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The IDF has become Israel's diplomatic channel to the West
By Anshel Pfeffer
Tags: Israel News, IDF

Regular visitors to Tel Aviv's northern beaches were surprised this week to find Tel Baruch beach strictly off-limits, guarded by makeshift barbed-wire fences and joint patrols by Israel Defense Forces soldiers and burly American men - and a few women - in desert camouflage.

The biennial Juniper Cobra exercise, aimed at improving coordination between American and Israeli missile defense systems, has become almost routine for the two armies since its inception in 2001, but this time there were a number of marked differences. Not only was this the largest joint Israeli-American military exercise in history, it was also the largest exercise of its kind by U.S. forces.

"This is the first time we've deployed all these systems, the THAAD missile, the Aegis system and the X-band radar all together against threat scenarios," Colonel Tony English, commander of the Germany-based 357th Air Defense Brigade told reporters this week near Tel Aviv.
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The exercise has major strategic significance not only for Israel, but also for the world as a whole. While Israel is developing a multilayered missile defense system, whose long-range Arrow missile component is operational while the others are on schedule in terms of development, the U.S. X-band radar system deployed in the Negev has tripled Israel's ability to detect missiles fired from the east (in other words, from Iran's direction).

The X-band system - the first and only permanent deployment of U.S. troops in Israel - together with the additional systems demonstrated during Juniper Cobra, which the U.S. would provide Israel on short notice in an emergency situation, greatly enhances the defensive shield over the country.

On the diplomatic level, the promise of emergency deployment could serve to reassure Israel that it need not act hastily.

For the United States, this year's Juniper Cobra provided the first opportunity to practice deploying an entire mobile missile defense envelope. Following President Barack Obama's decision to cancel plans to build a permanent missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, the U.S. trend is to move to mobile solutions. While exercising their interoperability with Israeli missile defense units, the Americans were also proving something to themselves: that in a global situation, where the threat may come tomorrow from Iran, North Korea or an increasingly unstable Pakistan, they are capable of flexibility.

Give and take

There was, however, a slightly less positive undertone to Colonel English's remarks, implying that just as this defense can be extended to America's allies, it can also be withdrawn. The entire setup, including the X-band radar system, which in a few weeks will celebrate its one-year anniversary on Israeli soil, can be disassembled within a few hours, moved overland and then loaded onto C-17 transport aircraft and redeployed anywhere in the world.

But no one, at least in the U.S. military, is currently talking about reducing Washington's security commitment to Israel. Although relations between the countries' leaders are at a low, their armed forces have never been closer. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi never tires of telling guests that he speaks with the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, at least once a week on the secure line between their offices.

As Israel appears to be increasingly isolated diplomatically, the relationship between Western and Israeli military leaders is beginning to resemble a convenient back channel for the exchange of information on Syria as well as on Iran, Hezbollah and Islamist threats. During Ashkenazi's three-day stay in Germany this week, the official press releases emphasized mainly the visits by Israel's No. 1 soldier to Holocaust-related sites, such as the villa on Lake Wannsee where the Final Solution was decided upon. But the truly pressing matters on Ashkenazi's agenda were far from historical. In just three weeks he has met with the chiefs of staff of the five largest armies in NATO - the United States, Britain, Canada, France and now Germany.

"The army chiefs are a very useful diplomatic channel," one IDF General Staff officer says. The content of Ashkenazi's meetings with Germany's Chief of Staff, Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, was of course not made public. But at a time when the major Western countries are engaged in a frustrating dialogue with Iran over the future of its nuclear program, there is little doubt over what could have been of joint interest to the two generals. Israel, in particular, has a clear interest in conveying its viewpoint to the senior military advisors of these nations' leaders.

But the military relationship between Israel and Germany goes much deeper than just dealing with the current Iranian problem. German shipyards are building two Dolphin class submarines for the Israel Navy, which according to foreign reports are capable of launching ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. The German government is funding one-third of the costs of the new submarines. The three Dolphins previously delivered to Israel were funded fully by Germany. Meanwhile, last week the Israel Navy began talks with the Blohm & Voss shipyard over the possible construction of two new corvettes (warships).

The military know-how goes both ways. This week a new deal for the purchase of Israel Aerospace Industries Heron unmanned aerial vehicles by the Luftwaffe was announced. The deal is believed to be worth $90 million at present, with additional orders in the pipeline.

The Heron system, consisting of drones and command and control cabins, will be shipped immediately to Afghanistan. The German units that are part of the NATO effort there urgently need flexible, real-time air surveillance capability to help counter the Taliban in the once-peaceful northern sector. In the past few months the insurgents have drawn the troops deployed there into the bloodiest fighting experienced by German soldiers since World War II.

Officially, Israel has no involvement in the fighting in Afghanistan. The last thing the Western armies struggling to gain the confidence of the local Muslim population need right now is to be linked to the "Zionist entity." But the new German unmanned aerial vehicles will join similar Israeli-designed drones - used by Canada, Spain and the United States - in the sky, while on the ground will be combat vehicles covered in armor plating designed on Kibbutz Sasa, in the Upper Galilee.

But cooperation with Israel goes further than just the supply of hardware. Many of the forces facing threats from suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) operate according to doctrines adapted from those developed by the IDF when facing Hezbollah and armed Palestinian organizations.

Furthermore, in recent months, the similarity of the threat facing the IDF and its Western counterparts has grown. Analyses by the forensic laboratory of the IDF Ground Forces' technological logistics directorate show a distinct technological advance in the IEDs used against the IDF near the border with the Gaza Strip. One senior officer stationed in that sector said last week, "They are not really improvised anymore." In any event, from information supplied by the British and U.S. armies, it seems that the devices in Gaza are almost identical to those used by the Taliban in Afghanistan, including the recent incorporation of tungsten.

The new materials and expertise almost certainly came from bomb experts smuggled into Gaza through tunnels under the Egyptian border. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead more than 10 months ago Hamas has virtually ceased carrying out operations against the IDF. All of the attempted attacks have been traced to Islamic Jihad groups that flout Hamas' authority. Like the Taliban, these groups are now being funded and trained by Al-Qaida.

In a related development, U.S. Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker visited Israel this week to study methods of dealing with battlefield trauma. A senior IDF physician who met him asked Schoomaker to take him to Afghanistan.

"I said that Afghanistan is now the place to learn about battlefield trauma, we could gain a lot through the experience," the physician related. "But he said, 'Don't even ask, you know it's impossible, we'll have to keep meeting here.'"
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