A sudden inspection, conducted by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the tank base, revealed a serious shortcoming in the operational training and conditions of service of the military.
The inspection was held a week ago on the basis of the 460th brigade responsible for the combat readiness of all the armored units of the IDF. The audit revealed serious shortcomings in the combat readiness of the unit itself, in the state of the infrastructure of the base and in the conditions of service on it. The instruction to conduct the inspection was given by the Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman, and he, quite unusual, took part in carrying out the inspection and personally demanded explanations from the High Command regarding the revealed shortcomings.
In an annual report published in May responsible for dealing with complaints of soldiers, the inspection of "one of the tank bases under the jurisdiction of the 460th brigade" was mentioned, although the name of the base was not included in the report. The report criticized the unsatisfactory content of hundreds of tanks and other combat vehicles and excessive load on the technical staff of the base. In the wake of the report, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman decided to conduct his own verification and instructed the inspector of the defense department to brigade general of reserve Hagay Tanenbaum-Erez to organize and conduct a sudden inspection of the base.
The army command knew about the intention of the minister and the inspector of his department to conduct an inspection of one of the bases and reacted to this venture with noticeable discontent. It was said that the inspector of the defense department, subordinate to the minister, should not conduct such inspections, which are, say, the prerogative of the IDF inspector, who submits to the chief of the general staff.
However, Lieberman insisted on his own and instructed Tanenbaum-Erez and his staff to conduct the inspection.
In the middle of last week, a group of two dozen of the top reserve officers entering the defense inspection system entered the Shizafon base of the 460th Armored Brigade, and the inspector Tanenbaum-Erez himself and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman led the group. The Inspectorate revealed that, despite a number of complaints from servicemen of the Shizafon base (these grievances and protests appeared, among other things, on Facebook a few months ago), the IDF command is not in a hurry to repair the wiring, without which the normal operation of air conditioners is impossible, which is why many soldiers Forced to escape from the unbearable stuffiness, sleep under the open sky. At inspection of kitchens the blatant antisanitary (cockroaches, etc.) is revealed.
The soldiers of the privates and sergeants at the meeting with the inspection team also complained about serious shortcomings in the maintenance and maintenance of the Merkava tanks and, in this connection, the unreliability of these combat vehicles. Ensigns-super-long-timers, in turn, complained about the overload in the work, which they called "unbearable."
When working off a call to the training ground on the alert of one of the units on the combat deployment plan, it turned out that a number of miscalculations in planning the deployment and maintenance of combat vehicles make the crews noticeably out of schedule.
Upon completion of the inspection, Avigdor Lieberman held a meeting with the army command, demanded explanations and urged him to report to him on the elimination of all the shortcomings identified in the shortest possible time.
A sudden inspection in the 460th Brigade caused a storm in the army command. The general is dumbfounded by the unusual interference in the case of the inspector of the defense department, and quite out of the ordinary by the outstanding participation in the inspection of the Minister of Defense, who has discovered so many serious miscalculations in the conditions of the service of soldiers and the maintenance of combat vehicles. However, it is very likely that this inspection will have more significant consequences, since it is, in any case, the combat readiness of the armored units of the IDF.
Recently, the chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot, issued an order that from the beginning of next year - for the first time after 2000 - maneuvering joints (armored and infantry) will devote at least half of their time to combat drills (that is, the fulfillment by these units of operational tasks for The protection of borders and order in Judea and Samaria should not be allotted more than 50% of the time). In the conditions when special attention is paid to the combat training of units, the immediate elimination of the identified shortcomings becomes especially important, since they directly affect the operational capabilities of the army in an emergency situation.
Until now, Lieberman, unlike his predecessors, tried not to demonstrate his interference in operational matters. And the generals got the impression that the current defense minister gives generals room for maneuver in matters of day-to-day leadership of the army. However, the steps taken the other day by the Minister of Defense show that he attaches paramount importance to the issues of combat readiness, in general, and the army's readiness in case of war in particular. Lieberman makes it clear that the responsibility for the army's combat readiness and the conditions of service in it lies with it, and there will be no compromises in this matter.
