That's a lot of shooting going on.

45,000 shells equates to roughly 3500 shells average over the 18 days since the Israeli military began firing back on Hexbollah.

This dovetails nicely with our series about the battle of Yelnia in the summer of 1941, especially the artillery operations the Soviets maintained against static German forces.

As we will note, German infantry divisions were reporting an average of 2000 shells per day with some moments during the day so bad movement was not permitted even in heavily fortified areas.

The Russians were able to pound static German units because at that moment the Germans decided that that point would not be the focus of more maneuver warfare. THe Russians took advantage of that inflicting tremendous casualties on units they could ill afford to lose.

Why at this moment don't the Israelis move against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon? Our best guess is that the IDF is pounding Hezbollah in preparation for an invasion. Eighteen days is a long time to wait for maneuver forces to go into action, but we believe at some point it will happen.