It began as a routine meeting. Amit had asked me for advice on venture capital and defense technology. I expected to discuss startups, funding models, and innovation ecosystems. But within minutes, I realized this was not about business at all.
What sat across from me was not just a researcher or entrepreneur, but a commander who carried with him a vivid memory of dense urban combat, some of the most brutal and unforgiving fighting imaginable. In such battles, the enemy is not waiting deep inside the battlefield but is hiding just meters away, behind a corner or a doorway, ready to strike the moment you falter. The engagement window is brutally short in both time and distance, often no more than a few dozen meters, practically face-to-face.
Urban warfare adds another cruel layer of complexity. The time required to secure terrain grows exponentially. The enemy can vanish into alleys, leap from house to house, and reappear without warning, turning the city itself into a living battlefield. In open terrain, the advantage clearly belongs to armor and combined maneuvering, but in cities, it is the defender who has the upper hand. He knows the ground, blends into it, and uses every street and structure as a weapon.
And there, in the heart of the chaos, a commander is tested not against a doctrine written on paper, but against his ability to lead, to fulfill the mission, and to prevail.
At that moment, I realized I was not only speaking with just a former combat officer, but with someone who had rewritten doctrine in real time, under fire, on the battlefield itself. I asked him to share his story. For me, someone who spent much of my career developing technologies to reduce friction and achieve battlefield dominance in the unforgiving urban domain, it was a chance to listen to someone who had been forced to create that dominance with his own hands.
When the playbook died
Amit explained that he was commanding an infantry company under an armored battalion. The mission was familiar: seize a complex of high-rise buildings. On paper, it required a whole company of about one hundred soldiers. In practice, due to a shortage of Namer APCs, only forty could maneuver into the target area. The mission, however, did not change - only the reality did.
“The dilemma was not technical; it was existential. With every passing moment, the gap widened between the doctrine that I had trained on for years and the brutal reality before me: narrow streets turned into a lethal maze, walls riddled with sniper fire, and apartment blocks where every window might conceal an RPG. In that moment, the doctrine we had relied upon collapsed,” he said.
A flash of insight – from Rommel to Gaza
Almost instinctively, Amit recalled a paper he had written at the IDF Tactical Command College:
“Urban Warfare Lessons for a Future Lebanon War.” He had studied Erwin Rommel - the “Desert Fox” - not in World War II but in World War I. While most armies hurled wave after wave of men in blind assaults, Rommel inverted the ratio: overwhelming fire dominance, nine parts suppressive fire to one part assault.
Later, US research validated his intuition: when suppression was dominant, up to 82% of rounds reached their target, compared with just 25% under assault-heavy tactics. In Gaza, the principle crystallized for Amit: success would not be defined by the number of boots on the ground, but by absolute fire dominance.
A doctrine born of necessity
“The method we developed in Gaza took shape not on drawing boards but in smoke and fire,” Amit recalled. “We arrived at the mission site only after the civilian population had been evacuated, facing an environment stripped of noncombatants but saturated with threats.”
Amit explained the doctrine he developed while under fire:
1. Target reduction
Floors that were tactically irrelevant or posed excessive danger were eliminated in advance through direct fire from tanks, helicopters, or loitering munitions. This narrowed the battlespace and forced the enemy into exposed positions.
2. Encirclement with heavy direct fire
The building was encircled by tanks and Namer APCs delivering precise yet destructive fire on every facade. This 360-degree coverage sealed the structure, denied reinforcement, and ensured no safe angle remained for the defenders.
3. Rotational and suppressive fire
Armored platforms never stayed static. They shifted constantly around the perimeter, maintaining suppressive fire from multiple directions. During this stage, heavy fire was also directed at the upper floors, creating a vertical boundary of cover that kept the enemy disoriented, under pressure, and unable to regroup.
4. Assault under continuous cover
Only after fire dominance was secured did infantry dismount. Often they advanced from top floors downward, while external fire continued to target the higher stories. This simultaneous internal maneuver and external suppression denied the enemy time to reorganize and frequently inflicted additional casualties even before direct contact.
This method bore little resemblance to written doctrine, but it was closer to the reality of his soldiers. “With fewer troops, in less time, we achieved more — and proved a larger truth: doctrine is not sacred. When it collapses, commanders must invent anew,” Amit said.
From doctrine to the micro-tactical
Listening to Amit, I tried to understand how a broad systemic doctrine — such as the IDF’s approved concept of operation for multi-domain maneuvers, to support the tactical commander on the edge — found its way into a single building fight. This doctrine was designed for maneuvering, integrating intelligence, air force firepower, ISR UAV, and joint-force capabilities. Yet here it was, compressed by Amit into a micro-tactical improvisation, in a place where those systemic assets weren’t available.
The insight was clear: even when the system struggles to deliver its intended resources to the tactical edge, the commander is forced to improvise them himself. What is born as battlefield improvisation is, in fact, a warning sign: without accessible, embedded technology at scale, the burden of doctrine falls once again on the soldier’s shoulders.
The human role
Reflecting on the role of the commander in urban combat, Amit said that “urban warfare overwhelms even the most experienced leaders with speed, complexity, and unpredictability. I had to synchronize multiple forces, process fragmentary and often misleading intelligence, adapt to unexpected events, and prioritize between simultaneous threats, all in real time under fire. No human brain can carry this load alone.”
“That is why I came to believe that adaptive technology becomes critical. Machines that filter information, synchronize fire and movement, and visualize the battlefield reduce the technical burden. They allow the commander to do what only a human can: define intent, exercise judgment, create, and lead with moral clarity.”
When technology meets the challenge of scaling
In fact, Amit’s story connects directly to what is happening today. In recent years, MAFAT (the Directorate of Defense R&D) and the IDF have accelerated the development of precisely these systems: tactical drones that slip through windows, ground robots for breaching and evacuation, real-time urban sensing, and AI to turn chaos into clarity.
The problem is not their absence - but their scale. When five divisions maneuver simultaneously in the confined space of Gaza, saturated with civilians and concrete, a handful of drones or robots will not suffice. The challenge is deploying massive numbers of such systems, pushing them forward with the maneuver, and synchronizing them so they operate as one.
This is not a challenge of invention, but of systemic integration at scale. How do you field hundreds, even thousands, of robotic and drone systems into a divisional maneuver? How do you ensure the drone above the building communicates seamlessly with the robot inside and the tank covering the street? This is the core challenge of modern armies: not just building breakthrough technology, but orchestrating it into a coherent symphony across the battlefield.
A shared conclusion - the call for hybrid thinking
Tomorrow’s urban battlefields will demand a new blend: soldiers bringing intuition, adaptability, and moral judgment; machines bringing speed, precision, and scale. Only when the two are fused, human judgment amplified by machine capability, can dominance be secured in the most unforgiving environment of all.
This is the essence of hybrid thinking: the human defines intent and provides moral clarity, while the machine delivers tempo, accuracy, and volume.
As our conversation ended, I thanked Amit for several riveting hours. This was not a discussion about startups or defense investments - it was a living lesson in command under fire, in the ability of a leader to reshape doctrine on the spot, and in the painful gap between what the system plans and what the soldier experiences in a narrow alley.
For me, it was a stark reminder: true innovation is not born in labs or doctrine papers alone. It emerges in the moment when commanders and their soldiers face the unknown and are forced to create answers. Our responsibility as defense technologists, strategists, and policymakers is to ensure that next time, commanders like Amit are not left to improvise alone, but are equipped with the systems they need to bring their soldiers home.
Amit Govrin is a former IDF company commander in the Givati Brigade. He played a central role in the battles of October 7 and later led combat operations in Gaza, where he was severely wounded, losing sight in his right eye. Following his recovery, he served as Head of Foreign Affairs at Israel’s National Defense College. Amit is now an MBA candidate at MIT Sloan, where he focuses on defense technology, strategy, and building regional partnerships.