Prior to the
1973 War the Israeli armed forces were thought to be greatly superior to the Arabs
both in training and equipment. The Israeli victories in the previous wars
meant that their leadership tended to underestimate the Arab soldier. This led
to a false sense of superiority and the belief that the Arab states would not
risk going to war against Israel since they would surely lose. Unfortunately
for the Israelis the Arabs were prepared to go to war to achieve their
political objectives. The Yom Kippur War caught the Israelis by surprise and
the Arab armies were able to win victories in the Sinai and the Golan Heights. However
Israeli superiority in training and leadership, coupled with the dispatch of
reinforcements led to the defeat of the Arabs. This was a costly victory and it
led both sides to engage in peace talks that culminated in the 1978 Camp David Accords.
The Yom
Kippur War was of great interest to military observers since both sides used
modern equipment and tactics. Israel had equipment used by NATO countries and
the Arabs were equipped with Soviet weapons. If the Cold War turned hot these
same weapon systems were going to be used in a future conflict in Europe
between NATO and the Soviet Union. For this reason the US intelligence agencies
carefully evaluated the weapons and tactics of both the Arabs and Israelis. The
CIA report ‘The 1973 Arab-Israeli War: Overview and
Analysis of the Conflict’
contains the lessons learned from this conflict.
The report is
dated September 1975 and says:
‘This study examines the military operations
of Egypt, Syria, and Israel during the 1973 Middle East war with a view to
providing some indications of future force developments in the area. Key
findings:
Strategy. The Arabs had different
goals and, consequently, different strategies. The Syrians wanted to liberate
the Golan Heights and attempted to do so in one stroke. The Egyptians' main
goal was to achieve a political effect, and they therefore planned for a
limited offensive. The Israelis, because of overconfidence and because they
failed to recognize that their occupation of the Suez Canal's east bank
deprived them of advance warning of an Egyptian attack, did not react to
mounting evidence of Arab intentions.
Performance of Troops. The Arabs were
tough on defense but ill trained and poorly led on offense. The Israelis showed
a depth of training and flexibility that enabled small units to withstand the
initial shock of the Arab attack without breaking, and to recover quickly.
Antitank Weaponry. The most effective
tank killer in this war was the tank - 90 percent of the Arab tanks and at
least 75 percent of the Israeli tanks destroyed during the war were hit by
enemy tanks. Antitank missiles such as the Sagger, RPG-7, LAW, and TOW could be
countered by appropriate tactics, although they represented a new and dangerous
presence on the battlefield.
Air Defense. The Arab air defenses
prevented the Israeli Air Force from damaging Arab ground forces on anything
like the scale seen in 1967. They achieved their primary aim by disrupting
Israeli attacks rather than by shooting down or damaging Israeli aircraft.
Israeli loss rates were actually lower than they were in 1967, when the Arabs
had only rudimentary air defense systems. The Syrians destroyed or damaged
Israeli aircraft at a rate two to three times greater than the Egyptians
because the tactical situation on the Golan front forced the Israelis to accept
greater risks.
Mobilization. The Israeli mobilization
was untidy and revealed many flaws and shortages. The situation was saved by
the training of the troops and by standardized procedures that allowed crews to
be scrambled without degrading performance. Despite the problems, the Israelis
delivered more combat power to the front line in less time than the plans
called for.
Naval Operations. Israel's talent for
tailoring its strengths to Arab weaknesses was especially evident in naval
operations during the 1973 conflict. The Israeli navy's excellent performance
was a sharp contrast to the prewar complacency and overconfidence displayed by
the ground and air forces.’
The report is
thorough and it covers the political goals and military strategies of Israel,
Egypt and Syria, the major battles and the performance of the main weapons
systems. The parts I found particularly interesting were those dealing with the
performance of the new Soviet anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and the
comparison of Israeli quality versus Arab quantity.
Soviet hand held anti-tank systems
versus Israeli armor
In the
previous Arab-Israeli conflicts the superior performance of the Israeli tank
corps was one of the main reasons for the swift defeat of the Arab forces. Israeli
tankers were so confident in their ability to deal with enemy forces that they
usually operated without proper support from infantry and artillery units.
The Arab
militaries tried to counter the Israeli advantage in tank warfare by equipping
their infantry with Soviet hand held anti-tank weapons. In the 1970’s the
introduction of new systems such as the AT-3 Sagger threatened
the superiority of the main battle tank. Military analysts were skeptical of whether
tanks could survive in the modern battlefield against an opponent equipped with
large numbers of these weapons.
In the
opening stages of the Yom Kippur War the Sagger missile was able to live up to
its reputation by destroying or damaging a large number of Israeli tanks.
‘Israeli tank losses in the first 24 hours of
the war are hard to establish. The Israelis began the war with 250 tanks in the
Sinai. Within 24 hours, 150 to 160 of these were out of action, although many
were repaired and returned to service within periods of several hours to several
days. Some units were almost wiped out. The brigade in the Al Qantarah sector
was reduced from 50 tanks to 11 by early morning of 7 October. The major cause
of these losses probably was the Egyptian antitank missiles employed from
ambush by troops who crossed early and moved five, to ten kilometers inland
from the canal. Also effective were antitank missiles fired from the mounds the
Egyptians had built along the west bank (see illustration on page 17). These
mounds provided Egyptian Sagger and tank crews with a broad field of fire
extending into the east bank area. Antitank missiles were the primary cause of
Israeli losses in the first two or three days of the war. The Israelis' use of
unsupported tanks made them vulnerable to Egyptian infantrymen armed with
portable antitank weapons. The Israelis had simply failed to recognize that
antitank missiles would require them to change their tank tactics.’However after the initial shock the Israelis changed their tactics and were able to deal effectively with the Sagger.
Although the
long range A/T missile was a dangerous weapon it did not render the main battle
tank obsolete.
‘In accounts immediately after the war,
however, the effect of the antitank missiles was exaggerated. Detailed
information now available indicates that in the whole war the Israelis lost
approximately 500 tanks; among them 119 disabled units………. at least 6 percent
but no more than 25 percent, were killed by Saggers.’
Soviet air-defense systems versus the
IAF
In the war of
1967 the Israeli Airforce played a key role in the Israeli victory by
destroying the Arab airforces and by relentlessly attacking Arab units on the
ground. In 1973 the Arabs made a huge effort to counter the IAF through the use
of the most modern Soviet air-defense systems. Apart from the stationary SA-2
and SA-3 missile systems the new mobile SA-6 ‘Gainful’ was
introduced.
The report
says: ‘The Arabs were so impressed that
they concluded the IAF alone had caused their humiliating defeat in 1967.
Hence, they believed, if they could but find the means to neutralize the IAF,
Arab ground forces with some expansion and further training could deal with
Israeli ground forces on acceptable terms’.
………………………………………
‘The entire pattern of Arab training,
equipment acquisitions, and deployments between 1967 and 1973 can be seen as
the gradual implementation of a plan to overcome the two major assets of the
Israeli armed forces--tactical air and armor. This plan was based on lessons
the Arabs learned from the 1967 war, and the main lesson learned was that the
IAF had to be stopped’
Both Syria
and Egypt invested heavily in a multilayered A/A system.
During the
Yom Kippur War their air defense systems were not able to inflict heavy losses
on the IAF, however they were able to degrade its performance by forcing
Israeli pilots to limit their loiter time over the battlefield. This means that
IAF bombing missions were not as effective as they could have been due to the
threat posed by Soviet A/A missile systems.
‘In this and the following section the
Egyptian and Syrian air defense systems are examined from two points of
view--first, in the usual way, by counting the number of aircraft they shot
down; second, in a much more general way, according to the amount of damage the
systems were able to prevent the IAF from inflicting on the Arab ground forces.
The first measure concentrates on the attrition factor while the second
attempts to reflect the degradation in effectiveness a heavy air defense
environment may cause in an attacking air force’……………………………………………………..
‘In terms of aircraft shot down, the
performance of the Egyptian air defense system in October 1973 was dismal.
Despite its enormous increase in size, despite its advance warning, despite its
increased sophistication, and despite the fact that the IAF did not attack it
in force for the first several days, the Egyptian defenders were barely able to
match the performance of their 1967 predecessors’
‘On the
other hand, aircraft shot down--in either absolute numbers or percentages--may
not be the best or most instructive measure
of the performance of the Egyptians. The effectiveness of air
defense could also be measured by
the extent of damage a hostile air force is prevented from inflicting on the
force the system is protecting. There is little direct information, but it
seems clear that in preventing damage the 1973 Egyptian air defense system
attained considerable success. Evidence includes the continued functioning of
the bridges and changes in tactics and weapons that resulted in less accurate
and effective Israeli air support’
‘The Israelis found that if they stayed above
10,000 feet they could cope with the Egyptian air defense weapons. At that
height they were above the effective range of AAA, their ECM and tactics
against the SA-2 and SA-3 were effective enough to make the risks of operating
at that altitude acceptable, and their pilots had sufficient warning of an SA-6
launch to take evasive action. However,
the combination of altitude and evasive maneuvering severely degraded the
accuracy of IAF weapons delivery’
‘The Israelis lost the same number of
aircraft (51) on each front, but the loss rate on the Syrian front was three
times as high as on the Egyptian front, primarily because the situation facing
Israeli ground forces on the Golan forced the IAF to take greater risks
there…………………………….Two factors, however, do seem to have been very different on
the Golan front and could account for the higher losses. First, the battlefield
area defended by the Syrian SAM system was smaller—about 1,800 square nautical
miles, as compared with 3,700 sq nm for the Egyptian system. Second, and more
important, the tactical situation in the ground campaign was very different.
Initially, the Syrians pushed harder and deeper into Israeli-occupied territory
than Egypt did, and the Syrian attack was much closer to Israeli population
centers. The Israeli command, therefore, decided it had to give priority to
defeating the Syrians while the Egyptians were only to be contained until
forces could be freed from the Golan front to deal with them. Air power was a
major element in this strategy, and the role the IAF had to play forced it to
accept greater casualties’
An important
aspect of war has always been the question of quantity versus quality. History
shows that small military forces can defeat much larger ones if they are superior
in training, weapons and leadership. On the other hand it has been said that ‘quantity has a quality of its own’.
In general
Western societies have invested in quality and thus given emphasis to training,
doctrine, leadership and initiative. On the other hand Eastern societies have
tried to maximize the size of their armed forces without paying too much attention
to the quality of the weapons, the training of their soldiers or the leadership
capabilities of their officer corps.
In the Middle
East the Israelis have had to fight against Arab countries that had a much
larger population. This means that the only way to win was to maximize the
potential of the small Israeli Army by making sure it was well trained,
equipped with quality weapons and capable of taking the initiative against the
larger (but slower to respond) Arab armies.
In the Yom
Kippur War Israeli quality triumphed over Arab quantity.
‘Both Egypt and Syria had apparently devoted
considerable effort to planning and training for the initial stages of their
attacks. After the opening phases of the war, however, both Arab armies
exhibited the defects of command, control, training and maintenance which US
intelligence had estimated were present. In the final analysis, the Egyptian
and Syrian armies showed they could be trained to win a battle but had yet to
master the skills needed to win a war against the Israelis.’
‘The greatest weakness of the Arab armies has
always been the officer corps. Through the 1967 war, this flaw could be largely
ascribed to class differences, deficient education and a consequent set of attitudes on the part of officers
which denigrated the ordinary soldier………………. One of the major strengths of the
Israeli Army, in contrast, has been the close relationship between men and
officers—a relationship so close that, in the eyes of some foreign observers,
it borders on the insubordinate. During the period between 1967 and 1973, both
Egypt and Syria took steps to eliminate the worst officers of the old pattern
and to recruit and keep younger, better educated officers and NCOs whose
competence and more open attitudes enabled them to be more effective
leaders…………………. Still, certain weaknesses of the Arab officer corps were
evident in 1973. This was especially so after the carefully planned and
rehearsed opening phases of the war ended. On both fronts, plans were rigidly
adhered to long after it was clear that they were no longer profitable.’
‘The greatest mistake of the Arab armies in
1973, as in 1967, was their failure to train their troops adequately. The
soldiers themselves seemed willing enough to do what they had been trained for,
but often their training was rigid or poor.’
'The Israeli Army once again showed
that its superiority over the Arab armies was greatest in the quality of the
training and initiative of the lower ranks--individual soldiers, NCOs, and
platoon- and company-grade officers. In the first days of the war it was the
tenacity and adaptability of small units and their immediate leaders that
enabled the Israelis to stabilize the front and go over to the offensive so
quickly. This was especially evident on the Golan, where Israeli forces, though
outnumbered five or six to one in almost every category of equipment, were able
to stop the Syrian advance within 24 hours and eliminate it within 72 hours.’
Note: The Israelis evaluated the
performance of Western and Soviet tanks in the 1973 war. I’ve given an overview
of their assessments in Recurring
problems of Soviet tank design.
