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Document created: 1 December 2007
Air & Space
Power Journal - Winter 2007
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Lt Col J. P. Hunerwadel, USAF, Retired*
Israel’s 34-day campaign against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 had people lining up to place blame for its failure even before it ended. Indeed, Hezbollah’s survival and increased influence in Lebanon does seem to indicate that Israel suffered at least a partial strategic defeat in that conflict, despite its claims to the contrary.1 Regardless, many think there is plenty of blame to spread around. Some believe that Israel’s overreliance on airpower contributed to the apparent defeat. Commentators such as Phillip Gordon and Ralph Peters concluded, as summarized by analyst William Arkin (who does not share their views), that “airpower can never be decisive in a war, that an airman cannot command an army, and that airmen live with a pernicious desire to win wars at the exclusion of ground forces.”2
One of the bugbears that airpower’s critics trot out to scare the faithful is the concept of the effects-based approach to operations (EBAO), which they also blame for the failure of the campaign.3 A number of individuals in the antiairpower crowd represent EBAO as a reductionist model of warfare and claim that its supporters believe it can yield magic answers that eliminate the fog and friction of war.
On the contrary, an effects-based approach does not advocate “immaculate warfare” (to use Peters’s phrase), and Israel fought its campaign against Hezbollah in contravention to the effects-based principles advocated by the US military in its own doctrine.4 This article details the manner in which Israel either misunderstood or violated the principles of EBAO in three fundamental ways: its failure to properly analyze both the problem and the enemy it faced, its reversion to a mind-set focused on servicing a list of targets rather than creating specific desired effects, and, perhaps most importantly, its failure to determine a coherent end state for the campaign. If, in fact, Israel did seek to wage effects-based warfare against Hezbollah, then it fundamentally misunderstood and misapplied the tenets of an effects-based approach, and it fundamentally misused both airpower and ground military forces in the process.5
The first reason Israel failed relates to its apparent lack of analysis—of its situation and of its enemy, Hezbollah. The doctrinal principles of EBAO recognize that knowledge of all actors and the operational environment is important to success and should be based on analysis of the operational environment as a system of systems.6 The Winograd Commission, an Israeli board charged with determining the causes of the campaign’s failure, summed up Israel’s performance in this regard: “The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on careful study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena.”7
By examining Hezbollah’s linkages to the world outside the immediate battlespace, a systems-based analysis should have indicated to Israel the relative insensitivity of substate terrorist organizations to civilian damage; in fact, they often consider it an advantage. Civilian casualties that can be blamed on an attacker reinforce the facade of “victimhood” that many terrorist organizations assume in order to garner sympathy in liberal corners of the developed world. Thus, every bomb dropped on a seemingly “civilian” target, however valid that target according to the laws of armed conflict, can represent a small propaganda victory for the terrorist organization. This risk is often outweighed by the target’s legitimate military value, but commanders must weigh such risk and, in most cases, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commanders and Israeli national leadership did not do so.
A systems-based analysis also should have shown that organizations such as Hezbollah are composed of many semiautonomous cells, not subject to strong centralized control and thus inherently resistant to attempts to disrupt command and control (C2)—something that many of Israel’s strikes on “civilian” residences in southern Beirut seemed designed to do (by destroying Hezbollah “command centers” contained in the buildings).8 Israel might have saved itself some measure of international condemnation for attacking residential structures had it realized that doing so could not prove effective in disrupting a “cellular” organization’s C2. As it was, Israel seemed content to attack such targets simply because of their inclusion on a target list, not considering the indirect effects that these attacks would have on worldwide public opinion.
The principles of EBAO maintain that wars are not tactical exercises writ large (war entails much more than a single engagement or tasking order) and that all operations, from the smallest tactical action to the integration of national instruments of power—military, political, cultural, economic, and informational—require integration into a coherent, adaptive whole.9 EBAO thus seeks to counter the mind-set that sees warfare as an exercise in servicing a list of targets or simply causing attrition of an enemy and his equipment until he gives up. Several people in the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, maintain that Israel won its campaign because it killed upwards of 600 Hezbollah fighters. Victory is not based on body counts, however. Hezbollah suffered tactically but no doubt gladly exchanged the lives of its fighters for increased prestige and influence in Lebanon and the world arena.
The Winograd Commission’s report states that “the Prime Minister made up his mind hastily” and that the chief of staff responded to the taking of Israeli hostages “impulsively.”10 What evolved after the initial few hours of retaliatory strikes was not a plan but “the most conventional of approaches, with each individual object justified for its legality and military importance, almost divorced from the overall campaign objective and desired strategic outcome.”11 The campaign thus became a blind effort to service a set of targets that air forces customarily hit, along with an equally blind effort to attrit Hezbollah’s fighting forces. Apparently, the Israelis gave little thought to the consequences of hitting this list of customary targets. They carried out this effort to coerce the Lebanese government in such a manner that it had almost exactly the opposite effect than the one intended.
The target-servicing mentality can become the default position for the use of airpower in the absence of good operational design and planning. This became the norm in Vietnam for the United States, and it contributed to US defeat. When employing airpower, good commanders must always guard against this mind-set. Likewise, the default position for ground military power amounts to pure attrition, usually by the most expedient means available—preferably standoff firepower. Commanders must guard against this mind-set as well. Israeli commanders failed in both respects, and their campaign devolved into a target-servicing, attrition-oriented exercise.
The principle of the objective calls for directing “every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive, and achievable goal.”12 EBAO takes this principle one step further. Attainment of the goal or a set of such goals should lead to a set of conditions that defines what the operational environment should look like after the conflict. Further, these end-state conditions should not simply represent a moment in time. The US military teaches that operations should be based upon the notion of continuing advantage—of gaining and maintaining a state that confers what we want while denying our enemies what they want within the operational environment. EBAO emphasizes that the desired end state should drive all subordinate considerations of planning, execution, and assessment, including the details of targeting. In short, all military operations not only should strive toward a definable and decisive goal but also should contain a plan for what that goal achieves in a continuing sense beyond its attainment.
Throughout the campaign against Hezbollah, Lt Gen Dan Halutz, the Israeli chief of staff; Defense Minister Amir Peretz; and Prime Minister Olmert seemed unable to explain publicly why they were doing what they were doing. This may have resulted from the necessities of military security—but more likely because they themselves did not understand the relationship between the tactical assignments they tasked the IDF to carry out and the strategic objectives and end state they wished to achieve. In the words of the Winograd report, “[Israel] authorized the commencement of a military campaign without considering how to exit it.”13 With no clear end state in mind, the Israelis pursued varying goals throughout the campaign.
During the first hours, Israel wanted to secure the return of two reservists taken captive in a raid on a border patrol and to retaliate for Hezbollah rockets fired at Israeli towns and border posts. The first goal led the IDF into an ambush. The second triggered a rehearsed plan—“Hannibal”—to strike Hezbollah’s Iranian-supplied long-range missiles. This initial retaliatory strike, however, lasted only 34 minutes.14 From the end of the first day of the campaign forward, Israel found itself “off the script.”
After executing Hannibal, Israel extensively bombed civilian infrastructure in Lebanon in an apparent attempt to coerce the Lebanese government into pressuring Hezbollah to stop its rocket attacks on Israel.15 Instead of coercing the Lebanese, however, these attacks had the effect of coalescing world opinion against Israel, thus strengthening its enemies. Israel’s attacks also may have undermined the credibility of the Lebanese government, which had been acting as a de facto ally in reducing the influence of terror-sponsor Syria in Lebanon. Ultimately, regardless of what Israel wanted, the end state took the form of a strategically strengthened Hezbollah (albeit weakened tactically) and an IDF that saw its perceived reputation as substantially diminished (however much tactical success it may have enjoyed).
Finally, military commanders should have a stake in determining end-state conditions, which they did not during the campaign. As part of operational design, the commander and his or her strategists act like an architect who creates a design for a client or sponsor. In the case of military operations, the “sponsor” is national leadership, and determining the end state becomes a central part of what the sponsor and the “architect” do through mutual and continuous dialogue. This is the best way to prevent designing an end state that military force cannot deliver. In contrast, regarding his commanders, Prime Minister Olmert explicitly stated that “ ‘they can’t see the entire picture and they don’t need to see the entire picture. That isn’t their job. Their job is to carry out their mission in the best, most effective way, that is cheapest in terms of the human cost, and in the best way for Israel.’ ”16 To the extent that Olmert crafted a strategy at all, he crafted one that his military could not deliver. Dialogue with his commanders while conducting operational design likely would have prevented this.
Ironically, Israeli brigadier general Shimon Naveh spearheaded the entire field of military operational design; indeed, his book on operational-design theory is considered a central text in the field.17 Israel’s leaders would have done well to consult the general, but it appears that his ideas had either fallen from favor or were unknown at the time of the campaign. Naveh emphasizes that constant dialogue between military and civilian leadership is crucial to successful operational design.
From its first day forward, Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah was truly joint, involving air, ground, and naval elements. As mentioned, some critics tendentiously point to Israel’s misuse of airpower as evidence of the incapacity of airpower to bring about a decision. From its opening hours, however, the campaign involved ground forces (albeit in a haphazard and uncoordinated fashion), who suffered equally from a lack of coherent operational design and planning.
Airpower’s critics maintain that, through “precision-targeting systems and other superweapons,” airpower “zealots” promise “bloodless wars” and that perfect information will dispense with the fog and friction of war.18 This is a straw-man argument. One of the central insights of an effects-based approach (whether applied to air or any other form of military power) holds that the complex and nonlinear nature of systems made up of human beings means that one cannot eliminate fog and friction, however “perfect” the intelligence, and that operations must thus be designed so that even the least tactical action can be understood in the context of the conflict’s overall desired end state. Clearly this did not happen during Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah. Indeed, “[the chief of staff] did not alert the political leaders to the complexity of the situation, and did not present information, assessments and plans that were available in the IDF at various levels of planning and approval and which would have enabled a better response to the challenges”; furthermore, he “did not prepare a clear operational plan for the campaign,” said Maj Gen Udi Shani, who led a team investigating the General Staff’s performance.19
When ground operations did start, many units went into combat with inadequate training and supplies, failing to place continuous pressure on Hezbollah and its resources.20 Speaking of the ground as well as the air effort, retired general Yoram Yair noted that “the basic principles of war were neglected in this campaign. . . . There was no initiative, persistence, onslaught, concentration of effort.”21 One can attribute some of the failure of the ground effort to long neglect of the IDF’s ground forces: “The shortcomings in the preparedness and the training of the army, its operational doctrine, and various flaws in its organizational culture and structure, were all the responsibility of the military commanders and political leaders in charge years before . . . Prime Minister [Olmert], Minister of Defense [Peretz] and Chief of Staff [Halutz] took office.”22 It appears that ground forces were ill served by Israel’s government for years and that, as it did with airpower, Israeli leadership misused them in the campaign against Hezbollah. All of this resulted from a failure of Israeli grand strategy in the years leading up to the conflict and the failure to strategize at all when the conflict with Hezbollah started.
All of this raises the question of whether Israel could have pursued a coherent strategy that would have achieved its aims in this conflict. One military alternative would have involved executing a much larger ground offensive into southern Lebanon to secure Hezbollah bases and the areas from which rockets were being fired. Prime Minister Olmert apparently came under some pressure, both from within and outside his government, to do precisely this, but Arkin expresses best why the Israeli government chose not to: “Israel indeed showed initial restraint on the ground, a decision that could and should be interpreted not as some airpower daydream or a lack in ‘understanding’ ground war but as a desire to avoid a protracted battle, an occupation, and all of the subsequent killing and destruction that would follow.”23 Israel occupied southern Lebanon for nearly 20 years following the First Lebanon War, but its occupation failed to prevent the rise of Hezbollah and cost it dearly in blood and treasure.
Another alternative would have called for a combined air-ground campaign focusing exclusively on Hezbollah, concentrated south of the Litani River. An effects-based analysis of the operational environment would have suggested that this was a better option than the campaign that Israel waged, but then Israel still would have faced the problem of the end state: would it have to occupy southern Lebanon again, or would clearing Hezbollah fighting positions and then abandoning them be politically viable and militarily prudent? Such a course of action might at least have had the advantage of creating opportunities for defeating Hezbollah “units” in open combat. This might have reversed the perception that Hezbollah “won” and the IDF “lost.” It also might have given the IDF the opportunity to destroy much of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in southern Lebanon. In any event, Olmert’s government failed to analyze and plan for any coherent campaign and therefore did not consider this option. Given the short notice it received, Israel’s military probably was not prepared for such an operation.
A final alternative might have entailed limiting retaliation to suspected Hezbollah missile-launcher sites, much as occurred during the “34-minute attack” and much as Israel is presently doing in Gaza. This probably would have involved months of tit-for-tat air strikes, as Hezbollah launched missiles into northern Israel and Israel struck back. No doubt political pressure would have mounted on Olmert’s government to conduct an assault on launcher positions in Lebanon, but the Israelis thus might have had time to prepare an appropriately joint air-ground operation that properly considered the nature of Hezbollah and the operational environment. Israel still would have faced unpleasant end-state choices, but, again, this might have permitted the IDF to create the perception that it had won.
In summary, effects-based principles should have guided the Israelis into understanding that they could not attain the end state they desired through attrition and destruction alone—that, in fact, an approach based on destruction could rebound into significant strategic damage to the cause for which Israel fought. Effects-based principles also should have directed them away from a target-servicing mind-set and toward a focus on the end state and objectives. Finally, sound principles of operational design should have guided them toward building a framework for the campaign that included the political and cultural effects that their bombing would likely produce. As the campaign played out, Israel caused significant tactical damage to Hezbollah through attrition and destruction, but the strategic outcome, at least in the short run, weakened Israel’s reputation and ultimately strengthened Hezbollah.
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
* The author is a senior doctrine analyst in the Joint and Multinational Doctrine Directorate at the Air Force Doctrine Development and Education Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.
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Notes
1. For the best overall treatment of the campaign thus far, which makes the case for the defeat of Israel, see William M. Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, August 2007). See also Carol Migdalovitz, Israel: Background and Relations with the United States, CRS Report for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 26 July 2006), http://vienna.usembassy.gov/en/download/pdf/israel.pdf.
2. Arkin, Divining Victory, 140. See also Phillip H. Gordon, “Air Power Won’t Do It,” Washington Post, 25 July 2006, A-15; and Ralph Peters, “The Myth of Immaculate Warfare,” USA Today, 5 September 2006, http://www.usa today.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-09-05-warfare-edit_x.htm.
3. Most notably in Israel itself. See Ron Tira, The Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations: On Standoff Warfare, Maneuver, and Decision, Memorandum no. 89 (Tel Aviv, Israel: Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University, March 2007), http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/memoranda/memo89.en.pdf. This monograph sets up a straw-man rubric of standoff firepower-based operations that attempts to “impose effects” versus “classical military operations,” which “directly accomplish military aims” (9–13).
4. See, for example, Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 2, Operations and Organization, 3 April 2007, chap. 2; see also Joint Publication (JP) 3-0, Joint Operations, 17 September 2006, chap. 4; and JP 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, 26 December 2006, chap. 3.
5. For principal tenets, see Lt Col J. P. Hunerwadel, USAF, retired, “The Effects-Based Approach to Operations: Questions and Answers,” Air and Space Power Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 56–60, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af .mil/airchronicles/apj/apj06/spr06/spr06.pdf.
6. AFDD 2, Operations and Organization, 19.
7. “The Winograd Report: The Main Findings of the Winograd Partial Report on the Second Lebanon War,” Haaretz.com, 5 January 2007, 10a, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/854051.html.
8. Israel also struck cellular-telephone antennas, which similarly had little effect. See Arkin, Divining Victory, 115.
9. AFDD 2, Operations and Organization, 18–19.
10. “Winograd Report,” 12b, 14a.
11. Arkin, Divining Victory, 155.
12. JP 3-0, Joint Operations, appendix A, A-1.
13. “Winograd Report,” 10c.
14. See, for example, Aluf Benn, “Report: IAF Wiped Out 59 Iranian Missile Launchers in 34 Minutes,” Haaretz.com, 24 October 2006, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/ 778485.html.
15. Arkin, Divining Victory, 41–42.
16.“Winograd Transcripts: Olmert, Peretz, Halutz Blame Army, and Each Other,” Israel Insider, 10 May 2007, http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/11338.htm.
17. Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory (London: Frank Cass, 1997).
18. Peters, “Myth of Immaculate Warfare.”
19. “Winograd Report,” 14a; and Alon Ben-David, “Debriefing Teams Brand IDF Doctrine ‘Completely Wrong,’ ” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 3 January 2007, 7.
20. See, for example, Ken Ellingwood and Laura King, “Warfare in the Middle East: Israel Wades into Bloodiest Day,” Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2006.
21. Ben-David, “Debriefing Teams Brand IDF Doctrine,” 7.
22.“Winograd Report,” 15c.
23. Arkin, Divining Victory, xxiii.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University
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