The IDF Spokesperson announced last week that the IDF is advancing a new multi-year plan for 2026–2030, the Hoshen Multi-Year Plan (תר״ש חושן). The plan is intended to shape the military’s force build-up after more than two years of intense warfare. According to the outlook of Chief of Staff Zamir, the IDF is required to operate simultaneously along two central lines of effort: continuous force employment across all theaters, alongside systematic force build-up through the multi-year plan.
The publication of the plan’s main elements comes against the backdrop of budget discussions within the government, and the government decision to set the defense budget at NIS 112 billion for the coming year, despite the IDF’s demand for NIS 140 billion and concerns that additional cuts may still be made. The multi-year plan is based, among other things, on the Nagel Committee report from the summer of 2024, which stated that the defense budget should be increased by NIS 9–15 billion per year. In addition, Prime Minister Netanyahu said over the weekend in an interview with The Economist that Israel would reduce to zero within a decade the aid it receives from the United States, which currently amounts to $3.8 billion per year. All while the IDF is still short 12,000 soldiers, most of them combat troops, and the conscription law has yet to be passed and, even if it is, is not expected to bring the missing soldiers into the ranks of the army.
Program Components
At the core of the multi-year plan is the requirement to ensure immediate readiness for war, with an emphasis on a surprise war and a multi-front configuration. According to the plan of Zamir and the Planning Directorate, the IDF will be required at all times to maintain up-to-date defensive and offensive plans that enable decisive outcomes across all sectors, while preserving functional continuity even under fire and across all domains.
Another central component is the restoration of readiness and rehabilitation. After a prolonged period of fighting, the military is required to undertake deep rehabilitation of combat platforms, munitions, stockpiles, and infrastructure, while simultaneously continuing training, instruction, and maintaining alertness along the country’s borders. As part of this effort, a dedicated plan for the fortification of the borders will also be developed, aimed at preventing enemy entrenchment, stopping infiltrations, and ensuring rapid response capability along every border at all times.
The plan also assigns significant weight to the IDF’s ability to cope with emerging threats. In the field of air and rocket defense, the emphasis is on providing responses to a range of threats, particularly at low altitudes close to the ground. In the more distant circles, and especially vis-à-vis Iran, reinforced preparedness is required for the employment of force and the management of combat systems across multiple distant theaters simultaneously.
In the land domain, the war has underscored the importance of multi-domain maneuver, primarily by ground forces. Accordingly, the multi-year plan emphasizes strengthening capabilities, improving training and instruction, and deepening force readiness for sustained maneuver in order to strike the enemy as effectively as possible. At the same time, the IDF has placed emphasis on improving collection and intelligence capabilities as a foundation for higher operational effectiveness across all theaters of operation.
Another significant pillar is technological buildup. The IDF is expected to develop a dedicated plan for the digital, data, and artificial intelligence domains, with AI defined as a central accelerator of the military’s capabilities— capabilities that in many areas already rely extensively on artificial intelligence. Alongside this, the integration of robotic and autonomous tools across all branches and units will be expanded, as part of adapting operational responses to the challenges of future warfare. The space domain is also addressed as an emerging arena, requiring long-term preparation that extends beyond the years of the multi-year plan itself.
The IDF emphasized that one of the important dimensions of the plan is support for human resources, against the backdrop of the IDF’s ongoing campaign to recognize and honor career personnel and their families. After a prolonged period of fighting, the multi-year plan defines manpower, conscripts, career soldiers, and reservists, alongside IDF civilian employees, as the army’s central source of strength. To this end, a multi-year action plan will be formulated for the care, development, recognition, and compensation of service members and commanders.
Schedules, Framework and Limitations
The plan is being developed on the basis of IDF investigations into the events of October 7 and the course of the war, incorporating and implementing the lessons learned, a process led by the Deputy Chief of Staff. At the same time, it is grounded in a forward-looking perspective, in line with the vision of the next war.
For the formulation of the multi-year plan, Chief of Staff Zamir defined a focused timeframe for staff work, such that the plan is expected to be finalized by the Passover holiday, on April 1, 2026, and then move into the implementation phase. However, implementation of the plan is subject to the security situation. The multi-year plan is structured around three time frames, short, medium, and long term, and will be updated in accordance with additional lessons derived over the course of 2026, upon the completion of the war investigations.
The IDF clarifies that work on the multi-year plan is coordinated throughout with the political echelon and relies on a resource-based framework for buildup over the coming decade, alongside the Chief of Staff’s command directives regarding IDF strategy and mission prioritization.
