The IDF is more specialized in counterterrorism than the US military, but that's because counterterrorism is 70-80% of the IDF's mission--the other 20-30% being defense against comparatively feeble Arab armies. The IDF also only has to defend itself.
The US military has much, much wider requirements--it has obligations to South Korea, Japan, NATO, and the entire Western hemisphere, which demand a strong conventional warfighting ability.
Re:How Israel handles airport security
by maxawaytoolong on Tuesday November 16, 2010 @10:35AM
(#1910380)
Check out the book "Imperial Grunts" by Robert Kaplan. The US military also has forces in Kenya, Yemen, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Columbia.
Re:How Israel handles airport security
by d2viant on Wednesday November 17, 2010 @03:26PM
(#1915590)
To be even more specific, the US military has a presence in over 150 countries.
People quote that statistic all the time. Suspiciously, the US also has over 150 embassies, and each of them is guarded by a small detachment of Marines. I wonder what the number really is when you stop counting embassy guard details.
Re:How Israel handles airport security
by RyanMcGreal on Monday November 15, 2010 @08:34PM
(#1908708)
>It sounds from the article that the Israeli airport security personal are all ex-IDF.
Every Israeli adult is ex-IDF, except for those adults who are still in the IDF.
Not true. About a quarter of men and a third of women do not enlist: http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-nearly-28-of-israeli-males-a...
Re:How Israel handles airport security
by RyanMcGreal on Tuesday November 16, 2010 @10:28AM
(#1910340)
Thanks for the correction. I assumed my general statement wouldn't be universally correct, but I didn't expect the number of exemptions to be nearly that high.
"Every Israeli adult is ex-IDF"
I wish it were true, but it's not. Many people are exempt from service on racial, religious or just ideological reasons. Mind you, it's not always easy to be exempt, but some sectors of the population have an automatic "pass".
3 years for men, 2 years for women. And such security jobs are more easily gained by people who served a bit longer (i.e. signed up for another year or two of paid service, after the compulsory one ended)
How do they justify the longer service for men?
Re:How Israel handles airport security
by chronomex on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @02:30AM
(#1932913)
How does the US military justify the draft excluding women?
With all the bloody mishaps and atrocities considered, your military is still better at winning hearts and minds than about anyone. Overall record for armies of the world in treating civilians is pretty abysmal, and IDF does not particularly shine there either.
There is definitely soft skills training in the US military. This was an interesting read:
http://www.amazon.com/Interrogators-War-Breaking-Al-Qaeda-Af...
It's a military interrogator's account of the techniques used in Afghanistan.
I am not an expert, but I imagine that given the primary mission of the IDF in dealing with Palestine, they probably receive training and some experience (depending on where they are assigned) in how to spot potential terrorists using behavioral profiling. So when they leave and join airport security, they hit the ground running.
US soldiers on the other hand probably aren't given much behavioral profiling training. We seem to specialize in blowing stuff up, steamrolling it with tanks, then randomly throwing money at it afterwards. If any military or ex-military know differently, please correct me.
Gen. Petraeus may be slowly improving that SOP, in Iraq and Afghanistan at least, but I'm not sure how much his work there is getting rebased to general boot camp and officer training programs. Eg, are these kinds of soft skills percolating throughout the US military, or are only the Special Forces and other groups specifically tasked with winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan getting this training?
So the question remains, would filling the TSA ranks with military veterans and paying them higher wages provide a more Israeli-like airport security force? Dunno. Certainly worth considering, but there are some significant differences.