In the video: a terrorist tunnel located a kilometer and a half from the border was destroyed, documentation of the activity of the brigade combat team 646 01.24.24/doc
A month after the publication in the Wall Street Journal, last night (Tuesday) it was allowed to publish that during the war, the IDF put into service the ability to neutralize tunnels by injecting water. owned by the IDF for handling the Hamas tunnels. This is based on powerful water pumps that are capable of pumping hundreds of thousands of liters of water from the Mediterranean Sea and injecting them into the Hamas tunnels.
The systems consist of pumps and pipelines to transfer the water to the tunnel shafts. It was developed after staff work that included an analysis of the soil characteristics and a system water in the area, among other things, to make sure that the possibility of using the groundwater for drinking will not be compromised following the flooding. According to the IDF, the water is pumped into the tunnels in the Gaza Strip only along terrain routes and locations found to be suitable for this, and with the selection of an appropriate operating method in any case.
The authorization to reveal the system is probably due to the fact that it turned out that it is not a miracle weapon against the threat.
Even before the tunnel flooding system was revealed, tunnel warfare expert Dr. Dafna Richmond-Burke commented that, "Using water is tricky - you don't always know how much of the tunnel you've destroyed.
Some of the tunnels have a floor that is not made of concrete but of compacted earth, in which case the water may seep in without destroying the tunnel, only putting it out of use temporarily."
"Using water is tricky - you don't always know how much of the tunnel you've destroyed."
Tunnel in Khan Yunis/IDF spokesman
The array of tunnels in the Gaza Strip is more than 500 km long, the ability to flood the tunnels is one of the many tools the IDF uses to destroy parts of it.
Guided bombs dropped from fighter planes, underground maneuvering and special operations using advanced technological tools such as robots and drones are also used to destroy tunnels.
The IDF also used D-9 bulldozers for digging tunnels and handling shafts, which was one of the reasons for the decision to dramatically increase the array of military bulldozers, and to order dozens of new bulldozers from the American company Caterpillar. Some of the ordered bulldozers are operated by remote control so as not to endanger a human operator
. The destruction of the tunnels is led by the Yalam unit, the patrol of the Corps of Engineers that has transferred knowledge it has gained to other special units in the IDF. Among the tools that the unit operates are robots, such as the robot that travels on chains from the Israeli Roboteam and a series of tiny drones capable of flying, navigating and mapping tunnels.
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The destruction of the tunnels is led by the Yalam unit, the patrol of the Engineering Corps. A tunnel with rooms that belonged to senior Hamas officials/IDF spokesman
"The IDF is today the most advanced army in the world in the field of tunnel warfare," says Dr. Dafna Richmond Barak, from the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, at Reichman University.
Richmond Barak, who researches the field of tunnel warfare and serves as a research fellow at the Institute of Modern Warfare at West Point, the US Army Academy, explains that "tunnels are an ancient form of warfare, Jews hid in them and fought from them even during the wars with the Romans.
In modern times, the Americans faced the use of Viet Cong tunnels in the Vietnam War, where they lost many fighters.
Since then, they have learned no lessons, developed no combat doctrine or equipment suitable for tunnel warfare, and the US military once again struggled when faced with the threat of tunnels in Afghanistan.
We have also seen the use of tunnels in Syria and Iraq.
A lot of the knowledge gained by ISIS terrorists at that time came into the hands of Hamas."
The IDF revealed, even before the war, that it was expanding the use of the Ma'oz drone manufactured by Rafale, which was operationally activated for the first time in Operation Wall Guard in 2021. The Ma'oz, as it is known in the IDF, or Spike Firefly named for export, weighs 2.2 kg.
It is capable of carrying a charge weighing 350 grams, which can be an explosive charge, or a battery that extends its "lifetime" from 15 minutes to 30.
It is able to fly autonomously, but an operator can give it instructions while flying from a tablet.
The IDF revealed that it is expanding the use of drones in tunnels. A tunnel where hostages were held/IDF spokesperson
"The robots and drones reduce the risk to the fighters. These are important technologies, but the IDF has not yet found an iron dome for the threat of the tunnels.
We have a sophisticated and high-tech military, but we all saw the limitations of that on October 7," says Dr. Barak-Richmond. The name of the game is intelligence.
The forces in the Strip gather information from the Hamas headquarters they raid, and from investigations of the terrorists in Noah'a.
"There is a limited ability to identify tunnels from the outside without starting to stop and drill, something that is almost impossible to do in the middle of the battlefield," analyzes Barak Richmond.
Even after the detection, the destruction is not easy.
The Air Force has bombs designed to penetrate deep and detonate, such as Boeing's SDB and Elbit's PHR, both of which were used during the war. Creative ideas could do the job. Putting fighters into the tunnels should be the last option because of the high risk."
According to another report by the Wall Street Journal, so far only about 20% of the Hamas tunnels have been destroyed. , which requires hard and creative work. There are no magic solutions here."
More on the same topic:
Gaza war
War of Iron Swords
tunnels
Hamas
IDF