More combat engineers, mechanized infantry: IDF Ground Forces lays out future plans
Drawing on lessons from the latest conflicts, the military begins to arm female surveillance soldiers, move their war rooms away from borders; infantry to get explosives training
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
After 14 months of fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces’ Ground Forces on Thursday laid out a series of changes it was seeking to implement to face current and future challenges, from expanding its combat engineering forces to giving infantry troops more independence.
Amid the war, top IDF officials have repeatedly said that the military needs to grow in size, though they have never specified exactly where.
According to the Ground Forces, its top priority is establishing a new standing army Combat Engineering Corps battalion. Currently, the military only has four combat engineering battalions in the standing army, but more than a dozen in reserves.
Combat engineers have operated intensively during the war, demolishing hundreds of kilometers worth of Hamas tunnels and other infrastructure belonging to the terror group in the Gaza Strip, as well as Hezbollah facilities in Lebanon.
Their intensive activity amid the war has brought top officers to the realization that there needs to be more combat engineers readily available in the standing army.
With the same thinking, the Ground Forces also plans to expand the size of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, which has also been used constantly during the war for special operations in Hamas tunnels in Gaza.
In addition to the new combat engineering battalion and expanding Yahalom, the Ground Forces said it would also begin to train infantry forces to carry out simple explosive-related engineering tasks, to free up the combat engineers.
The Ground Forces also seeks to train all of the IDF’s infantry forces to use armored vehicles and become mechanized infantry brigades. Currently, only the Givati and Golani brigades are considered mechanized infantry, while the Nahal Brigade is in the process of adopting more advanced armored personnel carriers.
Infantry units amid the war have largely lacked their own mobility units. Therefore the Ground Forces also plans to provide them with Humvees and light armored vehicles, in addition to the APCs.
In terms of women in the Ground Forces, the IDF said that in 2023, some 7,000 female soldiers served in combat roles, and each year around 1,600 new female fighters are drafted. The IDF has been opening up new combat units for young women joining the army in recent years.
A pilot program in Yahalom, where there is an active all-female team and another team in training, will end in July 2025. Another pilot for women to serve in infantry mobility units began in November, and there are plans for a pilot program for female soldiers to serve in the Armored Corps starting in November 2025.
Additional changes the Ground Forces was working to implement were moving the Combat Intelligence Collection Array’s command centers away from the country’s borders and providing the female surveillance soldiers with weapons.
Female surveillance soldiers, referred to in Hebrew as tatzpitaniyot, have been positioned very close to Israel’s borders with the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. On October 7, the Nahal Oz base next to Gaza, where one such command center is based, was overrun by terrorists who killed and kidnapped over 20 surveillance soldiers. The female soldiers, aside from the commanders, were mostly unarmed.
The Ground Forces said that in the coming months, all of the tatzpitaniyot will have weapons, and in the coming years all the command centers will be moved back from the borders.
The Ground Forces seeks to achieve bringing all the reservist units up to the same level as the standing army, in terms of their equipment. Many reserve armored brigades are using older Merkava tanks without active defense systems. Those tanks will undergo upgrades to retrofit them with more advanced systems, including active defenses that are featured in the latest models.
The Ground Forces is also establishing two new divisions and a new brigade for ultra-Orthodox soldiers.
One division, known as the Eastern Division will be tasked with Israel’s border with Jordan.
The second, known as the 96th Division, will be a light infantry force based on volunteer reservists for patrol and routine security during periods of escalation across the country.
Meanwhile, the army’s new Haredi brigade, known as the Hasmonean Brigade, will receive its first company of ultra-Orthodox men later this month.
