MAJOR-GENERAL YITZHAK BRIK is a decorated warrior and in recent years the Israeli army’s ombudsman. He has raised a furore by compiling a secret report claiming that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are unprepared to fight a large-scale war and calling for an external commission of inquiry. While his conclusions have been strenuously denied by the top brass, which insists that the IDF is at near-peak readiness, the defence ministry’s former auditor has now spoken up in support of many of General Brik’s claims. The army’s chief of staff has put together a committee to inspect the report, but this step has also drawn criticism, as the committee members are army insiders. So why can’t the generals agree?

The IDF is widely recognised as one of the world’s best-trained, best-equipped armies. It comprises three elements: a conscript army of young men and women performing national service; a professional officer corps; and a large contingent of reservists, who undertake short, annual stints of training and patrol duties. Some of the more elite sections—air-force squadrons, commandos of the special forces and intelligence-gathering units, for example—work at a constant operational tempo and are involved in covert operations such as Israel’s campaign against the Iranian presence in Syria. Most of the regular and reserve units, though, have more mundane duties including border patrol and policing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. To an outsider, Israel’s wars, such as the incursion into Gaza in 2014 and the Lebanon war of 2006, seem frequent, but the reality for most soldiers and officers, particularly in the ground forces, is one of long periods of low-level operations in which their military skills are eroded.

Both sides back up their claims with figures and anecdotal evidence. The army’s general staff cite an increase in live-fire exercises in recent years and the acquisition of new weapons and kit. Critics point to ageing equipment mouldering in emergency depots and young officers grumbling about exercises disrupted due to tension on the Palestinian front. The main enemy on Israel’s borders is the Lebanese party-cum-militia Hizbullah, which has an Iranian-supplied arsenal larger than that of many states. Hizbullah has been deeply involved in the Syrian war for the past seven years and Israeli officers worry that its men are now more experienced at warfare than their own soldiers. The deeper concern, though, is that should Israeli ground forces be called upon to fight another all-out war against Hizbullah in Lebanon, its regular and reserve formations will lack the cutting-edge to win an early victory against a smaller, more resourceful enemy, and that this will suck the armoured brigades into a bloody war of attrition.

In Israel, where two-thirds of young people serve time in the army, nearly everyone feels they have a stake. A lack of military preparedness has been a national nightmare since Israel was caught unaware in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked simultaneously. This is why the generals’ dispute has made headlines. The debate, moreover, is unlikely to be resolved quickly. When it comes to spending on advanced weapons systems and expensive, time-costly exercises, the air force and intelligence branch will always take precedence over boots on the ground. Grunts hauling unwieldy loads across the battlefield, cursing under their breath at the pilots whizzing overhead, have been a part of military life for over a hundred years. And no soldier is ever fully prepared for war.