Air Power, Insurgency and the “War on Terror” - Prof. Joel Hayward's ...

Chapter 9
<strong>and</strong> incorporates political, psychological, informational <strong>and</strong>
economic methods. 377
The approach of irregular warfare is to attrite <strong>and</strong> exhaust <strong>the</strong> adversary through nonconventional
methods ra<strong>the</strong>r than through direct confrontation. As <strong>the</strong> US Joint Staff
(J-3) writes, “tactical <strong>and</strong> operational competence in conventional warfighting does not
necessarily guarantee tactical, operational, or strategic success in operations <strong>and</strong> activities
associated with IW.” Israel’s experience in <strong>the</strong> Second Lebanon War demonstrates why
this may be <strong>the</strong> case.
Unlike some of <strong>the</strong> Arab state militaries that operated in conventional, force-on-force
settings against Israel <strong>and</strong> had high value targets <strong>and</strong> “centres of gravity” worth striking,
Hezbollah lacked such capabilities <strong>and</strong> targets. Lacking high-value targets, such as
industrial facilities <strong>and</strong> robust comm<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> control nodes, Hezbollah’s main targets
became its leadership, fielded forces, <strong>and</strong> weapons, hidden among civilians <strong>and</strong> extremely
difficult to target. These targets were largely decentralised <strong>and</strong> diffuse, lacking a clearly
defined structure that Hezbollah used to its advantage. By relying heavily on numerous,
elusive katyusha rockets <strong>and</strong> asymmetric tactics, operating from high density civilian
areas, <strong>and</strong> moving <strong>the</strong>ir offensive capabilities frequently, Hezbollah was able to avoid
being destroyed. Against <strong>the</strong>se targets, <strong>the</strong> IDF’s attempt to use long-range bombs <strong>and</strong>
artillery to disarm <strong>and</strong> defeat Hezbollah was intractable, <strong>the</strong> operational equivalent of
finding needles in haystacks.
With this strategy, <strong>the</strong> IDF may have been able to suppress <strong>and</strong> disperse <strong>the</strong> Hezbollah
fighters <strong>and</strong> rockets but could not have caused decisive defeat. Israel’s “uncontested
superiority in <strong>the</strong> realm of conventional warfare” 379
<strong>and</strong> material <strong>and</strong> technological
advantages did not translate into success on <strong>the</strong> battlefield, as Hezbollah “managed to
reverse decades of Arab military humiliation, surviving <strong>the</strong> Israeli onslaught” of <strong>the</strong> 2006
war in Lebanon. 380
Against Hezbollah’s asymmetric tactics, 381 <strong>the</strong> IDF had limited success in killing Hezbollah’s
leadership <strong>and</strong> destroying <strong>the</strong> mobile rocket launchers with st<strong>and</strong>-off capabilities. Not
only did it have limited success in hitting its targets, <strong>the</strong> IDF also inevitably contributed
to a number of Lebanese civilian casualties. From st<strong>and</strong>off positions, <strong>the</strong>re was no way
to distinguish between un-uniformed Hezbollah fighters <strong>and</strong> Lebanese civilians. The
result was about 1,100 civilian casualties. 382 Tellingly, in its accounting of casualties, <strong>the</strong>
Lebanese government did not differentiate between civilian <strong>and</strong> Hezbollah combatants,
in part reflecting <strong>the</strong> difficulty of distinguishing between <strong>the</strong> two even up close <strong>and</strong> by
extension, <strong>the</strong> impossibility of doing so from fighters or bombers operating from much
fur<strong>the</strong>r. 383 Although <strong>the</strong> tactic of operating un-uniformed <strong>and</strong> from civilian areas was of
<strong>Air</strong> <strong>Power</strong>, <strong>Insurgency</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> “War on Terror” 151