To see the future of urban warfare, look at Gaza

FOR ARMIES lucky enough to be at peace, other people’s wars are learning opportunities. Take Israel’s northern front, where the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have been exchanging rockets and drones with Hizbullah, the Lebanese militant group. To stop Hizbullah’s increasingly capable drones, the IDF has resorted to heavy jamming. The impact on the electromagnetic spectrum is so strong that Israeli soldiers have had to eschew digital maps for printed ones. That is one of many tactical lessons identified in a new report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think-tank in London, based on extensive interviews with IDF officers. (“Hamas commanders were not accessible for interview,” the authors observe, laconically.)