Editor's Preface

"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."

Father John C. Culkin SJ

In the middle of the 20th century, the city of Detroit, population two million, was the fifth-largest city in the United States and one of the richest and most vibrant in the world. Riding on the waves of success and wealth of the American automotive industry through the 1950s and 1960s, the city enjoyed economic and cultural prosperity, becoming a magnet for the multitudes who exchanged the rural life for a promising future in the big city.

Today, mansions and cultural projects, sports facilities and huge community institutions are standing drearily empty, testament to the devastation of a city whose economy collapsed and whose population moved on. Abandoned and exhausted, Detroit has only a fraction of its former population. Most residents live in poverty, and the city filed officially for bankruptcy in 2013. Detroit today is a bleeding urban wound in the American landscape, wrapped in smoke from burning abandoned houses, a silent testimony to a glorious human enterprise which failed to reinvent itself.

Force design is an ongoing project, a continuous enterprise, with indisputable importance in determining the success of military power in the strategic activities of the state. And yet, it is not clear whether all those who use the term “force design” attribute to it the same meaning.

In fact, the IDF lacks an official theory of force design. In his book “Studies in the Theory of Force Design,” Brigadier-General (ret.) Jacob Zigdon feels the need to define the scope of this important domain.[1] There are those who consider force design a process concerned with the “structural preparedness of the combat arms” and “preparing the force” as a process that has to do with improving the capabilities of a unit,[2] and there are those who emphasize the total mobilization of national resources as a preparation for war.[3] Alongside the multitude of definitions and viewpoints, the relative dearth of theoretical and research literature on force design - especially in Hebrew - is conspicuous. The forthcoming issues of The Dado Center Journal will be dedicated to the force design enterprise. We will not engage in reductive definitions. On the contrary – we will try to propose a multi-dimensional, systemic and multi-angled debate, covering the many tasks involved in force design.

The broad framework for the debate in this issue, Part 1 of the forthcoming series, will be provided in the opening article by Brigadier-General (ret.) Yoram Hamo on the subject of force design as a campaign. Hamo explains that we have become used to thinking about force design as a challenge whose essence is in optimizing various procurement offers and the available budget. This mindset, though not necessarily in contradiction with innovation and creative thinking, definitely does not encourage creativity. Hamo claims that we should think about force design in strategic terms, and consolidate it as a campaign in itself, just like the campaigns in which we exercise that force. To illustrate the difficulty of this situation, Hamo poses a challenging question – How is it that, despite a huge imbalance of technology and resources in our favor, we do not yet feel that the challenge presented by an organization like Hezbollah has been solved?

The second article in this issue, the fruit of extensive research by Nissim Hania, a former J2 officer and currently a hi-tech entrepreneur and research fellow at the Dado Center, offers an answer to Hamo’s question. Hania explores the historical evolution of the Israeli defense development and production system – the Ministry of Defense, the defense industries and the General Staff. His conclusion is that this system, which in the past was a major cause of the IDF's successes, is currently suffering from flaws which cast doubts on its ability to promote the qualitative edge of the IDF. The research demonstrates that in certain places the jointness between large defense industries, their institutional protection mechanism in the form of the Ministry of Defense, and an inherent weakness in technological thinking in the General Staff, constitute a substantial block in the ability of this magnificent system to bring forth technological and conceptual military innovation.

In the third article, the commander of the Ground Forces, General Guy Tzur, proposes a different framework for thinking about force design. By describing the learning process “Land in Sight,” carried out in the Ground Forces for the last two years, Tzur provides an alternative to the orderly and institutionalized planning processes discussed in the two previous articles. “Land in Sight” is a dedicated learning process, outside the framework of the routine processes carried out in the force design entities, which has deliberately and systematically created organizational conditions for renewed thinking, for refuting previous fundamental assumptions and eventually for providing an updated concept for an offensive ground maneuver and a force generation plan to apply this concept.

While the first three articles deal with force design as a processional, institutional and intellectual challenge, the fourth article, by Colonel Eran Ortal (the undersigned), opens a window into force design content. The article, through a critical observation of the current conventional ground operations concept, deals with one of the most important impediments limiting the strategic effectiveness of the current military power. The article introduces the strategic problem – the chronic aversion of nations and armies to the employment of significant ground forces – analyzes its reasons and points out the conceptual and technological potential for change labeled “Sixth Generation Warfare.” The actualization of sixth generation ground warfare will enable the IDF, according to the article, to execute effective joint operations and bring an end to the repression of land power.

The issue concludes with the fifth article, by Colonel Yoav Tillan and Lt. Colonel Eli Michelson. Tillan and Michelson studied another way the IDF adapted to new challenges in the past, to learn and implement new information – the establishment of special units, which became “learning units.” The writers claim that in previous decades, the IDF had succeeded in identifying new challenges, in confronting them with small, flexible and dedicated formations, and in using the ongoing friction with the enemy in between wars for operational learning and for adaptation to changing conditions. In other words, Tillan and Michelson present a further force design mechanism, whose essence is the exploitation of friction and creation, as opposed to premeditated action.

What is the learning mechanism that characterizes force design in the IDF? Can we define it? Are we aware of it? What is the force design we’re aiming for? Are we thinking about this enterprise in strategic and operational terms? Are we results-oriented regarding a technological development system whose power center resides outside the IDF? Are we learning today, as we did in the past, from prolonged friction with our enemies? Are we maximizing this mechanism satisfactorily? These questions and others remain open for further thinking and debate. But the biggest question of them all – What is the mechanism that defines our ability to re-invent ourselves, the unique spark that will enable our military might to avoid a similar dwindling into irrelevance of the kind experienced by Detroit? – is at our doorstep.

As stated, this is the first part of the force design project of The Dado Center Journal. The second part will strive to peel back another layer in an effort to find an answer to that big question by studying the roots of the IDF organization, by probing the place of innovation as a conscious thinking effort within the framework of the military organization, by advanced thinking about the role of intelligence in the force design enterprise, by a critical examination of the concept “Qualitative Edge” and its evolution, and more.

With best wishes for fruitful and enjoyable reading,

Col. Eran Ortal Head of Think Tank

[1] See Jacob Zigdon, “'Studies in the theory of military buildup,” P. 16

[2] Ibid

[3] Idem, P. 27