War will no longer be only on the front line
Reserve Major General Amir Eshel, former commander of the Israeli Air Force and former Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, spoke on Monday, June 1, 2026, at the annual Jerusalem Post conference in New York. It was there that he described a war scenario that, according to him, Israel and the entire free world need to prepare for now.
His main thesis sounds harsh: the future war will not be limited to the front line, military bases, and air strikes. It will hit the depth of the country, cities, communications, transport, energy, and the daily lives of citizens.
Eshel spoke not as a theorist. He linked his assessments to Russia’s war against Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East, and Israel’s experience in recent years. In his view, the world is entering a stage where the familiar question “who won?” becomes less and less obvious because wars are becoming longer, more expensive, and more destructive for the home front.
For the Israeli audience, this is not an abstract forecast. Israel already lives in the reality of missile threats, drones, air raids, cyberattacks, and dependence on early warning systems. But Eshel effectively warns: the next level could be much harder.
Five lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East
The first lesson he highlighted at the New York conference is the sharp increase in the role of missiles, cruise missiles, ballistic systems, and drones. If previously such a strike was primarily considered a tool of pressure on military targets, now fire is increasingly directed across the entire territory of the state.
The second lesson is that quantity itself becomes quality. Cheap drones, mass launches, and simple strike systems can overload even technologically advanced defenses. This is evident in Ukraine, where Russia has been combining missiles, “Shaheds,” and waves of combined attacks for months, forcing air defense to operate in a constant wear-and-tear mode.
The third conclusion concerns ground maneuver. According to Eshel, the wide saturation of the battlefield with strike means seriously limits the classic advancement of infantry and armored vehicles. Ukraine has shown how difficult it is to move forward when the space is monitored by drones, and any concentration of forces quickly becomes a target.
The fourth lesson is that air defense finds it increasingly difficult to withstand the scale of threats. Interception becomes expensive, and attacking means are often cheaper than defensive ones.
The fifth conclusion is that the absence of a quick resolution makes wars protracted. This is visible both on the Ukrainian front and in the Middle Eastern reality, where military force does not always lead to an immediate political result.
Thousands of targets in the sky and the new role of artificial intelligence
The most alarming part of Eshel’s speech on June 1, 2026, concerned the scale of future attacks. He said that society needs to get used to not only hundreds of missiles and drones but to thousands and even tens of thousands of targets that can come simultaneously from the air and from space.
For Israel, this means a fundamentally new challenge. Even a powerful multi-layered defense system — “Iron Dome,” “David’s Sling,” “Arrow,” and other elements — was built around certain threat scenarios. A massive new type of attack may attempt not to penetrate the defense pointwise but to overload it with numbers, speed, directions, and false targets.
Eshel also emphasized the role of artificial intelligence. In his assessment, the future war will not just be a war of people, headquarters, and commanders. It will be a clash of systems, where AI on one side will oppose AI on the other side, managing thousands of autonomous platforms, analyzing data, and making decisions faster than a human can comprehend the battle picture.
For readers in Israel, this conversation is important not only as military analytics. Nikk.Agency considers such statements in a broader context: the country’s security increasingly depends not only on the army but also on the resilience of civilian infrastructure, the readiness of municipalities, the reliability of communications, energy, and the ability of society to live under prolonged pressure.
The electromagnetic spectrum as a battlefield
Eshel placed a separate emphasis on the electromagnetic spectrum. According to him, the space in which Wi-Fi, cellular communication, GPS, digital control systems, cameras, sensors, and navigation operate has already become a full-fledged battlefield.
This is an important warning for Israel. In a modern country, almost everything is tied to digital infrastructure: hospitals, traffic lights, elevators, banking services, logistics, transport, alert systems, smartphones, and civilian applications. A strike on such systems does not necessarily look like an explosion, but the consequences can be no less painful.
Eshel also described another layer of threats — the use of energy as a weapon. This refers to lasers, electromagnetic systems, and means capable of disabling electronic components. Not only military drones or missiles can be affected, but also civilian equipment: cars, computers, phones, cameras, electronically controlled doors, elevators, and urban systems.
What this means for Israel
Eshel’s main conclusion, voiced at the Jerusalem Post conference in New York, is that confidence in strength alone is no longer enough. He called for a change in approach: to invest not only in offensive capabilities but also in defense, infrastructure protection, and reducing damage to the civilian home front.
In Israeli security logic, this is a particularly sensitive issue. Israel traditionally bets on intelligence, air superiority, quick strikes, and technological advantage. But if the enemy can attack the home front for a long time and massively, then defense becomes not a secondary shield but a condition for any successful operation.
Eshel effectively says that without strong protection of civilian infrastructure, offensive potential also loses effectiveness. The army may have strong strike capabilities, but if the country is paralyzed at the rear, if communication does not work, if cities are not ready, if air defense systems are overloaded, strategic advantage narrows.
The Israeli home front as part of the front
For an ordinary Israeli, this forecast sounds unpleasant but realistic. The war of the future may come not only through a siren and a missile salvo. It may manifest in navigation failures, communication outages, transport disruptions, power grid damage, digital chaos, and pressure on civilian psychology.
That is why Eshel’s conversation is important not as panic but as a warning. Israel needs not only a strong army but also a more resilient country: protected hospitals, backup communication channels, prepared municipalities, clear instructions for the population, reliable energy, and the ability to withstand a long conflict without destroying everyday life.
The war of the future, which Amir Eshel spoke about on June 1, 2026, in New York at the Jerusalem Post conference, is already partially visible in Ukraine and the Middle East. The difference is only in scale. If thousands of cheap systems, artificial intelligence, missiles, drones, and electromagnetic strikes combine into one campaign, the front will not be somewhere far away. It will pass through the sky, phones, roads, homes, and infrastructure.