister of the day had no military experience, and even the Minister of Defence had no notable military record, having served in a rear echelon maintenance unit for his Army service. Never had the trio of these roles been bereft of someone with experience in manoeuvre warfare.

It was with these captains, that the ship of the IDF went to war.

The following is an account of the war. It is a description of the various events and aspects of the dysfunction. Post-war, a Commission of Inquiry and its findings, as well as exhaustive analysis by retired senior officers and defence correspondents are condensed here. Anecdotes and personal observations are included as they illustrate the extent of the breakdown, the ultimate results of the adoption of a flawed methodology.

For convenience, I have sectioned the list of failures that I observed by the system according to the NATO staff system used by the ADF.

0 – Command

General Halutz was now the premier military advisor to the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, who could only blindly trust his judgement, as they were not equipped to do otherwise. At the outbreak of war, he recommended a concerted bombing campaign against the Hizbollah, in order to convince that enemy that the two abducted soldiers should be returned to Israel, and to punish the jihadi movement for their unprovoked attack.

He did not wish to call up the reserves, not even in small numbers. The fact that they desperately needed to equip and train before being sent in to fight did not matter, as they were not expected to be necessary.

When the reserves were eventually called up, it was done at the last minute in a frantic, chaotic rush that left the soldiers with the impression that the war was not being managed judiciously.

The general commanding Northern Command (a corps formation equivalent), and director of the campaign, Major-General Udi Adam, was a dour armoured corps officer. He and the intellectually flamboyant General Halutz enjoyed a poor level of mutual understanding. In the middle of the war, Halutz sent another general to mentor Adam, in what was seen many to be a clear vote of no-confidence.

The Carmeli Brigade was placed under the command of 91 Division, which in peacetime was tasked with the garrison duty of protecting the northern border with Lebanon. The division was commanded by a promising graduate of the paratroop brigade, and a protégé of Dr Shimon Naveh.

The commander of the division was one of the leading adopters of SOD in the IDF. I was not present in the divisional headquarters at any time so I cannot comment firsthand on its functioning, but we were directly affected by its performance. Never once, during the entire war, did our brigade headquarters receive a written (or verbal) operations order from the division.

No orders groups were held, and prior to our second entry into Lebanon, we produced our own impromptu orders group at the brigade headquarters without any assistance or input from the division, who had tasked us by way of a personal verbal briefing handed down by the divisional commander to our brigade commander.

This not only resulted in abject chaos throughout the formations under 91 Division, it left us astounded and steadily eroded confidence in the command levels above our brigade. The chaos affected all aspects of the functioning of the Army, which at times was paralysed.

Multiple contradicting directives and obscure missions were given by the division, often up to six or seven a day. At the time it caused a complete loss of confidence and in retrospect it appeared to be the result of the divisional command attempting to manage the battle via SOD, as all traditional methods of Command and Control were discarded.

The IDF had to make the mental switch from the reality of a LIC (Low Intensity Conflict) to one where we were at war. No commander ever actually said the words, ‘we are now at war’, and everyone wondered if we were in some large scale operation designed to get our two hostages back and maul the enemy, or if were we fully at war. This hampered us in several ways, not least when resources had to be drawn from the rear echelon, where logistics officers strictly observed peace time allocations, quotas, and budgets to our frustration.

This was rectified in 2014 and again in October 2023, when commanders made a point of immediately declaring on the radio nets that we were now ‘at war!’

The brigade headquarters was deployed in a hardened underground facility that was designed for the role. The strongpoint was about 50m to the south of the international border between Israel and Lebanon.

Our battalion was told to enter Lebanon, take up positions, and await orders. We were told to expect to be inside Lebanon for some 24 hours. No clear orders or mission was given. A briefing was given directly by the brigade commander (in the IDF this is a colonel, a division is commanded by a One Star) to the battalion commander. In the meantime, I sorted the battalion tactical command group into two columns. It was the first time we were ever doing this, never having had an opportunity to do so in the previous three years. 

We were rushed, two hours behind schedule and not properly ready. We had to cross into Lebanon and the battalion commander had no time to brief the staff, or even myself. Our best understanding was that we were to strive for contact with Hizbollah in general and destroy them. All of us were nevertheless highly trained and experienced infantrymen. We trusted our CO and each other. We instinctively formed up and marched into the night behind our Recce Company, working the bolts of our rifles, charging a round into the breech as we crossed the border in the inky pre-moon darkness.

We emerged eight days later, with the only achievement of note being rescuing another battalion of paratroop commandos who had been attacked by multiple anti-tank guided weapons and had suffered nine dead and almost forty wounded. Their battalion commander had frozen in the moment of crisis. We ran, carrying them on stretchers to the border under fire, as our Forward Observer brought down a smoke screen to cover us. 

After a break of a few days, we went in again.

The middle and junior levels of command in the IDF (brigade and down) endeavoured to complete their missions as best they could. After the war, General Halutz attended a brigade debrief, where he answered some of the questions posed to him by an unsympathetic, if not hostile cadre of officers, and apologised to everyone for the overall performance of the IDF senior command.

1 – Personnel

Professional development of the reserves relied almost exclusively upon experience gained in the field. There were few courses available for junior staff officers. Reserve days were budgeted per unit, and were jealously kept for the standard once-a-year 30 day garrison duty on the border and with preciously short training opportunities. Reservists faced workplace and family pressure to do less reserve time and training courses were therefore a rare luxury.

Our battalion was some three years old, having been formed by the amalgamation of three companies that hitherto had been under direct command of the brigade headquarters. The battalion staff was formed by graduates of these same companies or were taken from other parts of the IDF. The battalion staff was the weak link of the unit.

The battalion intelligence officer had not attended an intelligence officer course and had no background in intelligence when war broke out.

On a personal level, I was promoted to the role of battalion operations officer without ever having served in a battalion staff, and indeed it had been many years since I had served in a battalion at all. Since graduating from officer school, I had only served in specialist companies under direct brigade command. No course was available to train me for the role and I had to figure it out for myself as I went along.

2 – Intelligence

The brigade S2 (intelligence) position was vacant when war broke out. I do not know what steps were taken to fill this role during the war, but no intelligence ever reached us. We fought the entire war with zero intelligence support. We crossed into Lebanon on two occasions, and never did we have the foggiest idea of what enemy was in our area or where they may be. We found out when we saw armed gunmen or were fired upon. We were quite literally blind.

At one point, exasperated, I called our deputy intelligence officer who we had left behind with the brigade staff and asked him to bypass the brigade and contact the divisional intelligence centre directly, to explain to them that we were without intelligence and could they please provide us with information relevant to the area. He was simply told to approach the brigade S2 or S2 Table in the Joint Fires and Effects Coordination Centre and no further assistance was forthcoming.

3 – Operations

The breakdown in Command and Control, and indeed in everything else, led to a struggle to operate coherently. A number of Special Forces operations of note took place.

The Navy SEAL equivalent, Flotilla 13, (in Hebrew Shayetet 13) performed a daring raid on the port city of Tyre where a senior Hizbollah commander was residing in a high rise apartment. The intelligence was off, and the commandos attacked the apartment of his bodyguards, one floor below, leaving the target unscathed. A number of commandos were wounded and a hurried withdrawal to the beach was interrupted when their doctor had to perform lifesaving emergency surgery in the field, while arguing with the force commander who was keen to complete the withdrawal first.

Another operation by the SAS equivalent, the Sayeret Matkal, was conducted in the depths of Lebanon. The force was engaged by elements of Hizbollah. The only casualty was the loss of the life of Lieutenant-Colonel Emanuel Moreno, who I considered to be one of the most gifted officers who ever served in the IDF. Even today, his image is not published due to the sensitivity of missions that he had previously undertaken.

More conventional operations were undertaken by armoured corps, infantry, and engineers. The Hizbollah fighters were defeated in every close engagement, without exception. Fairly early on in the war they resorted to using rocket, mortar, and ATGW fire with which they endeavoured to draw Israeli casualties, not without success.

Toward the end of the war, a divisional thrust was made through the Salouki Valley. Poor planning, as well as poor command and control saw the force decimated by ATGW’s and the mission was unsuccessful. The chaos and lack of operational orders and orders groups were not unique to 91 Division. It affected everyone.

These were the days prior to the Iron Dome system and Hizbollah rockets rained down on Israeli population centres. The IDF artillery attempted to conduct counter-battery fire against launchers hidden in fields, ravines, areas of dense undergrowth, and especially urban areas. The ammunition expenditure was vast, and the stocks of 155 mm rounds reached dangerously low levels. The achieved result was almost nil. This prompted a post-war rethink of the use of artillery in the IDF and led to far reaching changes.

4 – Logistics Management

We had always trained for wartime scenarios with our logistical trains in close accompaniment. It was a given that whenever the IDF would advance, the logistics would follow close behind in their convoys of trucks.

In this war, we met a situation where the enemy enjoyed access to vast quantities of ATGW ammunition. Upon sighting an IDF soldier, they would promptly fire a missile at them. Daytime movement of any kind invited instant ATGW attack. We only moved at night, and always on foot.

There was absolutely no question of soft skinned vehicles crossing the border. It was impossible. Demand for logistical resupply placed an emphasis on water and ammunition. It was summer, with temperatures in the mid-thirties every day. Water consumption was high.

Initially, resupply was done by helicopter, but as the moon was waxing toward a full moon, it was deemed too dangerous for helicopters to perform this mission and they would only venture north of the border for casualty evacuation (CASEVAC), and that was in hours of darkness, never by day. On occasion a Puma armoured vehicle would bring supplies to us during the hours of darkness.

Prior to the war we had raised the issue of our equipment being insufficient and inadequate. We pointed out that we had no backpacks or satchels for carrying specialist payloads such as TOW missiles or their launchers. We were promised that should war break out, this equipment would magically appear.

Needless to say, it didn’t.

If a Puma AFV was not available, logistical resupply was done by ourselves, with platoons and companies sent to the border on foot under cover of darkness to fetch food, water, and ammunition. We would carry six packs of mineral water packed into kitbags, TOW missiles carried in their wooden packing crates on the shoulders of the soldiers – over steep, cacti covered, and rocky terraced hills to return to our positions. By the following nightfall these supplies were exhausted and we would have to repeat the exercise. It was our principal activity.

As carrying capacity was at a premium, prioritising water and ammunition, we received very little food when we were north of the border. For some 24 hour periods a member of our party would typically go without food entirely. At best one could expect to receive a slice of bread and a small tin of tuna until the next resupply the following morning.

Smoking is prevalent in Israeli society and the soldiers had little access to cigarettes. Soldiers would stand in a circle passing around a final cigarette until it was smoked to the filter. The Lebanese grow tobacco and when we were in the vicinity of a field, the soldiers would pick the green undried tobacco leaves. They requested pages from my notebook and from these they rolled crude cigarettes.

We were moving over very rough, steep terrain – avoiding paths as these were suspected to be mined. While climbing over the boulders and terraces that abound, a man from the Sapper Company fell and dislocated his hip. We requested a CASEVAC but were denied, as it would soon be dawn and the helicopter could not fly after dawn twilight. He was carried on a stretcher, the men stumbling and jarring him over the difficult slopes until we reached our hide for the day. The man was in agony but never uttered a sound. He had to wait for the following evening for a helicopter to extract him.

The caution was not unfounded. One evening a Sikorsky CH-53D landed 35 paratroopers deep inside Lebanon, among them the brigade commander and his party. The force disembarked and as the helicopter ascended, a laser guided Kornet ATGW struck it. The helicopter crashed and five aircrew were lost. The same paratroops had to recover the charred body parts, which was done using kitbags as nothing else was available.

5 – Plans

A contingency plan had been drawn up months and years previously, to cater for the eventuality of war with Hizbollah. We had studied the plan, and our brigade had its own derivative operational plans. Our headquarters’ exercises in the few years preceding the war, were based on these plans.

After the enemy’s initial cross-border raid, each member of our battalion, still a civilian, prepared for an imminent mobilisation. We expected the call within hours of the initial attack, but it never came. Days passed, and we gnashed our teeth in frustration as we watched the IAF pummel Hizbollah targets in Lebanon, and the Special Forces conducted raids that appeared ineffective. The regular army was arrayed on the border but did not cross en masse into Lebanon.

When the call finally did come, some two weeks later, the plans were abandoned. Instead, we received multiple verbal warning orders, each one contradicting its predecessor. None of these bore any relation or semblance to pre-war planning.

The first warning order arrived within three hours of us arriving at a sprawling training base in the southern desert, where we were to sign for equipment and execute a short but intensive training plan designed to bring us up to speed before we deployed to the north. As kitbags were being unloaded from trucks, the battalion commander and I were summoned to the base commanders’ office, where we were told that we were to travel within the hour to a nearby IAF base, from where we were to be flown north and would be crossing the border that night to attack the enemy.

My commander and I exchanged a glance of incredulity. We had not received all of our equipment or ammunition, had not zeroed our rifles and had no idea what our exact mission was to be. We returned to our men, who were sorting through gear, a lot of which did not fit or was defective. A reprieve arrived with the news that the Air Force had mistakenly caused significant collateral damage and casualties in Lebanon and as a result, the government had agreed to a 48 hour pause for ceasefire mediation. We gratefully embraced the opportunity to complete some hurried training.

6 – Communications

This war saw the first large scale use of the IDF’s new encrypted cell phone network. Every commander and staff officer had one. Radio nets were abandoned and all communication moved to these cell phones. Everyone had previously relied on listening in to the radio nets to build a tactical picture and maintain situational awareness. Now, information was not disseminated. Orders were passed by way of cell phone conversations between divisional and brigade commanders, and so on. Orders groups were obsolete and briefings, initially, were not conducted.

We had no idea what was going on around us. If we found a transistor radio in an abandoned house, we would listen to the civilian news.

Whenever I asked my battalion commander for an update, the picture was varied. In an effort to create a modicum of situational awareness among the chaos around us, we never slept. We dreaded going to sleep and being woken up disoriented in the middle of a contact with the enemy. We were severely sleep deprived and the fog of confusion merged with the exhaustion which brought on a mental lethargy which one had to constantly fight in order to remain effective. My battalion commander who was the finest, most capable and inspirational officer I have ever served under, fell asleep in the middle of an engagement led by the commander of the Recce Company. He had been virtually without sleep for ten days.

7 – Training

Prior to the war the IDF had suffered from extensive budget cuts. More than one division was disbanded and removed from its order of battle. The only exercises available were headquarters exercises where own forces and enemies were simulated by single jeeps, each sporting flags to denote their corps and unit strength. The exercises matched our contingency plans, but these were now discarded and what we eventually did during the war bore no resemblance to any training or exercise whatsoever.

In the three years since we were stood up, never once had we had the opportunity to conduct a full battalion level exercise. We built our standard operating procedures and protocols during the war, as we went along.

Summary

Israel has a unique society, and its armed forces mirror it, for both good and bad. It’s DNA stems from the desperate hardship of the early days of the state, when over two million refugees from Europe and Arab countries had to be absorbed by a destitute little country, devoid of any natural resources or industry. It is a society where sacred cows are short lived, everything is questioned, by anyone and everyone. Disorder and mismanagement can be found almost everywhere, together with brilliance and boundless innovation. Rules and regulations are viewed as impediments to be tolerated if possible, but best traversed or overcome. Improvisation, flexibility, and mental agility are valued qualities. No officer can succeed without these.

So, when the war began the initial chaos was not wholly unexpected, but as it only worsened and the organisation did not find a rhythm, the system unravelled. All those serving in the IDF experienced a growing loss of confidence in the leaders of the country and the armed forces. Following the war, a Commission of Inquiry resulted in many losing their positions, including the Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Chief of General Staff, Officer Commanding Northern Command, and at least four divisional commanders.

The result of the war was not a defeat, tactically the IDF was never beaten, perhaps with the arguable example of the Salouki debacle. One could say that it was the equivalent of passing an exam with a 51% grade.

The reader should note that this account is selective, and the successful, more positive aspects of the war, are not covered here.

The CGS was replaced by the man who had been my brigade commander when I had served as a young soldier in the Golani Brigade. The IDF underwent an extremely thorough root canal treatment. SOD was discarded and discredited. A complete transformation followed.

The Second Lebanon War is today perhaps the least mentioned war of all Israel’s wars. It’s the one no-one wants to remember. The IDF learned from it and moved on.

In 2014 when we next went to war at that scale, I was taken aback at the extent the IDF had learned and implemented its lessons. Notwithstanding the failure of the 7th of October 2023, the IDF has continued to evolve and improve, reaching new heights of competency and effectiveness, to this day.