jhungary
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well, this is different than Starlingrad....The problem is, in Stalingrad, Germany is on a schedule to take it, and they took a lot of risk they don't have to, and in the end, they took too many risks and got flanked.Exactly on point. Lets not forget about Stalingrad where the Luftwaffe thought air superiority will solve the problem for the ground offensive and it ended up being their graves. Also the Palestinians know this is their last stand so whatever happens they must fight for their homeland and their future
I wrote a detail take on Israeli battleplan on Senior Section 3 weeks ago for @RescueRanger on the 16th of October.
So I promised @RescueRanger and some member that I will do a write up to discuss the Current Hamas-Israeli war. So this is what I thought the battleplan for both side is going to play out, I am specifically write this out of the main thread so only serious discussion is allowed, this thread is not glorified or condemn any side of the parties, as per my view I had expressed in the main thread, my view on this war is tragic and pointless. And both sides were to blame. This thread only discuss the military science behind Urban Warfare. Nothing more, nothing less, if you have issue with the basis of this war, please refrain from comment on this, there is a main thread there you can vent your anger on either side.
https://defence.pk/threads/gaza-israel-conflict-october-2023.777384/
Background
Gaza is located near the mouth of Red Sea, it is a strip of land roughly 140 square mile (350 sq km) in area, with roughly 40km coastline toward the Mediterranean another 60km border shared with Israel and roughly 7 mile border with Egypt.
View attachment 962493
On October 8, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) started to prepare a general ground invasion toward Gaza in responded to the Hamas attack one day earlier. IDF publicly announced they have recalled up to 360,000 reservist for the upcoming operation. That put the troop density (Troop v land ratio) to roughly 100/sq kilometer. The operational force for Israel will be a combine arms service, with Armour, Artillery. Air and Naval Support.
Hamas on the other hand, have roughly 15000 to upward to 30,000 trained member of the military branch in Gaza, without significant Anti-Armor, Artillery and Anti-Air Capability. Mostly light infantry with lightly equipped force.
Area of Operation (AO)
View attachment 962496
For the Israeli, I can see the IDF would divide Gaza into 5 operational zone (AO) separated by 4 Phase line (Red, Green, Blue and Orange) The 4 line essentially will cut Gaza up in 5 different district with each district attached to a separate command. Each command will be equipped with different armament. And have different task/goal.
Phase line Red will be drawn to separate between Besor Stream (Zone 2) (or Wadi Gaza) and Gaza City (Zone 1)
Phase line Blue will be drawn to separate between Besor Stream and the middle part of the Gaza (Zone 3),
Phase line Green will be drawn to separate the Southern Gaza (Zone 5)from the middle part of Gaza
Phase line Orange will be drawn from Rafah up and separate Wadi-as-Salqa (Zone 4) and Southern Gaza
As with this map, light grey denoted build up area, while the entire landscape of Gaza is generally flat, with the coastline deflated from the central Gaza.
IDF Troop deposition
Zone 1 - IDF will likely deploy 6 Brigade of light mechanised infantry, indirect support asset, aviation asset (both rotary and fix wing)
Zone 2 - IDF will likely deploy 4 Brigade of light mechanised infantry, Armoured Corp, Self-propelled indirect support asset, aviation asset (both rotary and fix wing) and naval asset
Zone 3 - IDF will likely deploy, 4 Brigade of light mechanised infantry, Armoured asset, Indirect support asset and aviation asset (both rotary and fix wing)
Zone 4 - IDF will likely deploy, 4 Brigade of light mechanised infantry, aviation asset (both rotary and fix wing) and naval asset.
Zone 5 - IDF will likely deploy, light mechanised infantry, indirect support asset and aviation asset (both rotary and fix wing)
IDF will likely to separate the operation into 3 phases, depends on the ultimate goal, the 3rd phase is going to have a different operational requirement.
Phase 1 - Current - Reduce Hamas C4I capability, establish battlefield intelligence, both try to locate the hostage Hamas took and Hamas C&C and other asset, including tunnel complex. ISTAR will be focused on EM (locating C&C via Electonic communication), thermal (locating Hamas tunnel complex by electricity consumption) and IR (mapping out battlefield, identifying obstacle). Certain SAT asset will be involved, and certain probe and sensor will most likely be dropped by air and deployed by Special Force
Phase 2 - Opening Phase - up to 2 weeks from current. After all intelligence and shaping work are done, Israel will launch their invasion toward Gaza, the first move would be moving the armour column across zone 2 toward the sea, maybe helped by a amphibious assault from LCAC or AMTRAC as well as air assault from a seaborne perspective. The move will basically cut Gaza in half cuting off the GLOC between Southern and Northern Gaza, stopping surface transport and isolate Gaza City, which would be the main objective for Israel. A separate group will jump off from Zone 3 and act as a blocking force and stop enemy reinforcement from into the City, Troop holding form Zone 1 may stand fast in order to encircle Gaza City, Another amphibious assault may launch from Zone 4 from the sea to push Hamas from the left side of Gaza into southern Gaza, and squeeze Hamas forces into Zone 5. It may not happen depends on the situation on Zone 3 and how well the blocking force perform. Zone 5 will remain untouched
Also in this phase, increase amount of airstrike will be directed to Hamas C4 structure attack known Strategic Target such as Command Post, Listening Post, Cave/Tunnel Entrance, Ammo Cache/Storage and also Staging Area. Israel most likely will call in airstrike and drop GBU-28 bunker busting bomb on cave/tunnel entrance, and mop up the surface with JDAM or Thermobaric Munition. US may also supplies Israel with MOP (GBU-57), a C-130 droppable Subterrain Munition with 20,000lbs warhead. Designed to penetrate deep inside earth and concrete complex, another possibility is for US to supplies GBU-72 (Advance 5K Penetrator or A5K) which can penetrate deeper than GBU-28 but with more control and more accurate result at the same time amplified the damage inside the structure. Such bomb may be used with ordinary Free-Fall Bomb or JDAM to deal with suspected Hamas hard point and strong point.
Phase 3 - Penetrating Phase - Timeline Unknown, after satisfied most of the known hardpoint, strong point, all strategic targets are dealt with. now it's time for IDF to move into their main objective itself. Now depends on how or what is the main goal for Israel, it can play out in 1 of 2 ways.
Scenario 1.) IDF is looking for specific target, quick in and out to extract Tier 1 personnel, or eliminate them. If this is the case, Israeli will move into Zone 1 in all 4 direction, taking small group of soldiers (most likely squad based) into the one of the largest density city in the world. Soldier from each squad or platoon will work together to clear the street house by house and then move onto their pre-determined objective. Exposing IDF infantry for ambushes, all 6 brigade on Zone 1 will move inside Gaza, couple with 1 or 2 Brigade on Zone 2, Couple with Aviation Asset, with Apache and Corba flying overhead controlling the battlefield. Infantry and Special Force will flag any target with smoke, Chem light or strobe and using either air asset or indirect asset to destroy those hard target IDF encountered on the ground.
For this scenario, Israel casualty will be lighter, but by all mean no light, and so does Casualty for Palestinian in Gaza In this scenario, IDF are looking for 2000-2500 kill, about 10,000 wounder with around 150,000 troop committed. Palestinian and Hamas casualty will be anywhere between 80,000 to 150,000 dead or wounded.
Zone 3 will see limited assault, in this scenario, mostly tactical insertion launched by the IDF in coordination with operation in zone 1. Pushing any militant toward Gaza City and flush them off with their supply. Zone 4 and 5 are largely untouched in this scenario
Scenario 2) IDF have no specific target, It's a general operation, in this case, Zone 1, 2, 3 and 4 will see active combat ,basically to flush Hamas toward Southern Gaza, now whether or not IDF will venture into zone 5 is unknown, they would if they really want to see Hamas destroyed. Active combat in Zone 1,3 and 5 will see a great deal of Casualty from both Israeli and Palestinian side. We are expecting Battle of Fallujah level of casualty (US loses 101 Marine with roughly a division went in), maybe more, so we expect to see up to 5000 IDF dead, another 20,000-25,000 Wounded in different degree. Gazan casualty will be extremely high, it will be up to 400,000 Palestinian killed or wounded in this war. IDF would msot likely deploy 200,000 - 250,000 of their force
HAMAS Opposition
As mentioned in the main thread, Hamas would want to multiply the sphere of engagement as possible, which mean attack from above, attack from the ground and attack from underground. Using the tunnel network, they can ambush IDF when they enter the building, however, the issue with Tunnel is that you can only use it once, because after you have your troop appear out of the tunnel IDF will know the location of the tunnel and will call in support (Direct and/or indirect) to destroy the entrance, you do not need to cave in the entire system (unlike what US tunnel did back in Vietnam war) since it's an urban setting, if you drop a few tons of concrete on top of the tunnel entrant, you can get in and out of that tunnel (at least with that entrant) so with this, it's important for HAMAS to keep hitting the ground running, keep disposing and re-disposing their force and don't stay in one area for long, because there are only limited tunnel entrant in a certain area, if you stay in the same ground for long, those entrant are going to be sealed and you aren't going anywhere but fight until you die.
Hamas also lack of manpower, armament and equipment, most likely lacking supplies too (depends on how much preparation they had) which mean HAMAS will have to fight with ingenuity and force multiplier, so Hamas should take a leaf out of the Ukrainian and uses Commerical FPV drone and try to harass the Israeli, however, since IDF would most likely have complete air dominance in this war, this is going to be local and may not be turn into a bigger problem for IDF, but still it give IDF one more thing to worry about, and you can't look up when you look forward.
Finally, it's important for HAMAS to keep the fighting centralise, by that I don't mean grouping all the people together, but rather the command structure should be centralised, keeping the C&C central and constantly on the move, because if you fragmentise the force by spilling it everywhere, it would require a high degree of command and control to control fragmented force, and HAMAS would most likely not have the equipment or ability to control a fragment battlefield, so the commander need to know what every one of their group is up to and able to direct them toward area they need and not letting local commander take the command responsibilities, this, for me, if I am HAMAS, is a gamble because Hamas would ceased to be a effective fighting force if and when that Command Structure got taken out.
Conclusion
After looking at the capability, force size, equipment and deployment strategy, I don't think Hamas have a great chance to win this war. The number and equipment is just too heavily tilted toward IDF, if this fight is a 1 on 1, there are less than 10% chance Hamas would win, and even with Hezbollah entered the war in the north, IDF would still have the defender advantage as this would be Hezbollah entering Israel to fight, not the other way around like 2006 when IDF enter South Lebanon. IDF could hold on that front until Gaza resolved in a few months and redeploy those force form Gaza toward Lebanon border.
The only way I would say will lead to Hamas victories will be Iran and Syria as well as Lebanon enter the war against Israel, and Israel will be fighting alone, the chance of this assumption happening is not really high. Especially if Jordan and Egypt stayed out of the conflict. Because Iranian troop would have to funnel thru either Lebanon or Syria, both of which can be heavily bombed by Israeli Air Force. making staging force a very complicate issue.
@RescueRanger @HGV @AlKardai
I will say Israel will take their time on this operation. especially as I wrote 3 weeks ago that I don't even see there is a single objective the IDF had on this war.
