The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• (1) A direct correlation does not necessarily exist between the amount of information available and the prevention of surprise.
• (2) Because surprise attack is always possible, each army must there- fore be prepared to fight a war under conditions of surprise attack. Its military plans, deployment and mobilization systems should be based on the assumption of no warning time at all, and should be backed up by a large number of contingency plans. Proper psychological preparations, frequent military exercises and simulated war games, and conduct under conditions of surprise can help to cushion the effect of surprise.
• (3) More attention must be paid to intentions, since, in situations where political gains are more important than military victory, the decision to initiate war is not always directly related to one's relative capabilities.
• (4) Examinations of the interrelationship between opposing military doctrines must be very studiously prepared, taking special care not to project one's own doctrine onto the enemy.
• (5) In case of doubt regarding the possibility of a surprise attack, it is always safer to mobilize and be prepared, even if the costs involved are very high-especially in the case of states (such as Israel) who are in a militarily vulnerable position. Special care must be taken (a) to not relax one's attention and alertness during frequent mobilization and (b) to develop a very elaborate set of criteria for distinguishing between real and false alarms (enemy troop concentrations, communication and traffic patterns, presence and behavior of foreign advisors, simultane- ous mobilizations in more than one enemy country, and so on).
• (6) Competing approaches for interpreting the enemy's intentions must be encouraged through various methods, such as the establishment of several intelligence agencies; the guarantee of pluralism of opinions within each intelligence agency; competitive, but coordinated, collection of information; the existence of "devil's advocates"; and so on. It is better to err on the side of too flexible a conceptual framework, than on the side of too rigid a one.
• (7) Better integration between military and political intelligence must be encouraged because evaluation of military situations cannot be made in a political vacuum, and vice versa.
• (8) Available information should be used more liberally and dis- seminated more willingly both upward and downward in the intelligence hierarchy. Better coordination between field or tactical intelligence and intelligence headquarters must be ensured.