Not life underground, but a new reality for Israel: why rockets, shelters, and the home front have already become part of one big doctrine

In Israel, in recent weeks, the same nervous question has been increasingly heard: are we really being hinted that we will have to live underground and get used to endless war? Formally — no. But if we look honestly, without comforting formulas, the state is indeed moving towards a different security model, where the home front is no longer considered a temporarily inconvenient place between short campaigns, but becomes a permanent part of the battlefield. This is no longer a theory. Since February 28, 2026, Israel has been living under daily Iranian rocket fire, and on March 22, two Iranian ballistic strikes, not intercepted by air defense, hit residential buildings in Arad and Dimona, injuring dozens of people.

In this context, words about underground floors under new buildings, autonomous life support centers, and shifting part of the strike load from aviation to missiles are not fantasy or hysteria. It is an attempt to adapt Israel to a new type of war, where the sky cannot be made completely airtight, and civilian resilience becomes almost as much a military resource as aviation or intelligence. Photos where families during strikes have effectively moved to underground parking lots have already shown: this reality began earlier than an official language was invented for it.

At the same time, it is important to immediately separate emotion from analysis. No one is declaring that all of Israel should literally move underground. But it is becoming increasingly difficult for Israel to pretend that the old model of a short war, after which the home front quickly returns to normal life, still works in its pure form. And this is perhaps the main thought that should be seriously discussed.

The home front is no longer a ‘temporary problem,’ but a separate front

The old Israeli doctrine was built around deterrence, early warning, and quickly transferring the war to the enemy’s territory. But modern Israeli and Western studies already recognize: in the era of missiles, drones, and precision munitions, the home front has become an independent direction of war. In a published IDF study on the evolution of Israeli doctrine, it is directly stated that the homefront has become an additional front, and in a JISS work, it is emphasized: due to the increase in the number and accuracy of missiles, a serious revision of home front protection priorities is required — with a combination of active and passive defense, as well as strikes on launchers.

This is important for understanding the entire discussion. When someone talks about underground urbanization, they are not necessarily proposing a dystopia. They are more likely acknowledging an unpleasant fact: a safe room in an apartment and a siren on a phone are no longer always sufficient for a scenario in which the country lives under combined strikes for weeks. Reuters wrote that after the strike on Arad, the surviving reinforced part of the building leading to the shelter effectively became the boundary between life and death; Netanyahu directly said at the site of the strike that there might not have been any casualties if everyone had gone to shelters in time.

Underground complexes are not panic, but the logic of resilience

In Israeli cities, underground parking lots, old miklatim, and improvised shelters are already beginning to perform functions that were previously considered temporary. Reuters showed families sheltering in underground parking lots in Haifa, and the Times of Israel wrote about thousands of buildings in Jerusalem without protected rooms, causing residents during Iranian shelling to once again seek refuge in basements, vaults, and repurposed spaces.

Against this backdrop, the idea that new projects should initially include several underground levels not only as parking but also as infrastructure for long-term stay no longer sounds like architectural exotica, but as a continuation of the trend. Especially since State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman said back in June 2025 about ‘millions’ of Israelis without sufficient protection from Iranian missiles, reminding that back in 2020, it was about approximately 2.6 million residents with an insufficient level of shelters. Even if we take a cautious formulation, the scale of the problem has long been known.

This, of course, does not mean that all of Israel needs to be urgently buried underground. But it means something else: normal urban construction in 2026 can no longer be separated from defense. A residential neighborhood, school, clinic, parking lot, shopping center — all of this is gradually becoming part of the national survival system under fire.

Aviation remains the key, but aviation alone is no longer enough

The second part of the discussion is no less important. The formula ‘missiles instead of planes’ sounds catchy, but in reality, it is not about replacing the Air Force, but about unloading and supplementing aviation. The Israeli Air Force remains the main tool for long-range strikes and threat suppression. According to Ynet, citing the IDF, by March 19, 2026, more than 12,000 munitions had been dropped on Iran, over 8,500 strikes had been carried out, and about 540 sorties to central and western Iran; one of the Air Force commanders admitted that they flew ‘like for a whole year’ in 18 days. This is not a figurative phrase, but an indicator of pace and load.

That is why the idea of expanding the ground precision missile component does not look like a radical upheaval, but quite a rational continuation of an already existing line. Back in 2018, Israel created a separate ground force of ‘ground-to-ground’ missiles, initially with a range of up to 150 km, then with a calculation for 300 km, precisely to give ground forces their own tool of precise fire and reduce dependence on aviation for some tasks. CSIS then directly noted that the corps was conceived as an offensive response to Hezbollah’s massive missile arsenal.

What is changing in Israel’s military logic

The change here is deeper than a debate about technology. If earlier aviation was almost a universal solution for most long-range pinpoint tasks, in a multi-front war, it becomes a bottleneck. Aircraft require takeoffs, maintenance, ammunition, priority distribution, coverage, time. And some targets — especially launch positions, launch windows, short-lived targets — require a reaction in a matter of minutes. Ground precision missiles can cover this gap, especially in the northern direction and in scenarios of massive exchange of strikes. This conclusion is consistent with JISS analysis: Israel needs not only strong Air Force but also more lethal and less vulnerable ground forces, as well as the ability to quickly find and destroy enemy launchers, preferably before launch.

Therefore, it is more correct to say not ‘missiles instead of planes,’ but ‘missiles alongside planes.’ Israel is not moving away from aviation power. It is trying to ensure that the war with Iran, Hezbollah, and other participants in the regional axis does not rest on a single overburdened tool.

And here, another thing is important for the Israeli audience. Modern defense is no longer just interception in the sky. A study by the Modern War Institute on endurance under air strikes using the example of Israel and Ukraine emphasizes: real resilience is provided by three layers simultaneously — offensive defense, active air defense, and passive protection of civilian infrastructure and population behavior. That is, there is no miracle system that simply ‘closes the sky’ and removes the issue. Only a combination works.

Israel is not being prepared for a life of moles, it is being prepared for long endurance

The most unpleasant conclusion from this entire discussion is that society is indeed beginning to be restructured for a longer era of instability. But this is not equivalent to capitulation to eternal siege. Rather, it is about recognition: if the enemy bets on exhausting the civilian home front, then the resilience of cities, homes, hospitals, transport, and communal life becomes part of the military strategy, not an appendix to it.

That is why the phrase NAnovosti — Israel News | Nikk.Agency in such a conversation should not sound like an emotional slogan, but as a reminder of a simple fact: today, Israeli security is no longer just fighters in the air and missile defense batteries on the ground. It is also a question of how long a city can live under attack without collapsing socially, economically, and psychologically. In 2026, this became too practical a question to leave it in the genre of television panic.

What follows from this right now

Firstly, the conversation about multi-level underground spaces under new buildings does not mean that the state has ‘given up’ and acknowledged the defeat of air defense. It means that the state finally recognizes the limits of any air defense. Reuters has already shown in specific strikes that individual missiles break through, and the comptroller and Israeli media have long talked about the lack of protected spaces.

Secondly, strengthening the missile component of the ground forces does not mean weakening the Air Force. On the contrary: it is a way not to drive aviation into a mode where it is obliged to solve absolutely all tasks at once, especially in a war on several fronts.

And thirdly, the most honest reading of this discussion is this: Israel is not being prepared to ‘live underground.’ Israel is being prepared so that even in the conditions of prolonged missile campaigns, the country continues to live. This, of course, sounds heavier and gloomier than the old Ben-Gurion dream of short wars with long pauses. But it seems that it is to this less comfortable truth that the system is beginning to adapt.