Why Israeli Tactical Losses Foreshadow Domestic Anti-Terror Failures

If possible, it is always better to learn from the failure of others.  Whether in business, politics or war this axiom holds true.
 
What we have today is such an opportunity and it will be very expensive to ignore.
 
The lesson to be learned is that state-supported Islamist terrorists have placed a premium on gaining the ability to break into the communications security of their opponents and disseminate what they learn to their tactical units in the field, in real-time.
 
This time around it is Hezbollah and the Israelis. 
 
The tell-tales are numerous.  First there is the ability of the terrorists to very successfully interdict tactical Israeli operations that are initiated, controlled and coordinated using secure electronic communications.  The next is that the Israelis are having only limited success in interdicting terrorist tactical units and again those Israeli tactical efforts are initiated, controlled and coordinated using secure electronic communications.
 
During the preplanning for the current Hezbollah offensive it would not be considered unreasonable for the terrorists to have built a high degree of mobility into their strike teams if only to avoid the deadly Israeli counterstrikes they have had long and unhappy experience with.  If the ability to monitor and disseminate the Israeli preparations for these counterstrikes to these strike teams was an added factor, then we would see the kinds of fairly consistent results we have.
 
This kind of intelligence capability is always desirable in any conflict.  The last time the US suffered this level of pervasive interdiction was in its classified intelligence projects (MACV-SOG) at the close of the Vietnam War.  Being a veteran of one of the projects experiencing those heavy casualty levels has prompted my long-term interest in understanding why the special operations casualty rates had exponentially risen to better than 160% during my assignment.
 
What I discovered was that the kinds of horrific tactical failures we experienced were due to two major factors.  The first was the increased understanding of our tactics and scope of operations by the enemy and the second was the failure of communications security at the strategic and tactical levels.  While climbing the learning curve is a constant for both sides in any prolonged conflict because to fail to do so is to die, it is the second factor that is utterly prescriptive of such rising incidences of failure.
 
The nature and the scope of the Israeli setbacks are eerily similar to those suffered by US special operations forces so long ago.  When you add the level of confidence projected by the Hezbollah leadership that they have many more ‘surprises’ in store for the Israelis it becomes obvious that an intelligence breakthrough has been achieved and consolidated into their strategic and tactical planning.  We can only be thankful that the inherent low self-esteem of the terrorists have prompted them to hint at this coup, something the WWII allied leadership knew better than to betray after breaking the Japanese and German codes.
 
As we have monitored the cross-pollination of tactics and capabilities between the Islamist terrorist communities it becomes obvious that electronic intelligence is now becoming generically incorporated into their scope of operations and tactical routines.
 
What this means is that we can expect that military and police communications in the US will be the focus of similar terrorist intelligence efforts aimed at achieving what Hezbollah has succeeded with against Israel.  It is needful to fully comprehend that while some domestic secure US military communications are at par with the Israeli’s compromised systems, most National Guard units don’t share that higher level of security.  Police operations are at an even greater risk, as their communications nets are far less sophisticated and therefore easier to effectively compromise to the great benefit of terrorist operations.
 
We need to be paying very close attention to the true meaning of current events as they may soon be repeated here.  We still have time and that is something it will cost blood to waste.
 
Forewarned is forearmed.