IDF opens new combat training facility on Lebanese border

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has inaugurated a new battalion training complex just 300 m from the Lebanese border, it announced on 27 October.

Soldiers train in dense woodland at the new facility, which replicates conditions likely to be experienced fighting Hizbullah on the Lebanese border. (Israel Defense Forces)

The Galilee Forests facility is under the command of the 91st Territorial Division and designed to prepare the formation’s soldiers for likely combat scenarios if conflict breaks out with the Lebanese group Hizbullah.

“It is a means of training forces for the exact conditions of combat in Lebanon,” the IDF said. “The compound is modelled after a Lebanese village, utilising detailed intelligence and careful analysis of enemy territory. It includes a training area for combat in urban terrain and for combat in underground structures, the capability for live-fire exercises and tactical exercises under the [tree] canopy, a logistics training interface, shooting ranges, explosive training sites, armoured fighting vehicle training capabilities, and training in mountainous terrain.”

It also includes barracks and offices for the training battalions. There is a combat video simulator that replicates scenarios that soldiers could counter in the next conflict – scenarios that were drawn up using intelligence assessments.

The facility was completed less than a year after the decision to build it, following lessons learnt from an incident in which Hizbullah militants firing a Kornet missile narrowly missed an IDF vehicle on 1 September 2019.

We understand that the Hizbullah terror army and the northern border are changing, and in the face of that, we are providing the best solution to deliver security to the local residents while preparing for the next war in Lebanon,” 91st Division commander Brigadier General Shlomi Binder said.