IDF think tank chief: Better tactical language needed

Thing Tank head: We cannot count on the IAF to wipe out Hizbullah.

By YAAKOV KATZ
IDF armor lebanon 298.88 (photo credit: AP [file])
IDF armor lebanon 298.88
(photo credit: AP [file])
Two months after former OC Manpower Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Yoram Yair said he required a dictionary when deciphering military orders during the Lebanon war, the newly-installed head of the IDF's Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) Brig.-Gen. Itai Brun called on Tuesday for the creation of a new tactical military language. While Yair - who investigated the performance of the Galilee Division during the war - was referring specifically to orders written by its former commander Brig.-Gen. Gal Hirsh, Brun called for an all-encompassing change in IDF language. "One of our [the IDF's] problems during the war in Lebanon was the type of language," Brun said in his first public comments since being appointed head of the OTRI. "We called the fighting in Lebanon guerrilla fighting but it wasn't really guerrilla warfare in the traditional sense." Speaking at a conference at Tel Aviv University, Brun, a former Air Force Intelligence officer, also called on the IDF not to repeat the same mistake it made during the war by counting on the IAF to wipe out Hizbullah in southern Lebanon. "We need to remember that air power is limited in this type of warfare," he said. Last month, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss warned of the creation of several conflicting military languages in a report he compiled on the defense establishment and in which he slammed the OTRI. The report claims that the OTRI, located at the National Defense College in Glilot, and established to develop and write operational commands and methods, had not published a single report on large-scale military tactics in the 12 years prior to the inspection. "This severe situation runs the risk of preventing the creation of a common professional military language, needed, to manage and command large IDF frameworks in routine and during states of emergency," Lindenstrauss wrote in the report.