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In Iraq, The two Battles of Fallujah were some of the hardest fought battles in American history, with the six-week-long Second Battle of Fallujah being the bloodiest battle for American troops in that entire war. There was every reason to think IDF troops would face the same in Gaza…only worse, given that Hamas is a death cult, whereas Saddam Hussein’s troops were more ordinary Islamic fighters.

What’s happened in Gaza has been different, reports Kemp:

The IDF has exceeded even its own commanders’ expectations with the speed and the extent of Hamas’s destruction. It has encircled Gaza City and is assaulting terrorist strongholds, killing large numbers of fighters including key commanders, smashing command posts and gaining valuable intelligence, while its forces have sustained fewer casualties than anticipated.

I suspect the Israelis are making good use of some home-grown technology. Back in 2010 I was on the automotive engineering team bringing the first lane-keeping camera sensor (the kind that are now commonplace on windshields near the rear-view mirror) into production. We were using software provided by Mobileye, an Israeli tech company that was apparently spinning off tech developed for military purposes.

One of the optional features the software enabled was a pedestrian protection feature. The camera could detect pedestrians walking near the path of the vehicle to provide a warning to the driver.

I still remember an engineering manager walking into a morning meeting and saying something like this: "Hey guys, get a load of this. When we plug the camera output into a monitor and someone walks in front of it, the software brackets the person and it reads out TARGET in red at the bottom of the screen!" That's an interesting way to do pedestrian protection... or rather, it plainly was a carryover from the original purpose for which the software was developed.

every one seems to forget why it was a nightmare ... the ROEs. They required lawyers to sigh off on targets, they required no first shot until the enemy shot first, no shooting of men dressed as women, then no shooting back until a troop is wounded. etc.