James - I believe your assessment is spot on. I would go a little further. I served with the Asymmetric Warfare Group for a couple of years and had a chance to take a security team to Israel and interact with the IDF and ISS. I was concerned at the time with how they were implementing what I will call predictive profiling schemes for targeting in various circumstances. They had little concern with how errors could be introduced and propagate through their algorithms and processes. They had no interest in understanding false positive rates or false negative rates or how to iteratively improve their approach. I wound up in a fairly sharp argument with the then director of security for the Knesset on this issue.
Having said this, I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for all of the IDF and ISS personnel we met on the trip. They have a very difficult and challenging job to perform. I want them to succeed in destroying Hamas and the rest of the proxies involved in hostilities. Doing some real time lessons learned (which it appears they are doing) should significantly decrease the chances of another mistake.
Will - I enjoyed your Shield of the Republic podcast yesterday and wish you all success going forward. I also became a subscriber to your blog as well.
James did a good job covering most of what I’ve wrote about elsewhere regarding sensors and signatures, so I won’t delve too much into the thermal vs EO camera stuff already covered. What I will mention are two other points of observation, one regarding standing Rules of Engagement and the other relating to battle space management.
With respect to ROEs, a tactical ops center managing active persistent overhead assets like drones have a rulebook to follow once they see suspected pattern-of-life signatures related to targets of opportunity on the ground. Based on what little I can gather from open source info, it seems to me that “signature strikes” were likely authorized at the ops center level via standing ROEs when the officer in charge manning that watch floor determined that what he saw on that drone-mounted thermal camera met sufficient criteria to initiate a strike—and multiple follow ups, or “double taps” as they’re sometimes called. This means that things like military-aged males loading boxes onto vehicles were assumed to be Hamas fighters loading cached munitions onto vehicles for an imminent strike against IDF ground troops rather than aid workers loading food onto trucks that were already cleared for transport via other ops centers (more on that in a minute). So the accidental killings here to me is partially a downstream result of how standing ROEs were set up in very similar ways to how some of the US military and intel community strikes met the same accidental outcomes in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
On the battle space management side, you had WCK calling their movements into the IDF ahead of scheduled departures, so the IDF had the appropriate info in hand, but one hand was not talking to another and so deconfliction between networked centers did not prevent the accidental killings that it could have. This is what happens when there’s not a “shared battle space picture” via different operations centers with different missions. The concept of “Network Centric Warfare” is supposed to establish a shared battle space picture between different ops centers with differing mission roles, but what it looks like here is that the IDF did not have a shared battle space picture in place via the principles of NCW, which admittedly are really tricky unless you’ve had months-to-years to work that sort of thing out either via pre-conflict training that envisions these kinds of scenarios or through actual operations where mistakes are made and lessons are learned (the IDF are learning those lessons in real time as we speak).
Nothing more to add on this front other than it’s kind of crazy to watch another country go through so many of the same bad experiences and lessons the US just learned throughout 20+ years of counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency operations across 2 different continents. It’s always better to learn from the mistakes of others rather than learning from your own mistakes, and those who don’t set themselves up for hard lessons. The IDF had our 20-year history to learn a bit from, but it looks like they’re learning things the hard way themselves at this point. Urban conflict is a cruel teacher.
What I have been able to discern from open sources is that the IDF observed one of the aid workings with something slung across their back that they misidentified to be a rifle. It was most likely a backpack or bag of some sort. Depending on a number of factors that’s an easy thing to mistake, but the targeting process SHOULD require greater fidelity in the analysis and positive identification (PID) of weapons. I’ve witnessed farmers carrying shovels misidentified as MAMs with weapons, especially in IR. And that’s why our threshold for PID was stringent in most ROE scenarios.
The investigation by the IDF found that the Rules of Engagement (ROEs) and targeting protocols were not properly followed, leading to the dismissal of two officers and the reprimand of three others. That’s some level of accountability. But I also hope they find where the authorities/processes allowed the human errors to result in the tragic loss of innocent human life. Because the loss of even a single innocent life is untenable, even when achieving zero casualties seems unattainable amidst the “fog of war.“ Zero has to be the goal.
I love you, Will. You're a righteous dude, and don't argue with me about that! You may be a grumpy combat vet, but I am a grouchy retired teacher. And I've got my ruler somewhere!
The dig was at Iran, its proxies, and their sympathizers. But, it’s helpful to see that the context I authored the piece wasn’t the context under which it was received by the reader.
The reader doesn’t know that I’m a veteran who lives with the ghosts of the strikes gone wrong I’ve witnessed. And that those ghost resurface every time I review events like this, until I sit with them and we deal with the renewed moral and emotional trauma again. And as such, very few people want these events to be minimized as absolutely possible more than I do.
I sympathize with the full blown pacifists in their desire for the war to end yesterday. But who I don’t sympathize with is the Iranians and their propagandists who equate Israel’s actions in Gaza to genocide of Palestinians. And who would remark that the IDF deliberately targeted an aid convoy to deflect from the responsible party for this entire conflict, Iran and Hamas. The blood of the innocent victims of this conflict are on their hands. And their sympathizers misrepresent the facts and “Monday morning quarterback” their every move to support their antisemitic narrative. They have the bloodlust. And they want Israel to be less effective so they have more propaganda.
And in the age of social media-based disinformation platforms, they are published even wider than ever.
I completely accept your explanation. There are a lot of people who claim that leftists are just glad and rejoicing when Israel makes mistakes so they have more ammo for a blanket condemnation of Israel.
I know it is really hard to anticipate how an audience will hear a point. That's why it's almost always safer to write a paragraph than an isolated sentence.
James - I believe your assessment is spot on. I would go a little further. I served with the Asymmetric Warfare Group for a couple of years and had a chance to take a security team to Israel and interact with the IDF and ISS. I was concerned at the time with how they were implementing what I will call predictive profiling schemes for targeting in various circumstances. They had little concern with how errors could be introduced and propagate through their algorithms and processes. They had no interest in understanding false positive rates or false negative rates or how to iteratively improve their approach. I wound up in a fairly sharp argument with the then director of security for the Knesset on this issue.
Having said this, I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for all of the IDF and ISS personnel we met on the trip. They have a very difficult and challenging job to perform. I want them to succeed in destroying Hamas and the rest of the proxies involved in hostilities. Doing some real time lessons learned (which it appears they are doing) should significantly decrease the chances of another mistake.
Will - I enjoyed your Shield of the Republic podcast yesterday and wish you all success going forward. I also became a subscriber to your blog as well.
Thanks, bro.
James did a good job covering most of what I’ve wrote about elsewhere regarding sensors and signatures, so I won’t delve too much into the thermal vs EO camera stuff already covered. What I will mention are two other points of observation, one regarding standing Rules of Engagement and the other relating to battle space management.
With respect to ROEs, a tactical ops center managing active persistent overhead assets like drones have a rulebook to follow once they see suspected pattern-of-life signatures related to targets of opportunity on the ground. Based on what little I can gather from open source info, it seems to me that “signature strikes” were likely authorized at the ops center level via standing ROEs when the officer in charge manning that watch floor determined that what he saw on that drone-mounted thermal camera met sufficient criteria to initiate a strike—and multiple follow ups, or “double taps” as they’re sometimes called. This means that things like military-aged males loading boxes onto vehicles were assumed to be Hamas fighters loading cached munitions onto vehicles for an imminent strike against IDF ground troops rather than aid workers loading food onto trucks that were already cleared for transport via other ops centers (more on that in a minute). So the accidental killings here to me is partially a downstream result of how standing ROEs were set up in very similar ways to how some of the US military and intel community strikes met the same accidental outcomes in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
On the battle space management side, you had WCK calling their movements into the IDF ahead of scheduled departures, so the IDF had the appropriate info in hand, but one hand was not talking to another and so deconfliction between networked centers did not prevent the accidental killings that it could have. This is what happens when there’s not a “shared battle space picture” via different operations centers with different missions. The concept of “Network Centric Warfare” is supposed to establish a shared battle space picture between different ops centers with differing mission roles, but what it looks like here is that the IDF did not have a shared battle space picture in place via the principles of NCW, which admittedly are really tricky unless you’ve had months-to-years to work that sort of thing out either via pre-conflict training that envisions these kinds of scenarios or through actual operations where mistakes are made and lessons are learned (the IDF are learning those lessons in real time as we speak).
Nothing more to add on this front other than it’s kind of crazy to watch another country go through so many of the same bad experiences and lessons the US just learned throughout 20+ years of counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency operations across 2 different continents. It’s always better to learn from the mistakes of others rather than learning from your own mistakes, and those who don’t set themselves up for hard lessons. The IDF had our 20-year history to learn a bit from, but it looks like they’re learning things the hard way themselves at this point. Urban conflict is a cruel teacher.
What I have been able to discern from open sources is that the IDF observed one of the aid workings with something slung across their back that they misidentified to be a rifle. It was most likely a backpack or bag of some sort. Depending on a number of factors that’s an easy thing to mistake, but the targeting process SHOULD require greater fidelity in the analysis and positive identification (PID) of weapons. I’ve witnessed farmers carrying shovels misidentified as MAMs with weapons, especially in IR. And that’s why our threshold for PID was stringent in most ROE scenarios.
The investigation by the IDF found that the Rules of Engagement (ROEs) and targeting protocols were not properly followed, leading to the dismissal of two officers and the reprimand of three others. That’s some level of accountability. But I also hope they find where the authorities/processes allowed the human errors to result in the tragic loss of innocent human life. Because the loss of even a single innocent life is untenable, even when achieving zero casualties seems unattainable amidst the “fog of war.“ Zero has to be the goal.
The "Team" is back together again. I confess I know nothing about the topic but it is fascinating to read about it.
I loved this very informative post very much until this the last cheap dig at people who want to see a smaller percentage of civilians killed in Gaza.
That's fair. I don't think that was his intention, but that's my fault. I take ownership for it and I will do better next time.
I love you, Will. You're a righteous dude, and don't argue with me about that! You may be a grumpy combat vet, but I am a grouchy retired teacher. And I've got my ruler somewhere!
The dig was at Iran, its proxies, and their sympathizers. But, it’s helpful to see that the context I authored the piece wasn’t the context under which it was received by the reader.
The reader doesn’t know that I’m a veteran who lives with the ghosts of the strikes gone wrong I’ve witnessed. And that those ghost resurface every time I review events like this, until I sit with them and we deal with the renewed moral and emotional trauma again. And as such, very few people want these events to be minimized as absolutely possible more than I do.
I sympathize with the full blown pacifists in their desire for the war to end yesterday. But who I don’t sympathize with is the Iranians and their propagandists who equate Israel’s actions in Gaza to genocide of Palestinians. And who would remark that the IDF deliberately targeted an aid convoy to deflect from the responsible party for this entire conflict, Iran and Hamas. The blood of the innocent victims of this conflict are on their hands. And their sympathizers misrepresent the facts and “Monday morning quarterback” their every move to support their antisemitic narrative. They have the bloodlust. And they want Israel to be less effective so they have more propaganda.
And in the age of social media-based disinformation platforms, they are published even wider than ever.
I completely accept your explanation. There are a lot of people who claim that leftists are just glad and rejoicing when Israel makes mistakes so they have more ammo for a blanket condemnation of Israel.
I know it is really hard to anticipate how an audience will hear a point. That's why it's almost always safer to write a paragraph than an isolated sentence.
At the risk of asking a dumb question: was this strike performed at night, thus necessitating the use of IR sensors, rather than EO?
Per a WSJ article, it was at night. It is a good report on the investigation.
Yes.
4:30 am or close to that, I believe.
I don't tolerate blood libels here. Goodbye.
I appreciate your perspective. You’ve inspired me to write another piece in response.