In the wake of the economic woes brought about by the coronavirus, the IDF will inevitably have to tighten its budget. Gal Perl Finkel argues that, in doing so, it ought not lose sight of the primacy of its ground forces:
Before the [2006] Second Lebanon War, . . . the ground forces’ fitness was severely affected by the 2003 budget cut. [The IDF was operating on] the theory that the ongoing intensive operations against Palestinian terrorism would preserve the army’s operational readiness. This misconception ignored the fact that fighting terrorism is different from what is likely to occur in a campaign like the one in Lebanon. Indeed, the “less than satisfactory” way, as a senior IDF officer put it, that that ground forces operated in the Second Lebanon War demonstrated that neglecting their fitness was a costly decision. The conclusion is that training the ground army for the purpose of maintaining battle fitness for an emergency requires the continuous investment of resources.
The IDF currently possesses very effective firepower and intelligence capabilities, . . . and the air force can attack thousands of targets a day. These abilities were highly impressive against the threat posed by Hizballah in [Lebanon] in 2006 and Hamas in 2014. Then too, however, precision firepower, boosted by timely and accurate intelligence, was not enough. The enemy became accustomed to it and learned to evade it, while continuing to launch missiles and rockets at the Israeli home front. The ground maneuver and firepower did not stop the barrages against the Israeli home front, but they did disrupt and lessen them.
The combination of the two is capable of bringing the campaign to a close and leading to a situation in which Israel will be able to force its terms on its enemies—a state of affairs that Israel [should] seek to maintain for as long as possible.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/ground-forces/