These pings will be short. Basically, I’m doing little more than teeing up posts on X/Twitter from the last week. As each day gives hindsight on the day before, we see the signal of what’s going on emerge more clearly from the background noise, and find both concern and hope renewed.
The last comprehensive(-ish) summary is this one, from 9 May 2024.
At that point we were aware that the Biden administration had suspended a shipment of air-delivered bombs to Israel. The shipment involved 2,000-lb and 500-lb bombs, which had been approved for shipment in March 2024 and were actually in fulfillment of a sales contract from 2008. They weren’t part of the aid package Congress voted on for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. The reason for the suspension, according to the administration, was concern about civilian casualties in Gaza attributed by NGO analysts and the media to Israel’s use of the 2,000-lb bombs.
It always bears repeating that the civilian casualty rate from IDF aerial bombing is exceptionally low (lower than America’s; see link); the 2,000-lb bombs are used – very precisely, with JDAM precision-guidance kits and active targeting by aircrew – on Hamas’s tunnels and the ground-level infrastructure they hide under, which is among the best uses for such bombs; and in any case, the core of any civilian casualty problem is that Hamas uses civilians as human shields for its combat arrangements such as weapons storage, firing positions, and command posts.
Ping 1: Shaping the battle with arms delivery fulfillment
The Biden suspension remains in effect, however. Shortly after it was announced, Biden was perceived by many to be changing course when his administration disclosed that a separate shipment of other arms had been authorized. This was the one described as a $1 billion arms package. (Links in the X thread below.)
The problem: the shipment contained only munitions for infantry ground operations. The air-delivered bombs were still being withheld.
Israel can fight much more effectively, and with lower own-force casualties (as well as fewer civilian casualties, in many cases), if the IDF can attack Hamas infrastructure using air-delivered bombs to prepare urban areas, in particular, before IDF troops enter.
This X thread of 14 May captures the essence of it.
If we recall from the 9 May TOC article, the IDF would probably run out of 2,000-lb bombs within about 16 weeks of starting a full-blown operation in Rafah. It would run out substantially faster if Hezbollah opened a second front for Israel in the north.
The Biden administration appeared to be trying to limit Israel to fighting, and incurring more Israeli casualties, using ground operations, with less air-interdiction preparation and air support. In fact, Biden appears to be trying to handicap the IDF by not replenishing the bomb inventory.
I’ll copy in here some summary observations made in separate correspondence.
The effect of this is to boost (though not all that significantly) Israel’s ability to wage a ground fight. Everything in the list is a munitions package for infantry ops.
The air-delivered bombs are still withheld. That’s what matters. Israel doesn’t want to shift the fighting profile to more intensive ground ops with less air prep, interdiction, and air support. IDF on the ground is more vulnerable that way, and the ops profile is less efficient and everything takes longer.
Plus, the withholding of the bombs leaves Israel with the same original problem of how fast everything would run out if Hezbollah opened a major front in the north. The bombs would be needed badly for Lebanon. The IDF can’t afford incursions into Lebanon without massive air support. Could well be the difference between keeping a fight on Lebanon’s side or having it cross into Israel and have to be defended/thrown back at greater cost.
Please don’t be fooled. This is not a major concession from Biden.
Ping 2: A pier in full makes its debut
On 16 May, the floating pier off Gaza was announced to be operational. Again, see the 9 May article for a lot more on the pier.
By 17 May, trucks were being photographed rolling down the pier in gratifying numbers with their Meals-on-Keels cargo for Gaza, which had already had quite the scenic-route experience being transferred sometime between 11 and 16 May from the container ship M/V Sagamore to the Military Sealift cargo ship M/V/ Roy P Benavidez, apparently off Ashdod/Ashkelon on the Israeli coast, thence to proceed to the vicinity of the pier where it was shuttled to the pier in batches by U.S. Army landing craft.
The trucks were coming down the pier half-loaded, which isn’t promising as expeditious delivery is concerned. But things were finally moving.
Alert analysts quickly recognized a presence on the pier, however. Not one scintilla of an American uniformed boot has been observed on the ground of Gaza. But the air space of Gaza is another story.
Perched on the pier, about 900 feet offshore by my estimate, is an Army counter-drone system called M-LIDS, which features a 30mm chain gun and a rocket launcher for maneuverable UAV-type drone-on-drone interceptors called “Coyote.” The Coyote Block 2 rounds with this M-LIDS system can operate in powered, winged flight on a small jet engine.
And if they have to engage a drone near the pier, they will perforce be expending fires in the territorial air space of Gaza (administered for security by Israel), which extends to 12 nautical miles off the shoreline.
Readers will note that my X posts were sent on 17 May. The import of the M-LIDS system on the pier was obvious as soon as it was seen. It helps explain why Hamas complained that the U.S. was putting the pier in with the intent of bringing in military capability to Gaza.
The U.S. administration spoke appeasingly on the matter, but Hamas probably doesn’t believe our abject disavowal of belligerent intent.
Bonus notes: A C-RAM AAA intercept system has been observed on the landward side of the pier since pier installation. This is presumably an IDF C-RAM, not being operated by U.S. troops.
Moreover, the pier’s aid flow instantly drew threats other than mortars and rockets from Hamas. The UN says it hasn’t received anything from the pier since Saturday.
Ping 3: Fronts, first and second
Although the Biden administration has been doing its level best to discourage Israel from going into Rafah and finishing the job of evicting Hamas, there have been signs that Israel is quietly getting the fight for Rafah underway.
Unsurprisingly, given the virtually certain need to conserve the larger air-delivered bombs (1,000-lb and 2,000-lb), the IDF appears to be maximizing comparatively-risky infantry engagement in tunnel clearing and other preliminary operations.
While Team Biden keeps pushing for a ceasefire and criticizing the Netanyahu government for, among other things, an alleged lack of preparation for the follow-on to combat in Gaza, Netanyahu himself points out that his government will certainly not disclose its plans to Hamas or Hezbollah before execution.
A key reason the need has just grown for trenchant statements from Netanyahu is that on 16 May, Hezbollah launched a massed barrage of attempted drone and rocket strikes on northern Israel. In effect, this amounts to opening the second front that would quickly start spending down the IDF inventory of air-delivered bombs.
As user Ron M. observes, the nature of the threat is now more ominous than previously. Hezbollah is using armed drones now – with separate, deliverable weapons – and not just “suicide” drones that have to make impact themselves to create explosive effects.
The character of such apparatuses makes their support infrastructure in Lebanon, including storage, manufacture, and preparation – substantial portions of it underground – an ideal target set for 2,000-lb bombs. Hezbollah tunnels at Israel’s northern border also demand bombing attacks to prevent their use for multi-vector entry of Hezbollah “infantry” into Israel. (For the clever, IDF infantry can’t be expected to perform this task by entering easily booby-trapped tunnels under fire from Hezbollah.)
And the prospect of high-volume massed attacks makes such prior interdiction in Lebanon imperative, if Israel is to keep the fight north of the border. Even more than fighting in Gaza, Israel can’t afford to run out of 2,000-lb bombs for dealing with Hezbollah’s tunnels and huge stash of drones, rockets, and missiles. Any merely defensive fight from northern Israel would be overwhelmed at some point.
If the IAF couldn’t deliver sufficient punch to interdict Hezbollah’s attack assets before they were used, a larger and uglier and more protracted ground incursion into Lebanon could not be avoided.
The stark need for replenishment of the air-delivered bomb inventory could not have been illuminated more quickly, with Hezbollah opening the second front just as Israel began actively focusing the first one, in Gaza, on Rafah.
Ping 4: Helicopter mishap in Iran
The history of the last week puts in a fascinating light the crash on Sunday 19 May of a helicopter in northern Iran carrying President Ebrahim Raisi and other high-ranking officials of Iran and Azerbaijan.
The search for the helicopter and its passengers and crew went on for hours, and eventually the Iranian regime reported that all on board had been killed in the crash.
There is no basis for speculating usefully on what happened, other than acknowledging that the helicopter crashed.
But there are circumstances worth considering that surround this incident. One is that the Biden administration’s project of trying to limit and channel the options Israel has for the war in Gaza is essentially about gratifying the same priority Iran has to leave a functional Hamas presence in Gaza.
We needn’t settle for ourselves the motive of the Biden administration in holding the same priority as the radical Iranian regime. I don’t doubt that most readers already know where they stand on that. Most readers already know where I stand.
The point is only that Biden’s stick-and-carrot game with Israel is pursing the same goal as Iran’s. That’s all we need to know to look at the other circumstances.
Biden is denying Israel the weapons it needs to fight effectively in both Gaza and Lebanon, should Hezbollah mount a full-blown challenge to Israel by making Lebanon a separate combat front. Biden has gone so far as to visibly attempt to shape Israel’s combat choices, by offering to supply one set of weapons and not another.
This of course is dishonorable and disgusting. And Biden is doing it in the context of pursuing the same goal as Iran’s in Gaza. There’s no other explanation for Biden’s actions than that his administration’s goal is to keep Iran’s terrorist proxies viable, as sources of potentially existential attack, on Israel’s borders.
The prospect of this situation coming to a head and leaving Israel trapped at a disadvantage became visible and imminent with Hezbollah’s mass attack on 16 May. Israel can’t just keep absorbing such attacks using air and missile defenses. There has to be preemptive interdiction in Lebanon. (Israel does have alternatives to 1,000-lb and 2,000-lb air-delivered bombs – but not enough of them to use them all up on an interdiction problem in Lebanon to which the air-delivered bombs are better suited. Israel needs the other weapons, including cruise and ballistic missiles, for other factors in self-defense and preemption.)
The Biden administration reiterated once again, on Friday 17 May, that it would continue with the “suspension” of the bomb delivery to Israel. In hindsight, that has the aspect of Biden being afforded one more chance to change course.
He didn’t. Less than 48 hours later, Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, were dead, along with Governor Malek Rahmati of East Azerbaijan.
Not incidentally, Iran’s sore-tried people were in the streets in major cities to celebrate that misfortune for the regime that continues to brutally oppress them. As with demonstrations and increasing dissident activity in the last several years, the people clarified that the regime doesn’t have solid majority support. It can consider itself vulnerable and at risk. That’s fortuitous for Israel – and goes to the strategic center of gravity of the threat to Israel.
If the reader’s mind imagines I’m suggesting that Israel engineered this event, the reader may get his head out of “Protocols” capture. The reader, if he wants to ponder how Iran and Biden, through this disaster, both lost key regime leadership in Iran that pursues the shared goal of keeping Hamas operating and viable in Gaza, needs to think bigger than that.
Feature image: Deceased Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in September 2022, vowing to the UN General Assembly to avenge the death of terror chief Qassem Soleimani (responsible for over 600 American service members’ deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan). CNBC video, YouTube.
The Optimistic Conservative 
The treacherous nature of the Obama-Biden team is flagrant . I hope it will change for good in November .
and now as of the Sunday before Memorial Day, the pier has turned into a clusterfark. Another time and Normandy would have failed.
interesting that both Hezbollah and Russia are relying heavily on drones supplied by Iran. I certainly don’t want to get sucked more deeply into Ukraine, but hope we have observers in theater to learn new tactics.