Military outlines reform plan for smaller, smarter IDF

Military reform to streamline air force, navy, ground forces and reserves • Funding to go to intelligence, cyber and special forces capabilities • Military source: IDF is strongest military in the Middle East, regional armies busy with internal issues.

Lilach Shova, Zeev Klein and Israel Hayom Staff

Outdated tanks will be retired [Illustrative] | Photo credit: Etzion Goel

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The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday outlined some of the dramatic changes it plans to make to its order of battle over the next few years, saying the reform will result in a smaller, more streamlined military that will be able to face future threats more effectively while complying with government-mandated cuts to defense spending.

The reform, formulated by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, will see a vast reconfiguration of the military's main operational platforms -- the air force, navy, ground forces and reserves.

The Israel Air Force will be the first to implement the change, shutting down one squadron, fusing two others together and closing one operational unit. The army will retire several outdated tanks and close one artillery unit and one of the reserves' logistical support units, while the navy will retire several battleships. Focus, and funding, will be placed on air force, intelligence, cyber and special forces capabilities.

A comprehensive change to the structure of several of the ground forces' divisions will be introduced as well. The IDF's area brigades, which are deployed in the Golan Heights, the Galilee, Judea and Samaria and near the Gaza Strip and Egypt borders, will become sector brigades, adding various tactical and intelligence missions to their operational duties and subjecting additional units to their command. Division 36, which is deployed in the Golan Heights, will become a multi-arena division.

The IDF will also cut its personnel by 3,000 to 5,000 career servicemen.

The military plans to reappropriate funds, personnel and equipment to bolster the strategic role played by the air force and special forces units, as well as the continued development of its intelligence and cyber warfare capabilities. The army also seeks to further develop the ground forces' manoeuvrability between its different sectors to better meet the security needs of the various fronts.

The military said the reform would have taken place regardless of the budget cuts ordered by the government, with the aim of updating its operational platforms to meet the relevant threats Israel faces. The reform was put in motion faster than planned despite Gantz and Eizenkot's desire to introduce it more gradually, to better assess each change's impact on the military.

The IDF's five-year work plan had originally included a 26 billion shekel ($7.2 billion) investment in force building, to make up for shutting down various units, but it has been ordered to slash NIS 22 billion ($6 billion) from its budget over the next five years, significantly reducing its ability to realize its force building plan.

A military source said the IDF was the strongest military in the Middle East and it would be able to use the internal turmoil sweeping through the region, namely in Egypt and Syria, as an opportunity to implement the proposed changes. Implementing the reform "is a matter of just a few years," he said.

Still, the extensive cuts to defense spending and the planed military reform may prove problematic considering the regional realities, especially if the IDF's force building plan falls short of meeting potential threats.

An IDF source stressed that the military had no intention of presenting doomsday scenarios to intimidate the government and that the planned cuts will be presented to the cabinet in a clear-cut manner, so it would be able to make the final decision on them.

Finance Ministry officials, however, claimed that the military was fostering doomsday scenarios "so the ministers and MKs' hands will shake when they come to vote on the matter."

Any decrease in the cuts required from the IDF would spell additional cuts to the education, health and welfare budgets, the Finance Ministry warned.

"We are planning to implement a revolutionary multi-year reform by the end of which, in a few years' time, we will see the different military," Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Thursday in a Defense Ministry statement.

"As the threats we face have changed, we have come to the conclusion that we must pursue a significant reform, rather that mortgage the future at the expense of the present. These steps are made in a responsible and careful manner and include investing in systems that would enable the IDF to maintain its dramatic technological advantage compared to the countries around us.

"We will continue to invest in this path's building blocks: precise weaponry, intelligence, teleprocessing, cyber [warfare] and active defenses.

"The foreseeable future may lead us into conflicts that would be decided by the IDF's technological superiority in the air, on land and at sea, and using less heavy equipment and more sophisticated, unmanned tools that would give us an advantage over any enemy.

"We are not slaves to technology. We apply it to our needs and to the new reality, where face-to-face battles of army versus army, the likes of which we last saw 40 years ago during the Yom Kippur War, is becoming less and less relevant."

According to the defense minister, "These changes will assist the IDF to operate more effectively and utilize both the human and technological advantaged in favor of achieving swift results in battle. This is why we will make every possible effort not to impede on the force building [plan] and we will continue to invest in it as means of preserving our quality advantage.

"The budgetary constraints of 2013 and 2014 have forced the IDF to take various steps, such as infringe on the reserves' training and operational deployment, with the aim of taking calculated, short-term risks so as not infringe on the long-term force building plan."