Posted on 12/19/2023 7:59:36 PM PST by Uncle Miltie
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.
Uncovering tunnels
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.
Where is the steel used? And how did Hamas get it?
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.
Tell us more about the “floors.”
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…
Can the IDF develop underground intelligence?
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.
How will the IDF keep uncovering tunnels, especially in the south?
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.
The IDF is doing fine. It is clear Ham Ass has more money and technology than expected and this is the new challenge.....stopping the money (hard) and materials (easier).
They are going to have to level Gaza. Internationally, they have to stop caring about the civilians.....there are none.
The US didn’t when we dropped the bomb and Israel should take the same attitude now. There will be civilian sacrifices which are tragic, but necessary to lower the overall death toll over time.
Flood Gaza until it collapses and naturally backfills with sand, then enjoy the beach.
Pump smoke in and watch where it comes out.
“War is the health of the State.”
Randolph Bourne
And Israel’s Deep State is getting healthier by the day.
The same politicians who gutted private gun ownership.
I will suggest that the bombing has mostly eliminated the primary tunnel targets. It is now necessary to go after the bombed entrances and tunnels to force the Hamas troglodytes to the surface where they can be killed.
The primary mission remains........ Hamascide. Kill Hamas.
The current whining for cease fire can be ignored becvause there is not only no reason to cease the killing but to the contrary, there is strong reason to keep on killing Hamas.
Hostages? At this point hostages are no longer bargaining chips. Hamas has declared the hostages to be toast by trying to trade them for ending the war.
Good article. Using tunnels for their advantage against the Islamic jihadis.
It was just discovered that the large tunnel extends beyond the Gaza border in the north to a greenhouse area inside Israel, where local Arabs brought in items for large amounts of money. This could be the source from which the steel entered Gaza.
In the south, the tunnel reaches to at least Khan Younis, and perhaps all the way to the Egyptian border. This large steel tunnel system was built by Sinwar’s brother over several years at great expense. Now the Hamas tunnel system covers at least 500km with all the branches and levels.
Peaceful nuclear explosions/nuclear engineering can solve this problem with minimal casualties:
Just crank up the pumps and run them 24-7 until all of Gaza is an uninhabitable swamp or every single Hamas member is handed over to the IDF in chains.
Whichever comes first.
L
Doesn’t matter how deep the hamas may dig. Stay on the surface, find and seal off the entrances and exits and ventilation shafts. That will end the problem in due course.
1. How did they not notice the construction of an underground country? (tailings?)
2. Where did they get the money, talent, and equipment?
3. Why is there still a Gaza left intact?
There is no way that a Kinzhal missile’s 480 kg warhead will penetrate into a hardened bunker 130 meters below ground - it was130 meters according to the dubious Russian sources, not 400 meters.
The depth was misreported in the false story - it was 130 meters, not 400.
1. Limestone “tailings” were mixed with cement to make buildings etc.
2. Iran
3. Work in progress
They could introduce thermobaric gases and touch them off.
The only long term solution is to evict the Arabs and make it part of Israel again.
Read the debunking links in that post and you will see that it started as claiming 80 meters.
But it was curiosity that compelled me to seek out how deep these bunker busters were actually capable of penetrating the earth before their payload was detonated. 🙂
Yeah, but this was based upon no bore hole being present. Big difference. 🙂
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.