naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I don't think we've gotten a full tactical breakdown, and we may never get one, but this (caveat: It's the New York Times) and this point to broader issues: Hamas struck at communications, observation, and relay posts, often ones that the IDF believed were heavily obscured or distant enough that fast-reaction groups could protect them, while bringing a massive level of coordination across a wide area that the IDF believed would not be possible without the IDF having detailed early notice, at least given holiday standings. The paragliders had some impact for increasing the chaos, but much of the attack looks to have gone through the normal 'how strictly do you define a technical'-style road-based troops.
Which is pretty typical for light aircraft as a military force. Paragliders, gyrocopters, plain passive gliders, all have a long history, but there's a reason they've historically been limited use.
I expect the bigger immediate question's going to be how Hamas got that level of planning done without it getting into the newspapers (or just someone starting things off early!), and where they got the information to do that planning. The former may be an unavoidable consequence of Israel keeping its military and civilian groups out of Gaza, but it's also possible that the IDF got so complacent that they mixed LARPing with not. On the information control side, there's been fingers pointed at the Gazan work permit program, and there's basically zero chance that survives the month, but I don't think that provides a sufficient level of detail for this operation. Maybe we're all just underestimating what open-source intel can do, or the Gazan border was a nest of light drone incursions, but I've seen red teams try to exploit far more completely-covered fields before and not been able to pull that level of detail and coordination together.
If we're lucky, I think the practical result is gonna be increased buffer zones (probably extracted from Gazans), hard border restrictions, and strongly increased isolation, along with turning those buffer zones into a shooting gallery for anything bigger than a paper airplane and destroying any military leadership that tries to unify what's left inside the zone. The more pessimistic options... don't look great.
Reading more about it, it is indeed sounding like their real force multiplier was not so much the IPGs, but the much better than expected intelligence, planning, and execution on the part of the militants, and how they managed to keep it completely secret from the vaunted Israeli intelligence services. Which suggests we should expect over-reaction on the part of the Israeli security forces and decision-makers due to not so much due to the sheer outrageousness of the brutality against civilians but instead how many people must have been asleep at the switch for this to be possible.
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Notes -
I don't think we've gotten a full tactical breakdown, and we may never get one, but this (caveat: It's the New York Times) and this point to broader issues: Hamas struck at communications, observation, and relay posts, often ones that the IDF believed were heavily obscured or distant enough that fast-reaction groups could protect them, while bringing a massive level of coordination across a wide area that the IDF believed would not be possible without the IDF having detailed early notice, at least given holiday standings. The paragliders had some impact for increasing the chaos, but much of the attack looks to have gone through the normal 'how strictly do you define a technical'-style road-based troops.
Which is pretty typical for light aircraft as a military force. Paragliders, gyrocopters, plain passive gliders, all have a long history, but there's a reason they've historically been limited use.
I expect the bigger immediate question's going to be how Hamas got that level of planning done without it getting into the newspapers (or just someone starting things off early!), and where they got the information to do that planning. The former may be an unavoidable consequence of Israel keeping its military and civilian groups out of Gaza, but it's also possible that the IDF got so complacent that they mixed LARPing with not. On the information control side, there's been fingers pointed at the Gazan work permit program, and there's basically zero chance that survives the month, but I don't think that provides a sufficient level of detail for this operation. Maybe we're all just underestimating what open-source intel can do, or the Gazan border was a nest of light drone incursions, but I've seen red teams try to exploit far more completely-covered fields before and not been able to pull that level of detail and coordination together.
If we're lucky, I think the practical result is gonna be increased buffer zones (probably extracted from Gazans), hard border restrictions, and strongly increased isolation, along with turning those buffer zones into a shooting gallery for anything bigger than a paper airplane and destroying any military leadership that tries to unify what's left inside the zone. The more pessimistic options... don't look great.
Reading more about it, it is indeed sounding like their real force multiplier was not so much the IPGs, but the much better than expected intelligence, planning, and execution on the part of the militants, and how they managed to keep it completely secret from the vaunted Israeli intelligence services. Which suggests we should expect over-reaction on the part of the Israeli security forces and decision-makers due to not so much due to the sheer outrageousness of the brutality against civilians but instead how many people must have been asleep at the switch for this to be possible.
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