Israel's Next War

by Martin Archer

  ******

  I sat in the coffee room and reviewed what I think I know. It’s an open secret that the basic Israeli plan for confronting a major enemy invasion is for a massive pre-emptive strike once it is absolutely certain that an enemy attack is going to occur. As it was, the Israelis and everyone else had been caught flatfooted and unready. There was no preemptive strike—the great bulk of the Israeli reserves were still in their beds asleep when the initial elements of the New Islamic Army reached the borders of Israel and its two neighbors—and kept right on coming.

  The situation was still muddy but becoming clearer and clearer by the minute. Israel has been attacked and it’s deadly serious.

  About half an hour later I returned to our room for a few moments to finish dressing and give Dorothy a brief explanation of what was going on. Then I told her she might as well go back to bed and get some more sleep. I took a quick shower, more to clear my head than anything else, and went back down to the embassy communications center to get the latest news. The ambassador was still there wearing his pajama top but someone had obviously brought him his shoes and pants.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard Ambassador Tolson tell a skinny man in a white tee shirt and khaki pants, obviously his security attaché, that any demonstrators who show up are to be kept out of the embassy grounds even if it requires deadly force, and that there will be no surrender to demonstrators as had occurred many years ago in Tehran.

  Report updates were flooding in from the CIA, NSA, and Military Intelligence but the basic message remained the same—a major war has erupted in the Middle East before the Israelis had time to launch any of their carefully planned preemptive strikes. It was the Yom Kippur War surprise all over again.

  What we know so far is at least six armor-heavy divisions of the Islamic Army, four Iranian and two Syrian, are pouring across the border and on to the Golan Heights to engage Israel’s heavily outnumbered Golan Brigade. The attack began at 0212 in the morning. According to the NSA intercepts, it was a complete surprise to the Israelis because it started so quickly after the Islamic divisions arrived at the border and commenced without any artillery preparation.

  Despite being surprised, the initial Israeli resistance resulted in the virtual destruction of one of the Islamic divisions and serious losses for three others—because Israel’s Seventh Armored Brigade, the Golanis, is permanently deployed along the Syrian border and is always fully manned and ready with first class equipment and excellent communications.

  Intense fighting is always vicious and this time was no exception—the sun came up at about 0530 to a horrific scene of death and destruction all along the Israel positions on the Golan Heights, particularly on the Israeli right. It is quickly apparent that most of the blood shed under the flares was Syrian and Iranian—but certainly not all of it.

  During the initial hours of close quarter armor duels in the early morning darkness, Israel’s Seventh Brigade alone lost more than fifty tanks and other armored vehicles; the Syrians and Iranians lost well over four hundred tanks and hundreds of other armored vehicles.

  Dawn broke on a scene of incredible desolation and human suffering. Bodies of dead and wounded men were strewn everywhere and destroyed and burning tanks and other armor and vehicles were sending up clouds of dark black smoke for as far as the eye can see. It’s as if the land was covered with a thick black fog of oily smoke. Men from both sides can be seen stumbling through the wreckage trying to find survivors. There was an almost constant rattle of small arms fire and the periodic wham of tank cannons.

  Most of the smoking and burning vehicles were new and near-new British-made Chieftain II main battle tanks and M-113 fully tracked armored personnel carriers. The British sold them to Iran last year to help the Iranians in their fight against what was left of the Sunni fundamentalists known as the Islamic State. The Golani Brigade’s new and latest model Israeli-made Merkava tanks, it seems, are both the ugliest tanks ever produced and in all ways superior to everyone else’s including the British Chieftains. Also superior, for that matter, are Israel’s German-made Marder infantry fighting vehicles and the Israeli officers and men, although more than two thousand of them become casualties even before the sun rose over the battlefield.

  On the other hand, there is no question about it; despite its horrendous losses the Islamic Coalition’s army has pushed Israel’s Golan Brigade out of its initial positions and is already in control of a good third of the Golan Heights and maybe more. Before the sun even came up the hard hit Golanis were forced to hand the battle off to Yoram’s Tenth Brigade and withdraw behind it to reorganize.

  Chapter Twelve

  ****** Major Dick Evans

  It cools off at night on the Golan after the sun goes down. So when the shooting started Harry and I and the four Israelis with us were all in our tent sleeping in our summer sleeping bags. The previous evening we had driven around and visited some of the Brigade’s companies. Then we dined on lamb stew with newly baked bread and coffee at the headquarters mess and sat around for a couple of hours talking to some of the officers and troops. Most of them, but not all, speak English; some of them quite well. The food is absolutely delicious, particularly the fresh bread.

  Actually, we’d spent most of the evening listening to the Israelis argue among themselves about the significance of the new Islamic Coalition. There was even some discussion as to whether it means the brigade’s reservists are likely to be held over on active duty when their annual thirty day call-up is finished at the end of the week. The consensus seemed to be they’ll be heading home Friday when their thirty days of active duty are up.

  About 2230 we’d called it a day, gave cheerful goodnights to the Israeli troops still in the mess tent, and walked together in a loose group back to our little squad tent to sack out for the night. Other than a match flaring as Solly lit a cigarette, and Harry commenting about the stars being out, we walked along in the moonlight without talking—just a bunch of soldiers quietly walking back to their tent with a brief stop at the latrine.

  It was a lovely night. The stars were out and it even felt a little cool, a welcome relief after another hot and dusty day.

  Our tent was crowded but everything seemed quite normal as I blew more air into my somewhat deflated rubber mattress and worked myself into one of the old fashioned light wool mummy bags we’d been issued at the brigade’s warehouse. There were the usual muttered curses and quiet apologies as everyone tried to do the same thing and bumped into each other in the darkness. Then the satisfied sighs and rustling and a couple of farts as we settled down for the night. The last thing I remember hearing was a couple of the Israelis talking softly in the dark. I think it was Oren and Si.

  Everything changed a little after two in the morning when the alert sirens went off and a few seconds later the sound of tank cannons and explosions suddenly began immediately to our north. Then all hell broke loose.

  “What the fuck?”

  “This is serious,” I said to no one in particular as Solly turned on an electric lantern and we all scrambled to get our boots on and our bootlaces tied. It certainly is. Harry and I know the sounds of heavy fighting and high velocity tank rounds when we hear them. We heard enough of them in Russia and we recognized them instantly.

  “No shit,” said Solly as he pulled up his pants and fastened his belt. He was ashen faced. One of his sons, Rafi, his youngest, is a career officer in the Seventh Brigade, a lieutenant commanding a platoon of old but recently reconditioned M-113 armored personnel carriers, one of the few platoons in the brigade without Marders. A couple of days ago Solly visited him when we drove up to the border to see how the Israelis were positioned to defend it—where the noise seems to be coming from.

  Even before I got my shoes on there were shouts and whistles blowing in the darkness and we could hear men running and tank engines beginning to turn over and start. Nearby I heard the distinctive double “clink” as a high velocity tank round was loaded and the br
eech closed. And almost immediately we could hear and vaguely see some of the brigade’s vehicles beginning to move. But where are they going?

  ******

  It seemed like a scene of mass confusion in the cool moonlight. But it really wasn’t. Harry and I had seen it before—because every two or three nights for the past three weeks the Brigade had been subjected to practice alerts pulling its men out of a sound sleep and requiring them to deploy in the dark of the night to new positions. The big difference this time is the alert is obviously for real and the Tenth is not moving out of its positions behind the Golani Brigade, it’s manning them and getting ready to fight.

  “Come on,” I shouted to Harry and the Israelis over the growing din of engines and the continuous red flashes and rolling thunder of explosions immediately to the north and northeast. “Let’s go over to Yoram’s command vehicle and see what the fuck is going on.”

  We got there in time to watch in the moonlight as Yoram’s antennae encrusted armored personnel carrier pulled out for parts unknown. “Back to the jeeps,” I shouted.

  We need to move. But where did Yoram go and should we follow him? Shit, everybody knows where to go and what to do except us.

  ******

  It was a quiet Tuesday night. Sergeant Ataullah Suheimat at Jordan’s Balqua border post was sitting sleepily behind the observation window in his little office. He was watching two of his corporals check the passports and papers of the people in a couple of civilian cars. Ataullah grunted to himself as he recognized the big van pulling up behind them. It was, he knew, returning to Jordan after delivering vegetables to Damascus from the new hydro vegetable farm down the road. They are growing vegetables down there, he’d been told, right in the water without using dirt. It’s hard to believe but the drivers all swear it is true. He had already decided to go there someday to see for himself.

  Then he heard rumbling in the distance. It seemed to be coming from the north, from over in Syria, and it sounded like it was coming this way and getting closer. Finally, his curiosity got the best of him and he walked to the door and listened as the rumbling got louder and louder. After a while he could even feel the plywood floor vibrate slightly under his immaculately polished shoes. What in the name of Allah is going on? That was his last thought before a massive explosion tore the little customs office apart. He never saw the Iranian and Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers as they poured by on both sides of the waiting cars and trucks and flooded into Jordan.

  ******

  Captain Michael Yigel was standing partially illuminated on the thirty-foot telescoping observation ladder that extended up from the turret of his Merkava battle tank. He watched by the light of the flares and gun flashes as two enemy columns charged towards the Seventh Armored Brigade’s positions on either side of his company. Each of the enemy columns was three or four kilometers away. He could see that each of them is big, really big, perhaps brigade strength or more, and spreading out. Elements of the enemy armor appear to be coming towards him from both sides.

  As the on-rushing armor got closer Michael could see numerous individual enemy tanks and other vehicles by the light of the popping and fizzing flares being fired from his rear by one of the Golani Brigade’s five companies of self-propelled artillery.

  What he saw raised an important question in the captain’s mind as he hurried down his tank’s pole ladder and quickly cranked it down. Should the sixteen tanks of his company attack the invaders or should they stay and fight from their current hull down and camouflaged positions?

  Basic Israeli doctrine is to attack. But attacking would mean moving his tanks out of their hull down positions, away from the camouflage nets breaking their silhouettes, and out into the open where they will be more visible and vulnerable. The alternative was to stay hull down and hidden and that’s what he is supposed to do if it makes more sense. But does it?

  “Akiva Three One. Ezra One.”

  “Akiva Three One. Go”

  “Ron, I have large numbers of enemy tanks and armored personnel carriers coming right at me. They look like Chieftains and M-113s. They’re spreading out from large enemy columns coming in on either side of my position. No dismounted enemy infantry visible at this time. Unless you order otherwise I am going to send my infantry back and remain hull down here and pick them off as they come by.”

  “Agreed Ezra One. Good luck Michael.”

  Every tank crew in the battalion was listening on the net and immediately understood Michael Yigel’s decision. The tanks of Ezra Company of the Third Battalion of the Golan Brigade are going to hold their positions and sell themselves dearly if that’s what it takes to stop the invaders; the six missile carrying infantrymen each Merkava tank carries in its cargo compartment are going to fall back to positions at the company’s first rally point and set up with their handheld missiles to take the "leakers" who get past the tanks. The rally point is about eleven hundred meters to the rear.

  “Ezra tanks. Ezra One. Release your infantry, remain hull down, and select multiple targets. Do not fire and reveal yourselves until you have multiple certain kills. All infantry to take their missiles and immediately fall back to their first rally point positions. Hustle boys, hustle.”

  Troop ramps on the back of his company’s sixteen Merkava III battle tanks were already going down before he finished speaking. It is amazing how fast heavily loaded infantry can move when they want to, Michael mused as he stood in his tank’s turret and watched his heavily burdened infantry dash out of the troop compartments of their Merkavas carrying their personal weapons and missiles and sprint towards the rear. Then he turned his attention and his tank’s 120mm barrel towards the enemy armor spreading out towards him.

  Damn I wish this thing had some of those laser guided anti-tank rounds we tested last year.

  ******

  Initially Israel’s assault helicopters and air force planes were extremely effective when they arrived in force over the Golan battlefield in the hours before sunrise. Their pilot’s night vision sights let them clearly see the armor below them and the special paint on the Israeli tanks and APCs made it relatively easy for the night-vision-equipped Israeli pilots and weapons officers to tell friend from foe. They filled the darkness with their missile distracting flares and joined the Golani’s tanks and missile equipped APCs in inflicting massive losses on both the initial enemy columns and the follow-on armor coming up behind them.

  Unfortunately for the Israelis, while they are wreaking havoc on the Islamic Coalition’s advancing armor, their planes and helicopters were taking serious losses from the Iranians old American made “Hawk” radar controlled mobile SAM batteries and the mobile anti-aircraft guns that came forward right behind the Islamic Coalition’s initial armor columns. Although Israel’s air force commanders didn’t initially realize it, dozens of Israeli planes and attack helicopters were lost before the sun came up, including a number of Israel’s F-15s, F-16s, F-35s, and even some the upgraded Israeli-made Kfirs still in service.

  ******

  Everything changed for the worse for the Israeli air force when the sun came up and the Islamic invaders could see well enough to begin using their handheld SAM missiles. Their handheld SAMs combined with the invaders’ radar directed mobile SAMs and anti-aircraft guns to erect an umbrella of SAMs and steel over the Coalition’s troops and armor that couldn’t be penetrated—and Israeli planes and helicopters began going down all over the place. It became virtually suicide for an Israeli plane or helicopter to fly over the forward edge of the battle. That’s when the Israelis lost control of the lower altitude air space immediately over the battlefield.

  High above the battlefield a somewhat similar battle raged in the night skies for control of the air battle. Here the Israelis were doing better, much better. Before the ground attack started the Israeli air force’s ground radars, satellites, and AWACs observed the enemy planes gathering over Syria. As a result, a good part of the fully mobilized planes of Israel’s air force we
re either on runway alert or already in the air when the Islamic armies poured over the border and the invasion started.

  Initially the Israeli controllers held their planes back in an effort to avoid provoking an attack. They stayed over Israel and didn’t attempt to engage the Coalition’s planes. That policy lasted until the three Israeli AWACS in the air simultaneously reported enemy planes and tanks crossing the border into Israel. Only then did the AWACS controllers give the Israeli fighters permission to engage.

  As soon as they were released by their controllers the Israeli pilots surged out of Israeli airspace and immediately engaged the somewhat uncoordinated planes of the three air forces they faced. Within minutes the superior planes and pilots of the Israelis took control of the night skies and began attacking the enemy armor and helicopters on the battlefield itself and behind it—and immediately became seriously vulnerable themselves.

  Israel’s air response and the likelihood Israel would win the air war had been foreseen by the Islamic Coalition’s planners. They countered it by repeating what the Egyptians had successfully done years ago during the Yom Kippur War—bringing up large numbers of mobile radar-controlled SAM and anti-aircraft artillery units behind their attacking ground forces and issuing thousands of hand held SAMs to their best ground troops. By dawn the Islamic Coalition had erected a missile umbrella over its troops and neither side could afford to use planes and helicopters against its enemies’ ground forces on the leading edge of the ground battle.

  ****** General Christopher Roberts

  As I told the President by phone in my second call from Cairo, the one just as he was getting into bed for the evening, “so long as the Arabs and Iranians stay under their missile umbrella it is going to be a ground war with an air war raging high overhead out of missile range.”