Israel’s military completed a large-scale divisional exercise in the north on Friday to improve its readiness for war, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced.
The two-week long drill saw troops and reservists from all levels of the 36th Armor Division, also known as the Ga’ash (“Rage) Formation, train on combat scenarios in complex and urban areas. The troops, which drilled on operational planning and discourse, dealt with operational challenges on a tactical level.
The division’s units operated in brigade combat teams in accordance with the concept of the “Gideon Battlegroup” while providing logistical solutions through a mobile logistic center.
IDF ground forces have been undergoing a fundamental change in recent years with a combined fighting method of infantry, tanks and combat engineering in a unified force-the “Gideon Battlegroup,” a combat brigade with thousands of soldiers.
The revised method, which is designed to make the ground forces more efficient and better suited to the types of fighting they might face against terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, will be implemented in the coming years.
“The division’s forces practiced a variety of combat scenarios, combined with advanced and unique capabilities in complex scenarios, which increased the division’s preparedness for war,” the military said.
The IDF has significantly stepped up the scope and frequency of its combat training in order to improve its readiness. As part of the IDF’s five-year Gideon plan, the military has returned to 17 weeks of consecutive training, an increase from the 13 weeks soldiers trained for the past decade and a half.
The IDF has been training in Israel’s Golan Heights for another war with Hezbollah which over the years since the Second Lebanese War in 2006 has morphed into an army with more advanced weaponry and more mobile, able to draft large amounts of fighters and deploy them quickly into enemy territory.
Hezbollah was recently described by a senior officer in the Northern Command as the strongest army in the Middle East after the IDF.
With tensions high on the northern front, Israel’s defense establishment has warned that any outbreak of conflict on the northern border will not be confined to just Lebanon or Syria, but along the entire front.