‘If the generals are counting tunnels, it suggests things are not going well’

Yehuda Kfir, an expert in underground warfare, says the IDF can’t keep bombing buildings and infrastructure to locate Hamas’s tunnels: ‘We need to dig from our side to theirs’

This week, the Israel Defense Forces publicized what it said was the biggest Hamas terror tunnel uncovered to date, built under the stewardship of Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar’s brother Muhammad in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Erez Crossing into Israel.

The IDF didn’t specify if and how the tunnel was utilized during Hamas’s October 7 massacre, when its terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel. But since it extends some four kilometers, from the northern part of the Jabaliya refugee camp to 300 meters (less than a thousand feet) short of the border, it is not unreasonable to deduce that it played a part.

From its large northern opening, dozens of motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles could emerge quickly. With a group that size and that close to the border fence, IDF observation posts and patrols would be too late and too overwhelmed to prevent an attack.

Israel has known for years about Hamas’s Gaza underworld, including its vast tunnel networks, but largely chose not to carry out cross-border operations to demolish them. This was both a consequence of a policy of containing Hamas, and because sending ground troops into Gaza requires complex military considerations and great risk to soldiers’ lives. The political echelons avoided this at almost all costs, until October 7.

The tunnel exposed this week is known colloquially as a “stem.” The IDF didn’t publish footage of its “branches,” but they exist. The massive tunnel system consists of a main shaft that descends to a depth of 50 meters, with “branches” coming off the sides and exit shafts located in schools and other buildings.

The “stems” of such tunnels tend to serve as “floors,” with a split at the top. In the footage that the IDF published, you can see steps leading up out of the tunnel.

Earlier this month, the IDF said it had located 800 tunnels and 500 shafts of various sizes and lengths in the course of the war against Hamas. Most of the tunnels discovered were located in northern Gaza, where the ground offensive began and has been most intensive. There are also massive tunnels for smuggling goods under the border Gaza shares with Egypt, at the southern foot of the Strip.

The issue facing the IDF is not just the number of tunnels or their length, engineer and underground warfare expert Brig. Gen. (res) Yehuda Kfir told The Times of Israel’s sister site, Zman Yisrael. Kfir previously headed up underground warfare in the IDF’s Technological and Logistics Directorate, and continued his research and work in the field after his years of service.

Over the past decade, Kfir built a Facebook group called “Tunnel Warfare,” where he continually discussed the tunnel threat and issued calls for Knesset committee discussions on the matter.

“In the field of historical research on underground warfare, it is clear that when the generals are talking about numbers and sizes [of tunnels], there’s a problem. If they’re counting the bodies of enemy combatants, or kilometrage, or the number of shells, that’s a sign that things are not going well,” said Kfir in an interview.

“In wartime, what’s important is not the scope or the number of kilometers or how many tons of explosives, but rather: Is the army capable of breaking the enemy?Unfortunately, to date, despite the IDF finding many tunnels, we’re not seeing that the enemy is breaking. And that means that the goals of the war are still far from achieved.

“You need to understand that in underground warfare it’s that much more difficult to assess the enemy’s status, because we can’t analyze what’s going on under the ground,” Kfir said. “In military history, armies have always found it difficult to know what’s going on with the other side when they’re underground.

“It’s difficult to know how badly and where they’ve been hit – and how much longer they’ll be able to hide out there. In World War II,” he noted, “there was a Japanese soldier who came out of a tunnel years after the war had ended. The tunnels give a real boost to survivability.”

The defense establishment knew there were tunnels in the Erez Crossing area, but the evidence released by the IDF Spokesperson recently gave us more details, especially on the engineering work that went into this particular tunnel. What did you learn from the footage?

Yehuda Kfir: The clip shows the development of new excavation tools, including an improvised tunnel boring machine (TBM), much like the one used to dig the Tel Aviv Metro.

Of course, there’s also the round shape of the tunnel, and we’re seeing a lot of steel, which is relatively new; they’re using steel and not concrete like we saw in Operation Protective Edge [in 2014]. The tunnels in these videos are more sophisticated; they really invested in them.

Steel is a higher quality material, it’s more convenient to work with, and it’s more expensive. This underlines that money is no issue for Hamas. They’ve got a lot more money than they had back in 2014.

In terms of the use, you can see it in the heavy, armored doors. It’s clear that they’re of a high standard.

The steel needs to be transported, fashioned in a proper workshop inside Gaza, and then installed. It appears that steel is being imported from outside the Strip. The steel is also used to produce rocket launchers and the missiles themselves.

We see the steel doors over and over in footage of tunnels, so we can assume that if we’ve seen some of them, there are many steel doors in the rest of the tunnels. It’s clear that they’re not having any problems getting heavy materials.

There was a claim in the past that the smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza had been damaged, but after seeing all these materials, plainly smuggling from the Sinai area has been going well for them.”

We know that the [Hamas ] engineers and excavators learned most of what they know [about tunnel construction] in the Khan Younis area. That is to say, in terms of the evolution of the tunnels, if this is what we’re seeing in the north, we can assume that in the south the tunnels are even bigger, better equipped and more sophisticated.

I learned new things about the tools Hamas is using, and about their capabilities, including rotary hand drills, which need two people to operate. This shows the development of excavation tools which, to the best of my knowledge, are not available on the commercial market. It looks like a local improvisation of a simple drilling device, and it teaches us that they’ve got a “Development Department” that’s up and running. They’re not sitting around, but rather investing in improving their excavation abilities.

The IDF said this tunnel went down as far as 50 meters. Why do they need such depth?

The IDF previously believed Hamas was excavating to a depth of 30 meters, because that’s groundwater level. Sunday’s revelations of a 50-meter-deep tunnel, below groundwater level, shows that Hamas overcame another technological hurdle, because building at that depth is highly complicated. From an engineering perspective, when there’s water around during excavation, there’s constant pressure — and whoever’s doing the building and the digging under the groundwater could drown without specialized pumping equipment to dispose of water and prevent flooding.

We’re talking about technology that’s above average. That is to say, compared to what we know about their capabilities up until Operation Protective Edge, it marks a big jump.

But the deeper you are, the more protected you are. Their need to dig deeper comes from the fact that the IDF developed deep explosive capabilities from 2017. There was an incident in which a number of Islamic Jihad men were buried in a cross-border tunnel. So Hamas learned its lesson. It understood that, in order to survive, it needed to dig deeper.

We can see a subterranean city in some of the videos, with different levels of tunnels and passageways between them. There’s a kind of underground street with entrances in other locations. The internal architecture tells us what they’re using the tunnels for, and their strategy.

In the big tunnels there are “assembly areas” just under the ceiling. And of course the shafts themselves are used for attacks. The size of the main thoroughfare, the “stem,” can tell us whether it’s a smuggling tunnel, used to transport equipment and vehicles.

The IDF Spokesperson didn’t discuss the tunnel’s internal communications system, but we could see electricity panels or communications boxes.

Since October 7, the assumption is that Yahya Sinwar also used the tunnel network as a communication network. It’s most likely a cable system, which Sinwar planned so that cables buried deep in the earth would be safe from phone- or wire-tapping.

In the cellular system or cable system above ground he would say one thing, what he wanted us to hear — and then he used the underground system for secret messages. Practically speaking, the wiring inside the tunnels was out of reach of [Israeli] intelligence. That was also what was missing for the IDF — intelligence about the [situation] underground, where their forces are located, how many troops remain, upcoming combat plans…

It’s possible. When Israel decided to block the cross-border tunnels, it took time – but it found a technological solution. To plan for an underground war, you need to develop more underground intelligence.

The IDF method is frustrating and we can’t keep using it, because it involves destroying infrastructure and buildings above ground in order to get to what’s underneath.

In the first stage [of the ground offensive], the IDF had a broad mandate for widespread destruction [as it sought to dismantle Hamas]. Obviously, we can’t uncover tunnels in that way in Khan Younis and Rafah, so deciphering what’s going on underground will have to be done another way — to reveal what’s underground without destroying the buildings and infrastructure above.

I believe the way to do it is by digging from our side toward them, while inserting smart tools — sensors, microphones and robots, anything that can penetrate the tunnels and bring us intelligence on where they’re located.

I’m talking even about some sort of underground torpedo, launching an excavation machine with explosives capabilities, at the right time. We need to change the approach — to attacking the tunnels from within.

You linked Snopes as the debunking link

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nato-command-center-strike/
11 posted on 12/19/2023, 10:31:09 PM by ansel12

not a reliable source.

No source is, you have to seek information, and those sources are very useful, evidently you believe the Russians and think it was 130 meters instead of what that poster had remembered as 400 meters.

I don’t know why you are pestering me with your strange posts.

“The primary mission remains........ Hamascide.”

While it is true that that is the current mission of the IDF, I think it is the wrong one.

Correctly, their mission should be to permanently break the will of the population to ever wage war again. Unconditional surrender of everyone with enough death and damage so that nobody ever concieves of war again.

Too bad there wasn’t some sort of sonic weapon that could be used to subject areas where the tunnels are to cause some sort of earth tremor that would collapse many of these tunnels enmass. Yes I know it would bring down some buildings. Tough boogers!

I will argue that you do not grasp the extent of the process currently under way.

The initial step precipitated by the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel is the extermination of Hamas. Hamas must be exterminated man , woman and if necessary, child.

Benjamin Netanyahu lost his brother during the 1976 raid on Entebbe. That action was required by the IDF to rescue hostages. Now, 47 years later there is yet another of many hostage takings. That game is declared to be over.

Yesterday there were announcements of proposed activities by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. All along with Israel and America will jointly provide security and governance and money to develop the transformation you desire. Palestine as has been is over. Hamas is to be gone and the Palestinian Authority is powerless and will also be gone.

The game the world has been playing and is currently attempting to play again is over. Palestine is over.

I make a second post to not have one that is so long.

FYI there is lots and lots of IDF activity video on You Tube. There is lots and lots and lots of what I call dust and chunks and rebar tangle. Wherever Hamas was, those places are gone. The IDF releases arial videos of very specific buildings being bombed and converted into dust and chunks and tangles. I believe that there is a catalogue of videos of each and every building so destroyed. Such videos are evidence against the charges of war crimes that destroy civilians.

Conversely, there are background shots of buildings not destroyed. The only buildings in Gaza that are damaged and destroyed are those in which Hamas occupied.

I am amazed at the efforts of the armored IDF bulldozers and excavators. They have cleared paths for the IDF tanks and vehicles. There are very wide swaths cleared of the dust and chunks and tangles right down to the brown dirt. The dirt is in Hamas land.

It is reported there were 7 “Refugee Camps”. There were no refugees any more, there was Hamas. Now the “Refugee Camps” are just gone, dust, chunks and tangles.

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