The Israel Defence Force (IDF) has released some very interesting data on the current war with Hamas, Hizbollah and other Iranian proxy forces.
I have quoted this excellent summary from Mannie Fabian on Twitter in order that the original data be preserved on Hive and for ease of reference and have highlighted myself some important figures that I discuss further below.
The IDF has published a large data set with information on its operations in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Lebanon, from the number of terror operatives killed, to the number of sites struck.
According to the data, more than 9,000 Hamas operatives and fighters of other terror groups have been killed by the IDF in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. The Hamas-run health ministry has said over 23,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, which includes both civilians and Hamas members.
The IDF's data says the military has killed two Hamas brigade commanders and 19 battalion commanders and other seniors with an equivalent rank. More than 50 Hamas company commanders and operatives with a similar rank have also been killed, according to the data.
In Lebanon, the IDF says it has killed more than 170 terror operatives, mostly members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Some 30,000 targets have been struck in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, including more than 3,400 that were discovered as Hamas sites amid the fighting. In Lebanon, some 750 Hezbollah positions have been hit, according to the IDF's data.
Since the beginning of the war, some 9,000 projectiles fired from Gaza crossed the border into Israel, another 2,000 from Lebanon, and around 30 from Syria.
The IDF says the Military Intelligence Directorate's Unit 504 has interrogated some 2,300 Palestinian suspects in the Gaza Strip, some of whom were arrested and brought to Israel for further questioning.
A total of 7,653 trucks ferrying humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip have been inspected by Israeli authorities at the Nitzana and Kerem Shalom crossings. The IDF says the trucks have carried a total of 137,920 tons of aid.
The IDF has also made 79,000 phone calls, dropped 7.2 million leaflets, sent 13.7 million texts and 15 million recorded calls to Palestinians in Gaza with evacuation warnings.
Since October 7 in the West Bank, the IDF says troops have arrested more than 2,650 wanted Palestinians, including more than 1,300 affiliated with Hamas. It says 40 brigade-level raids have been carried out, and 14 homes of Palestinians accused of terrorism have been demolished.
According to the IDF's data, a total of 295,000 reservists have been called up since the beginning of the war. Of them, around 45,000 are serving despite receiving an exemption from reserve duty.
The IDF says the nearly 300,000 reservists have been on duty for an average of 61 days.
Men make up 81-percent of the reservists, with the other 19% being women. 115,000 of the reservists are fathers, and some 3,000 are mothers. Half of the reservists are between the ages of 20-29, with 31% being between the ages of 30-39. Another 13% are aged 40-49, 5% aged 50-59, and 1% aged 60-69.
A total of 522 soldiers and reservists have been killed and another 2,536 have been wounded since October 7. Of them, 188 were killed and 1,113 were wounded during the ground offensive in Gaza.
The IDF has also listed 19 soldiers killed due to friendly fire in Gaza, and another 36 by accidents amid the war, including car crashes and military-related incidents.
In analysing this data lets create some relevant military statistical ratios.
Kill Ratios
IDF kill ratio in Gaza ground offensive: 9000 Hamas fighters killed for 188 IDF soldiers killed =
48:1 kill ratio.
This is close to a world record for any large offensive operation.
A review of the list of the most complete and crushing military victories in history shows much lower casualty ratios for the winning side.
Battle of Cannae: 10:1
Battle of Zama: 13:1
Battle of Stalingrad: 1:1.25 (Winning side greater casualties)
Operation Bagration : 1:1.25 (Winning side greater casualties)
First Gulf War: 68:1
IDF kill ratio on defensive inside Israel on Oct 7-8 and subsequent days: 1000 Hamas fighters killed inside Israel for (522-188-5=329):
3:1 kill ratio.
This is an extremely bad ratio for Hamas (1:3) which had the advantage of total surprise and severe under-preparedness of the IDF, yet failed to achieve its military objectives (instead slaughtering and kidnapping civilians).
Wounded Ratios
Hamas initial strength: 30-40k fighters
Losses: 10,000 killed
Let's estimate wounded.
(the typical ratio of those wounded to those killed in conflict has historically hovered around the 3:1 mark. With recent medical advances, however, the U.S. wounded-to-killed ratio today ranges anywhere from 10:1 to 17:1.
[Source https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/nonfatal-casualties-and-changing-costs-war]
Using the historical wounded to killed ratio would lead to 30,000 Hamas wounded.
10k killed and 30k wounded is total losses of 40k, which is Hamas's entire force.
It is likely that Hamas wounded to killed ratio is lower than 3:1 because there clearly are some Hamas forces still fighting in some areas of Gaza. Hamas's complete disregard for human life, even their own, and limited availability of medical care leads to more deaths and less wounded.
Based on the remaining level of resistance and areas the IDF has not yet got to (mainly Rafah) I estimate a wounded to kill ratio of 2.3:1. Leading to 23,000 wounded.
Complete Hamas Losses
Hamas also have suffered substantial surrenders and captured fighters. 2300 suspects have been captured and interrogated. The IDF has not released the percentage of which were arrested as Hamas members but let's estimate this as 40% leading to another 1000 fighters captured.
Thus Hamas losses look like this:
10,000 killed
~23,000 wounded
~1,000 captured
Total losses 34,000 with perhaps up to 6000 fighters unwounded and maybe 2000 walking wounded.
Conclusion: Hamas have lost around 80% of their combat forces.
This is consistent with the work of Erik Zimerman, an OSINT military analyst on the ground in Gaza as an IDF soldier.
Eric's map of Gaza Area of Operations (AO)
This map shows the status of Hamas forces by Battalion:
13 battalions totally destroyed
6 battalions heavily damaged (30-70% health)
5 battalions still combat effective (70+% health)
IDF Forces Used in Gaza
The IDF has had around 5 combat divisions, comprising 15 brigade combat teams or 45 battalions operating in Gaza at peak. About 2 weeks ago the IDF released 5 brigades of reservists who had completed their mission in North Gaza. About 3.5 IDF divisions remain in combat in Central and Southern Gaza. Many of these units are close to completing their mission and further force reductions are expected soon.
The IDF is also rotating its forces with its best combat brigades being given R&R and replaced with fresh but less experienced units.
This is standard practice in a strong and well run army, but is something that Ukraine (and to some extent Russia in the earlier stages of the war) have been unable to do.
Experience & Morale Gains vs Attrition
The power and effectiveness of any military unit is the product of many factors including numbers (including attrition), firepower, morale, training, experience, leadership, logistics and the integration of fire support.
It is clear that before this war IDF combat Brigades had high levels of all these factors, other than experience in high intensity large scale manoeuvre (which the IDF had not done since 2006 and then badly).
In the 100 days since October 7, there have been the following changes:
- morale has reached stratospheric levels, as indicated by the 45,000 reservists volunteering to serve despite being exempt and over 200,000 Israelis returning from overseas to assist the war effort;
- very large numbers of IDF troops have gained extremely valuable combat experience;
- attrition levels have been very low.
When any military unit goes into battle it will gain experience and suffer attrition.
Which factor dominates determines whether a unit gets stronger or weaker after combat.
Experience
Gains in experience make troops better at every little and big aspect of combat and weeds out that inevitable percentage of soldiers that are unable to perform in the heat of battle. This adds up to a huge increase in combat effectiveness.
It is well recognised that a soldier who has experienced combat, performed his mission and survived is worth 2-3 times an unblooded soldier.
Attrition
All military combat involves losses, both of soldiers and of equipment (including by wear & tear and use of munitions). This is called attrition. A well functioning military system will repair damaged equipment that is not a total loss and replace expended munitions and destroyed equipment. This is a function of logistics.
Dead soldiers can be replaced by newly trained soldiers, but the lost experience cannot be replaced and in large scale warfare there are limits on effective recruitment, especially if losses are high (as Ukraine (severely) and Russia are experiencing).
How to make your forces stronger by winning
So the ideal result of combat is that your troops get a lot of valuable experience and suffer very low personnel losses.
This is what is happening to the IDF.
The IDF has achieved extraordinarily high kill ratios leading to very low IDF death rates while conducting very difficult operations in the most heavily defended urban environment ever experienced by any military on the planet.
The Russians have rightly celebrated their military performance in taking the heavily defended city of Mariupol (with lots of underground entrenchments). Note Wikipedia likely exaggerates Russian losses.
But a comparison with the IDF's performance against a Hamas force 5-10 times the size of what Russia faced, in a city with less than a quarter of the pre-war population of Gaza, with a casualty ratio (around 1.5:1) which is 70x worse than the IDF's (but not so bad for an attacking force against a heavily defended target) shows just how extraordinarily good the IDF performance really is.
The most powerful military units on Earth
The experience in Gaza has made the IDF immensely stronger.
Its dozens of blooded combat brigades are now clearly the most powerful military units on the planet by a large margin.
The IDF leads the world in:
- morale
- combat experience
- military technologies
- fire support integration
and is equal to the best in:
- training
- leadership
- firepower
- logistics (at least close to Israel's borders).
No major power has units that are even remotely as powerful.
- US (which has no recent high intensity warfare experience and morale problems);
- Russia (whose objective performance in Ukraine is orders of magnitude worse than the IDF and is well behind Israel on tech, morale, attrition and fire support integration);
- China (which has no combat experience and tech and morale well below the IDF);
- India (with little combat experience and tech and morale well below the IDF).
If you study military history or have ever played a military computer game that models this you will understand that giving units the opportunity to achieve victories with low attrition is the key to creating almost unstoppably powerful units that completely dominate the battlefield.
This was the case with the German Panzer Divisions in WWII which started with relatively easy but total victories over weaker opponents (Poland) then defeated stronger opponents (France) before fighting the USSR where they caused enormous losses to Soviet forces, even when massively outnumbered, and even at late stages of the war, but were eventually attritted into ineffectiveness (at the cost of 60 million Soviet lives).
Comparison of Theatres
This is a multi-front war and without numbers it can be hard to understand scale.
The IDF has struck 30,000 targets in Gaza and 750 in Lebanon.
The IDF is poised to strike over 2000 targets per day in Lebanon as part of its upcoming invasion to push Hezbollah well away from Israeli towns in the North of Israel. I expect that over 50,000 targets in Lebanon will be destroyed in the first month of the upcoming war.
In contrast, the US & UK have struck maybe 70 Houthi targets in Yemen and the US has struck maybe 25 targets in Syria and Iraq.
Until America ups its game by at least 100x, it is not going to put the Houthis out of business and will not be taken seriously.
Confirmation & clarification of my previous estimates of IDF numbers
In a recent post I debunked the oft cited Wikipedia numbers regarding the size of the IDF, pointing out that their source had forgotten about over 220,000 conscripts.
These recently released IDF figures confirm my position, because the 295,000 reservists called up are all in the 20-69 year old age groups.
The 18-20 year old conscripts are not included.
Also there is useful information regarding the results of the 20% oversubscription to the 300k call up of reserves.
The number of reservists actually called up was 295k rather than the 360k who initially reported for reserve service.
It appears that of the 300k compulsory call ups and 60k voluntary call ups the IDF took 45k volunteers and sent home 15k volunteers 50k compulsory call ups that were replaced by volunteers.
The desire of Israelis to kill terrorists is unbelievably high. The 20% oversubscription to the huge 300k call up caused many disputes between people wanting to fight Hamas and clearly the IDF had to pick and choose and sent many home disappointed.
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