The Israel Defense Forces held a multi-front war drill, “Dawn’s Rise,” that began early Monday morning, testing the readiness of its General Staff and regional commands for a range of extreme scenarios, including a mass assault of terrorists in pickup trucks from the eastern border with Jordan.

The drill is a direct application of the painful lessons learned from the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and is part of a broader strategic reset being led by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir to prepare the military for a new era of continuous, multi-front combat.

The surprise exercise began at 5:30 a.m., with the chief of staff arriving at the IDF’s Central Command bunker, known as “the pit,” at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv. The drill’s purpose was to test the readiness of the IDF’s General Staff Headquarters, the Operations Directorate, the Israeli Air Force and the Israel Navy, as well as the regional commands, with IDF Comptroller’s Unit personnel overseeing the process.

The scenarios involved multiple arenas and included responses to various terror attack simulations in the wake of lessons learned from the Oct. 7 attacks.

A senior IDF source from the Operations Branch provided an insider’s perspective on the exercise. “Personally, I was being tested. I immediately took a piece of paper and wrote down my 10 lessons from Oct. 7 and I tested my people everywhere based on them,” the source stated.

He added, “All headquarters were activated, including all directorates and commands. The scenarios were multi-front, without a single focus. They included the eastern border, Judea and Samaria, the Southern Command and coordination with the Israel Police, Shin Bet and Mossad. The main thing was to see the processes, to examine the readiness in the air, at sea, and on land.”

The source clarified that the drill focused on command-and-control processes rather than the physical deployment of all forces. “We didn’t activate everyone physically; we mainly checked the readiness, up to the gate guard, in order to see the capabilities,” he said.

This drill is a key component of a wider strategic overhaul underway in the IDF. On Monday, Zamir held the second in a series of General Staff situational assessments aimed at shaping the IDF’s annual work plan and adapting the military to a new reality.

In a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Zamir said, “We must learn from the lessons of the past, continuously examine our preparedness and from there improve, strengthen and advance towards a strategic plan and a significant force build-up. Alongside this, our working assumption is that we are in a continuous war. The year 2026 will be a year of shaping and maximizing achievements, increasing preparedness, returning to fundamentals and seizing operational opportunities.”

The chief of staff emphasized the need to apply the lessons of the war while looking ahead. “The IDF must return to fundamentals in procedures, alertness, training and planning and force-build-up processes, while taking a differentiated approach to each arena and its characteristics,” he stated.

This strategic reset began in late July, when the first major assessment in nearly two years codified a new doctrine of “defense through offense” and elevated the IDF Depth Corps, which commands long-range operations, to a strategic command. 

While the borders with Gaza and Lebanon remain active, the threat of a large-scale attack from or through Syria and Jordan is being taken seriously. In recent months, the IDF has also massively ramped up its defensive posture on the Golan Heights to counter threats from Syria. This includes the setting up of nine fixed military positions on the Syrian side of the buffer zone on the Golan Heights, including on the strategic Mount Hermon. 

On July 29, a security official noted that “over the past year, the 210th [Golan] Division has invested significant efforts in preparing the communities in the home front for extreme events. Currently, there are approximately 1,100 defense squads with about 30 soldiers in each community. All communities in the Golan Heights are equipped with emergency combat gear and the division ensures regular training and the sharing of the operational situation with the defense squads at a high frequency.”

The focus on the Jordanian border is a response to persistent terrorist threats. While Israeli and Jordanian security forces maintain quiet coordination, recent years have seen a significant increase in attempts by Iran-backed terror cells and smugglers to traffic advanced weapons from Iraq and Syria, via Jordan, to terrorist cells in Judea and Samaria. The surprise drill’s scenario of a mass infiltration from the east indicates that the IDF is now preparing not just for smuggling, but for a direct assault across this border as well.

The senior source from the Operations Branch explained that the central challenge of the drill was “to formulate a situational picture and, in light of it, to make the right decisions and how to activate the order of battle accordingly.”

He added, “The chief of staff checked all of us and debriefed us, examining the communication between the headquarters. There are things that can be sharpened and, … they have been sharpened.”

In his statement, Zamir said, “We are still at war and in the midst of it, we are carrying out force build-up processes. This is an unprecedented situation. We must be prepared for an expansion of the campaign.”

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