Success leaves clues: The mounting lessons for Australia from Israel’s startling successes

First things first, this is not a moral judgement on the conduct of either side, nor is it condoning their actions or their specific claims to legitimacy of action. Now that is out of the way, let’s dive in.

By virtue of Israel’s location, its history and its comparatively small population when compared to its surrounding Arab neighbours and the corresponding threat environment it faces, the Israeli Defence Force, coupled with its formidable intelligence apparatus has long been considered one of the most lethal combinations in the world.

Despite the intelligence failure that precipitated the tragedy of 7 October, the small nation rallied in response to the objective barbarity on display to prosecute a combined arms effort to root out Hamas in Gaza, with ongoing operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian-supported extremists throughout the region.

This has predictably resulted in a series of comparatively ineffective counter-attacks from Iran and even the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels operating from Yemen against Israel, resulting in dazzling displays of the nation’s Iron Dome and Arrow integrated air and missile defence systems as civilians across Israel and the West Bank scrambled for cover.

All the while, the wider world has watched on in varying degrees of confusion, horror and amazement as both sides traded blows and praying that the relatively contained conflict didn’t explode into a wider and far more devastating regional conflict that had the potential to set the globe ablaze.

Importantly for Australia, the ongoing conduct of the conflict has important lessons to teach us about the future of conflict and the importance of having, maintaining and leveraging a qualitative edge and the importance of mass in terms of both munitions and “boots” on the ground, even in today’s era of technology-centric conflict.

At the onset of this latest conflict in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October 7 attacks, my colleague Liam Garman provided some important and timely analysis of these factors; however, as the fighting has escalated and brought Israel into direct conflict with a well-equipped, well-funded and motivated peer or near-peer competitor in Iran, the corresponding lessons for Australia have equally evolved.

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But what exactly are these lessons?

Integrated air and missile defence are critical, but so is magazine depth

By far, one of the most impressive performances during this conflict to date has been the performance of the Israeli Iron Dome system, which has long been celebrated by many across the Western world as the gold standard of integrated air and missile defensive systems for large urban population centres coming under complex and sustained attack.

While originally developed to counter the vast number of short-range rocket and mortar systems fielded by both Hezbollah and Hamas, Iron Dome steadily evolved over time as the threats evolved to become a more comprehensive form of integrated air and missile defence system capable of tracking and engaging a host of threats up to and including rockets, missiles, mortars and drones.

Iran’s accelerated ballistic missile development program and its nuclear weapons program, in particular, also played a significant role in shaping continued development of the Iron Dome and its suite of sensors and effectors, creating the system we have witnessed over the past few months.

However, despite the advanced nature of the Iron Dome system-of-systems, one of the core challenges Israel, like many nations, is discovering is the impact of constrained supply chains and the rapid depletion of expensive, finite munitions, with startling lessons for Australia’s own burgeoning guided weapons and explosive ordnance program and more broadly, defence industrial base.

We have seen the reality of this, as a number of apparent hypersonic ballistic missiles and more conventional ballistic missiles seemingly penetrated the Iron Dome to strike at the southern Israeli Nevatim Airbase to cause extensive damage with unconfirmed reports that a portion of Israel’s F-35I fleet was damaged or destroyed in the exchange.

Where this really matters is in the availability of critical munitions, particularly missiles and their common components across families of missiles like the SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6, as well as AIM-9 family of short-range air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles.

This is only further compounded by the ongoing supply of critical “smart” and “dumb” munitions to Ukraine to help in their resistance against Russia’s ongoing war of aggression and expansion.

Yet, Israel – like Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and a host of other Western nations – is dependent on a limited supply chain for these munitions, reinforcing the necessity for nations to work more closely together to build out diversified resupply and munitions manufacturing capacity to build out magazine depth and supply chain resilience through industrial base diversification.

That seems like a pretty common sense course of action right? Yet there seems to be little in the way of progress both at home and within the broader Western alliance network, it also raises important questions about the capacity of the US to resupply its own forces in the Indo-Pacific, let alone Australian, Japanese or South Korean forces in the region in the event of a high-intensity conflict with a peer or near-peer competitor.

Equally important is the recognition that our major regional threat, in this instance, the People’s Republic of China, is vastly different to Iran, with an industrial capacity orders of magnitude larger than that of Iran, with a significantly larger military capacity across which our own resources will both individually and collectively be stretched to breaking point.

So lesson number one? Get cracking on building or perhaps rebuilding Australia’s industrial base and start yesterday.

Balancing mass and technology

A central pillar of both Australian and Israeli defence strategy has prioritised and, in many ways, hinged on the importance of a technological edge, or what is typically called a “qualitative edge” through the acquisition, integration and fielding of advanced platforms across the air, land, sea and cyber and space domains, respectively.

However, where the two nations depart from one another is the acceptance of the Israelis that “mass”, particularly in terms of personnel when coupled with technology, training and doctrine, is as critical to not only prosecuting an operation but also winning decisively.

The evidence of this in the Israeli context can be seen as far back as the 1960s with the Six-Day War and through to the ongoing conflict today, where Israel has deployed a host of advanced systems, ranging from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms through to smart, loitering munitions and even comparatively “low-tech” options like the successful strike against Hezbollah using commercially available pagers.

Equally, as we have borne witness to the ongoing ground operations in Gaza and more recently in Lebanon, the “mass” of the Israeli Ground Forces in particular, combined with the qualitative overmatch across their deployed units has provided Israel with significant “staying power” to conduct high-intensity urban combat operations simultaneously with the capacity to still conduct sizeable combat operations across the region.

In a comparable combat scenario, the question has to be asked, could Australia’s own military conduct so many concurrent, high-intensity operations against a near-peer or at the upper end, a peer competitor?

Lesson number two? Australia needs to re-emphasise the creation of a “balanced, focused force” which balances the planned growth in manpower, while leveraging high-technology capabilities, training and doctrine to compensate for our vulnerabilities.

Final thoughts

Despite the rhetoric and lofty ambition highlighted by both sides of the political debate, this all paints a fairly gloomy picture for the average Australian, no matter the demographic group in which they fall, but especially the younger generations.

Declining economic opportunity, coupled with the rapidly deteriorating global and regional balance of power and the increased politicisation of every aspect of contemporary life, only serves to exacerbate the very reality of disconnection, apathy, and helplessness felt by many Australians.

This attitude is only serving to be compounded and creates a growing sentiment that we are speeding towards a predestined outcome, thus disempowering the Australian people and, to a lesser extent, policymakers, as we futilely confront seemingly insurmountable challenges with little to no benefit and at a high-risk/reward calculation.

Taking into account the costs and implications, it is therefore easy to understand why so many Australians, both in the general public and within our decision-making circles, seem to have checked out and are quite happy to allow the nation to continue to limp along in mediocrity because, well, it is easier than having lofty ambitions.

If both Australian policymakers and the Australian public don’t snap out of the comforting security blanket that is the belief in the “End of History”, the nation will continue to rapidly face an uncomfortable and increasingly dangerous new reality, where we truly are no longer the masters of our own destiny.

Our economic resilience, capacity, and competitiveness will prove equally as critical to success in the new world power paradigm as that of the United States, the United Kingdom or Europe and we need to begin to recognise the opportunities presented before us.

Expanding and enhancing the opportunities available to Australians while building critical economic resilience, and as a result, deterrence to economic coercion, should be the core focus of the government because only when our economy is strong can we ensure that we can deter aggression towards the nation or our interests.

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..