The Lebanese army, which was Thursday dispatching troops to the south in the first such deployment for decades, counts 60,000 active soldiers but lacks significant firepower and fighting experience, experts say.
According to the "The Military Balance ", an annual report published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the army numbers about 70,000 troops, including reservists.
However, most are more police officers than soldiers. At most 25,000 or so have experience from the 1975-1990 civil war and the army is considered more of a peacekeeping force than an offensive one.
The Lebanese army, which was Thursday dispatching troops to the south in the first such deployment for decades, counts 60,000 active soldiers but lacks significant firepower and fighting experience, experts say.
According to the "The Military Balance ", an annual report published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the army numbers about 70,000 troops, including reservists.
However, most are more police officers than soldiers. At most 25,000 or so have experience from the 1975-1990 civil war and the army is considered more of a peacekeeping force than an offensive one.
The dispatch of the 15,000 troops to the south fufills a key element of the UN resolution that ended the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah but the army is expected to play no role over the contentious issue of disarming the Shiite militant group.
It is the first deployment of such magnitude in three decades in the border area, which had been controlled by Palestinian factions until the Israeli invasion of 1982 before being overtaken by Shiite guerrillas.
The army has 310 main battle tanks, mainly old Soviet-made T-54s and T-55s, 24 helicopters, 1,257 armoured personnel carriers and 541 artillery pieces.
There is also a a paramilitary force of 13,000 men, an air force of 1,100 and still smaller navy of around 1,000.
The Lebanese army has asked other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, to urgently provide military equipment, according to a government source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
When Israeli troops pulled out of south Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation, Lebanese troops did not deploy to the border. Instead, they left the area under the control of Hezbollah, whose capture of two soldiers in a deadly raid on July 12 prompted Israel's offensive.
