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Military history

What we can learn about avoiding a Russian surprise attack from the Yom Kippur War

Alexander With

• 3 min read
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By Alexander With

During the summer holidays, I read "The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of Yom Kippur and its sources” by Uri Bar-Joseph, which delves into the surprise attack on Israel that started the Yom Kippur War in 1973. There are several lessons from that war which could also be relevant today in a Russia-NATO scenario:

  • Israel had excellent intelligence indicating that Egypt and Syria were planning to attack. The problem wasn’t a lack of intelligence, but a lack of willingness to believe it—both among decision-makers and key individuals in the intelligence community.
  • One reason the intelligence was dismissed was the belief that Egypt and Syria couldn’t possibly win a war. The rationale was: "We are the strongest. The others know this. Therefore, they won’t dare to attack." Egypt and Syria had a different opinion.
  • Egypt’s president found the status quo unacceptable. He knew he couldn’t win a total war against Israel, so the goal became a limited war to break the political deadlock and achieve concessions such as regaining the Sinai Peninsula from Israel. And it worked. Egypt eventually got Sinai back a few years later.
  • The war preparations were masked as a large-scale military exercise (sounds familiar?). The Egyptians had learned this from the Russians, who had used the same tactic during the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Egyptian deception tactics were not particularly sophisticated – but they were convincing enough for those in Israeli intelligence community who wanted to be convinced.
  • The head of Israeli military intelligence suffered from intellectual megalomania and always spoke with great certainty, even when the intelligence was ambiguous. He saw it as his role to always communicate clearly. The day before the war, he told Israeli decision-makers that war would not come. He based this on his flawed interpretation of the enemy’s intentions, which he believed he could deduce. This also led him to ignore increasingly serious reports about the enemy’s capabilities and military options.
  • "They don’t dare attack us. Therefore, their offensive posture is actually a defensive posture." That was how enemy troop build-ups were explained. A kind of reversed security dilemma, where one believes it is their own military build-up that makes the other side afraid and causes them to increase their military spending and posture. But Egypt wasn’t acting out of fear — it was out for revanche.
  • Hubris and groupthink. Many in Israel had become blinded by their past successes and didn’t take the threat seriously. This was worsened by groupthink, where alternative threat assessments were actively dismissed, and those who raised alarms were labeled “alarmists”.
  • “The boy who cried wolf” had been heard too many times in previous years. Many in Israel had grown numb to war warnings that never materialized. In hindsight, some of these warnings were real. For example, Egypt had wanted to attack six months earlier but changed its mind. When the attack did not come, the warning was seen as wrong. Few people contemplated that Egypt had simply postponed the attack.
  • The Israelis managed to obtain the complete Egyptian attack plan months before the war, but it was never forwarded to the commander of the Southern Front, who was responsible for defending against the Egyptian attack. It was not deemed important, because surely the attack would never materialize in the first place. The Israeli intelligence had a “conception” of how they expected things to play out. Intelligence that was contrary to the conception was filtered out.
  • A fair amount of intelligence from human sources such as spies and traitors came through another Israeli intelligence service (Mossad), and there were good analyses from, for example, the Israeli Navy’s intelligence division. But the military intelligence service (AMAN) was the only agency at the time that had both analytical capability of military matters and also access to the most highly classified sources. As a result, no one could effectively challenge AMAN’s flawed assessments, because AMAN could dismiss any criticism by saying, "You don’t have the task or the capability to analyze," or, "You don’t have access to the information I have, so you lack the full picture."

The Yom Kippur war should serve as a prudent reminder that hybris, arrogance, groupthink, and organizational friction can lead to disaster. Many rests assured that NATO’s superiority will deter Russia from starting a war it cannot win.

However, in 1973 Egypt (and Syria) started a war against an Israel that was both conventionally superior and armed with nuclear weapons. There was no way that Egypt could win a total war. But that was never the Egyptian objective. And despite Israel claiming victory, it was Egypt that eventually obtained the Sinai and thereby its primary objectives for the war.

About the author:

Alexander With is commander (OF-3) in the Royal Danish Navy and military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College. His website is https://www.alexanderwith.dk