Exclusive: What Israel's underground war can teach other militaries
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Few if any Western militaries are prepared for underground warfare: the kind of visceral, claustrophobic fight that's reminiscent of Vietnam War tunnel rats and plays out year after year across the Middle East, according to a Jewish Institute for National Security of America report shared with Axios.
Why it matters: The lengthy document, littered with warnings, was co-authored by a man known as "Col. David," an elite combat engineer who commanded Israel's counter-tunnel and subterranean warfare operations after the Oct. 7 attack.
- It contains photos of subterranean Hezbollah facilities and Hamas holding cells and tunnels in Rafah big enough to drive a Jeep through.
- "It's really unprecedented access," Yoni Tobin, the other co-author and JINSA senior policy analyst, told Axios.
- "The reason why they gave it to us, the reason why they want this out there, is because they really want to sound the alarm bells," he said. "Israel is one of the most adaptive militaries, arguably, in history, and they still faced enormous challenges confronting this threat."
What's inside: The report lists five key takeaways from Israel's experience. They include:
- Synchronizing above-ground and below-ground operations and viewing both fights as a "single, cohesive effort."
- Updating military concepts, language and structure to treat subterra "not as a specialized issue, but one that impacts the entire conflict."
- Monitoring and disrupting knowledge transfer and supply chains, even in peacetime.
Threat level: China, North Korea, Iran, terror groups and drug smugglers alike operate and exploit these underground warrens.
- They also share best practices.
- "We know there's so much cooperation between them on so many different fronts," Tobin said, "and this is one of them that often gets overlooked."
The intrigue: A report published by the U.S. Army in 2025 concluded American forces "may not be able to avoid a subterranean fight in the future" and recommended studying the IDF's successes and failures.
My thought bubble: Remember Northeast drone chaos?
- Among the problems then were slapdash policies, reporting chains and countermeasures. The same is true here.
The bottom line: "We're at a political moment where we actually are risking losing access to some of those lessons that our frontline partner has learned," Blaise Misztal, JINSA's vice president for policy, told Axios.
- The report, he said, is "about raising the profile — or the alarm — on these subterranean threats" as well as "recognizing the hard-fought lessons that Israel has learned."
