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A sober look at how the war was won Experts still debate many of the military lessons of the Yom Kippur War, but two conclusions seem widely accepted. First, considering the disadvantageous conditions under which the IDF entered the war, its ultimate achievements were outstanding. Second, of the several factors which turned the tide, undoubtedly the most obtrusive was the heroic performance of the IDF’s reservists. Pitched into combat at literally a moment’s notice, Israel’s citizen-soldiers saved the country from military humiliation. That accomplishment exerted a profound effect on Israeli strategic planning. The performance of the IDF reservists in 1973 was considered a vindication of the IDF’s force structure as a whole. Hence, whereas several other dimensions of Israeli security thinking were subsequently reviewed (and in some cases revised), the IDF’s retention of its traditional framework of military service was not affected. Instead, the need to maintain the reserve system has remained dogma. To what extent does a study of the Yom Kippur War in fact support that stand? One place to look for an answer is the final report of the Agranat Commission, established in the wake of the 1973 war, whose full and uncensored version has only in the last few years been made available to the public at the IDF archives. Quite apart from its historical data, this document also contains several conclusions which are still of practical relevance, especially where the IDF’s reserve system is concerned. On this subject (as on others), the report suggests that the lessons of Yom Kippur are less straightforward than might be thought. True, the report confirms the crucial contribution of IDF reservists to the ultimate battlefield outcome. Without their skill and valor, Israel could not have recovered from the shock of the outbreak of war and the initial run of defeats. But the report also suggests that the achievement was attained despite the reserve system and not by virtue of its application. In effect, the outcome of the war reflected far more credit on the reservists as individuals than on the framework of which they formed a part. THE decision to construct the IDF on a ’three-tier’ basis (consisting — in ascending numerical order — of professionals, conscripts and reservists) was taken as early as 1949. In part, this choice reflected David Ben- Gurion’s determination to project the IDF as a ’people’s army,’ which would bond Israel’s heterogeneous society. But the principal justifications were operational. Only a force with unrestricted access to Israel’s total available pool of human resources (female as well as male) could moderate the demographic disparities between the IDF and its potential foes. Quality alone would not suffice. Numbers also counted. In time, this conception was elaborated. IDF reservists were not categorized as ’auxiliaries,’ and relegated to secondary duties. Rather, they were regarded as core combat troops and fully integrated into the overall force structure. They also became essential components of military strategic planning. Their participation in battle was considered indispensable to the attainment of a ’decisive’ victory. Like virtually every other aspect of Israel’s early military doctrine, the IDF’s utilization of reservists seemed to be vindicated by the 1967 Six Day War. Thanks to the reserve mobilizations carried out during the ’waiting period’ prior to June 6, the High Command had been able to feed into battle the maximum number of personnel at exactly the right times and locations. Moreover, the technical proficiency displayed by all troops during the fighting generated a new set of hypotheses regarding their future deployment. Henceforth, professionals and conscripts could be relied upon to hold back an initial enemy attack; the reservists would then deliver the decisive counter-blow. These concepts permeated IDF thinking in the early 1970s. Planning was then dominated by the notion that the next war — unlike the 1969-1970 War of Attrition, but in keeping with the operational style adopted in 1967 — would be characterized by a series of swift and massive thrusts designed to culminate in a smashing Israeli military victory. If attacked, the IDF was not to stand on the defensive. Instead, Israeli forces were to move as quickly as possible onto the offensive, and to carry the battle — with all forces at their disposal (i.e. including the reserves) — to enemy territory. On this point, chief of general staff during the Yom Kippur War, David Elazar, was emphatic. As he told his staff on May 2, 1973: ’… I want us all to be absolutely aware of the fact that our problem — should war indeed break out — is to attack very quickly and to attain substantive and meaningful gains. That is the object. I do not visualize any messing around with an extended war, developing war, attrition etc. What I certainly do see — and this has relevance for early decisions on our part, for our preliminary preparations and for our readiness — is to carry out an offensive immediately.’ Given that mindset, the role allotted to the reserves was rigidly defined. In the event of an Arab attack, they were not to be employed during the initial ’holding’ stage, which would necessarily have to be defensive in form. ’Absorption’ was to be a temporary phase, entrusted entirely to the regular forces (including the air force) and to the limited number of reserves on routine duty. The main body of the reserves would not enter the fray until they had been fully mobilized - and would be used in a series of deep-penetration and offensive armored thrusts. ONE OF the principal findings of the Agranat Report is that the failure of this strategy in October 1973 cannot be attributed solely to bad luck or to technical flukes. The faults were far more fundamental, and resided in the very assumptions upon which military planning had been based. The list of faulty assumptions — ’misconceptions,’ as they have become known — is long. At a tactical level, it begins with the IDF’s confidence that ’the regular forces can hold the line by themselves’ (an assessment itself based on a gross underestimate of the improvement since 1967 in Arab fighting abilities). It also extends to the almost mystical belief that the Israel Air Force would be able to attack enemy ground forces at will (a possibility virtually nullified in the first days of the fighting by the presence of thick clusters of SAM missiles on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts). These fallacies were compounded, secondly, by several ’strategic’ misperceptions. The most influential, and notorious, was the general Israeli refusal to acknowledge that an enemy attack in October 1973 was at all a practical possibility. It was to this ’blind spot’ that the Agranat commissioners attributed the off-hand manner in which Major-General Eli Zeira, then head of IDF Intelligence, reacted to various signals of imminent war and his consequent failure to provide adequate advance warning of its outbreak. They found the same cause responsible for Elazar’s neglect to take sufficient defensive precautions, especially in the first week of October. In the immediate aftermath of the war, these findings had dramatic consequences. The Agranat Report triggered the immediate resignation of both Zeira and Elazar, and severely discredited the government headed by Golda Meir. But the agitation deflected attention from the fact that the Agranat commissioners had also uncovered a third, and entirely different, set of misperceptions, relating specifically to the reservists. These warrant further analysis. IDF planning prior to 1973 took it for granted that the General Staff would always be able to mobilize whatever quantity of reserves it deemed necessary for operational purposes. The chief of staff had merely to state his needs to the defense minister, who would thereafter obtain the virtually automatic sanction of the prime minister and cabinet. This was an illusion. Studies of other international crises (most notably, that which preceded the outbreak of World War I in 1914) have clearly demonstrated that the mobilization of reserves — far from being a mere formality — is one of the most sensitive issues in all civil-military relations, demanding particularly careful regulation. Principally, this is because of its inherent escalatory potential. After all, once mobilized, reserves cannot be kept in the field indefinitely. Budgetary considerations must soon combine with societal strains to mandate that they either be disbanded or sent into battle. Demobilization is always possible. But in Israel’s case, sensitivity to the fragility of the country’s security margins has always made the escalatory option far more likely. Hence only a short step might separate mobilization from war. The restraints which these considerations can place on the IDF’s freedom of action became stark early in the morning of October 6. Confronted with news that an attack on his forces was imminent, Elazar looked to an immediate and large-scale mobilization of the reserves as a means of turning the tables. This was the only way he could move, as planned, to the offensive. But when the chief of staff put this option to defense minister Moshe Dayan at 5:50 a.m., an unexpected obstacle arose. Dayan refused to authorize anything larger than a ’partial’ mobilization. Full-scale mobilization, he warned, might precipitate the very war which he still hoped it might be possible to avert. ’[I am] skeptical about mobilizing for a counterattack in a war which has not yet begun,’ the Agranat Report quotes him as telling Elazar. ’Even if it is certain that war will break out, can we not mobilize reserves only for defense?’ As we have seen, none of Elazar’s plans allowed for that particular alternative. The reserves had been assigned a purely offensive role — and in that capacity really held the IDF’s entire strategy in thrall. Precisely because of the prominence allotted to the reserves in Israeli military thinking, the chief of staff had no option other than to institute a full mobilization. Hence, he could not even take advantage of the ’half a cake’ which Dayan had offered. Instead, he took no action whatsoever before personally presenting his case for full mobilization to the prime minister. Ultimately, Golda Meir sided with her chief of staff, and overruled Dayan’s objections. But that decision was not taken until 9:25 a.m., by which time, in the words of the Agranat Report, several ’vital hours’ had been ’wasted’ in virtual inactivity. ONCE Meir’s sanction for a full-scale mobilization had been obtained, the relevant orders were soon issued. But it was at this stage, when speed was obviously essential, that a second constraint inherent in all reserve systems became apparent. Reservists, it transpired, cannot be smoothly fed into battle at a moment’s notice. In contrast to professional forces, their mobilization and deployment requires both time and a particularly sophisticated infrastructure. In October 1973, the IDF — contrary to all expectations — possessed neither. Hence, instead of being an orderly process carried out in accordance with pre- planned procedures, mobilization in fact became an administrative shambles, characterized by improvisation and dependent upon individual initiative. The evidence collated by the Agranat commissioners reveals that foul-ups occurred at every stage. Even though the war broke out on the one day in the year when the roads were not congested, the reaction to mobilization was far from immediate. To this was added the delays caused by the need to register troops as they eventually reported for duty. (’The entire clerical procedure of absorption was very poor and took far too long. All the paperwork was a mess … they didn’t work fast enough’). Thirdly, much of the equipment which the reserves were supposed to draw from the emergency stores was either missing or unfit for use. Alternatively, the stores were in place, but there existed no means for extracting them from the depot. (’One [reserve] brigade suffered a delay of nine hours in the distribution of tank ammunition, principally because no steps had been taken to ensure the presence of sufficient forklifts…. Possibly, but for this delay, the severe crisis on the [northern] front in the first stages of the war might have been avoided.’) And even when that shambles was sorted out, the IDF found it difficult to dispatch its reserve forces to the front in accordance with military procedure, or even logic. Armored units were sent on their way in small packets, without due consideration for the readiness of their organic support and logistic elements, or for the availability of tank transports. As the Agranat commissioners pointed out at considerable length, responsibility for so extended a succession of administrative mishaps cannot be attributed to any one cause. A combination of factors was at work. One was the state of psychological shock — indeed panic — induced by the very fact that fighting had broken out so unexpectedly. Another was the abysmal state of the emergency stores (yamachim), maintenance at which bordered on criminal negligence. But the most important was the absence of prewar sensitivity to the fact that reserve troops — precisely because they are reserve troops — require a particularly sophisticated logistic infrastructure, itself staffed by personnel of the very highest organizational ability. The IDF of 1973, it is now clear, entirely ignored this requirement, trusting simply that ’everything will be all right’ (yihyeh beseder). ON THIS evidence, then, one lesson of the Yom Kippur War is that reserve forces constitute much less flexible agencies of force than they might initially appear. Unless treated with extreme caution, they might narrow, rather than widen, the options available to commanders and politicians. One reason, as we have seen, is that a mobilization of reserve forces demands a particularly sophisticated calibration of political and military purposes. Consequently, it also mandates an especially high level of consensus between generals and statesmen with regards to the desired ’match’ of political ends and military means. To this must be added, secondly, their particular organizational requirements. Regular forces, especially when composed primarily of professional troops, can at least be expected to maintain a minimum standard of battle- readiness, which might reduce the adverse impact of strategic military surprise. But reservists — even when as well-trained and as experienced as the Israelis were — cannot be classified as ’quick-reaction’ forces. Their fighting ’teeth’ can only be effective if serviced by an especially lengthy — and efficient — logistic ’tail.’ It is impossible to calculate the price which Israel paid in 1973 as a result of the IDF’s insensitivity to these two constraints. One can only hope that, a quarter of a century later, the lessons have been absorbed.
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