Hezbollah, fighting techniques and tactics at The Ouwet Front: A Lebanese Forces Blog

Hezbollah, fighting techniques and tactics

Posted by othello

For more than six years, this Shiite Islamic group has been preparing for such a confrontation with Israel.
It was greatly helped by Iran in terms of weapons, missiles of all ranges and ammunition whereas Syria, which controlled the country for five of the six years, helped logistically and by turning a blind eye as to weapons movements.

But how are they organized, what makes them so efficient…to start of, it is important to stress that they do not operate as a regular army does. Their fighting is mostly Guerilla style fighting… or rather a “modernized” Guerilla style.

Firstly there are four levels of personnel in the militia, two fighting and two reserves:

The Elite fighters, these are trained veterans with years of exposure and multiple training tours in both Iran and Syria. There are rumors that some of these participated in the latest Iraki fights under Moktada el Sader’s command.
The “normal” sodiers: these are regular fighters with little or no fighting experience. They are usually in charge of logistic operations and other day to day activities and also participate in combats.
Reserve level one, are those that have finished their military training with the militia after their National Military Service at most three years ago. These are considered as still “fresh” in the sense that the training required to get them back into fighting level is minimal. Strictly logistics and information gathering. Very rarely put in combat situations.
Reserve level two, are those who have finished their military service for more than three years.
It is important to note that both reserve levels undergo regular “refresh” training sessions for periods of one to three months.

Set aside from the four levels above is the suicide squad. Very little is known about the members in this squad since it is kept very hush hush. Since they have little training to do (for obvious reasons) they spend their time in prayers and contemplation.
Currently active in the war are the first three levels of fighters.

How do they operate?

Hezbollah have perfected the tactic of hit and run which makes it very hard for the Israelis, using traditional warfare techniques, to target them. They work in groups of five to six “elements” and each group is totally independent from the next group. Each has a general set of directives and most make their “plan d’action” as they go. This way, they are able to operate in the event of total loss of communication with the commanding base and there is no risk of anyone eavesdropping on conversations. And should anyone fall prisoner in the hands of the Israelis, he can only give out the plans of his group.

Each group travels using Cross bikes…this gives them flexibility as well as manageability on the terrain. Armed with light assault rifles and submachine guns and state of the art Chinese anti tank grenade propellers supplied by Iran, they are able to inflict severe damage to the opponent whilst sustaining minimal damage.

An example of how they operate can be given by the way they fire missiles, three bikes are used to perform the action:

One person stays at a distance providing surveillance and looking out for apache helicopters or spy planes
One group, on a bike, set up the launcher platform, without the missile. Total time: 5 seconds and they drive off.
One group delivers the missile and leaves. Total time 3 seconds.
One group sets the missile, fires it and leaves. Total time 10 to 20 seconds.
The first group comes back to collect the launch pad, if the observer informs them that all is clear, and replaces it in a subterranean hideout, to be used in the next operation.

All the groups leave in totally different directions.

The bikes are also used to lure the tanks into ambushes set up for them by fighters hiding in tunnels. The same tunnels are used to move between villages undetected and be able to surprise the enemy which relies on aerial images of the fight zone.

This fighting technique has caused great damage to the Israelis in their advance in South Lebanon.

It was observed that the only way the Israelis can counter it is by applying the charred land approach whereby any incursion should be preceded by heavy bombardment of the region by fighter planes, followed by a fine combing using heavy machine guns and helicopters before the infantry troops finally walk in.

Since the guerilla fighters hide between civilians, and operate from within inhabited or industrial areas, they greatly benefit from the coverage and lure IAF planes into bombarding civilians and factories which allows the Hezb to use the media coverage to its benefit.

Israel has had to resort to expelling all the inhabitants of the region out of the area and even beyond the traditional headquarters of Hezbollah namely southern suburbs of Beirut so as to minimize civilian causalities as well as any supportive action the Party of God can benefit from.

Filed under: Editorials, Information, News, Other, Political, Political Islam
Posted by othello on 07.26.06 @ 1:00 pm |

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4 Comments. Add your own...

1. Rampurple: The Evolution &hellip | July 26th, 2006 at 3:30 pm

[...] Detailed explanation on how Hezbolla operates. [...]
2. Kesher Talk&hellip | July 27th, 2006 at 12:00 am

Analysis of Israeli and Hizballah military tactics…

[ UPDATE: Here is a companion piece about Hezbollah’s tactics. (via Carl in Jerusalem) From Stratfor: Red Alert: The Battle Joined - Friday, 7/21/06 The ground war has begun. Several Israeli brigades now appear to be operating between the……
3. Abdul Haqq | December 7th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

What is not mentioned much in the media is the advanced tactics used by Hezbollah in which they used ATGM’s (Anti-Tank, Guided Missiles) against Israeli armor. The number of super-heavy Israeli Merkava tanks knocked out is very impressive given that these tanks (Merkava Mk3 & Mk4’s) are supposed to be the most heavily armored tanks in the world. Typically anti-tank ambushes were done against IDF tanks lured into ATGM kill zones where the ATGM’s were very well camoflaged and where Hezbollah missile crews were able to rapidly move into protected positions as other ATGM crews engaged remaining tanks. Apparently the US made TOW ATGM works quite well although I’ve not seen any references to whether these TOW’s were Iranian made copies reverse engineered (with help from the Chinese) or whether these were more advanced TOW-2 (tandem warhead) variants found on the black market. Aside from the TOW missiles, Hezbollah uses various Russian made ATGM’s and is rumored to have the advanced Iranian made version of the AT-3 Sagger known as the Ra’ad-T (T designating the tandem warhead variant).

Another highly lethal anti-tank weapon used by Hezbollah was the giant RPG-29. The RPG-29 is the largest of the Russian made RPG family of anti-tank rockets (unguided). It features a tandam warhead designed to knock out ERA protected tanks and to increase penetration of advanced composite armor such as those used on Israeli, American, and Western European made tanks. Its sometimes refered to as “The Abrams killer” as it is believed to be able to penetrate the side armored skirts and hull armor of a M1A1/A2 tank. There were also rumors of Hezbollah possessing the RPG-7VR rockets. These are essentially upgraded versions of the highly popular RPG-7 AT rockets found all over the world. Like the RPG-29, the RPG-7VR warhead is a tandem design that is far more potent against armor then the standard RPG-7 design.
All of these weapons, in the hands of a professional, experienced, and well disciplined guerilla force can wreak havoc on a heavy armor/mechanized force of a modern conventional army. If for example Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army had used well trained, highly mobile and well camoflaged tank killing teams equipped with ATGMs, he very likely could have inflicted enormous casaulties on American armor. Fortunately for the American military, the Iraqi armor suffered from inept leadership, old Soviet fighting doctrine, and key Generals bribed into not fighting.
Nevertheless, the 2006 War in Lebanon shows the future of guerilla warfare in the Middle East involving not only IED’s, VBE’s, suicide bomber, mortars, and snipers, but also advanced ATGM & AT systems supplied by various Middle Eastern nations or by the black market.
The response by Western Nations will either be the development of better technology to counter these threats (like the Russian Arena system, that now Western defense companies are copying), better usage of indigenous counter-guerilla forces (aka-death squads), or even worse, resorting to past savage principles of warfare that involve ethnic cleansing and the massive killing of civilians. The latter tactic was used effectively by the Russians against Chechnyan rebels and civilians.
The Israelis likewise killed alot of Lebanese civilians during their 2006 invasion. However it was not NEARLY as many as they could have killed. For example, their was no widespread usage of fuel-air explosives (napalm) that could have effectively wiped out concealed Hezbollah positions. The Russians had no qualms of this in Chechnya where they liberally used fuel-air artillery systems to wipe out hidden guerilla bunkers in various urban and rural areas. Likewise, young Chechnyan Muslim men and boys were routinely rounded up by Russian forces and never seen again.
Ultimately, it is only a matter of time before Israeli and American forces begin to use such scorched earth policies against insurgents. We saw an example of the beginnings of such tactics by US forces in Fellujah.

The only thing preventing this from happening is a willingness to except defeat by Israeli and American populations or intense diplomatic efforts and direct dialogue with Islamic guerilla organizations and the Islamic nations that use them as proxys.
Diplomacy in the Middle East however is rarely pretty and generally involves a high degree of backstabbing. So the prospects of diplomacy working is not very high given the lack of any clear strong leadership in America, Israel, or amongst any nation in the Middle East. I had hopes for Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah being a voice of reason, but now however, he seems bent on undermining and taking over the Lebanese government as Lebanon now teeters once again to the brink of civil war.

Inshallah, clear heads and good hearts will prevail in which men of honor of all sides will come together to talk as equals and as passionate about peace as they are at fighting wars. If not, beautiful Lebanon will suffer once again and may never recover from the looming proxy war set to erupt.

Abdul Haqq
4. hiren | September 1st, 2007 at 10:09 am

The article,written by Mr Abdul Haq, is very good.It reflects that he has understood the vagaries of war and he values life, anywhere and everywhere. Lots of laurels to his article.