Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War Historical Perspectives

8/3/2019 Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War Historical Perspectives

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I rilitary ~essonif the Yom KippurWar:a different war, ut a new type of

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24: Military Lessons of theYom Kippur War:Historical Perspectives


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THE WASHINGTON PAPERSVolume I1 1

24: Military Lessons of theYom Kippur War:Historical Perspectives

Martin van Creveld

THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIESGeorgetown University, Washington, D.C.

SAGE PUBLICATIONSBeverly Hills / London


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C O N T E N T SIntroductionBackground and TheoryThe War in OutlineThe Lessons

The WeaponsTact ics, or the Character of BattleStrategy, or the Character of War

PerspectivesNotesReferencesMap of Israel-Egypt AgreementThe Agreement


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INTRODUCTION

s nce th e en d o f World War 11, large-scale weapon produ ctionhas tended to concentrate around, and to be destined for,presumed battlefields in Central Europe. The United States, theSoviet Union, and their allies: these, with the important butunhelpful exception of Japan, are the only powers still capable ofproducing the ultimate in military hardware. Except for theUnited Sta tes, however, none of them h as been engaged inlarge-scale warfare during the last quarter of a century; and eventhe American experience in Vietnam was limited mainly toantiguerrilla operations waged under conditions little relevant tothose that w ould ob tain in a large-scale armed clash between fullymodern powers.

There have been, it is true, some partial exceptions to theabove situation. The Korean War of 1950-1953was fought on aconsiderable scale but did not, as far as weapons were concerned,go much beyond World War 11. The Suez campaign of 1956 wasvery instructive at the time, but is now almost twenty years past.The Indian-Pakistani wars of 1965 an d 1971 were comparativelymodern affairs but took place over terrain of such appallingdifficulty as to render any more general application hazardous.Most o ther wars were smallish conflicts waged between or againstpeoples totally unequipped for modem warfare. The result of this


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viiilack of experience was that the battlefields for which the mainweapon-producing powers designed their arms became increas-ingly hypothetical; and discussion in professional literature onlyserves to underline the fact that nobody really knows what afull-scale modern war, even one waged with conventional weap-ons, will be like.

On the face of it, the Six Days War-the third round in theArab-Israeli conflict, fought in 1967-had mor e to offer by theway of lessons. Here, at last, was a war between states that, ifhardly representing the acme of modernity, did at least possessarms supplied by the main w eapon-producing countries on a veryconsiderable scale. However, even in this case the modernity wasmore app arent than real. Despite the presence of many T-5 4s andT-55s, in the Egyptian tank force there were still man y T-34s andJS-111s. The Syrians even numb ered G erman Mark IV tanks ( 1936vintage) among their armor, together with many more T-34s andT-54s, while the Israelis used the so-called "Super Sherman"(with improved engines and 9 0 mm. gun) as well as more mode mM-48s and C enturions. Centurio n and half track, bazooka an drecoilless rifle-all were tak en strai ght out of World War 11.Since both the Israelis and their opponents used World War I1weapons, Israel also waged a World War I1 style campaign. Assome observers noted at the time, the Six Days' War was takenstraight out of the pages of Heinz Guderian, creator of theGerman armored force. It was as if a time machine had turned theclock back by a quarter of a century; was it not in 1939-1941that a handful of Panzer divisions used their speed and mobilityto overrun one country after the other? Even as World War I1nroeressed. however. such campaigns became increasingly rare.n up by heavily fortified

, and by the dominance ofwould be no exaggeration-fashioned not only in itsyears o f World W ar 11., ommonly known as theconflict that, though still1 arms, at least came very

r - 2 - -Attempts to mount them were broke]defensive belts-as at Kursk-in the eas t.Allied airpower in the west. Hence, itto say that the Six Days' War was oldown time but even in terms of the laterNo t so the fou rth Arab-Israeli roundYom Kippur War. Here at last was afalling short of the ultimate in moden

close to it. While some of the weapons in question were verymuch ou t of date-such as the American-built half track used bythe Israelis-others, such as the guided ant itan k and antiaircraftmissiles employed by the A rabs, were so new as to appear for thefirst time ever. Both sides, too, possessed these weapon s on ascale unrivaled since th e largest battle s of World War 11. For thesereasons, this war is likely to be studied for some time and hasmany significant lessons to offer.

How such lessons should be derived is, methodologically, adifficult problem. Obviously, any attempt to learn from historicalevents must start with an effort to separate the grain from thechaff, the universal from the localized, the permanent from theaccidental. Taking for example the two wars discussed above,were the differences between them due to such "accidental"causes as th e disregarding of this or that piece of intelligence, theincompeten ce o f this or that general, or the respective qualities ofthe armies involved? If so, history should confine itself to anarrative of events. If, however, there are deeper factors at work,going beyond these an d similar accidents peculiar to one time andone place; if historical method is available to help identify thosefactors; in th at case, history m ay have significant lessons to offer.

The problem, then, is where t o draw the line separating the"accidental" from the perm anent. Since the present study aimsless at drawing an approximate picture of the next Arab-Israeliround than at assessing the long-term significance of the YomKippur War for warfare as a whole, we shall assume that thefactor common to all theaters of war is military technology. Ofcourse, the presence or absence of this or that weapon on anygiven battlefield is itself "accidental"; neverthele ss, the assump-tion is justified in s o far as all wars are nowadays w aged withweapons designed more or less for the central Eu:-~.' iribattle-field. We shall therefore assume that, more than any other factor,it is arms technology that nowadays determines the character, notof this or that war bu t of war in general. It is here tha t the lessonsmost capable of a wider application are to be found.

However, a mere enumeration of technological developments,past, present, and future, is insufficient. In any case, a detailed


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inquiry of this kind is far beyond the capacity of this writer.What we are seeking is some kind of indication, not merely of theshape of future weapons b ut of the way those w eapons will affectthose elusive qualities, the "character" of battle , the "fare"behind war. Here military history may help because, as we shalltry t o show, it presents some patterns that repeat themselves.

To define these pattern s, some theory of warfare is absolutelyessential. Having studied many such theories, the writer is awareof their l imitations; no theory will ever be able to embrace all thefacts, much less explain them. Moreover, the concept of"warfare" itself, though indispensable for any comp arison, is tosome extent misleading. It rests on the assumption that the warsof each period and place, each stage of civilization, have somemore or less well-defined "character" made up by the sum of themethods used to fight them. In reality, of course, every armedencounter is to a large extent suigeneris. Still , almost any theoryis preferable to no ne at all. Withou t theory , as Clausewitz (1962)says. no understanding is possible; indeed, the very concept ofunder standin g becomes meaningless. The uniqueness of historicalevents does not preve nt us from speaking about "the spirit of theRenaissance" or "nineteenth cen tury economics"; surely, there-fore, i t should no t exclude such concepts as "Napoleonic" or"modern" warfare. Such concepts, while undo ubtedly repre-senting crude generalizations, nevertheless have their use in ourattempts to explore the relationship between those periods andthe ones proceeding or succeeding them. fon d a mere narrative

first, of defining thedescribed; second, ofell as possible withino explain why thatt t ime and that place,I what reasons caused)y the present study., its conclusions mustny case, its aim is no t

If military history is to be of any use beyof past conflicts, its task should consist, iterms of reference by which war is to be idescribing the specific war in question as withose terms; and finally, of an attemp t 1particular form of war was customary a t thaihow it differed from what went before, andit to fall into abeyance at a later date.

This, then, will be the outline followed tWritten at a time when war may recur again.necessarily be of a tentative nature; and in a;

to draw an approximate picture of the next Arab-Israeli boxingmatch b ut to try and isolate those aspects of the Yom KippurWar tha t, rather th an being due to"accidenta1" factors peculiarto that war, stem from deeper causes and would thus appear t o berelevant t o th e future of conventional war in general. To thispurpose, we shall first try to crea te an encompassing frameworkby working ou t som e basic relationships th at seem useful towardthe understanding of events; second, to use that framework inorder to describe the Yom Kippur War to the best of our abilityand the sources at our comm and; and finally, to ask how a nd whythis war differed from the ones preceding it , and what can bededuced from this difference about the direction in whichmodern war is moving. The above procedure is a difficult one tofollow; nevertheless, i t seems to the auth or the only one capableof producing results. Whether, in fact, this is so remains for thereader t o judge.


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I. BACKGROUND AND THEORY

T e fifth of Ju ne, 1967, was one of the most fateful days inthe history of the Sta te of Israel. After three weeks of tenseexpectation, there arrived at 0815 hours of that day in theheadquarters of Major General Yeshajahu Gavish, CIC SouthernFron t, a curt and cryptic message: "Sadin Ador n"(red sheet), theprearranged signal for the start of Israel's preemptive attack onEgypt. Within minutes, thousands of vehicle engines all along theIsraeli-Egyptian border roared into life; camouflage nets wereswiftly discarded, and with three Israeli divisions stormingforward it looked, in the words of a pilot overflying the scene, asif the whole frontier had suddenly started moving westward in ahuge cloud of dust.The right flank of the Israeli array, stretching along the borderfrom a point roughly opposite Gaza in a southwesterly directionfor about thirty miles, was formed by a division-sized task force(a so-called Ugda) consisting of two armored brigades withperhaps 250-300 tanks and a brigade of paratroopers on halftracks. Commanding this elite force was Major General Israel Tal,a tough, aggressive personality who served as Director of Israel'sArmo ured C orps and seemed ideally suited t o the task now facinghim; namely, in his own words, that of carrying out the decisivetrial of strength designed not only to open the way into the Sinaibut, above all, to establish the Israeli Defence Forces' (IDF)moral superiority over an enemy with whom they had not clashedfor over ten years (Young, 1967: 104).

If this, in fact, was the division's task, it was carried out in


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overlooked; taking a leaf out of John Frederi"armored might" and "armored shock" beca~in Israel, denoting an almost mystical faithability to move quick ly, strike hard, and swectroops clean off the battlefield. Armor,occupied a central place in Israel's array ofthe recognized "queen of the battlefield" de:at least absorb all other arms. Fighting waspercent technics and 10 percent tactics"; accowere conceived in terms of massive frontal cl

masterly fashion. Fighting, to quote Tal again, a "brutal battle,"the bulk of the Ugda attacked the opposing forces-the EgyptianSeventh Division and the Palestinian Twentieth Division, thelatter in brigade strength-head on and succeeded in breakingthrough the deep, strongly fortified positions centering aroundKhan Y unis, Rafa, and the Jerardi defile on the coastal road to ElArish. It was a tough battle tha t cost the Israelis extremely heavycasualties-thirty-five tank commanders are said to have beenkilled during the advance on Khan Yunis alone-but it did achieveits purpose; at midnight, though isolated Egyptian pocketscontinued to hold out all along the way back to the Israeliborder, the to wn of El Arish-some fort y miles from the originalstartin g positions-had been reached by the spearhead of Tal'sdivision. This was Colonel Shmuel Gonen's Seventh ArmouredBrigade, which was destined t o crow n a classic tank-cum-aircraftBlitzkrieg by being the first unit to reach the Suez Canal just 48hours later.

The "Battle of Rafah," as Tal's advance came t o be know n inIsrael, was commonly regarded as the toughest fight of the entireSix Days' War. It gave rise to many solemn anniversaries and to atleast one popular song. Those who had fought "exposed in theturrets"' became the subjects of a hero cult; the men who hadled the charge-primarily Gon en and Tal himself-were henc e-forward m arked m en, clearly destined for higher comm and.Above all, the battle had far-reaching effects in that it moldedIsraeli thought about the shape of the next war. The fact that Talhad modified his tactics on the second day of the war was

ck Fuller, term s likene household wordsin the tank and its!p any other kind ofwhich had alreadybattle, now becamesigned to replace ordeclared to be "90rdingly, future warsashes between tank

armies which, once victory had been won through the superiorquality of Israel's tankrnen, would be followed by a campaign ofmaneuver deep into the rear of an already defeated enemy: Anarmy that had traditionally put its trust in subtlety and theindirect approach (see Yadin, 1954) now came to regard thefrontal armored charge as the acme of tactics; organized in theirown separate corps and trained in their own separate schools,tank men were taught to look down on other arms and came toregard their participation o r even presence on th e battlefield as anunnecessary encumbrance that would merely slow down whatwas known as "armored pace."As the years went by, more details about the events of the SixDays' War gradually became known and began to modify thepicture.3 It now appeared that the Battle of Rafah, though hardfought and well won, had hardly been a masterpiece of militaryart. Tal, it became clear, had jeopardized his Ugda by failing tocontrol the movements of his brigade commanders, some ofwhom went off on wild goose chases of their own andsubsequently found themselves cut off. Coordination between thedifferent arms-particularly tanks and half tracks-had beenfaulty, leading to many unnecessary casualties. Individual unitshad become stuck in the dunes, had run out of fuel, or simplyhad got lost and ou t of control. If th e battle was initially believedto have been fought against the cream of Egypt's army, it nowtranspired that the troops involved were second grade. Above all,the whole bloody affair had originated in a tankman's arrogantconfidence in the ability of his troops to break through"regardless of cost"; had Tal been co nten t to wait fo r the IsraeliAir Force (IAF) to finish its task of destroying the Egyptian AirForce, the planes might well have cleared the way in front of histanks and made the battle much easier if not altogetherunnecessary.

While history was thus busy modifying the accepted picture ofthe battle, warning voices concerning the feasibility of a repeatperformance were also raised. To list but tw o out o f a great manyexamples, there app eared in 1 970 a book (Orgill, 197 0: 256-257)that not only dared to question the future of the tank but also


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went so far as to call Israel's 1967 victory an old-fashionedcampaign. A year later Ferdinand Miksche (197 l) , a well-knownmilitary critic and expert on armor, published an article in whichhe cast doubts on the tank's ability to get through a well-defended front in any future war. Both warnings were registeredin Israel, and a good part of the 1971-1972 (23-26) issues ofBemabrahot Shirjon (Armoured Arrays, the now defunct IsraeliTank Corps Journal) was devoted to discussing them. The tenorof the argument can readily be divined from such titles as "TheGalloping Corpse" and "The Tank, King of the Battlefield"; thus,in spite of m oun ting historical evidence to the contrary andprofessional skepticism abroad, the IDF's belief in the tankphalanx, armored shock, and Blitzkrieg as its ultima mtiopersisted.

Three Essential Elements. Throbe said to have consisted of thr

-..o-m"- ... -..- -... . ...., .- - ..---.principles that has made up the armeimmemorial and will presumably alwaysIf the principles of striking, movilremained constant throughout the fifty-about which something is known, the nthem into practice have undergone immement. To hit their enemies, men inventithe primeval club to the most recent guescape their foes, they em ployed increasiof locomotion from walking to flyingthey began by climbing up a tree andbeing) by enclosing themselves in reinfoplate. In between these extremes of priithe num ber of variations originated has hIn view of the almost unbelievable in;in his endless quest for improved striki

ughout history, all combat canee essential elements, namely,striking power, mobility, and protection. Striking power to hitand incapacitate one's enemy; movement to reach or, if neces-sary, escape him; protection to save oneself from injury while~noace r i n t h ~ t h ~ r wo- i t it thp cnrnbination of these basic

d encounter from timescontinue to do so.~ g , nd protecting haveod d centuries of warfareleans utilized to translatense and horrible develop-id weapons ranging fromided missile. To reach oringly complex techniq ues. To protect themselves,ended up (for the timereed concrete and armornitivism and modernism,been very large indeed.;enuity displayed by maning power, mobility, and

protection, it is surprising that, throughout recorded history, thefundamental methods by which he struck , moved, and protectedhimself have remained not only co nstan t but very few in number.Thus, in order to obtain protection, a body of troops can do oneof two things. It can try to withstand hostile striking power byinterposing some kind of movable screen or armor between itselfand th e enemy ; or it can try to avoid this striking power by eithertaking cover, or remaining dispersed, or keeping in m otion .In the same way, movement on the battlefield can be carriedout in one of two aboriginal forms. To close with its enemy, anarmy may move in a phalanx-a dense, tight formation distin-guished by considerable depth and by the rigidity with which itsindividual members are subordinated to the whole. On the otherend of the scale, troops may move in a loose, thin, and flexibleformation; in the most extreme case this will give rise to aformless swarm of skirmishers and storm parties whose veryessence is the complete absence of any attempt to tie themovements of one man t o those of another.Finally, striking power may also be divided into two basiccategories. Normally, the side enjoying superior strength ornumbers will do its best to close with th e enemy ; this means closecombat weapons, reliance on weight, and shock action. Bycontrast, the weaker party must endeavor to keep the enemy atarm's length; to this end he will trust to devices hurled fro m afar,entailing fire or missile power.

The Master Principle. Since striking, moving, and protectingmake up combat, all historical armed encounters could beclassified as well as described in terms of the dominant methodsused to achieve them. To the extent that war is a series of armedencounters, the general character of any specific war could alsobe defined in the sam e way. To d o so, however, is a comp licatedbusiness, and students of military history have usually tried toavoid it by selecting one of t he three as a "master principle" andconcentrating on the methods used to achieve it. The criteriaaccording to which this selection was made generally hadabsolutely nothing to do with historical method. Thus, Tom


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Wintringham (1943: 21-37) frankly admits that he chose pro-tection for no better reason that "because I am British," thenproceeds to divide history in to "armored" and "unarmored"periods succeeding each other cyclically. Another and greaterwriter (Fuller, 1936a: 2 27-229) did n ot feel his Britishness madehim essentially protective by nature; as the apostle of thatsupreme striking instrument that is the tank, he constructed asystem under which striking power, regarded as the master-principle, was used to divide history into periods based on shockactions as opposed to those based on firepower. In the same way,it should be possible-if, indeed, it has not been done already-todivide all wars according to whether movement on the battlefieldwas carried ou t in close order or in an open on e.That the above-mentioned systems are, taken separately,inadequate is' suggested not only by the fact that combat isnecessarily made up of all three principles, but also because theperiods into which they divide the history of war as a whole areremarkably similar. Battles such as Marathon (490 B.C.), Adri-anople (37 8 A.D.), Pavia (774), Hastings (1066), Crecy (1346),Valmy (1 792), and Cambrai (19 17) , figure prominently in most,if not all, books on military history. This is due, not merely tocoincidence or to the politically decisive results of these battles(as battles, in lac;, many of them were not decisive), but t o theirbeing taken for historical turning points in the sense that theywitnessed a significant and permanent change in the combinationof methods by which the three principles were put into practice.Military history, then , can be divided into p eriods according tothe dominant combination or combinations of methods used tostrike, move, and protect at any given time; a shift from oneperiod to the next is marked by the victory of one combinationover another as manifested by some "decisive battle." Thequestion as to which particular combination is used at each time-->a I - - - - l t - 2 1.. - 1 - - - .>. _1 uch "accidental" factors as thethe enemy against whom one'sore, armed encounters may beh as initial clash, main ac tion, andilling for a different combinationit kind of troop^.^

Behind these factors, which are peculiar to each individualbattlefield, however, there are certain principles governing the

of methods that may be employed. The first ofthese is the need t o pay attention to all three of them, a problemmore difficult by the fact that each can ultimately beincreased only at the expense of the others. To achieve greaterstriking power, a soldier m ay well have to carry a heavier weaponwhich, inevitably, will interfere with his mobility and possiblywith his ability to defend himself. Though individual men maytheoretically possess a greater freedom of movement than a moreor less compact body, they may have to sacrifice part of theirmobility in order to obtain protection by sticking together. Afortress, to give a final example, is basically nothing b ut a form ofprotection carried so far as to sacrifice virtually all possibility ofmovement. An army's ability to select a particular means ofstriking, moving, and protecting is thus limited by the need topay attention to the other two principles; failure to do so is tocourt disaster.Secondly, a close look at the history of war suggests that thevarious methods by which men have sought to achieve strikingpower, mobility, and protection are positively interrelated. In allages and regardless of the state of technology, reliance on shockaction for striking has meant armor for protection and a closeorder in movement. The use of fire as the main method forhitting one's enemy , on the oth er hand, invariably led to armorbeing diminished or even discarded in favor of either cover, ordispersion, or fast movement. If shock action necessarily entailsmobility in order to close with one's foe, firepower has oftenparalyzed movement on the battlefield and sometimes ended upby also eliminating the possibility of strategic movement fromone battlefield to another. Thus, a tactical or technologicalinnovation leading to a change in the methods used to achieveany one principle was invariably followed ':y correspondingchanges in the methods used to achieve the other two, although,armies being "temples of ancestor worship" (Basil Liddell Hart),the change often took a long time and a string of terrible defeatsto materialize.'


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Since the number of methods utilized to carry out the basicprinciples of combat is so small, and as even this small numbershows a definite tenden cy to appear only in certain combinationsand not in others, it should come as no surprise that the pattern sof warfare have often repeated themselves throughout the ages.Thus, for example, there is a clear resemblance between theclashes of medieval knights and modern tank warfare becauseboth rely on shock action for striking (even when, in the case ofthe tank, the shock action is produced by firepower weapons, aseemingly paradoxical statement the meaning of which will bemade clear below), armor for protection, and a comparativelyclose order while moving at high speed.6 The Swiss pikeformation of the fourteen th and fifte enth centuries bore a strongresemblance to the Macedonian phalanx; both employed a singletremendous shock for striking, an extremely close order inmovement, and armor for protection (to be exact, it should beadded that the two form ations differed in that th e Swiss were lessready to sacrifice speed for armor). Both were eventuallyovercome by troops wearing heavier arm or, relying on a series ofsmall shocks for striking, and moving in a somew hat more flexibleorder-the Roman legions and the Spanish sword-and-bucklermen.' Given this tendency of the forms of war to repeatthemselves, it is possible to foresee the future results of anydevelopment in the methods employed to carry through one ofthe three basic principles with some degree of certainty .Needless to say, these results are not limited to the effects ofthe three principles on each other. Rather, they extend to otheraspects of the m ilitary art; weapons necessarily affect tactics andthese have often determined strategy. Furthermore, the shiftfrom one combination to another affects the relationshipbetween defense and offense, attrition and annihilation; indi-rectly, it also influences the relationship between strategy8 andthe w ider aspects of policy. While it would be too much to claimthat all these factors repeat themselves cyclically, there are, Ibelieve, certain m ore general trends associated with each kind ofperiod as determined by the particular combination of methodsfor striking, moving, and protecting em ployed.

Two im portant reservations should be m ade here. First, termssuch as "close com bat," "long range," a "close order," or a"flexible formation" are relative. Compared to the long-rangeartillery duels of the e arly years of World War I , tank warfare as itdeveloped after 1917 was carried out at close quarters, althoughthis did not of co urse entail a reversion to medieval hand-to-hand~ o m b a t . ~imilarly, the armored phalanxes that broke throughthe opposing lines in Poland, F rance, and Russia during the earlyyears of World War I1 were much more tightly grouped than, say,the lines of skirmishers that fought the wars of the latenineteenth century , although they were far from being as closelypacked as the original Macedonian phalanx. Thus, though periodsof close and long-range combat, rigid formations and flexibleones, succeed each other cyclically, history as a whole shows adefinite tendency toward longer and longer ranges and looser andlooser formations.Second, it should be noted that most historical periods were,in fact, times of transition in the sense that reliance for striking,moving, and protecting was placed not on any single metho d buton a combination of several ones. Since the number of "acci-dental" factors that has t o be considered when determining themethods to be used is very large, commanders of all ages havestriven to build-balance is the correct word-their forces in sucha way as to enable them to adapt to circumstances in the sense ofemploying more than one combination of methods. This bal-ancing may be achieved in one of two ways: either by trainingand arming each individual soldier in such a mann er as to enablehim to meet the maximum n umber of contingencies, or bydividing the force into arms, each employing one particularcombination of methods to suit one particular task or set ofcircumstances. Thus, the Greek hoplites-heavy infantry usingshock for striking, armor for protection, and a close order inmovement-were sometimes accompanied by peltasts, or lighttroops, relying on firepower (bows and arrows, slings, javelins) forstriking, light or no armor for protection, and a loose order inmovement (see Adcock, 1957: 14-29). To give another example,bot h Napoleon's infantry and his cavalry fell into "light" and


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"heavy" types distinguished by the different methods they usedto hit, move, and protect themselves (see Chandler, 1966:332-336). Given the fact that each o f these arms will be at its bestunder one particular set of circumstances, victory may often tu rnon the correct selection of their proportion to each other.In actual fac t, due to the above considerations, armies relyingexclusively on any on e method to carry through each of the threeprinciples have been comparatively rare, though not unknown,and were usually beaten by troops relying on several suchcombination^.'^ This is an important point, for it serves toremind us that the above discussion is no more than an attemptto create a co nceptual framework by listing the extremes of eachmethod used; practice, by contrast, has usually hovered betweenthose extremes or, alternatively, combined them.King Tank. Having come so far. we can now turn our mindsback to the Yom Kippur War. Following its 1967 victory, Israel

entered that war with a military doctrine centering around a firmbelief in one particular combination of methods for carrying outthe basic principles of com bat. Technically, this belief found itssymbol in "The Tank, King of the Battlefield"; tactically, it couldbe summed up by awe-inspiring shock, "armored shock," carriedout by a mighty phalanx of armored fighting vehicles; strategi-cally, it was expected to pierce the enemy front and lead toanother Blitzkrieg shorter even than the Six Days' War. How didthese beliefs emerge out of the fog of war? Assuming that historycan be divided into periods according to the dominant methodsused for carrying out the three basic principles of combat, has ashift taken place? And if so, what is the significance of this forthe future? These are the questions that, on the basis of apreliminary examination of the course of events, the presentstudy will try to answer.

11.THEWAR IN OUTLINE

coking down upon the Sinai desert on the evening ofL O c t o b e r 7 , 1973, an airborne observer trained to think interms of "classic" armored warfare-the kind of campaign thathad won Israel her lightning victory in the very same area only sixyears earlier-would scarcely have believed his eyes. What wasgoing on below had little to do with that kind of war; nor did it

have much in common with war as envisaged by Egypt'spresumed Soviet mentors or, for that matter, with most kinds ofwar as it has been waged during the last 50-odd years.' 'Perhaps the biggest surprise of all was the composition of theforce that had crossed the Suez Canal since the war began 36hours earlier. Normally, one would expect a small number ofspecialist troops t o star t th e crossing, to be followed by n o moreinfantry than are needed to more or less secure the initialbridgeheads. Next, it would be the task of the armored troops toextend those bridgeheads as rapidly as possible, with motorizedinfantry and artillery following up in order to eliminate suchresistance as may have escaped the atten tion of the tanks, and toconsolidate the latter's gains.In fa ct, nothing o f this kind took place. The elite sapper unitsthat had first crossed the Canal and pierced the embankmentprotecting the Israeli side were not followed by any significantquantity of armor but by huge masses of infantry on foot, andthen more of the same-com ing o n "like ants,"' until there weresome 70,000 of them , divided between two armies1 whosejunction line was just north of the Great Bitter Lake. Only at a


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later stage-four or five days after the initial crossings-was theinfantry reinforced by strong armored tanks, while such tanks ashad accompanied the infantry were used to reduce strongholdsrather than to spearhead the advance. In any case, much of theEgyptian tank forces, numbering approximately 2,000 vehicles,'remained on the west side of the Canal right up to the end of thewar.Tactically and strategically, the Egyptian stroke was alsounorthodox. Disregarding most precedents, General AhmedIsmail's troops did not concentrate their blows against a fewselected points; rather, app arently in the hope of forcing the IAFto disperse its efforts, they threw their bridges over the 100-mileCanal along its entire length from Port Said to Suez. Havinggained a foothold on the eastern bank and having overcome orisolated the Israeli strongholds on the water line, they did not tryto advance much deeper in to the Sinai; instead of thrustingeastward with open flanks, as Soviet military doctrine woulddictate, they flexed their elbows north and south in order toeliminate any gaps and make their bridgehead continuous. Onlyat a later stage did they start a drive eastward, but even so it was aslow, methodical affair making little use of speed or maneuverand seemingly more concerned with securing its own flanks thanwith seizing as large a part of the Sinai as possible before theIsraeli reserves, streaming westward all over the northern half1of the Peninsula, arrived to contain them.I6 By the end of thesecond da y, the Egyptians had still no t advanced more than six toten miles inland from the Canal-a surprising fact, for lack ofcoordination had caused the initial counterattacks mounted bysuch regular forces as Israel kept in the Sinai to fail and there waslittle t o prevent the victorious Egyptians from penetrating fur theron.'The air force, that instrument par excellence of all modemattackers, was conspicuous only by its absence. In 19 39 and againin 194 0 and 1 941 , the German s opened their offensives againstPoland, France, and the Soviet Union with a shattering air strike;so did the Japanese at Pearl H arbor an d, of course, the Israelis in1967. These and other experiences led to the almost universal

belief, fully shared by the Israeli Intelligence Service (see theAgranat Inquiry Commission's Report, 1974), that no large-scaleoffensive could succeed in face of enemy superiority in the air.The Egyptians, however, proved the contrary by crossing theCanal with no kind of air cover except that provided by grounddefenses; they did, to be sure, drop some bombs on the Bar LevLine and on targets farther to the rear, but on the whole the600-plane Egyptian air force remained remarkably inactive.I8Not so the hitherto invincible IAF, whoseF 4 Phantoms and A 4Skyhawks are reported to have gone into action within 26minutes of the initial crossings but whose desperate attempts todestroy the bridges thrown over the Canal were being frustratedby th e murderous fire of antiaircraft missiles and, when they triedto avoid those by flying at low altitudes, by that of four-barrelledZSU-23 cannon spitting out ammunition at the rate of 4,000rounds a minute.Against the Egyptian advance, the Israelis had only very

inadequate forces immediately available. The Bar Lev Line,consisting of 3 5 strongholds on the water line and another 12 orso some miles to th e rear, was manned by on ly 25 percent o f thepersonnel f or which it had been designed and may even have beenin the process of a last minute evacuation.19 Two armoredbrigades-with perhaps 280 tanks all told-were stationed at BirGafgafa, some 50 miles to the rear, and thus too k several hours tocome into action." Once comm itted, they failed to concen tratetheir efforts but operated in penny packets all along the front,their task being made more difficult by the fact that the eastern(Israeli) bank of the Canal was dominated by the massive earthenramparts erected on the western side.21 By the evening ofSunday, October 7, the Bar Lev Line had been overrun and theforces supporting it reduced to a fraction of their originalstrength.The biggest surprise of all, however, was still to come. True,the initial counterattacks had failed; nevertheless, the GOCSou th, Major General Shrnuel Gonen, could still console himselfwith the hope that, once Israel's reserves came into action, theircounterattack would wipe the Egyptians clean off the map. By

- -p-pp


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14

the morning of October 8, these forces had arrived and weredeploying; the Israelis, as one soldier put it to me, expected thearmored charges to go "like a knife through butter." So great wastheir confidence that the tankrnen were frankly nonplussed bythe fa ct tha t the Egyptian infantry, instead of running at the firstsight of armor (as foot soldiers have been expected to do eversince Hitler's Panzers knifed through the Polish army in 1939)stood fast and held their ground (Insight Team, 1973).This fact,however, did not cause them to halt and think, as perhaps itshould have. Blindly, as it seems now, they charged forward, w iththe result that when the smoke cleared the attacking forces hadbeen smashed to bits by a hail of antitank missile^.'^ Here, plainfor all to see, was a historic turning point; the tank, a shockweapon par excellence that had stood out as the very symbol ofarmed m ight du rine the last 50 years, had finally met its match inthe form of a novel device based on f ir e~ ow er .~

Slugging Match on the Golan Heights. Meanwhile, on theGolan Heights, the picture was not dissimilar although the roleswere to some ex tent reversed. The Syrians, unlike their Egyptianbrethren, adhered fairly closely to the Soviet military doctrinethat envisages conventional war in terms of a super Blitzkrieg;accordingly, they did not spread out their forces in a clear anddeliberate advance but instead tried to engage in mobile warfareand engage a classic four-pronged pincer movement. Eighthundred tanks and 28,000 mechanized infantry advanced acrossterrain in parade ground fashion; shortly, however, they ran intotrouble in the face of ferocious Israeli resistance. Though heavilyoutnumbered, the Israelis used such armor as they had immedi-ately available to the best effect, shooting from preparedpositions and weaving interlocking fields of fire. By sheer weightof numbers, the Syrians broke through; nevertheless, theyapparently suffered such heavy casualties that, on the second day ,they modified their tactics and tried to imitate the Egyptians byadvancing in line abreast. I n doing so they ran afoul of the IsraeliAir Force, which was by now almost the only effective forcedefending the Golan and whose planes, though losing heavily to

\antiaircraft fire, flew in low from the south over Jordanianterritory and took them in the flank.By Monday morning, the Israeli reserves were beginning toarrive in force whereas the Syrians, despite an initial five to onesuperiority in tanks and an even greater advantage in infantry andantitank weap ons, had still not advanced more than ten miles intothe ~ o l a n . ~ ~ere, as in the Sinai, the lesson was clear. On bot hfronts, the attempts of both sides to use armor for shock in orderto achieve a tactical breakthrough followed by strategic pene-tration into the rear had failed in front of troops relying onfirepower. In the Sinai, that firepower had been produced-albeitat an enormou s cost in human lives-by infantry carrying guidedweapons; in the Golan, given the fact that Israel lacked anysignificant quantity of antitank weapon^,^ ' he tanks themselveshad served in the role of antitank guns.From Monday onward, fighting on the Golan Heights devel-oped into a confused slugging match, "stalking warfare" that gavelittle scope to strategy o r even grand tactics in the usual sense. Onneither side was there much attempt to gain an advantage bymaneuver; instead, there took place a shooting match that theIsraelis, being much the better shots?6 were apt to win. By th eend o f the week they were clearly doing just th at; Israelimechanized infantry, covered by artillery and tanks and stronglysupported from the air? " was on its way to Damascus. TheSyrians had lost abo ut 1,000 tanks,'* including those that hadbeen sent in on Thursday, October 11, in a desperate counter-attack. The war, how ever, differed from the previous ones in thatmany of those tanks had been destroyed in combat, and onlycomparatively few were aban doned by crews as a result of findingthemselves isolated miles behind the front. It was a victory, agreat one even; still, in the words of one Israeli commander(quoted by Insight Team. 1973: 102). it had not been "our sortof war." In particular, the predominance of firepower on thebattlefield had restricted tactical maneuver, and consequently noquick or elegant victories were won. Instead, it had been a brutalwar of attrition;a materkz/schlacht on a huge scale that left bothsides bruised and bleeding.


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In this war, there had been little or no attempt at strategicmaneuver; an army such as the IDF, which has traditionally (atany rate, until 1967) relied on finesse and the "indirectapproach" to achieve its ends, could perhaps have been expectedto devise a better means to gain victory than launching a purelyfrontal attack along the shortest, but also topographically mostdifficult, road to Damascus. Whether or not a more indirectapproach, such as an advance on the extreme southern flankbetween Syria and Jordan with an ey e to encircling the Syrianarmy:9 was possib le and would have produ ced better results isstill a moot point and will not be known for certain until theIsraeli (and Syrian) archives are opened, that is ad KalendasGrecas. As it was, G eneral David Elazar (1973) had p romised "tobreak their bones"; he ended up by doing just tha t, although theprocess remained incomplete and resulted in not a few bonesbeing broken on the Israeli side, too.More disturbing even than the lack of finesse in the IDF'soperational conduct of the war against Syria was the apparentabsence of a coheren t strategy. The Israeli decision to tackle Syriafirst, apparently made early in if not before the war, resultedfrom th e proximity of the fighting to her centers of populationand was also designed to deter Jordan from entering the war (seeDayan, 1974b ); as such, it was fundamentally corre ct. However,the question remains why the Israelis went over to the offensiveafter having repulsed the S yrian offensive. Given the nature anddirection of the advance they can hardly have hoped to deliver aknock-out blow; nor, it must have been clear, would politicalconsiderations allow them to enter Damascus. Granted that nodecisive victory could reasonably be expected to follow from anadvance into Syria, its only justification was presumably the wishto break as many Syrian (and Iraqi, and Jordanian) bones aspossible; an aim which, it cannot be denied, was admirablycarried out.

Stalemate in the Sinai. While the two sides were engaged intheir slugging match in Syria, something of a stalemate haddeveloped in the Sinai. Having suffered a material and psycho-

logical shock, Israel launched no further counterattacks todislodge the E gyptian footh old on the Canal; the arrival onWednesday of former COS Haim Bar Lev to take over commandalso heralded a new and chastened mood. The Egyptians on theirside seemed content with their initial gains and waged acomparatively low-keyed war of attrition, advancing their in-fantry in small leaps at night and mopping up such centers ofresistance as had not fallen to the first assault. Had Anwar Sadataccepted the cease fire proposed to him by Henry Kissinger onOctober 12 , the war would have ended in a clearcut, if limited,Egyptian victory. However, apparently in the hope of drawingmore blood by enticing the Israelis to renew their coun terat tacks,the Egy ptian President refused. By this time, too, he may havefelt obliged to do something in order to help his hard-pressedSyrian allies.

Having spent Friday a nd Saturd ay passing their armor over theCanal, the Egyptians attacked on the morning of Sunday,October 14. Their exact objectives are still obscure; in allprobability, Sadat did no t trust t o his army's ability to meet theIsraelis in a mobile encounter in the open desert far from theCanal, for such an encounter would require much more speed,coordination, and individual initiative than the Egyptian soldierhad hitherto displayed. Even if successful, moreover, advancingdeeper into the Sinai would have drawn the army away from thecover provided by the semipermanent antiaircraft m issile bases onthe west side of the Canal,30 thus exposing it to annihilationfrom the sky. Instead of trying to achieve a deep and rapidbreakthrough at one or two selected points, therefore, theEgyptian advance was a rather slow, deliberate affair with thepace of the armor tied to tha t of the infantry and extending alonga great part of the front. The results were, perhaps, predictable.The IAF was active all over the battlefield, and highly effective.Using their tanks as antitank guns and exploiting their superiorshooting to the full on the ground and in the air, the Israelisinflicted a terrible defeat o n the Egyptians, with whole battalionsbeing picked off withou t a single Israeli tank hit. By midday, with264 Egyptian tanks burning all over the battlefield,31 the


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offensive power of their arm y was broken fo r the duration of thewar.Bridging the Canal. Exactly when the Israeli decision to crossthe Canal was made we do not know. Such a move had certainlybeen prepared for insofar as the necessary bridging equipment had

b ee n de sig ne d a nd m a n ~ f a c t u r e d ; ~ ~ccording to some sources,the IDF was in a position to put it in effect on the evening ofMonday, October 8, when one of its armored battalions hadreached the Canal through a gap in the Egyptian lines. Whetherdeliberately or not, however, its advance was not followed up.Bridging equipment must have been on its way on October 11,and it is probable that the actual crossing was delayed by theEgyptian attack on the 14t h. The final decision to move musttherefore have been made between the repulse of that attack andnoon, October 15.The man selected to carry out this extremely audacious movewas Major-General Ariel Sharon, a flamboyant infantryman andparatrooper who had gained his experience while commandingborder raids in the 1950 s and as a divisional commander in 1967.Initially, he had luck on his side: his advance brigades found aweakly held gap between the Egyptian Second and Third Armiesat the projected crossing point (see Sharon, 197 3). Hence,reaching the Canal proved a comparatively easy task; a forceattempting to extend the access wedges to the north, however,ran into stiff opposition in the area known as the "Chinese~ a r r n . " ~ ~ere took place one of the toughest battles of the waras the Egyptian Second A rmy drove down t o close the corridor tothe Canal and had to be kept off by successive waves of tank s andparatroopers fighting a confused battle with little coordinationand less control. In the meantime a single battle brigade wasacross the water. The battle lasted for two days and the night inbetween; it was not until October 18 that the corridor was finallywidened and secured.When they reached th e Canal, the Israelis had faced the choiceof either rolling up the flanks of the two Egyptian Armies to theleft and th e right or taking the bolder course of crossing the Canal

and launching an attack from the rear. The resistance put up bythe Second Army to the attempts to extend the corridornorthward, as well as the urgent need t o reduce losses in the airby knocking out the antiaircraft missiles on the west bank, led topursual of the second course if, indeed, the first one had beenconsidered at all. During the night of October 1 5-16, when theadvance force had paddled across the Canal, it had met initiallywith no opposition whatsoever.On the m orning of Octo ber 16 , the Israelis had begun to passtanks over the Canal by means of heavy motorized rafts. By thistime, the local Egyptian command-though apparently not thecentral authorities in Cairo, who remained blissfully ignorant ofwhat was taking place34-had awakened to the Israeli move, sothat the crossing of the tanks, as well as the subsequentbridge-laying, was subjected to heavy artillery fire. On the westbank, meanwhile, an impatient Sharon defied rather cautiousorders and se nt the few tanks he had available to mount raids allaround the initial bridghead. Meeting at first with practically noopposition, they roamed more or less at will and destroyed anumber of antiaircraft missile batteries-the first hole to bepunched in Egypt's air defenses since the beginning of the war.Sharon's direct su perior, however, a chastened Gon en, orderedhim to pull his forces back and refused reinforcements until thebattle of the Chinese Farm was over and the Israeli corridor tothe east bank of the Canal was secured some 48 hours later . Thisdelay, Sharon subsequently claimed, resulted in Israel throwingaway the prospect of a full and complete victory.By Wednesday, October 17, the Egyptian General Staff hadbelatedly realized the danger threatening its armies. They startedwithdrawing some armor from the east side of the Canal, butwere hampered in this by the fact that the direction of the mainIsraeli effort west of it was still unknown.35 The Israeli AirForce, moreover , had now la rgely completed i ts tasks in ~ y r i a ~ ~and, aided by Sharon's forces, who were shooting up the missilesites, gradually recovered its freedom of action. The Egyptianattempt to meet this threat by finally activating their air forceresulted in numerous dogfights in which the Egyptians were


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invariably the losers; the extent of their despair can be gaugedfrom the fact that many of their planes, flying very low, wereshot down by Israeli small arms fire. Under the cover of amurderous bombardment, the Israeli advance slowly gatheredmomentum and became more pronouncedly directed toward thesouth, toward the encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army.Sharon's force, meanwhile, moved north. By Six Days' Warstandards, however, the pace of even this flamboyant commanderremained slow and cautious to the end. O n the west bank of theCanal, there were no elegant victories, only a methodical, brutalpounding by some 300 anks and perhaps 30,000 ther troops.Not daring to send their armo r far forward, the Israelis advanced,as they had don e on the Syrian fron t, mainly with mechanizedinfantry, supported by tanks and artillery. The IDF's superiorshooting was exploited t o the full with every attempt being madeto take u p such positions as to compel the Egyptians to attack.Only toward thevery end, on October 23rd and 24th, didprogress become noticeably faster; but at that time, a UnitedNations cease-fire had already been proclaimed.

III.THE LESSONS

s rprise aside, Israel's generals won the Six Days War bysuperior mobility, both tactical and strategic; six yearslater, her rank and file won the Yo m Kippur War-if won itwas-by superior shooting. In th e first case, a quick and elegantvictory was achieved by the swift thrust of a rapier that moved,pierced, outflanked, and cut off; in the second, a bloody butincomplete triumph was obtained by the heavy pounding of abludgeon that smashed, crushed, and destroyed. At the sametime, shock had lost in im portance as against firepower; maneuveras against attritio n; and q uality as against quan tity. The re sult wasnot m erely a different war but a new type of warfare.This, however, is putting things in a nutshell. In order todiscuss the implications of the Yom Kippur War more fully weshall assume, as we did in the introduction to this study, thatwhile "accidental" factors connected with time and place domuch to mold the peculiarities of each specific conflict, its placein the more general history of w arfare is dictated, broadly, by th enature of the technical means employed. Weapons determinetactics-that is the character of the battlefield; while tactics intheir turn d etermine strategy-that is the character of war. Weshall therefore start our discussion by considering weapons,passing on to tactics, and from there to strategy. True, thisprocedure is not an ideal one. In some cases, the distinctionbetween the three stages may become blurred. Also, sinceadditional "accidental" factors must enter the picture at eachsuccessive stage, the discussion will of need become more and


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more general; imagination must play its part. While a precisedescrintion of the next war can hardly be expected, one can atleast make an informed guess about some of its outstandingcharacteristics.

The WeaponsAny discussion of the lessons of the Yom Kippur War in

relation to the future development of arms must obviously startwith an examination of that centerpiece of the modern battle, thetank. Following the reserves inflicted on the "best tankmen in the

' world"-as the Israelis were som etim es called-observers w ritingimmediately after th e war were inclined to write off the tank as aweapon doomed to disappearance (see Sm art, 1973). The YomKippur War, and especially the events of October 8, werecompared to the battle of Crecy in 1 346 A.D.: just as the Englishlongbow overcame the armored knight, it was claimed, so theantitank missile was about to blast the tank off the battlefieldand thereby open a new epoch in warfare. While the fundamentalthought underlying the comparison may be sound, it is over-simplified even in its own terms: it overlooks the fact tha t knightsin armor did survive on the battlefields of Europe for some 200years after Crecy-indeed, that they did so for a periodconsiderably longer than that of the longbow itself.The tank was invented some sixty years ago specifically tocope with that fundamental problem, namely survival on amodern fire-swept battlefield that had already become too hotfor any o ther arm (see Fuller, 1945 : 139 ff.). Alone among theweapon systems of the time, it could withstand, and not merelyavoid, hostile fire ; hence tank s were able to reintroduc e shockaction into warfare, an advantage that proved sufficiently greatfor them to play a crucial role in the last years of World War I.The earlv tanks were slow, cumbrous engines, but when tech---.nological progress enabled their h itting and receiving power to becombined with mobility, unheard-of possibilities resulted. Anti-tank weapons were invented almost immediately, but they lagged

behind the tank in mobility and protection; furthermore, -sincetheir ability to penetrate armor depended on high velocityprojectiles and a heavy punch-most easily built into a heavyvehicle-the tank held an advantage tha t made it into its ownmost dangerous enemy. It was not until the invention, in the lastyears of World War 11, of an armor-piercing warhead notdependent on a heavy punch-the hollow charge-that antita nkweapons could be made sufficiently light to be used byinfantrymen; and even then it took another quarter of a centuryto perfect carrying and aiming devices so as to make their useany th ing bu t ~u ic ida l .~ 'The result was that, while the tank'smobility and striking power were not seriously put in question bythe Yom Kip pur War,38 its ability to protec t itself-the veryquality fo r which it was originally designed-was pu t in do ub t byAhmed Ismail's infantrymen. - .

The Future of Armor. Fundamentally, there are two ways tosolve this problem. First, armor may be increased; second,low-density armor may be used. The difficulty, however, is thatthe type s of armor-either spaced or consisting of a low densityplastic coat-that will afford protection against the hollow chargewill not do the same for conventional armor-piercing missiles.This is a baffling dilemma that has not so far been resolved.Whatever the solution ultimately adopted, the addition of morearmor can hardly be achieved without some loss of mobility; andeven if this loss can be compensated for by stronger engines,strategic mobility will certainly be diminished. F or reasons to bediscussed later, how ever, precisely such mobility is likely t o be ofcrucial importance in the future. Thus, the problem remains.More attractive at first sight is an approach that would aim atenabling the tank to avoid, instead of withstand, the threatpresented by hostile firepower. TO his purpose, tanks must eitherbe m ade smaller-so as to present more difficult targets-orsufficiently m obile to enable them t o take evasive action and usecover. The first approach has been adop ted by the Sw edes and ledto the development of the Strv-103 turretless tanks; the secondlies behind the German Leopard and the French AMX-30. Both


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have their drawbacks. Some of the advantages of giving up theturret-notably smaller size and a reduced crew-are likely to belost again by the need to have secondary armament, a need that,given the new pow er o f the infan try as well as the aircraft threat,will certainly prove even more important in the future. Otherthings equal, lighter vehicles are inherently less capable ofdelivering a heavy punch. Thus, the baby is in danger of beingthrown ou t with the water.This brings us to the armament of future tanks.39 Here, thewar has highlighted the issue of guns versus guided missiles. Thegreatest advantages of the missiles are their accuracy at long rangeand, above all, their ability to give great striking power to acomparatively light vehicle. Their drawbacks are equally obvious;except as a means o f engaging the most difficult targets, missilesare impossibly expensive. Their bulk means that only a few canbe carried, while the need of present-generation equipment to beoptically guided to its target prevents the tank from taking coverfor a few seconds after firing. Given these difficulties, togetherwith t he gun's ability to fire a variety of different types ofamm unition, it seems that tank-guns are not on their way to thescrap-yard. The ultimate so lution , if any , is difficult to envisage atthis date. It has been suggested that fin-stabilized ammunitionmay increase the propo rtion o f a shell's length t o its diameter andthus give be tter armor-piercing qualities, making possible the firstreduction of gun calibers since the invention of the tank.Alternatively, one may envisage a dual purpose system on thelines of the American Shillalegh, capable of firing both missilesfor long-range antitank work and ballistic ammunition for mostoth er purposes. In bo th cases, smaller, lighter, more maneuverablevehicles could result.One aspect of tank armament that will certainly have toundergo improvem ent is tha t of range-finding and directingsystems. The excellent Israeli shooting that did so much to shapethe Y om K ippur War was due, to a large ext ent , to the equipm entof Israeli tanks with superior range-finding equipm ent. Still, ascompared to the electronic marvels incorporated in modemaircraft, tanks are rather primitive in this respect-a fact tha t

worked in favor of the IDF by enabling it to bring its superiorquality to bear. As to the futu re, the greatest promise seems to liein systems integrating lasers and computers such as the Belgian-made COBELDA; such systems should be able not merely to findthe range but also to compensate for wind , barrel wear, and tur rettraverse. The result will be to make tanks simpler to operate; onthe other hand, maintenance problems are going to be com-pounded. Cost will also rise.The Future of Artillery. If the tank is a weapon th at, given theterrain, bo th sides in th e Middle East have always made extensive

use of, artillery by contrast has been strongly emphasized by theArabs while suffering from comparative neglect in Israel. Thisneglect is readily understandable from Israel's traditional relianceon mobile, quick-moving warfare; the weight and bulk associatedwith artillery-from the catapult onward-have always tended tomake it turn out to best advantage under conditions of more orless static warfare. H istorically, guns first became really im portan tduring the siege-warfare of the fifteenth c entur y, but 400 years ofdevelopment had to pass until they could be made sufficientlymobile to enable them, in Napoleon's words, to "decide the fateof nations." Even then, however, they were soon outstr ipped bythe more rapid evolution of small arms whose fire dominated thebattlefields from the middle of the nineteenth century onward. Itwas only when this fire ended up by virtually paralyzing alltactical movement that artillery really came into its own; underthe siege-like conditions of World War I it became the dom inant,all-powerful arm t o which all others were mere appendages. Sincethen, however, the advent of armor has not only led to the tanks,taking over some of the functions traditionally associated withartillery but also eroded the importance of artillery by restoringtactical mobility. It is no accide nt, therefore, that artillery figuresleast in those military doctrines putting the greatest emphasis onspeed and m obility, namely the German B litzkrieg technique and ,to some extent, present-day Soviet doctrine that has led toconventional guns being largely replaced by short- and medium-range ballistic missiles for use against the rear, rather than thefront, of the opposing forces.


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Insofar as the Yom Kippur War has shown the limits ofarmored mobility, however, and also because it witnessed asignificant reverse inflicted on the fighter bomber, artillery is verylikely to rise in importance in the near future. While this muchseems certain, the war has done lit t le to answer the question ofwhich kind of artil lery is preferable. Should guns be moun ted onwheels and drawn by m otor vehicles, as they are o n Soviet fieldmodels? Or should they be mounted on tracks and made fullyindependent, as American ones are? No definite answer can begiven. In the past, the advantages of the first approach-simplicityand relative cheapness, making possible mass use-have beencontrasted with those of the second, the ability of the guns toaccompany the tanks on their tactical missions. The Yom Kippu rWar has modified these co nsider ations insofar as it gave reason t othink that tactical movement on the battlefields of the futur e willbecome slower, rather than faster; on the other hand, there standthe benefits the Israelis derived from their guns' ability to rapidlychange their positions and thus escape the counterbattery fire ofthe overwhelmingly numerous Arab batteries. While this kind of"jumping" from cover to cover will presumab ly become moreimp orta nt in the future-especially if, as has been suggested,artillery is going to be equipped with laser-based target-desig-nation systems-it is also imperative to balance tactical againststrategic mobility. Exactly how all these conflicting demands aregoing to be m et I ca nnot presume to say. Be this as it may, therecan be lit t le doubt but that the star of the artillery is on theascendant and that i t is about t o resume a more importan t rolethan has been the case at any time since the end of World War I.

The Armored Personnel Gzmeer.The next weapon with whichwe have to deal is the Armored Personnel Carrier (APC).Originally, the tank itself was nothing but an APC; its task was toget men a nd weap ons across no-man's land and into enemy lines,not t o engage others of its own kind. "The tank of today carriesforward the rifleman of the future" (Fuller, 1936b: 129);expected to help overcome Held fortifications, the early tankswere armed, logically enough, with machine guns to deal with

enemy infantry. Only at a later date did it become clear that thetank was its own worst enemy; this, together with the tendencyto make tanks operate independently ahead of the rest of thearmy , led t o an overspecialization no t unlike th at of the medievalknight and to a gradual loss of the tank's ab ility to defend itselfagainst well-armed and dete rmined infa ntry . The tank's over-specialization made it necessary for it to be closely supported byinfantry, which could be done only if infantry were providedwith vehicles possessing cross-country capability comparable tothat of the tanks themselves; hence the half-tracks used by manyarmies in World War 11. The infantry, however, had to dismountin order to go into action and it was at this point that theybecame vulnerable to artillery; it was only the IDF's weakness inthis arm: com bined with the Arabs' indifference to casualties,that allowed the Egyptians in particular to operate as they did.Rather than pointing to any increase in the relative importance o ffoot soldiers, therefore, the Yom Kippur War demonstrates theneed to put the infantry behind some kind of armor plate.To do this, a number of different vehicles have beendeveloped. On one hand there are the American and British "tinbox" APCs built to bring troops to the battlefield; on the other,the German (Marder) an d Soviet BMP Infantry Fighting Vehicles(IFV) are designed to participate in the action itself. While itwould clearly be impossible to point to any one method ascorrect under all circumstances there can be n o dou bt but thatthe Yom Kippur War proved, if proof were needed, theadvantages of fighting mo unte d; this, even in the case of vehiclesthat, l ike the American M-113, were not primarily designed forthis task. In any case, even an APC not designed for mountedaction should have weapons for close support; the day of theunarmed b attlefield "taxi" is definitely over.

Since action against enemy infantry and close support must bethe IFV's first task, i t should be mounted with machine guns,grenade launchers and possibly flame throwers. At the sametime, it must have some kind of fighting chance against enemytanks-and to this purpose a recoilless rifle shoo ting HE AT shellswould be suitable. T o hit targets farther aw ay, antitank missiles


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could also be carried, though their number must necessarily bestrictly limited. The present-day vehicle that comes closest tofulfilling these deman ds is the Soviet-built BMP-76, probably thebest o f its kind in the world (though like othe r Russian AFVs it isimpossibly cramped). If the Yom Kippur War has provedanything , it is the need for th e West to have a similar vehicle, andsoon.As IFVs are furnished w ith increasingly powerful armam ent,they will presumably ten d t o grow heavier. As tanks increase theirsecondary armam ent, and also come to rely on m ovement ratherthan armor for protection, they will tend to resemble IFVs. Theultimate result, though this is still some way off, may very well bea fusion of the tw o types of weapons-a process not unlike tha twhich, following the invention of the bayonet in the lateseventeenth century, enabled the individual foot-soldier to useboth shock and fire and thus eliminated the need for two separatecategories of troops armed with pike and musket respectively.The form of such a vehicle, which would enormously facilitatethe problems of tactical coordin ation, can scarcely be imagined atpresent. It will, presumably, be heavier than present day IFVs,possess very high maneuverability combined with a low silhou-ette, and be armed with a very high velocity gun of relativelysmall caliber. Thus i t will be able to carry a considerable quan tityof am munition and, when applied to a comparatively light vehicledesigned principally to fight against large numbers of its ownkind, would be p referable to the bulk associated with guidedmissiles.

The Antitank Missile. This, in turn, brings us to the future ofthe antitank missile, which surely deserves to stand out as thesymbol of the Yom Kippur War. Though highly effective andsimple to operate, these missiles are not without their defects.Most of th em, including the Sagger itself, must be "gathered" ontarget, a process that takes several seconds and makes themuseless at short range. All have to be guided, whether m anually o roptically, to their targets, thus exposing their operators to fire. Atbest, only one m issile and targeting device can be carried by each

soldier-and in most cases two or three are needed to fire just o ne"round." All these factors tend to make the missile a ratherwasteful weapon, liable to be extremely expensive in numbers-the Syrians and Egyptians probably fired dozens of missiles forevery tank pu t ou t of action-and in hum an casualties. Theo-retically, it should perhaps be possible to overcome thesedifficulties by building missiles capable of independently identi-fying and following their targets (as several air-to-air andair-to-surface missiles already do) but the cost of using suchdevices against anything but the most important targets would beprohibitive. Perhaps the best guess for the near future would be asystem such as the British Swingfire, which, by allowing theoperator to control the missile while staying under cover as muchas 50meters a way, increases his safety.As things stand at present, operating antitan k missiles depends. on stealth; consequently, they are eminently suited for thedefense but mu ch less so for the atta ck. This is likely to remain sofor some time to come; though the missiles can readily bemounted atop vehicles, they will, as we have seen, complementrather than replace the gun of the AFV (Armored FightingVehicle) of the future. There is, however, another engine forwhich these missiles seem ideally suitable, namely the attackhelicopter; equipped with, for example, American TOW missiles,the attack helicopter could develop into a real "tank killer." Inthe Yom Kippur War, neither side possessed this weapon; both,however, are likely to d o so in the future.41 Exactly what theireffect will be remains to be seen. Experience in Vietnam andmaneuvers conducted by NATO have clearly shown the superi-ority of helicopters over tanks, but if the war has shown anythingat all it is that tanks are very unlikely indeed to be on their ownin any future conflict. Considering the newly-found effectivenessof antiaircraft defenses, particularly that of the light shoulder-fired missiles such as the SA M-7, whose warheads are t oo small toseriously damage conventional planes but highly dangerousagainst helicopters, it is more than doubtful that helicopterscould survive on mod ern battlefield. Certainly, they will have tofly very low-if only to avoid hostile fighter aircraft-and to make


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extensive use of natural obstacles and cover; even so, howev er,their vulnerability remains a problem. Rather than playing a greatrole on the battlefield, th erefo re, helicopters are likely tocontin ue t o be used on its edge, and particularly against suchtanks as may have succeeded in penetrating the front and gettingbehind it. Operating in this role they may well present a new anddeadly threat t o the tank.

The Air Defenses. Passing on to the air force, it is almostunnecessary t o dwell on th e magnitude of the role played byantiaircraft defenses in the Yom Kippur War. Whereas, in 1967 ,after the first air strike, everything Arab caught moving wasmercilessly destroyed; and whereas, before October 6 , 19 73, itwas widely believed that n o conventional operation-let alone alarge-scale offensive over open terrain-co uld succeed in the faceof enemy air superiority; these beliefs were shattered during thevery first hours of the Yom Kippur War. True, the Arab successwas strictly limited and won at tremendous cost; the Egyptiansare said to have employed three times as many men in theirantiaircraft defenses as in their air force (75,000 to 23,000).Israeli losses, it should be remembered, dropped sharply after thef irs t three days of the war: and "smart" bombs now beingintroduced may go some, though hardly all, of the way towardsolving the problem?3 Whatever the ultimate outcome of thestruggle of plane against missile, it would be n o exaggeration t osay that the Yom Kippur War has fundamentally altered therelationship between them. B oth will, no dou bt, continue toimprove: ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) and EECM (Elec-tronic Counter-Counter Measures) will be developed at an everincreasing rate (see International Defense Review, 1973: 700),and a growing proportion of military budgets will go to theelectronics companies. At one point or another, however, airforces are boun d to discover that their electronic "tail" is so largecompare d to the fighting "teeth" as to make the whole exerciseunprofitable.

Though the end of the manned fighter bomber is still nowherenear, greater tho ught will certainly have to be devoted in the

future to alternative ways of delivering warheads. To this end,two weapons clearly suggest themselves. The first is the un-manned "drone," which th e IDF is already adopting; it is usefulboth for work against air defenses and for reconnaissance.Second, the difficulties encountered by aircraft will again raisethe question of replacing them by short- and medium-rangesurface-to-surface missiles. Hitherto the latter have usually beenconsidered too wasteful and too inaccurate for tactical missionsunless equipped with nuclear warheads; but the check imposed onthe fighter bomber in the Yom Kippur War as well as muchimproved accuracies have led to a rethinking of this issue. Theresult is likely to be, not the disappearance of manned aircraft,but their integration with other weapons in a closely-knit teamaffording m utual supp ort.T o come back t o the air defenses themselves, their newly-found effectiveness is certainly one of the most important lessonsto emerge from the war. Particular mention should be made ofthe SAM-6 guided missile and the radar-guided, four-barrelledZSU-23 cannon, which together give necessary good cover at allaltitudes up to 50,000 feet. As compared to the earlier SAM-2and SAM-3, the greatest advantages of both are their mobility andthe ease with which they can be deployed, factors that mu st be ofcrucial importan ce if antiaircraft defenses are ever to becomeflexible enough, not merely to cover set-piece battles over alimited area but for use in strategically mobile campaigns. Atpresent, the greatest drawback of the missile is undoubtedly thehandicap it imposes, not merely on the enemy b ut on one's ownair force as well. The Syrians are reported to have shot down noless th an tw enty Iraq i planes in the course of a single day, and theneed t o keep the skies clear for the missiles was undoubtedly oneof the principal reasons behind the relative inactivity of theEgyptian Air Force. Consequently, it is imperative to solve theproblem of IFF (Identification Friend-Foe) if the missiles are tobe employed in theaters of war not dom inated, as was the case inboth Vietnam and the Middle East, by the planes of one side.In summarizing this section, the most important conclusion toemerge is that the days of any so-called "king of the battlefield"


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and "master weapon," bot h on the ground and in the air, aredefinitely over. No single arm , muc h less any individual technicalinstru ment , is alone capable o f winning or even dominat ing amodern war. If it is historically true that a "master weapon9'-beit the Macedonian phalanx or the medieval knight-tends torespond to the challenges put in its way by developing to thepoint of overspecialization until a breaking point is reached(Wintringham, 1943: 30-31), this breaking point seems to be onthe horizon for both tank and fighter bomber in the sense thatthey cannot now be considered "weapons of the future."Contrary t o what was written immediately after the war, neitherof them stands in any im minent danger of disappearing from thebattlefield; both, however, have already lost a good deal of theirformer dominance and their continued survival must dependabove all on close integration with other arms. Taking a moregeneral view, the Yom Kippur War may perhaps be seen in thecontext of a long-term shift away from large and expensiveweapons-systems, toward smaller, cheaper ones relying less onindividual action than on mass; if this interpretation is corre ct, afar-reaching change in the nature of warfare may well be in themaking.

Tactics, or the Character of BattleWeapon development is broadly dictated by technologicalpossibilities ("the state of t he art") and is therefore likely to runalong more or less parallel lines in the most advanced countries;

not so tactics, which must of necessity display a much greatervariety. The nature of the terrain; the task at hand; the intentionsand capabilities of the en emy; all these are "accidental" factor sthat will d o much to determine the tactics employed at any giventime a nd place. F or this reason, the following survey must remaingeneral a nd limit itself to those aspects of tactics that are more orless applicable everywhere in large-scale conventional war becausethey are dictated by the characteristics of modern arms; returningto o ur original definition of tactics as a combination of methods

for striking, moving, and protecting, the problem is whether theYom Kippur War has witnessed a shift in the dominantcombinations utilized and, if so, what the implications of thisshift are likely to be .

Any discussion of tactics must start with the most importantlesson of the war, namely the inability of armor t o withstand, notmerely the firepower delivered by tanks or from the air, but thatof small, relatively inexpensive, easy-to-operate infantry we aponscapable of being pro duced and used on a huge scale. Assumingthat armor is not about to regain its protective power-adevelopment that, for reasons outlined in the previous section,does no t appear likely-other ways of affording protection willhave to be found; these, in turn, will necessarily affect themethods used for striking and moving. In our attempts tounderstand the implications of these changes we are fortunate inthat such a process is not unique in history; a similar one tookplace in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is there,accordingly, that we sh ould look f or ou r guidelines.The defeat of the armored knight, first by the English longbowand then by early firearms, was naturally followed by a decline inthe im portance of cavalry relative to that of the infantry.Initially, the heavy cavalry tended to become even heavier, butthis was compensated for by the appearance of a new class oflight cavalry, namely the Venetian sardiots, the Spanish ginetores,and the English demi-lances. Artillery, which initially had muchmore to say in siege operations than on the battlefield proper,gradually increased in importance as the guns were made moremobile. Given all these new arms, coordination among them-practically nonexistent in a period when heavy cavalry coulddecide battles on its own-became the crucial facto r on whichturned victory and defeat. Skirmishing and fire-action nowopened every battle and frequently brought it to a decision. Thecoup de grace was still normally delivered by the heavy cavalrywhich, kept out of the way in the first stages of the clash, wouldthunder into the fray at the decisive moment. Pursuit 'an dexploitation were left to the light horse since the heavy cavalrywas too precious to be risked. As cover and field fortifications


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gained in importance, battlefields tended to grow and fronts tospread out. Tactical movement generally tended to becomeslower and more cautious, a process that was not reversed untilthe days o f Cromwell and Gus tavus ~d o l p h u s ? ~Assuming that a similar shift away from armor is now takingplace, which of these develo pmen ts can be regarded as relevant t oour own day? Some of them, notably the division of the"cavalry" int o heavy and light branches-tank s and IFVs-arematerializing before our eyes; the ultimate outcome of thisparticular trend, indeed, may yet be a compromise (A laMarlborough). Similarly, the relationship between infantry and"cavalry" is changing. Since foot-soldiers armed wit h guide dmissiles will be expecting t he advancing tanks behind every bushand rise in the g round, ta nks will either have to become lessspecialized or to be reserved for special circumstances. Thoughthe tanks' secondary arma ment is likely to become vastly moreimportant-in a way rather similar to that which saw sixteen thcentury cavalry adopting the pistol in addition to the lance-thiswill hardly permit them anything like their old freedom of Imovement. Casting about slowly and cautiously, tanks will have Ito keep their distance from well-armed infantry4' and conse-quent ly forfeit their ability to use shock action. At best, this willbe possible only against an enemy already more than halfdefeated by other means. Such armored charges as we are likelyto witness in the future will come at the end, rather than thebeginning, of the battle.

Tank-to-tank warfare, too, is undergoing a change. While it istrue that armor has never afforded sufficient protection againstpoint-blank hits , improved directing and range-finding equipme ntwill mean that tanks will be unable to face each other in theopen. Consequently, much greater use than hitherto must bemade of prepared positions, ramparts, and cover. Advances andretreats will take place in short, breathless rushes. Tanks willshoot with their hulls down, withdraw from sight after one ortwo shots, an d rapidly change their positions. Artillery cover willbe essential for safety at all times. Dispersion and extrem e tacticalflexibility must be the order of the day; under such conditions, I

centralized contro l will be difficult and "battles" may ten d todegenerate into a series of individual actions. Since armor nolonger affords anything like sufficient protection against directhits, everything will come to depend on the ability to fire first,quickly, and accurately. This will place a premium on "stalkingwarfare," pouncing and retreating, as waged by the ID F whiledefending the Golan Heights. What is likely to happen to tank sadvancing in close order, and without making use of cover, wasamply demonstrated by the casualties inflicted on the S yrians inthe Golan Heights, the Israelis in their counterattack of October8, and, above all, by the fate meted out to the Egyptians in theirdisastrous advance of Octob er 14.In any case, tanks are highly unlikely t o be on their own inany future conflict. A number of spectacular victories notwith-standing, the attempt to turn a machine originally invented forsiege operations into mechanized cavalry has failed (see Orgill,1970: 248-254). The day of armored divisions operating sepa-rately from. and often far ahead of, their own armies is over forgood. Nor will tanks necessarily form the first echelon of thetactical advance. Rather, like the heavy cavalry of the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries, it will have to form the linchpin of aclosely integrated battle team, incorporating in addition theartillery, as well as antitan k weapons, IFVs, a nd, in special cases,infantry on foot. Advances will probably be spearheaded byAFVs and supported by tanks rather than vice versa. In bothdefense and attac k, success will depend on the ability to use eachof the different kinds of troops for their proper function and atthe pro per mom ent. T o this purpose, organizational changes musttake place. Traditional "arms" such as the infantry or artillery areabout to become obsolete as all save a relative handful ofspecialist troops a nd reserves ar

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Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War Historical Perspectives