A specialist in fortifications and military engineering, IDF Major Yehuda Kfir, recently gave a new lecture on underground warfare. Translation from Hebrew and summary by Yigal Levin.
– For the first time in history, an underground war of such a scale is becoming a reality. In essence, this is a revolution in military craft, and the Israeli army, like other Western armies, was not ready for these changes. Israel knew about the tunnels in the Gaza Strip, but did not realize the scale; theory turned out to be divorced from practice.
– North Korea is one of the world leaders in the creation of underground communications, and its army and infrastructure are the most “buried” in the world. In fact, this is an entire state that has dug in. In fact, all underground tunnels of Hamas and Hezbollah conceptually repeat the developments of North Korea.
– The most important effect of underground war is psychological pressure. If you can hide from shelling in a shelter, then the thought that there may be a tunnel under you, and enemies could jump out at any moment, does not even allow you to sleep. This is already evident in Judea and Samaria, as well as on the borderlands, where people complain about underground noises they hear at night and fear that they are digging under them.
– Hamas underground tunnels have proven to be resilient structures. This is a multi-level underground city with living rooms, workshops, tunnels for attacks and escape to the next levels.
– Bombardment with special bombs is not effective against deep tunnels. Tunnel flooding works to a limited extent due to technical issues that have not yet been resolved. Land engineering means also do not always cope. The IDF resorts to tracking tactics: waiting for the militants to get out, tracking them to where they hide, and only then sending forces there to open new openings.
– The IDF is developing new tactics specifically for underground combat, including a full-fledged underground offensive maneuver.
– One of the reasons why the IDF needs a lot of forces today to hold the Gaza Strip is tunnels. In the past, when the sector was engaged, it was incomparably simpler, since there was not another dimension. All this leads to a long war, environmental damage, civilian suffering, loss of morale, international condemnation and prevents the militants from being finally reached and destroyed.
– Hamas, which does not care about the residents of Gaza, purposefully built its underground kingdom precisely under the cities themselves, realizing that in the war they would act as giant human shields. This is a targeted strategy.
– Underground warfare leads to an increase in friendly fire as soldiers wait for the enemy to appear anywhere. There is also a real danger: whether one of the tunnels runs under the seabed from Gaza to Sinai.
– Just as fortifications in the First World War led to the invention of the tank, and the tank led to the concept of the blitzkrieg, so underground warfare leads to a new revolution in military affairs.
– The Russian Armed Forces were able to stop the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces last summer because they also dug a multi-echelon defense system with passages between the fortifications. This neutralized the effectiveness of Western weapons. Russian tunnels made it possible to move from one line of defense to another and even carry out offensive actions during counterattacks, allowing infantry to move through deep trenches and tunnels directly towards Ukrainian forces.
– A modern army that uses tunnels and deep trenches gains a series of advantages, both defensively and offensively. Today, when drones reign over the battlefield, those who dig hard will survive.
– One of the conclusions: the IDF needs to develop underground engineering capabilities, up to the ability to conduct a full-fledged underground offensive maneuver without rising to the surface.
– In the future, we should expect larger-scale tunnels, a swarm of underground robots, as well as the creation of underground “boats” and the use of city sewer lines for full-fledged combat operations. There are already real concepts and developments, such as mole torpedoes designed for underground movement and explosions.
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