Israel Approves New Joint SOF Command
By BARBARA OPALL-ROME Defense News Published: 15 Dec 2011 15:23
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=8576347&c=MID&s=LAN

TEL AVIV - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Dec. 15 approved the
formation of a joint special operations force oriented to multidisciplinary
missions far from Israel's borders.

The force will be led by Maj. Gen. Shai Avital and will report directly to
Lt. Gen. Beni Gantz, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

Defense News first reported the likelihood of the proposed force - known as
Depth Corps - in its Nov. 14 editions.[see below]

The force will integrate elite commando units into a single special
operations command for counterterror, anti-smuggling, anti-proliferation and
other operations beyond its immediate and intermediate circles of enemy
states. Israel's military censor did not allow reference to these outer
circle states, but foreign sources have defined them to include Iran and
countries lining the Horn of Africa.

"The primary task of the Corps will be to extend joint IDF operations into
the strategic depth," noted an IDF statement released late Dec. 15.
======================

Israel May Merge Units For Far-flung Missions
By BARBARA OPALL-ROME
Published: 14 November 2011
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=8232693

TEL AVIV - Israeli military leaders may merge several historically
autonomous elite commando units into a single special operations force
oriented to multidisciplinary missions far from Israel's borders.

The proposed force, known among a small circle of senior officers here as
Deep Corps, is one of several organizational and conceptual upgrades under
review in response to escalating threats and instability anticipated in a
rapidly changing region.

As the democratic winds of the "Arab spring" turn into what many here
pejoratively call the Islamic winter, Israeli military leaders are making
worst-case contingency plans for high-intensity war on multiple fronts, and
for the prospect of bold, increasingly long-range preemptive special
operations.

Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, directed a
review of the pros and cons of establishing the unified Deep Corps special
operations force. Details of the study, led by Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a
former head of operations and commander of Israel's Northern Command, have
not yet been presented to Gantz for approval.

According to one member of the General Staff, the idea is to merge Sayeret
Matkal, Israel's premier General Staff reconnaissance unit; Navy SEALs
(Flotilla 13); the Air Force's Shaldag target designation unit and 669
airborne search and rescue force into a single command structure subordinate
to the IDF chief of General Staff.

Under the plan, each elite unit would retain its unique capabilities, but
the consolidated command would encourage a holistic, less competitive,
collaborative approach to mission planning and training. Proponents argue
this will allow a more seamless and ultimately effective operational force.

"We're talking about an organizational change that impacts planning,
training and chain of command, not budget," said the IDF general officer.

He noted that the proposed Deep Corps special operations force supports a
new operational concept coalescing within the IDF called "the operational
arena between wars."

Under this new concept, the IDF must be prepared to intensify counterterror,
anti-smuggling, anti-proliferation and other operations beyond its immediate
and intermediate circles of enemy states to the so-called outer circle of
threats.

Israel's military censor did not allow reference to these outer circle
states, but foreign sources have defined them to include Iran and countries
lining the Gulf of Aden.

"Before all these changes in the region, the IDF fluctuated between planning
for war and fighting wars in parallel to our routine anti-terror
operations," the officer said. "But in the new reality, we understand that
there is also a war between wars … and this is much more quiet and extends
to much wider circles."

'Failed States'

In a Nov. 3 address to business leaders and industrialists here, Meir Dagan,
the recently retired head of Israel's Mossad spy agency, described Somalia,
Yemen and Libya as "failed states" where a lack of a functioning and
accountable central government would result in intensified threats not only
to Israel, but to the entire region.

"Each of these states - at different levels of the scale - can be classified
as failed states. This is a distinguishing feature of the Islamic Arab
spring," Dagan said.

He also expressed doubts about Tunisia emerging as a democratic country. But
Dagan's assessment contradicts that of Israeli military intelligence, which
concluded that the Islamist Ennahda party that won in the country's first
democratic elections since the Arab spring uprising was essentially
moderate.

Most worrisome from Israel's perspective, Dagan said, are signs that Egypt
could be "at the beginning of a process toward becoming a failed state,
toward chaos."

According to the man who presided over Israel's intelligence agency for the
past eight years, Egypt is unlikely to become an Islamist state ruled by the
Muslim Brotherhood or offshoot groups. Nor, he said, is Egypt likely to
abrogate its peace treaty with Israel, despite widespread anti-Israel
sentiment by the same populist forces that brought down the regime of former
President Hosni Mubarak.

"Make no mistake, in Egypt, there wasn't a revolution. The only thing that
happened in Egypt was they removed Mubarak and put him in a cage," Dagan
said.

The former spymaster said that ruling authorities in Egypt would continue to
uphold the 32-year cold peace with Israel out of sheer national interest.

Nevertheless, IDF military planners here are building into their next
five-year plan the training - but not necessarily the equipment or war
stocks - needed to confront a revival of the long-dormant Egyptian theater.

Giora Eiland, a retired IDF major general and former IDF director for
planning, said that since the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Israel's
relative portion of defense spending to gross national product dropped from
a pre-Camp David high of 30 percent to about 7 percent. Because of the
neutralized Western front with Egypt, Israel was able to reduce its order of
battle and, more importantly, according to Eiland, its vast amounts of
stockpiled weaponry and ammunition.

In an essay published last month by Tel Aviv University's Institute for
National Security Studies, Eiland noted the dilemma facing the General Staff
as it updates its five-year plan to reflect changes fueled by the Arab
spring.

"Does the change that has taken place in Egypt require a change in the basic
working assumption that the country is a risk, but not a threat? And if so,
to what extent?" Eiland wrote.

IDF officers declined to publicly comment about Arab spring-induced changes
to its proposed 2013-'17 plan, which is being briefed to government
ministers and key lawmakers.

However, a Nov. 9 speech by Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, IDF chief of staff, hinted
at the dramatically altered threat assessment driving the updated multiyear
plan now under review.

In an address commemorating the 1995 assassination of then-Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Gantz said his reading of today's strategic map
reminded him of Rabin's speech to the nation just days after Israel's
victory in the 1967 Six Day War. He said then-IDF Chief Rabin's praise for
Israeli combat units "on all fronts," and his much-remembered reference to
"the few against the many."

"With revived instability in the Middle East, and in response to recurring
attempts of enemy states and terror organizations to harm the State of
Israel and its citizens," Gantz said, "it is not unlikely that we will have
to deal in the future with a similar situation."