From the Yom Kippur War through the last spring’s Gaza conflict, Israel’s enemies have deployed missiles as decisive strategic weapons, often in unprecedented ways. It is likely that a future conflict with Hizballah will involve massive volleys of advanced missiles from Lebanon, Gaza, and perhaps elsewhere as well. Brigadier General Eran Ortal, who heads the IDF’s internal think tank, argues that the Jewish state has not yet implemented an appropriate set of doctrines for confronting this new kind of warfare. To do so, he encourages the use of sensors and other high-tech tools, including what has been dubbed “the battlefield Internet of things,” combined with the old-fashioned deployment of ground forces:

Last month, the Chinese minister of defense, together with senior military figures, paid a visit to Tehran, where they met with their Iranian counterparts, as well as with the Iranian president. Tuvia Gering and Jason M. Brodsky doubt the talks will result in a grand Sino-Iranian alliance, but they nonetheless expect increased collaboration between the two countries. For many years, they note, Beijing has evaded or violated embargoes to sell arms to the Islamic Republic, and there’s reason to expect more of the same: