Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — Israel has directed its Navy to help support infantry
missions.

Officials said the Israel Navy has been ordered to expand support for
Army operations. They said the Navy was training to provide firepower and
reconnaissance for infantry missions, particularly along the Mediterranean
and Red Sea coasts.

“We’re currently examining new ways to utilize the sea to fortify our
soldiers on land,” Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh said. “We will do this through the use of precision fire and through systems used on land till today, such as unmanned aerial vehicles.”

In an address to a military conference on May 22, Naveh said Israel was stressing cooperation and interoperability of all the services in the
military. The general said the military leadership aimed to achieve tactical communications between the Army, Navy and Air Force.

“Every combat soldier on ground will be able to immediately contact
intelligence forces, Israel Air Force aircraft, and Navy vessels,” Naveh
told the Conference on Air and Land Jointness in a Complex Environment.

During the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2009, the military
conducted tactical coordination between the Navy and Army. Officials said this included the use of Navy attack craft to shell coastal positions during infantry raids of Hamas positions near the Mediterranean.

The Army has also intensified interoperability with the Air Force. Naveh
said tactical communications would enable field units to directly call for
ground air support by attack helicopters.

“Infantry combat soldiers will be able to call upon a helicopter,
contact it and transmit information, enabling the pilots to operate
quickly,” Naveh said. “So far, this field was extremely complex, and now it
is going to be much simpler, as we make optimal use of the cooperation with
IAF forces to effectively attack targets.”

Naveh said inter-service cooperation was required to quickly eliminate
enemy assets and shorten wars. He cited the growing missile arsenals of
Syria as well as such Iranian proxies as Hamas, Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad.
The general said Hizbullah increased its missile arsenal by 10-fold since
the war with Israel in 2006.

“We must shorten wartime as much as possible since many of the attacks
target the Israeli home front,” Naveh said.

“To achieve this we must rely on
precise strikes and ground missiles. Our goal is to target enemy weaponry
infrastructures and the command and control headquarters supporting them in
an extremely precise fashion. For this purpose we’re revolutionizing our
intelligence methods, refocusing from a wide image of the enemy to numerous
specific targets. The goal is to supply a target as specific as a vehicle
carrying rockets.”

  Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, Islamic Jihad, Israeli Navy to fortify land forces with ‘precision fire’, Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts, Navy and Army tactical coordination