As a result of the budget cut in military spending, 4,000 career personnel will be dismissed, hundreds of tanks will be taken out of service, two air force combat squadrons will be shut down, two navy battle vessels will be taken out of service and some reserve units will be dismantled.
In line with the new reality, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz are streamlining and the IDF in the coming three years will become a smaller military. Most of the cuts cannot be detailed by order of the military censor.
The IDF is compelled to cut 26 billion NIS over the next five years. Members of the General Staff are warning that the dramatic cut will have an impact on the military’s readiness and abilities and this comes at a time of regional instability.
Experts report that preparedness for future warfare will concentrate on more modern and effective weaponry, and for the air force that means the F-35. Last month, IDF Chief Gantz gave the order to cancel reserve duty for 70 reserve duty regiments in line with budgetary realities.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
8 Responses
In SHORT:
HI TECH in
Middle TECH and numbers out
(The IDF has been bloated for a long long while already)
‘IDF or Bust’ apologists please mull over this one:
“Last month, IDF Chief Gantz gave the order to cancel reserve duty for 70 reserve duty regiments in line with budgetary realities. ”
June 11th, 2013
…
‘YWN-ISRAEL first reported on this back in April 2013, but it appears the program is now moving ahead.
Ynet adds that the soldiers all state that at no time during their enlistment or service were they told they are compelled to serve in miluim (reserves). Ynet adds that for most of them, there are no older brothers and sisters who served before them, so in actuality, they have no clue as to what awaited them prior to entering the military. This is true regarding miluim as well.
When asked to comment, the Office of the IDF Spokesman states “Shachar soldiers were never promised that they will not have to serve in miluim. They will be doing miluim like other soldiers. Many soldiers will serve in the same capacity in miluim that they served in Shachar while others will not, all in line with the needs of the IDF.’
But, of course more than enough money available to found chareidi “Mechinot”
Is this not contradicting the planned on draft??
Note that they planning to replace professional soldiers with yeshiva kids. They don’t have money for basic weapon systems but do have money to conscript, and probably incarcerate – at a higher per capita cost, tens of thousands of bnei yeshiva. So perhaps the Israeli have decided to choose the “Lemming” as the national animal, and role model.
P.S. Apologies to lemmings, as they sometime suffer from misinformation and limited vision – rather than malice.
The article misrepresents the program. The Army brass is slating these units and activities for closure because it considers them obsolete and overly costly relative to changes that have occurred in the enemy’s threats.
#6
Having added zero,
therefore …
#6 – and therefore they want to get rid of professional soldiers and replace them with yeshiva kids (yet the “lean” armies of the world depend on highly motivated professionals, not kids who would rather be elsewhere and whose loyalty to cause may be considered suspect) – not to mention the expense for expanding the military police to cope with the thousands to hareidim threatening to flood their prisons as draft resistors.
If they want a smaller, more efficient army, the obviously solution would be to professionalize, and end conscription, which would be a “win win” situation since instead of fighting over conscription of hareidim, hareidim would then be free to get jobs if they want to (which is illegal at present). But they aren’t doing that, suggest my “lemming” analogy was correct.