page_title: Israeli Ground Forces
section_title: Future
hierarchical_section_title: Israeli Ground Forces / Future
caption_attribution_description: January 14, 2013 Soldiers of the Golani Brigade conduct an exercise in the snowy Mount Hermon. As the brigade of the northern command, Golani is trained in the most extreme conditions. Photo by Shay Wagner, IDF Spokesperson's Unit The Israel Defense Forces Facebook &#8226; blog &#8226; Twitter
context_page_description: The Israeli Ground Forces are the ground forces of the Israel Defense Forces. As part of the military wing of the Israeli security forces, the ground forces have no civilian jurisdiction within Israel. The commander is the General Officer Commanding with the rank of Major General, the Mazi, subordinate to the Chief of General Staff.
  An order from Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion on 26 May 1948 officially set up the Israel Defense Forces as a conscript army formed out of the paramilitary group Haganah, incorporating the militant groups Irgun and Lehi. The Ground Forces have served in all the country's major military operations—including the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, 1956 Suez Crisis, 1967 Six-Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1976 Operation Entebbe, 1982 Lebanon War, 1987–1993 First Intifada, 2000–2005 Second Intifada, 2006 Lebanon War, and the Gaza War. While originally the IDF operated on three fronts—against Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and Iraq in the east, and Egypt in the south—after the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, it has concentrated in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, including the First and the Second Intifada.
context_section_description: The IDF is planning a number of technological upgrades and structural reforms for the future. Training has been increased with greater cooperation between ground, air, and naval units.
  The Ground Forces are phasing out the M-16 rifle in favor of the IWI Tavor variants, most recently the IWI Tavor X95 flat-top ("Micro-Tavor Dor Gimel"). In addition, the outdated M113 armored personnel carriers are being replaced by the new Namer APCs, with 200 ordered in 2014, as well as obtaining the Eitan AFV, and is upgrading its IDF Achzarit APCs.
  The backbone of the Artillery Corps, the M109 howitzer, will be phased out in favor of a still-undecided replacement, with the ATMOS 2000 and Artillery Gun Module under primary consideration.
  The IDF is also planning a future tank to replace the Merkava, which will be able to fire lasers and electromagnetic pulses, run on a hybrid engine, with a crew as small as two, will be faster, and will be better-protected, with emphasis on protection systems such as the Trophy over armor.
  The Combat Engineering Corps assimilated new technologies, mainly in tunnel detection and unmanned ground vehicles and military robots, such as remote-controlled IDF Caterpillar D9T "Panda" armored bulldozers, Sahar engineering scout robot and improved Remotec ANDROS robots.
caption: IDF infantry with the IWI X95 "Micro-Tavor"
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