Perilous Prospects: The Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance by Anthony H. Cordesman

Author:Anthony H. Cordesman [Cordesman, Anthony H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429966958
Google: z__EDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39946917
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1996-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Comparing Total Syrian and Israeli Forces: Israeli Capabilities

Israel is not “ten feet tall” and faces qualitative problems of its own. Military spending has dropped from 19.1% of the GDP in 1982 and 11.2% in 1991, to well under 10% in 1995. Israel is attempting to convert its force structure to a smaller “peacetime” force that reflects its peace with Egypt and Jordan. It has reduced the number of men and women called up for conscript service and their period of service, and there are some reports it plans to cut its reserves from 430,000 in the mid-1990s to as few as 230,000.5 These force cuts inevitably will increase Israel’s vulnerability to saturation through sheer mass and raise questions about Israel’s ability to fully mobilize against a Syrian surprise attack.

IDF experts feel that the improvement of intelligence capabilities and fighting in all-weather conditions of the kind Israel often encounters on the Golan are two of the highest priority lessons that Israel has drawn from the Gulf War.6 At the same time, they indicate that Israel now needs to act on strategic warning at least 24 hours before a Syrian attack to mobilize and man its forward defenses, and needs 36 to 48 hours of reaction time to be fully effective. Israel miscalculated the compromises it could make in reducing the size and readiness of its reserve forces between 1970 and 1973, and it has been over 20 years since it faced the kind of challenge that forced it to fully mobilize under true wartime conditions and test its system in extremis—a “learning experience” that military history shows is inevitably more demanding than even the best peacetime exercises and training.

Israel also has recapitalization problems of its own. It has not been able to afford to convert its armor to a coherent force of first-line systems. Israel’s 930 Merkavas and 750 M-60A3s are its only tanks which are likely to have a decisive “edge” over the T-72—although some analysts argue that its Magach 7s are equal to the M-60A3 in many areas. Roughly 1,390 of Israel’s 3,895 tanks are relatively low grade Centurions, T-54s, T-55s, or T-62s.7 Israel is expanding its Merkava force, but only at a rate of about 60 per year.

Israel has had to choose between funding improved tanks and funding improvements in other armored fighting vehicles. As a result, it has few modern AIFVs to supplement its tanks. It only has a small number of Nagmashots and Achzarits—although large numbers of its 6,000 M-113s have been converted from APCs to AIFVs. While Israel has built up a massive modern artillery force of some 1,284 self-propelled weapons and more than 100 modern multiple rocket launchers—and is acquiring the US MLRS—it is still dependent on large numbers of obsolete half-tracks for support vehicles and reserves.

While sea power is not likely to be a significant issue in any near term Arab-Israeli conflict—particularly one between Israel and Syria—Israel has also had to cut its procurement of new Sa’ar corvettes from eight to three and

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