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| By Associated Press January 23, 2007 |
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Under the cover of thick smoke, a Muslim call to prayer ringing in the background, masked Israeli commandos stormed a concrete building in a dense mock neighborhood and "killed" a pair of guerrillas -- preparing for the next round with the Lebanese Hizbullah after last summer's 34-day war.
The Monday war drill, including simulations of helicopter, tank and rocket fire, took place in a recently constructed mock Arab city in the Negev desert, under the assumption that the techniques will be used in combat sooner rather than later.
"The year 2007 is the year of preparedness," Brig. Gen. Udi Dekel, a top army officer, said Sunday at the Herzliya conference, a yearly gathering of Israel's political and security elite. "The goal is to reach a level of professional capacity that will enable us to face the current threats, and in parallel to build a multiyear program in order to face future threats."
The unveiling of the Urban Training Center, which covers 20 square kilometers (eight square miles) and includes some 500 structures, came as Israel moved closer to naming its next army chief of staff. It was nearly certain that Gabi Ashkenazi, a retired general, would replace Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, who resigned last week following harsh criticism for leading Israel's mighty army in its inconclusive war against Hizbullah.
The military failed in the war's two stated objectives -- crushing Hizbullah and freeing two captured Israeli soldiers. Hizbullah fired almost 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, stopping only when the United Nations imposed a cease-fire, with Hizbullah claiming a rare victory over the Israeli military machine.
The new army commander's main task will be restoring Israel's military deterrence and preparing for another war.
The Urban Training Center is a key. Though in planning for more than eight years, the $40 million mock city's main focus will now be training the troops to cope with the highly publicized difficulties they encountered in last summer's urban warfare.
"This is a very important part of the solution," said Brig. Gen. Uzi Moskovich, the commander of the center.
Complete with a city square, six mosques, high-rise apartment buildings and even an adjacent faux refugee camp, the UTC has all the elements of an Arab city of 50,000, Moskovich said, and it allows the military to prepare for various scenarios of urban warfare -- in Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza.
In Monday's drill, some 600 soldiers were charged with occupying the city and dealing with a "red team" comprised of 350, which included the town's civilian population, demonstrators, journalists and terrorists hiding in their midst, including suicide bombers. Bomb-sniffing dogs searched apartments and the pop of gunfire echoed as troops moved through the empty streets.
Playing the Hizbullah guerrillas this time around were a group of female combat instructors, dressed in U.S. army fatigues, covered with camouflage paint and armed with weapons firing laser blanks.
The women gave as good as they got, and in one scenario gunned down a charging Israel infantryman.
"Even if they lose, they just have to learn from it," said Lt. Dana Marcowicz. "We are here to help the war effort."
The city was built in cooperation with the U.S. engineering corps and in the future will host friendly foreign armies in a series of war games.
"This is our playground to practice for anything we need," said Lt. Col. Arik Moreh, the base's second in command. "This complex is the only one of its kind in the world -- its size, its characteristics and its technical abilities."
These include surveillance equipment throughout each of the 4,000 scattered rooms and GPS systems attached to each soldier, allowing the command center to track the movement of its units. Each soldier also wears sensors that monitor whether he was hit by the "enemy's" laser-beam fire. In the future, some of the buildings will rotate and walls will become transparent to simulate various battlegrounds.
For those involved in Monday's drill, the bitter memory of Lebanon remained fresh.
"We're definitely training for the next war," said Sgt. Shalev Nachum, a medic who fought in last summer's war. "Next time, it will be different." |
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