Israel Evolving into a Naval Power

How a Historically Terrestrial State is Transforming into a Maritime Actor—and What Tools it Still Lacks to Complete the Shift 

Solomon Tanenbaum 

 

 

The Forgotten Arm of Israeli Power

Israel’s navy has historically been treated solely as a supporting branch in its conflicts rather than a decisive one. Within the public consciousness of Israel, it is the infantry and the air force pilots that remain the principal actors of the IDF. Official Israeli naval doctrine, as defined by then Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot in 2015, relegated the navy to an auxiliary role: securing flanks, maintaining supply lines, and providing intelligence.

According to the official Naval Mandate, the naval branch of the IDF exists to ‘assist the rest of the Israeli army in case of conflict’. However, the strategic environment is once again changing, and it is the Israeli Navy which requires an evolution to meet the coming day. With Turkish naval expansion, Egyptian signaling, a Houthi and Red Sea threat still unanswered by airpower, and increasing vulnerability of Israel’s SLOCs, the Israeli Navy is quietly undergoing a doctrinal and pragmatic evolution.

This old naval doctrine was born from the strategic reality of Israel’s early decades. For the first 30 years of the country’s existence, Israel’s largest enemies and threats were its proximate neighbors. In such an equation, the navy was both unnecessary and unaffordable. Whatever naval assets did exist, their capabilities were limited to the shoreline. Small patrol ships were used to largely intercept smuggling activity and secure coastal waters. During this period, Israel possessed what is referred to as a ‘brown-water navy’, i.e. a naval force capable of operating along adjacent coastlines.

However, following the discovery of the Tamar and Leviathan gas reservoirs within Israel’s EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone), the Israeli navy began to shift. A need to protect this infrastructure from potential missile fire from either Hezbollah or Hamas, the Navy extended its capabilities with the introduction of the Sa’ar 6. The class of corvettes effectively offers Israel an integrated combat package. The model carries anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-land missiles, hosts a naval Iron Dome battery, extending coverage offshore, and includes a helicopter hangar, allowing for the deployment of special forces or rescue operations from wherever the ship is located. During the same period of their procurement, the Navy also oversaw the purchase of several Dolphin class submarines. Both assets can stay out at sea for significant periods of time, and the addition of these tools into the Navy effectively shifted the space in which the Israeli navy could operate. The Sa’ar 6 pushed the Israeli Navy beyond the coastline into the deeper waters of the EEZ. The Dolphin submarines enabled a second‑strike and deep‑strike capability previously unknown to Israel. These additions granted the Israeli ‘brown-water’ Navy asymmetric capabilities relative to other brown-water fleets, and while not truly an evolution of the entire branch, their presence was the first hint of a new naval force.

 

 

 Yet it is the newest additions to the Israeli Navy which mark the embrace of a new strategic naval doctrine. Since the start of the war in 2023, Israel has purchased two landing craft, the Nahshon and the Komemiyut. Capable of transporting multiple armored divisions, mechanized brigades, fuel, ammunition, or medical supplies, these ships represent a shift in the approach of the Israeli Navy. Their range of 6,500 nautical miles allows for theoretical use throughout the Red Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean and brings new capabilities previously unknown to the IDF. In theory, such ships could allow for the resupplying of distant forces, deployment of troops and tanks on foreign shores, and the quick bypassing of land chokepoints. The ships have already been tested under fire in Gaza, and it is evident that military leadership is pleased with their performance. In May, Israel purchased five Triton ships. These ships are also landing craft, albeit of a different model. Smaller and faster, these ships are designed to accompany either the larger Nahshon or Komemiyut and are specifically engineered to transport infantry and light vehicles. This purchase is revolutionary because it creates a capability previously unknown to the Israeli Navy: amphibious envelopment. Such a capability is well outside the doctrinal needs or purpose of a brown-water navy and Israel’s increasingly rapid investment into this function signals a doctrinal pivot of the Israeli Navy.

Toward a New Doctrine — The Navy as a Decisive Arm

Israel has always suffered from its geography. Lacking any strategic depth, the country has been forced to seek ways to neutralize threats long before they reach its borders. Such an environment has forced Israel to maintain a strong army capable of defending and fighting along its borders but additionally a significant air force capable of influencing events and neutralizing threats at great distances. And while the Israeli air force has proven to be one of the most capable air forces in the world, the recent conflict, specifically the Houthis have proven that a capable air force alone may not be enough to neutralize all of Israel’s threats. At such distances away from Israel, the air force operates largely alone, as no force can reach and integrate its own power into its operations. Until now it has been trusted that the IAF would be a determining branch, and not a supporting one in Israel’s conflicts.

 

 

 However, this assumption has now proven faulty. It is now clear that the Navy is developing a new doctrine, transitioning from an auxiliary role toward a decisive, war-winning arm of the IDF.

Practically such a transition would mean that Israel’s brown-water fleet evolves in its entirety to a ‘green water fleet’. Unlike a brown water fleet, which operates in the nation’s territorial waters and adjacent coastlines, a green water fleet possesses the capability of operating for long periods of time in the nation’s marginal seas. Green water fleets notably possess long-range ships, amphibious capability, and overseas bases. Green water fleets, distinct from brown water fleets, transform the navy into a decisive military branch by providing the capability of amphibious envelopment, the ability to blockade chokepoints or enemy trade, and the capability of decisive enemy fleet destruction.

Israel does not yet have all of these, but it is moving towards them.

The Israeli Leviathan

 

 

Israel, with the Triton purchases, has now rapidly and massively acquired for itself a new amphibious arm. The potential of amphibious envelopment would allow Israel to land forces behind enemy lines, secure foreign ports, support potential allies, and bypass land chokepoints – and forces all of Israel’s potential enemies to plan and divert resources to such scenarios. The Sa’ar 6 and Dolphin submarines are already long-range ships capable of operating for extensive periods in both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Regarding overseas bases, it is frequently reported that Israel is seeking a naval facility in the newly recognized country of Somaliland, and that President Irro is receptive to the idea. Such an installation would anchor the Israeli navy in the Red Sea and allow for the patrol and projection of Israeli strength throughout this marginal sea. By 2016, Israel had already signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with both Greece and Cyprus, allowing for the rapid deployment and access of Israeli forces to both Greek and Cypriot bases should the need occur. In the event of an assault on Israel in this theater, Israel would have operational access to the territorial waters of Greece, Cyprus, and Israel, potentially anchoring and extending Israel’s naval range throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. These bases would allow for refueling stations and repair facilities throughout this domain, greatly increasing Israel’s overseas logistical preparedness for emergency operations.

However, what Israel still lacks are capabilities of blockade and complete fleet destruction.

The Missing Pieces

Considering the rising political tensions with both Egypt and Turkey, whose navies each outsize Israel, Israel must adopt specifically both defensive and offensive tools that would allow for the destruction of these potential navies. Two specific tools come to mind.

Firstly, drone carriers. In this new age of warfare, the drone has proven to revolutionize every aspect of the battlefield, from the open warfare of the infantry to aerial offensives and defensive operations across the skies. A drone carrier could potentially double as a longe-range ISR (intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance) with the potential to outclass the Sa’ar 6 surveillance capabilities. A mobile and relatively large drone carrier, with a varying arsenal of drones could offer additional tools to the navy’s capabilities as well. It might additionally serve as a launching pad for offensive unmanned naval craft and aerial craft specifically designed for anti-ship warfare.

 

 

 If Israel is to learn anything from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the arena has proven a bounty of naval innovations. Ukraine has developed a drone aircraft carrier, the MV11, which carries several additional drones, both aerial and naval, designed to defend and assault both maritime and terrestrial targets in a kamikaze style. Likewise, Russia has seemingly renovated one of its merchant ships into its own drone carrier, used as a platform to launch drones more covertly. Ukraine has proven that such a carrier can be produced, and whose arsenal has proven effective in the modern war, whereas Russia has proven that a merchant vessel can be renovated quickly and cheaply to serve similar purposes. And such a vessel would greatly increase Israel’s offensive capability to decapitate rival naval powers.

 

 

 Another tool lacking in Israel’s naval arsenal are ERMs – Encapsulated Rising Mines. These mines are not the standard naval mines simply floating at differing depths throughout the water. Traditional mines are ‘dumb’ weapons, dangerous to friendly shipping and restricted by international law during peace. However, these rising mines are encapsulated, held within a pressure-resistant capsule and anchored to the seafloor. The shell is fitted with acoustic sensors, and a specifically coded command signal can be sent remotely to the shell, upon which the shell opens and releases the mine. The mine can sit at the seabed dormant for years before deployment. This factor allows the mines to be placed covertly over time and theoretically allows Israel to turn its entire EEZ into a gridded network of dormant mines. The ability that these mines can be activated remotely as well as individually means that such a mine field might be the most cost-effective way of defending Israel’s naval space from enemy fleets, as well as creating the potential for the complete destruction of enemy fleets en route to the Israeli coastline. In the case of such a naval incursion against the state, Israel only need activate, remotely, one row or one area of the grid to turn the tide of a naval war. Even one mine activated at a time directly under an approaching enemy vessel would be devastating.

The United States already employs such a weapon, the Hammerhead Mine, and the Pentagon having recognized the growing need in the world for such armament has increased the US Navy’s order of these mines for the coming years. Such mines prove attractive because they can specifically be covertly deployed and because of their release mechanism, pose zero threat to friendly commercial shipping during peacetime.

 

 

Beyond potentially purchasing such munitions from the United States, Israel already possesses the domestic industry to produce similar mines in‑house. Between the IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) which has recently unveiled the unmanned underwater BlueWhale platform, and Elbit, which already produces significant sonar and acoustic naval systems, the potential for an Israeli-style Hammerhead Mine is entirely plausible.

The development of such a weapon would clearly deny access to hostile fleets, protect naval chokepoints, and increase the security of Israel’s own shipping lanes.

Israel Moving Forward

Israel is once again evolving its naval power out of necessity, but it must fully embrace all aspects of a green-water navy if the state wishes to truly secure its interests throughout the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. To this end, the continued pursuit of a naval position in the Horn of Africa and increasing cooperation with Greece and Cyprus is quintessential.

The addition of landing craft greatly expands the Navy’s capabilities, but Israel must further invest in the addition of drone carriers to extend aerial range at sea and offensive capabilities within the context of naval combat. Additionally, the adoption of a ‘smart mine’ system might be the most effective way of securing Israel’s EEZ as a safe zone and should likewise be pursued. Currently, it is only the submarines which possess the capability of projecting power and striking deeply into enemy territory. But this is only an asymmetric and limited advantage. Taken together, all of these developments would transform the Israeli Navy from a coastal force into one capable of projecting strength across the entire Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. The coming decade will determine whether Israel truly embraces the role that history now demands of it—and takes to the seas.