Posted on 07/05/2004 11:41:43 AM PDT by anotherview
IDF short of crucial combat equipment
Wealthy soldiers purchase equipment privately, while less fortunate colleagues make do without.
Itay Asher
The IDF is suffering major shortages of combat equipment, due to budgetary restraints. Many units are not provided with sufficient or adequate supplies of expensive equipment such as laser sights and electronic gear for night fighting and combat in built up areas.
As a result stores specializing in military equipment are doing a roaring business. Every Friday soldiers on leave flock to them with their parents, buying sophisticated laser-sights ($350), that can make the difference between killing or being killed when confronting terrorists in a densely built up area such as Nablus’s Kasbah. Other equipment in short suply popular with troops includes torches that fit onto their M16 assault rifles, hollow butts that can carry batteries and other useful equipment, and a variety of other accessories.
The main items are the laser sights, vital in combat in densely populated areas such as the West Bank cities where most of the fighting takes place. Most units find themselves without a sufficient number of these items. Some units manage to get contributors to buy them equipment that is supposed to be supplied by the IDF as standard equipment. In most cases soldiers either purchase the equipment privately, or are forced to go into battle with inferior sub-standard equipment.
As a result platoons go into battle with each soldiers assault rifle outfitted differently, depending on their financial capabilities. Officers and soldiers from wealthy families go into combat with state of the art equipment purchased privately, while their comrades have to make do with the standard equipment provided by the IDF, which the troops know is sub-par and inadequate to their needs. The bottom line is that the richer a soldier's family, the better his chances of returning home alive and well.
The IDF spokesperson denies any shortage of supplies, despite the wealth of evidence supporting the allegations, including statements made by IDF personnel to Maariv. The spokesperson said that the IDF provided all its troops with whatever they needed, and that it was illegal to use anything but IDF–supplied equipment, adding “soldiers have no need to buy additional equipment”.
(2004-07-05 14:42:00.0)
Wars are awfully expensive. How much is the War in Iraq costing Americans every year? The War in Afghanistan? Israel has been at war almost continuously for 56 years.
Looks like wavin_goodbye found out that ZOT is up-to-date and in plentiful supply.
This is as old as soldiering. American GI's do the same thing, spending their cash on better sights (for instance, many like the EoTech holographic sight, which Uncle ultimately decided not to issue) or different armor plates or a Rambo knife.
When I first got to Special Forces my team sergeant took me around while I drew three duffle bags of stuff from supply. He had me pick out about three things -- a rucksack, a cold weather parka, and some mountaineering boots if I recall. Then he gave me a mimeographed sheet: what model sleeping bag to buy at REI, what kind of sleeping pad (the Army started issuing similar pads a couple years later... then I moved on to a thermarest... then the army got those a couple of years after that), and where to get better Canadian canteens at a surplus store, etc. "The rest of that crap, put away," he said. "You won't need it till it's time to turn it in." And indeed, my WWII vintage snowshoes and Korean War sleeping bag went back to the supply guys, still in new condition, in a few years. The fact of the matter is that the military supply system can't keep pace with the innovation in the civilian sporting goods market.
As far as every trooper's rifle being different, well to start with everyone has his own zero... what's the big deal if Johnny (or Shlomo) wants to use a different scope as long as he can hit with it? I guarantee that the other guys on his squad or team will all know what his sight picture is like because soldiers have a lot of down time, and they spend a lot of that down time jawjacking about equipment, and everybody in the company will probably come and try out that new sight when the first guy gets it.
The kid that can't afford a $350 sight on a draftee's pay will find a way to get it. What do you think the guys who buy these things do with them when their tour is up? They aren't turning it in to supply... or tossing it in the trash. I bet there's a healthy market in used gun accessories.
And finally... the idea that these kind of fad things make a material difference in whether Johnny (Shlomo) comes home to Mom and Pop at the end of his tour is a bit farfetched. When the air starts getting thick with lead what matters is your luck, your ability to keep a level head, and your training. A well-trained unit armed with sticks and stones can take a machine gun nest from enthusiastic but untrained amateurs, and make it look easy.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
And what is wrong with that? Since the ancient times richer people went into battle with better armor and swords
VALHALLA I AM COMING!
ZOTTED TROLL COUNT FOR THIS THREAD: 2
Laser sights or red-dot sights? I'm guessing it's the latter.
What happened to all that weaponry seized via boats, ports, raids, etc. that the terrorists would use against Israel? Surely, Israel didn't give it back.
www.israelmilitary.com
Good stuff.
Most of it gets 86'ed in the Med.
This is a secure site, isn't it? I'd hate to think about the bad guys finding out about all the folks working for the good guys that report to the IDF that work for Reuters and the BBC.
Itay Asher sounds like an American Democrat bitching about Interceptor Body Armor.
A lot of stuff that used to be nice to have has, with the help of journalists and politicians, become so mission critical that if a soldier gets killed that did not have it, negligence, incompetence and/or malfeasance in office must have occurred and the authorities must be pilloried. Of course, if a soldier gets killed that did have it, his death is not easily politicized and therefore receives much less attention
You have no need to fear. Chief-of-Station Robert Fisk has assured us that our encyption is unbreakable, and he heard it from EastAsia-CINC Peter Jennings.
Ma'ariv is moderate, much like the Jerusalem Post. Of the major Israeli papers it is the least to the left. I can cope with Yediot Aharanot. There is a reason you rarely if ever see me post from Ha'aretz, which is quite far to the left.
Depends on the views. I think the views that are unaccceptable here (racism, violence) are defined on the home page. The mods do zap comments that step over the line. They also zap copyright infringements, if they're properly notified. They also zap posts that push left-wing views; this is a conservative discussion group, privately owned and managed. They zap entire users, when those users persistently post material violating the above simple rules.
I'm not a mod, so the above is my understanding of someone else's (to wit, FR owner Jim Robinson's) policy. Other than that, any view is fair game... not to say people won't disagree (as I did with the author of this Ma'ariv article) but you're equally free to defend what you say.
Again, I just play in this sandbox... I don't make the rules, and I'm an observer of, not an authority on, them.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Ma'ariv is a more conservative paper by Israeli standards. Bear in mind that left and right mean different things in Israel. Israel is a socialist country whose whole body politic is far left of the USA, except on terrorism (where Israel, too , is divided between eagles and ostriches). For the first 25 years or so of Israeli history a left wing labor party ran the country as a de facto one-party state.
When Begin got in, Labor took it hard; you could hear the shockwave of disappointed entitlement all the way to New Jersey.
An interesting country, Israel, and in most things, an ally, but you need to be on the ball where national interests diverge. It's reasonable to expect Israelis to put Israel first, which is why they can't resist doing something dumb (like pick up some loser flogging secrets around various embassies) once in a while.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Most of it is communist-bloc junk. Israel used to fob it off on its militia allies in South Lebanon, but since the Syrians rolled them up, there isn't a whole lot they can do with it. In the past they have sold some of it, but they discovered they wind up confiscating the same stuff twice...
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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