Planning Force Design

“It is the age old and unequal struggle between criticism and creation, science and art; the former may always be right, but without gain to anybody”

Hermann Hesse, Beneath the Wheel

Introduction

Over the years, the fields of Operations Research and Systems Analysis became dominant in the Israeli defense establishment’s force design decision‐making processes. Every conceptual idea that becomes a practical initiative must go through a long, thorough and systematic process of analytical assessment whose purpose is to evaluate the technological feasibility, utility and expected benefits of the idea' as well as other types of evaluations which can help the decision‐makers. This is certainly an important process, but over the years it has become a decisive process – a process that almost exclusively defines the framework of the discourse. These systematic analytical processes are also biased towards caution, that is – they prioritize, even if unintentionally, risk reduction over maximizing the chances of success.

This article will attempt to make clear the connection between the above trend and the conclusion that the IDF is not succeeding in creating force design that is relevant to the threats facing Israel. In each “round of violence” it is clear to all that the IDF is using the it has at tools at hand, rather than the tools that it should have.

It is widely accepted, almost across the board, that our environment is changing, that the nature of conflict is changing and that many other dynamics are changing as well. The IDF’s force design processes, however, have remained unchanged. In other words, while the environment and threats have changed dramatically, force design planning has remained fixed to the same mathematical and scientific methods. The IDF, to generalize, does not take into account the need to use its imagination in order to generate a ‘thread’ which could lead to an understanding of the enemy’s existing potential. This article will argue that the solution is to be found in a combination of lateral thinking ‐ in the context of the possibilities which may be developed by the enemy and its conceptual and technological potential ‐ together with an operations research methodology whose advantage is local optimization, a type of analysis related to tactical missions.

When Operational Optimization Meets Subversive Strategy

The center of gravity of the threats against Israel has moved from states (aside from the Iranian threat) to terror or guerilla organizations. As a result of this change, the question clearly arises as to why Israel is not succeeding in defeating enemy organizations (on the presumption that this is Israel’s strategic objective)? This question becomes more poignant when we analyze the enormous differences in investment and the quantitative and resource advantages that Israel enjoys in this type of conflict. It would seem that what has been is what will be. In recent conflicts, and it would seem in the future too, the lack of a decisive victory is a permanent feature. At a certain point, both sides meet at the UN Security Council and reach an agreement to implement a ceasefire which neither side is satisfied with, and after a short time period, these understandings are undermined and conflict breaks out again. Within the Israeli security concept, this ritual is referred to as the “rounds concept” or “conflict management.”

Seemingly, the conflict is being managed. But from a broad perspective, the way it is being managed appropriates numerous resources from the State of Israel, primarily in three areas: Human life, the economy and statesmanship. The connections between these fields create a critical mass which extracts a substantial price from Israel in the national security arena. As opposed to the security arena, narrowly defined, which only focuses on security issues, the national security arena covers many dimensions from all fields – from society to the economy, infrastructure and personal security, and to statesmanship; and also includes security. This broader view sees this “rounds approach” of conflict management as damaging to the broad interests of the State of Israel. This is primarily due to the fear that the feeling of instability and skepticism that will likely result from further rounds of violence, play into the hands of the terror organizations, whose objective is to subvert the conflict management process and the feeling of control inherent in it. Actually, we can “crudely” say that these organizations have the opposite function – to erode stability. Not only that, the tools at their disposal are infinitely cheaper, more available and easier than the tools available to the state which is managing the conflict. In addition, the civilian losses that cause Israel to attack these organizations, paradoxically, strengthen these very organizations – they mar Israel in the international arena and build these organizations’ positions within their internal arenas. Essentially, in the event of a war with Israel, all that these organizations need do is hold out while facing the Israeli attack and try to hit the Israeli civilian home front. This “organizing principle” is easier, cheaper and more efficient than Israel’s attempts to surgically hit terrorist actors within crowded areas populated by uninvolved civilians.

The amazing thing is, and perhaps the saddest, that Israel continues to do so, war after war, due to an enduring blindness.

What does it mean to Decisively Defeat the Enemy?

Any discussion dealing with national security must include the term “decisive defeat” (Hachra’a in Hebrew). It is well known that Israel’s security concept is made up of three basic elements – deterrence, early warning and decisive defeat and recently a fourth concept was added – defense. In this article we will focus on the term decisive defeat. I would argue that a decisive military defeat means: “A military campaign that ends with the ability of one side to force a diplomatic agreement at the expense of the other side.” The winning side can dictate the diplomatic situation after the war and the defeated side is coerced into accepting these dictates out of an understanding that rejection of the terms will bring an even more painful price. In reality, since the 1973 Yom Kippur war, no military operation has taken place which led to a decisive defeat, aside from perhaps Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 which ended with a decisive military defeat, but did not bring diplomatic coercion afterwards. In the same context, but from the opposite perspective, there also exists a state of “lack of a decisive defeat.” This means that the two sides reached the conclusion that they have exhausted their capability to achieve further accomplishments or that the investment required to achieve additional accomplishments would be too expensive and therefore not worthwhile. Consequently, they turn to the Security Council, and the conflict ends with a ceasefire.

The Difficulty in Decisively Defeating the Enemy

What are the phenomena that make it difficult for a national regular army to decisively defeat a terror or guerrilla organization, in the way that decisive defeats were achieved in World War II or the Israeli 1948 War of Independence? I will point out four key phenomena:

The first is the terror or guerilla organizations’ lack of sovereignty in the territory of the state in which they operate. They do not have a governmental backbone and clear military centers of gravity that can be identified and attacked. Their principal capability is to extract a price from enemy states, primarily from the civilian population of the enemy state. These organizations are (generally) not seeking to capture territory in order to defeat the enemy state, rather they want to continue to fire at the civilian home front of that state, even while negotiations for a ceasefire are taking place at the UN Security Council. This allows them to control the decision on when they will stop extracting a price from the civilian home front. This is how events worked out in 2006 – The UN ceasefire resolution, UNSCR 1701, came into effect only after Hezbollah’s representative in the Lebanese government gave his approval, and only after Hezbollah understood that the IDF was about to send large forces into Lebanon. In the militarily weakened state that the organization found itself in after three weeks of combat against the IDF, it preferred to agree to a ceasefire on the terms dictated by Israel.

The second phenomenon, the operational approach of these organizations – concealment, camouflage and rapid fire both towards the civilian home front and at the military forces, makes it difficult for regular armed forces to efficiently and quickly attack them and to bring them to a situation where they stop their armed activity.

The third phenomenon’s source is the differing perspectives on civilian casualties. For a guerrilla or terror organization, harm caused to civilians on their side – civilians who live in the same state or civilians who are identified with the organization but are “not involved” militarily – is not a failure. Rather, it is a way to generate support from the population and encourage it to identify with the organization as well as presenting the enemy state as a mutual enemy.

The fourth phenomenon and the last is connected to the ideological motif which led to the establishment of and continued motivation for these terror and guerilla organizations. They try to achieve political objectives through the use of violence and thus, as long as they are not decisively and totally defeated, they will continue to adhere to their founding values and will continue to use violence. Therefore, even local decisive defeats do not bring about political defeat. We can see, for example, the lack of a decisive defeat against Hezbollah and Hamas reflected in Israel’s attempts to shape the diplomatic situation against despite not achieving a decisive military victory, in the two unilateral withdrawals that took place.

An Unprofitable Investment

It would seem that the conceptual discipline that determines that a decisive victory over the enemy will cause them to surrender has lost its relevance over the last decade, to put it mildly. Nonetheless, it is too early to conclude that this concept is dead. In force design planning one must also take into account the possibility that state enemies could return to center stage. We cannot remove the possibility of a Syrian recovery adding to the range of threats facing Israel; for example, a ceasefire could enable the Syrian regular army to once again become a threat to Israel. A state must take into account a wide range of potential threats.

That said, I will return to the issue of decisively defeating the enemy and connect it to the question of investment. Previously I argued that the decisive defeat of a regular army depends on damaging its center of gravity and systematic destruction of its command backbone – air force, armored corps, air defenses, command and control and even the capturing and controlling of critical territory. During the Gulf War, the Americans added an additional element – the governing regime, on which an attack could cause the collapse of the state itself.

This viewpoint is complicated when applied to organizations. They do not have organizational backbones, hierarchical systems or the presence of general staffs and logistics levels. Consequently, regular armies are left to chase rocket squads or guerillas who constitute low signature targets. Attempts to improve intelligence capabilities, reduce the time needed to “close the loop between sensor and shooter” and increase firepower usually yield unsatisfactory results. In addition, controlling and capturing territory in which the organizations operate will not necessarily bring an end to the fire on Israel, certainly not in the timeframes that Israel sets for ending hostilities of this type.

Due to all of the above, we can argue that the level of investment in casualties, budget, and development by a guerilla or terror organization in order to achieve its strategic objectives is much lower than that needed by a state to “stop, neutralize or decisively defeat” a guerilla organization. This issue is directly exacerbated by the fact that as a guerrilla organization develops and uses older or more primitive technology, its chances of survival rise when facing regular armed forces. “Flying maneuver” – Qassam rockets –boasts manufacturing and usage costs that are negligible in relation to the enormous Israeli investment in the “Iron Dome” system. The cost of building tunnels for Hamas, which constitute a significant threat to Israel, is negligible in relation to the Israeli investment in developing systems to deal with this threat. These two examples are a demonstration of what is apparently to be expected in the next conflict – terror and guerilla organizations that are able to relatively quickly and cheaply develop operational challenges for Israel that will require a much greater investment to develop an adequate response.

The ratio between the investment which the organizations need to make in order to develop systems with high survivability and which can cause significant damage to Israel and the investment that Israel needs to make to develop systems to neutralize those threats is at least two orders of magnitude. For example, if the development of the Qassam system cost around 10 million dollars, the cost needed to develop the Iron Dome system is a billion dollars – a gap of two orders of magnitude.

This gap enables the organizations to engage in combat for a longer period than Israel would like. The range of operational possibilities for the organizations is enormous and endless. Any solution to the tunnel or rocket issues will certainly cause the organizations to seek another weapon system ‐ cheap, efficient and fast – and while an Israeli response will be found in the end, it will come after a long period and a large investment. Not only that, the ability to achieve a decisive defeat becomes more distant in this case. This gap is well known to the organizations and they rely on it to prevent an enemy state from decisively defeating them. They will continue to operate in the same fashion as long as Israel continue to engage in force design based on identifying gaps based on insights gleaned during previous hostilities and on the basis of Israel’s perception of the current situation.

That is, as long is Israel continues to engage in force design on the basis of the gaps between its situation assessment and its existing capabilities, Israel will always be one phase behind or find itself permanently off balance in relation to the enemies’ capabilities.

Scientific Force Design Compared to the Lateral Thinking of a Street Gang Leader

Force design methodologies in Israel are based on the gap between Israel’s situation assessment – of the threats to Israel – and existing responses to these threats. The military establishment must close this gap through suitable force design planning. The logic behind closing the gaps has been called “Minimax logic” – a cautious and calculated logic that determines that one cannot allow any opening for the enemy, and that one needs to engage in an almost mathematical optimization in order to divide resources among all of these gaps. This is a concept whose origins are in game theory. The Minimax guarantees us that among the worst results possible, we will receive that which is less terrible. Were it not for this logic, a rupture would be likely, and as a result we would find ourselves having to deal with intolerable possibilities.

It would seem that this is a logical and appropriate thought process. However, in reality it has an inbuilt problem – we are engaged in optimization on the basis of events that have already taken place or partial intelligence on the enemy’s intentions. While we are planning based on what we experienced, the enemy is already preparing a new and cheaper threat which in most cases we will initially relate to as a mere curiosity or something which is not serious or threatening. The difference between seriously threatening and not threatening primarily relates to the enemy’s usage strategy which is reflected in the level of usage and its nature. The Sagger missile was well known to the IDF before the Yom Kippur war. The way it was used surprised the IDF. The same is true of the tunnels. They were known to the IDF for a decade before the threat was first encountered in combat, but their conversion to a strategic asset by Hamas – numerous tunnels and offensive capabilities – surprised the IDF.

The use of rockets and missiles is another example. Already in 1991, Saddam Hussein fired SCUD missiles at Israel. Many operations research personnel predicted before the war that he would not fire missiles at Israel due to a fear of a decisive Israeli response. They argued that the expected benefits of firing a number of barrels of explosives – and sometimes they were even filled with concrete instead of explosives – compared to the harsh Israeli response to the launches would prevent him from firing. In the end, Saddam fired 39 missiles at Israel. He did so because he recognized an Israeli vulnerability – the civilian home front. Saddam’s concrete missiles were not meant to cause dozens or hundreds of casualties. Their role was to disrupt the daily routines of Israeli citizens, to impair their sense of personal security and to interrupt the continuous functioning of existing systems. In essence, Saddam thought, these missiles were intended to generate a strategic profit in the form of destabilizing the Western coalition against him and uniting Arab public opinion in his favor. This idea became common knowledge, and for similar reasons the terror organizations have equipped themselves with numerous rockets and missiles, with great accuracy and which carry standard explosives. A new problems was created for Israel which demanded a huge investment.

Until twenty years ago, Syria had only a few dozen SSMs. During the same period, the researchers who dealt with force design ranked this threat as very low on the ladder of threats. They saw rockets as a restricted problem which could possibly turn into a substantial threat in the future, but at that time there were greater threats that demanded investment. The Israeli brain is guided by operations research tools and follows the rationale – investment in what is clearly seen. What the enemy might do in the future is a low priority. The problem is in the different thought processes of the enemy, its different rationale: I will choose something that will surprise Israel and force it to fight for a long period, preventing it from decisive defeating me, until a ceasefire is imposed. The enemy’s thought process is not military. It is similar to the thought process of a neighborhood crime organization – two enter a bank, two others distract the police, and they all then escape.

Faced with this type of thinking, we have intelligent and talented force design planners who use mathematical models to generate optimization based on the types of conflict that we have become used to. These planning bodies are not able to get into the heads of “neighborhood crime bosses.” This enormous gap can be bridged only when we evaluate the different investment rations that are needed by each side in order to fulfill their goals. Even worse is the fact that if these two lines of thought continue to exist in parallel, then the thieves will continue to have the upper hand – arriving at an imposed ceasefire without the state being able to decisively defeat them.

Where is the problem?

We can usually find the end of the thread, but we can’t estimate its length, significance or shape. In other words, we can identify the beginning of a new threat to Israel but we are not capable of estimating its real significance due to our adherence to scientific thinking and planning or to thinking that is directed by operations research. It is hard for us to think like the leader of a street gang and we are therefore surprised by the enemy “thief.” We need to be released from our enslavement to accounting/operations research thinking and to start to think “laterally.” To think like them. To invest in possible situations that may develop and are not what we have already encountered.

Operations research thinking is relevant in the context of assessing the force components for a defined mission when all of the enemy components are known and defined. Aside from that, for the complete picture we need a different kind of thinking, outside the box, focused on the enemy’s next step and on a decision to invest in advance in stopping it.

The price of this approach is clear. After finding the “end of the thread,” we need the capability to predict logical steps that the enemy might take, which will then force Israel to make a considerable investment to ensure comprehensive coverage, when in reality it is likely that not all of these steps will be realized. However, it is still appropriate to invest in all of these possibilities. Even if the enemy has not renewed its capabilities, we will create a new field in which we have a preemptive qualitative advantage, not in response to a gap, but in a field of operational capability which will allow us to take the initiative in a way that the enemy has not yet developed a judicious response for. And if the enemy does renew its capabilities, then this option was taken into account in the force design planning. This result is very significant and could even allow for the decisive defeat of an organizational enemy.

Given that the number of “thread ends’ is not large, the investment will always be worthwhile. The logic that is meant to direct this process is as follows: How can the enemy use new capabilities that arise and leverage them to become a strategic platform which can bring it achievements (from its perspective)?

The first element of this logic involves evaluating the capability of the enemy to equip itself with armaments and to train technicians or fighters on those technologies. It is clear that state intelligence efforts are directed precisely at this issue, but the critical point is this: Even if there is not enough evidence that a new platform will become a strategic offensive element, but there is a possibility that it could be extended to such an extent that it would serve Hamas or Hezbollah, then force design planning should treat the threat as if the capability exists and attempts must be made to thwart it as quickly as possible.

Time and again, the long time period that Israel takes to find a response to new developments by the organizations allows the organizations to hold on, to escape a decisive defeat and to create a situation in which Israel prefers a ceasefire.

The capability of an enemy organization to surprise and to renew could turn into a double‐edged sword for them if IDF force design can somewhat reduce the domination of the old scientific approach in its planning processes. Not every investment in force design needs to be supported by solid physical and intelligence evidence such as that required in a criminal trial. The enemy is not “innocent” until proven guilty, and its natural inclination is to use every technological opportunity to make things more difficult for us, without organizational inhibitions and without “risk minimization” processes and “feasibility studies.” Thought processes and imagination have a significant place, and we need to derive from them investment channels for force design. Even if we have learned that there is a need for solid proof – this is the basis for all science expect the science of war ‐ in war there is a place for lateral thinking which also usually wins.

Conclusion

Investment in solutions to innovative new challenges, which the enemy intends to surprise us with, have strategic value even if it turns out that Israel invested in illusory paths. Israel’s capability to neutralize the enemy’s surprise at the beginning of hostilities also has enormous significance to Israel’s ability to decisively defeat the enemy.

The possibility of doing so will not be found in force design processes that rely on operations research but rather in processes based on the ability to be imaginative and to think like the other side. The personnel involved in these processes must adapt themselves to a way of thinking based on a deep understanding of the logic of the enemy system – the logic of the leader of a street gang of thieves. They need to focus on the way organizations that think like a street gang view success in a conflict against a state. There is considerable similarity between this new world and the cyber world. Analysis of what the enemy might do is more suited to ‘hackers’ than to intellectuals from academia. The tools of operations research are critical for force design but they are not the optimal and most relevant to the strategic and operational contexts. We need to limit our use of them to the instances where the mission is clearly defined and most of the issues are known.

[1] LTC (Res.) Dr. Haim Assa is the head of the Simulation lab Simlab at the Yuval Ne'eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Defense, Tel Aviv University.