@Ynhockey

3 months ago

There is no question that October 7 was a colossal failure by the Israeli military and establishment, but the technological failure is overstated. The failure was mainly conceptual: the establishment never could have imagined that Hamas would risk its very existence and everything it had built up over 15+ years, just for a few hours of senseless slaughter. The border forces were not insufficient because the IDF was turned into a small army – it's actually not meaningfully smaller than at any time in the past 20 years. The reason was that the army just released everyone home for the holidays and diverted some of the remainder, because who would think that Hamas would do such a thing? This was the conceptual mistake. Despite ample warnings from the field, there wasn't a single person in the establishment who actually believed that this would lead to an attack. This is why the border fence was extremely hard to penetrate below ground, where Hamas could have dug covertly, but was very easy to destroy above ground, where no one could imagine Hamas coming. The problem for Israel's enemies however, is that this trick only works once, for at least 20–25 years. On the other hand, the cutting-edge technology works for a long time. Since October 8, Israel has lost just above 200 troops in the fighting, and only 150 or so to enemy fire. Hamas lost 10,000. Sure, the IDF troops have air and artillery support; but Hamas has an underground tunnel network, prepared for an attack for years, and Israel is prevented from fully utilizing its weapons due to international pressure on civilian casualties, among which Hamas hide. The groundbreaking technology is what has allowed Israel to make relatively quick progress with relatively few casualties.

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