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Thursday, July 11, 2013
Weekly Commentary: And what if the military projections are wrong – again?

Weekly Commentary: And what if the military projections are wrong – again?

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 11 July 2013

Israel won’t be challenged by the conventional forces of a coalition of
enemy states for the foreseeable future.

That’s the critical working assumption that serves as the basis for
decisions now in the process of being made that will determine what the IDF
will look like for years to come.

What a convenient and comforting premise.

Then again, how much comfort can one really get from the assessments of
experts who failed to accurately predict any major development in the region
in the last half a century?

Yes. As of this afternoon it seems that Sunni-Shia animosity take
precedence over the Arab-Jewish conflict.

But what about tomorrow?

Yes, the Syrian army has no doubt been eroded by their civil war. But there’s
a lot more to the region than Syria.

The armies in our neighborhood have huge quantities of advanced conventional
weapons for land, sea and air based combat.

And there is absolutely no way to predict with any degree of reasonable
certainty who or what will be giving the orders to those armies within the
relevant planning horizon.

It would appear that the plans for a “slimmer smarter” IDF includes devoting
huge resources for a second squadron of F-35Is - a platform whose very
justification of existence is predicated on the working assumption that in
the coming decades no one is going to come up with a gizmo that facilitates
identifying, targeting and shooting down what at this time is hard to pick
up using instruments now deployed in the field.

Question: is this a rational working assumption?

Hint: F-35's can't defend against enemy F-35's or their Russian
equivalents. So you can be pretty sure that everyone is working in earnest
to develop this gizmo.

But there’s another equally troubling aspect of the F-35’s that demands
consideration: almost all, if not all, maintenance on the F-35’s will be
performed by the United States.

This puts America in the position that it can essentially veto any major
Israeli operation either by withholding services or by making it known that
If the operation is launched that Israel can expect to experience service
delays.

That’s bad enough. But consider this: There are Israeli operations that
the White House may welcome behind closed doors as it officially distances
itself from them. Everyone else in the world also will know that Israel
relies on American maintenance services for the F-35’s. The world,
therefore, may take the position that any Israeli operation using F-35’s has
Washington’s approval.

[Please note: Washington doesn't have to announce a freeze - though this
has, indeed, happened in the past. Instead it can simply have the American
companies notify Israel of delays for ostensibly technical reasons.]

How could this impact the use of the F-35’s?

How will this very overt dependence impact US-Israel relations?

As we mark the 40th anniversary of the consequences of failed "concepts" -
the Yom Kippur War, it would be most appropriate that we take special care
to avoid finding ourselves driven by some kind of herd mentality to
embracing false "concepts" today.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il

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