The army is trying to slim down even reducing the amount of time served for reserves from 3-2 years, they are laying off some regulars but they are shelling out fortunes to enlist thousands of haredi that they don't actually need. Drafting these new hared means the expansion of units like Nahal hared or creating new ones to absorb them all which is costing the army millions. Lapid and the haredi bashers though want to see the haredi in the army not because the army needs them but because they do not like haredi and so they want to have them forced to go into the army. So the army is going to cut down the amount of equipment it buys and not replacing outdated hardware to save money but they are spending new money to draft haredi, real smart.

PS: As best I understand this from afar, drafting haredim is not about increasing IDF manpower so much as it is about social policy. From what I've read, the idea is to spread the burden of being an Israeli, which would help reduce the burden on the rest of Israel -- which subsidizes the haredim. Drafting haredim could shorten military service for others, but most important, I'd say, is that all Jews would share the burden and risk of military service. Seems fair to me. Studying Torah didn't protect Europe's pious Jews from the Nazis.

"Doing more with less" is a familiar cliche, but it's also an oxymoron. Fewer resources mean less capability, period. In 20-plus USAF years, I experienced more than one downsizing, but all but one under Jimmy Carter (twirl your grogger), were done in a time of diminishing threat. I see no reduction in the threats to Israel; on the contrary, they seem to be increasing. I well remember how few tanks were defending the Golan in 1973, when it nearly was overrun, and reducing air resources seems particularly hazardous; it takes more than a year to train a pilot. But I'm a glautnik, so it's not my business to second-guess Israelis better positioned than I am to know the facts -- as well as having to live with the consequences. I just hope that the decisions turn out to have been wise.