The USMC would be well served to study the Israeli Defense Force war with Hezbollah in 2006.
The parallels are remarkable. For the first time in its history the IDF was led by an Air Force man. The "new" style of warfare would involve network centric systems, rely heavily on aerial ISR and would shift the IDF from a ground centric force to one where the IDF Air Force would play the lead role.
Hezbollah basically read the Israeli play book and kicked their ass. While I wouldn't characterize this as an Israeli defeat, neither would I call it a victory.
Anthony Cordesman writes a must read lessons learned (you can read it below) but this passage from page 49 stands out to me.....
The IDF may well be able to adapt. The Brodet Commission haslooked beyond the narrow issues of the Israeli-Hezbollah War and hasrecommended comprehensive changes based on the conclusion that“the Israel Defense Forces and the entire defense establishment sufferfrom a multidimensional crisis: budgetary, management, organiza-tional, cultural, and strategic.”The force that the Marine Corps is designing will be easily defeated on a modern battlefield. We need to reverse course now to maintain faith with the country we are sworn to defend.
It has radically increased its defense budget and has cancelled theplanned further cuts in ground forces.
It has a new minister of de-fense, Ehud Barak, with practical combat experience in dealing with asymmetric threats.
The IDF has a new, ground forces-oriented chief of staff. The land forces commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Gantz,has called for new training methods, a new emphasis on decisive ma-neuver, and a reorganization of many elements of Israel’s land forc-es. Israel is restructuring its entire training program, with a major new training center for asymmetric warfare in the Negev and major exercises in the Golan.
No one can predict Israel’s level of success,but the country is clearly making a massive effort to adapt to thethreats posed by forces like the Hezbollah and is extremely unlikely torepeat the mistakes of 2006.
The goal must also be to learn what cannot be done and to avoid setting goals for netcentric warfare, intelligence, targeting, and battle damage as-sessments that are impossible, or that are simply too costly and uncertainto deploy. Modern military powers need to approach these problemswith ruthless realism at the political, tactical, and technical levels
