"An efficient, lethal, innovative army" – in just a few simple words, the IDF's new chief of staff laid out the doctrine he intends to implement in the coming years as he prepares the army for war.
The IDF's traditional war doctrine is predicated on forcing the enemy to surrender after defeating it on its own territory with nimble land forces capable of encircling and threatening to destroy it. What the new IDF chief, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, has described is a new type of doctrine that sees the military defeat the enemy primarily through destroying its military resources and personnel on the ground (and under it), from afar, by means of lethal precision weaponry born of Israel's technological advantages.
The focus on efficiency and lethality expresses the aspiration to emerge victorious as quickly as possible, without having to pay too high of a price and with higher levels of precision. Precision is necessary, among other reasons, to neutralize the main threat posed by the terrorist armies' only game-changing weapon, that is to say the civilian population. Due to the desire to avoid civilian casualties, the IDF thus far has not used its full might to end campaigns quickly and shorten the period of suffering for Israeli and enemy civilians alike.
Building this new army, it would appear, presents Kochavi with several challenges. The first among them is the urgent need for a budget that can limit the vulnerable transition period between the IDF's new procurements, during which the army must incorporate the resources derived from the previous doctrine with the resources required to implement the new doctrine.
Unlike in the past, increasing the budget is necessary for the IDF to manage a simultaneous war footing: a defensive posture alongside the ability to immediately launch offensive campaigns on multiple sub-fronts to annihilate the enemy's ability to fight. Linear victory, as was the case in the past when the IDF concentrated its resources on one front and then moved them to another after securing the former is an economic use of those resources, but tends to expand the length of the war and, consequently, the scope of devastation and civilian casualties as well.
The second challenge facing the new chief of staff is to eliminate the air force's monopoly on precision, long-range "lethality" and to disperse this capability among all the branches.
His third challenge is to breathe new life into the eroded ethos of "duty." He has to motivate and incentivize talented officers to stay in the army and forego enticing and often better paying civilian avenues.
The fourth challenge is defining the role of the reserve army in the new war. Galvanizing and updating the reserve force is imperative if he wants to fix the terrible impression left by the outgoing IDF ombudsman in his reports on the state of the army's emergency weapons warehouses and military training according to the old war doctrine.
