THE OCTOBER WAR: EFFECTIVE EGYPTIAN PREPARATIONS ENABLE STRATEGIC SURPRISE

by

W. Troy Ayres

submitted to

Professor Curtis Brandt Smith

INTL506: Analytics II

October 25, 2015

American Public University System

Charles Town, WV

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"War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war."

—Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Introduction

After over thirty years of peace between Egypt and Israel it is easy to forget that these

two Middle Eastern states were arch enemies for an almost equal amount of time starting only a

few years after WW II. Prior to the Egyptian surprise attack in October of 1973 Israel and Egypt

fought a series of four wars starting in 1948. During the previous four conflicts Israel dealt Egypt

humiliating defeats, which led the Egyptians to develop a deep sense of shame and lost honor

(Shemesh 2008, 31). The worst defeat the Egyptians suffered was during the Six-Day War in

1967, when the Israel Defense Force (IDF) managed to seize the entire Sanai Peninsula from

Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria; possessions which Tel Aviv refused to give up at the

end of the conflict because of the added strategic which the seized land added to small country of

Israel in the event of any future military conflicts. Following the Six-Day War was the War of

Attrition with Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the PLO launching limited attacks and raids against the

Israel, with Israel responding in kind. Throughout the War of Attrition Egyptian forces suffered

significantly higher casualties than their Israeli foes.

Stinging from this long list of military defeats Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s new president, came

to power in October of 1970 decided that something different had to be done. His predecessor

Gamel Nasser played the two Cold War rivals against each other in order to gain military aid

from the US and USSR (Shemesh 2008, 30-31). Upon assuming the presidency Sadat took a

different approach and appeared to fall firmly in the Soviet camp, by enlisting up to 30,000

military advisors to help train, equip, and modernize the Egyptian Army. In Egypt’s past wars

they mostly used Soviet equipment and advisors with terrible results. Still Sadat doubled down

on using Soviet doctrine for one more try, but he combined this with a careful study of Israeli

and Egyptian military and political strengths and weakness (Brugioni 2004, 6-7). The result was

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a shocking Egyptian military success in the early phases of the Yom Kippur war, with almost

complete surprise and in a few key warfighting functions technological superiority over the

Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Most of the scholarly work on the October War focuses on Israeli

mistakes, under the false assumption that since they had the stronger military that it can only be

through mistake that they suffered any sort of military setback on the battlefield. This assumes

that the Egyptians were as inept at fighting wars in 1973 as they were in 1948, 1957, and 1967.

What if this not true and that the Egyptians actually conducted proper research, analysis, and

strategic planning? If the Egyptians did independently improve themselves to such an extent that

they could for a short while defeat the most powerful military in the Middle East how should

other western nations view adversaries in contemporary times within the same region?

The United States is still currently deploying soldiers in Iraq, and is actively targeting the

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as a weakened Al-Qaeda in Yemen and other parts of the globe.

Prior to the rise of ISIS President Obama called them the “JV” (Junior Varsity) jihadist

(Contorno, 2014), which is precisely the same way that Israel viewed the Egyptians military in

1973. It would seem that there is a history of underestimating Arab adversaries which then

“miraculously” from out of nowhere pull off a stunning military achievement. This case study

seeks to study one of the greatest Arab military achievements in modern times, the crossing of

the Suez Canal in 1973, to more fully realize the capabilities that an underrated adversary can

pull off while engaged against a more technologically powerful opponent. Egypt did not just get

lucky because of Israel’s intelligence mistakes; they developed a detailed military plan based on

updated political objectives, a realistic plan based on limited military capabilities, which

coincided with an effective deception campaign enabling them to achieve a strategic surprise at

the expense of the Israelis.

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Literature Review

Within academia and military circles there are two schools of thought on how the Arab

armies were able to achieve the element of surprise. The first school of thought gives credit to

the two Arab armies’ deception plans, which were able to fool the Israeli intelligence agencies.

The second school of thought places harsh criticism towards AMAN, the head Israeli intelligence

agency. AMAN was the premier national level intelligence agency which was responsible for

consolidating, analyzing and presenting the intelligence estimate to the prime minister’s office.

After the war concluded Israel conducted a thorough investigation, called the Agranat

Commission, to determine why their intelligence organizations were caught so completely

caught off guard. The conclusion of the commission was that AMAN overly relied on several

preconceived ideas that Egypt could not and would not launch an attack against Israel until

certain military capabilities were achieved, which the Egyptians did not have in 1973. The first

of these ideas was that Egypt would not attack Israel until it had a deep strike capability which

could target the Israeli interior and defeat the Israeli Air Force, and the second part of this

narrative was that Syria would not attack without Egypt launching a simultaneous attack. The

Agranat Commission called these two ideas the “conception” (Kumaraswamy 1999, 7; Israeli

2013, 89). According to the conception neither country was a threat until Egypt could obtain

specific military hardware, which they never obtained in 1973. This is the narrative that most

scholars tend to promote rather than the theory that the Egyptians executed a highly successful

deception campaign against one of the most technologically capable militaries. Supporters of the

conception theory are further divided into two subgroups that are slightly different. The first

group believes that conception theory is mostly applicable at the institutional level, while the

second goes a more in depth, and actually blames key individuals. Other scholars take the view

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that the intelligence failure was based on some success of the Egyptian deception campaign

playing to the hands of the flaws in the conception theory. The following will be a discussion of

the literature available today after more than forty years of research on the subject.

In the journal Israel Affairs, Heichal wrote an article titled “Perception, Image Formation

and Coping in the Pre-Crisis Stage of the Yom Kippur War”. In this article Heichal (1999, 196)

states that the “Israeli intelligence community was faced with a dilemma after they repeatedly

witnessed large training exercises conducted by the Egyptians along the Suez Canal following

the cessation of hostilities when the War of Attrition ended in August of 1970”. This is not hard

to fathom that in many way the Israelis would come to see these large scale exercise as routine

given the fact that by October they had already conducted 20 training mobilizations in 1973

(Bar-Joseph 199, 17). The Israelis maintained an active intelligence collection campaign during

all of the exercises and mobilized several times in response, but by the third quarter of the year

they had begun to develop several biases. Heichal describes these biases as a perception, which

then lead to an image formation. In this case the image was of the weak army that Israel defeated

in four other wars, with the most recent one taking place only five years earlier in 1967 (1999,

209; Bolia 2004, 50). However, this was not the same army as the one in 1967, because the

Russians were actively resupplying and training the Egyptians ever since the end of the War of

Attrition, which AMAN was well aware of. Heichal (1999, 208) argues that even with contrary

evidence that the Egyptians were rebuilding their military into something new the Israelis

resorted to a coping avoidance bias; defined as a mechanism where a person does not allow new

contrary information to change pre-conceived perception sin order to avoid possibility of

sounding a false alarm.

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The strengths of Heichal’s argument is that right up until the very last minute several key

leaders, most notably the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) Brigadier General (BG) Eli

Zeira the leader of AMAN, still would not change his mind that an attack was imminent as late

as ten hours prior to the Egyptian assault across the Suez Canal (Bar-Joseph and Kruglanski

2003, 88), which tends to support his theory that people were practicing a coping avoidance. On

some level DMI Zeira refused to mentally change his mind despite the many warning that he was

receiving. What Heichal fails to address is the fact that the Egyptians spent a lot of time and

energy attempting to hide their actual intentions. Scholars that agree with this line of thinking

tend to dismiss these efforts, despite the fact that they actually took place and may have

contributed to Israeli hesitation to counter-mobilize, and/or to launch a preemptive attacks like

they did in 1967.

Uri Bar-Joseph is one of the premier experts on the Yom Kippur war, with multiple

journal articles and book titled “The Watchman Fell Asleep”. A central element to Bar-Joseph’s

(1999, 27; — and Levi 2009, 469) argument is that Israel’s organizational structure in 1973 used

only one agency, AMAN, to develop the intelligence estimate which was given to the executive

branch of the government. At that time the Mossad, Israeli Defense Force (IDF), and Foreign

Office did not have direct access to present their analysis to the prime minister. The dilemma of

course is that if a single estimate is given and turns out to be wrong the executive branch will be

basing all decisions off of false information. Bar-Joseph (2003, 84) also argues that the leader of

AMAN at that time, DMI Zeira was an authoritarian leader known for stifling his subordinate’s

alternative ideas if they did not conform to his own viewpoints, and would even threaten that any

disagreement his opinions would result in that person’s delayed promotion. Bar-Joseph makes a

compelling argument that DMI Zeira was not the most efficient manager to lead a national level

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intelligence organization, and no doubt DMI Zeira’s weakness played a role in a delayed military

response. However, governments are large organizations and many people reported to the Israeli

Prime Minister Golda, which could have enabled her to make a better more timely decision. She

was in fact warned by King Hussein of Jordan that he believed the Egyptians and the Syrians

were going launch a surprise attack on September 25, 1973, just twelve days prior to the real

attack (Aboul-Enien 2003a, 54; Honig 2008, 81). Yet, in three journal articles Bar-Jospeh places

the majority of the blame for the intelligence failures on DMI Zeira, even though Meir had some

level of warning from other channels. This is not an excuse for DMI Zeira’s failures, and he

deserves a lot of criticism, but so do many others throughout the Israeli government.

The worst point that Bar-Joseph (2003, 76) made in any of his works was in the Political

Psychology journal in an article titled “Indigence Failure and the Need for Cognitive Closure: On

the Psychology of the Yom Kippur Surprise”, when he states that “Syria had no deception plan at

all”. He uses this as an argument to promote the idea that Israel was never tricked or deceived,

rather they were caught being complacent and lazy. While it is true that Syria did not have a

deception plan, the Syrians did not need to have one based on the conception framework which

Bar-Joseph supports. This is because within the framework of the conception Syria was not a

threat until the Egyptians gained long range strike capabilities. Since the Israelis knew that the

Egyptians did not have this capability then they did not need to worry about any offensive

preparations that the Syrians made. Syria could make all the offensive maneuvers they wanted,

but they never would have a chance to defeat Israel alone. Since the Egyptians painted enough of

a picture that they were not ready to attack the Israelis would not mobilize based solely on Syrian

actions.

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Yigal Sheffy is a supporter of the minority view that the Egyptians pulled off a very

successful deception campaign. Sheffy describes his support for this theory with the article

“Overcoming Strategic Weakness: The Egyptian Deception and the Yom Kippur War” in the

Intelligence and National Security journal. In this article Sheffy (2006, 815) argues that the

“Egyptians aimed to shorten the time span between the moment that the Israelis finally realized

that war was imminent and the moment that the Egyptian army had completed establishing

sufficient bridgeheads to make any IDF response irrelevant.” According to Sheffly (2006, 818)

the Egyptian deception campaign comprised of two parts. First there was a ‘fundamental

deception’ which targeted the Israeli senior leadership. In this phase of the deception plan Sadat

stressed his support for the “No War, No Peace” slogan that many other Arab countries were in

agreement with, and he hinted that he was willing to accept the terms of the Rogers Plan which

led Meir to believe that there would not be an attack while there was still the possibility of peace

talks (Aboul-Enein 2003, 53). It appeared to the Israelis that Sadat, unlike his predecessor

Nasser, was not willing to risk another disastrous war like the one in 1967. The second

component of Sheffy’s argument is that the Egyptian’s partook in ‘situational deception’. This

phase of the deception was based on misleading-intentions rather than on actually hiding the

mobilization of Egyptian forces, which could never be completely concealed (Sheffy 2006, 818).

As discussed previously, by September 1973 Egypt conducted 20 military exercises, with the

largest mobilization ever occurring as recently as May. Israel mobilized in response to the May

exercise which turned out to be a false alarm, but the precedent had been set that the Egyptians

were willing and capable to conduct large scale training exercises (Shazly 1980, 207). In an

attempt to prove that the September mobilization was a routine exercise the Egyptians

announced plans to allow soldiers to go on leave for the Hajj, and demobilized 20,000 soldiers

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on October 4, which was a significant amount of firepower (Gaqwrych 1996, 24). According to

Grabo (2011, 120), a renowned intelligence analyst from the US, all that is needed in order to

successfully conduct deception is to present an alternative reason for an action, which is exactly

what the Egyptians did during their final mobilization in September 1973. In summary, Sheffy

disagrees with the more popular view point that Egypt was able to provide enough deception to

confuse the Israelis. An issue that Sheffy fails to address is the complete lack of intent by the

Israelis to discover the strategic goals of the Egyptians under Sadat.

A final piece of literature comes directly from the general that planned and led the attack

on Israel in 1973, and that is the book “The Crossing of the Suez”, which is the memoir of

Lieutenant General Saad Al Shazly, the Chief of Staff for the Egyptian Army during the October

War. The initial phase of the war completely surprised the Israelis and was heralded as a great

success. While the later phases of the war saw the Israelis regain the initiative and conduct their

own crossing of the Suez Canal to encircle the entire Egyptian 3rd Army which made up the

Egyptian right flank (Winokur 2009, 59). Sadat later blamed Shazly for the later failures of the

war and claimed that Shazly was fired on October 19, 1973, which Shazly denied ever happened

(1980, 302). There is the possibility that Shazly’s memoir was primarily written to save his own

reputation as much as it was to tell the Egyptian side of the war, but he still took part in nearly all

of the planning for the operation which makes his book a literal gold mine for information, since

there is relatively few Arab sources on the war. Some of the key parts which Shazly (1980, 211)

stresses throughout the memoir is that the Egyptians went to extreme measure to

compartmentalize information for fear of spies reporting to the Israelis. In total not more than 25

people knew about the attack from Syria and Egypt as late as October 1 (Aboul-Enein 2003a,

53). This compartmentalization of information was so tight that Shazly’s (1980, 208) wife did

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not even know about the attack until the day that it took place. Shazly (1980, 207) gives the most

credit for the successful deception to what he calls the “routine of mobilization”. With so many

mobilizations it became difficult for the Israelis to become worried about a real attack, and the

exercises helped train the Egyptians for the successful battle that they eventually fought in

October.

After over four decades since the Yom Kippur War there is wealth of information and

scholarly research debating what actually took place. To this day many Israelis are still horrified

at how close they were to losing in battle for the first time, while the Egyptian celebrate the

anniversary as a national holiday. There are many reasons for the failure to predict the joint

Egypt/Syria attack on Israel. There is no doubt that there were many failures within the Israeli

intelligence agencies and their leadership, but that does not mean that the Egyptians did not do

their part to feed a false narrative to their adversaries. This paper will contribute to the body of

literature by not looking at the Israeli military as an unbeatable foe that can only lose through its

own mistakes, but through the “lens” that Israel’s enemies have the ability to change strategies

based on their own analysis of their military strengths and weaknesses.

Methodology

Most scholars take the viewpoint that since Israel was such an advanced military

compared to its neighbors in 1973 that any shortcomings or losses on the battlefield were not due

to their enemies’ skill, but due to internal mistakes within the Israeli military and intelligence

agencies. The “lens” which these scholars view the conflict is extremely “Israeli-centric” and

based on the same cognitive biases which the Israelis had prior to the war—namely a bolstering

bias which Cottam et al (2010, 42) describes as “selective exposure to information, as people

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search for information supporting their decision and avoid information that would be critical of

it.” In addition after winning three military conflicts (including the War of Attrition) in row

against Egypt and with such a crushing defeat in 1967 the Israelis began to believe that they did

not face any real sort of threat. To see an “inferior” enemy suddenly successfully execute a

highly technical water crossing that no one thought possible along a 95 mile front, followed by

dismounted infantry knocking out tank after tank, coupled with a nearly impenetrable air defense

umbrella against one of the world’s most capable air forces came as quite a shock to the IDF.

Ariel Sharon summed up the change in his assessment of Egyptian best when he said “I have

been fighting [Arab forces] for 25 years, and all the rest were just battles. This was a real war”

(Keegan 1979, 167). Yes, the Israelis made mistakes, but scholarly research should not just focus

on the mistakes made by the technologically superior force. By focusing mostly on the Israelis to

the exclusion of the Egyptians scholars mimic the same mistake that AMAN and the IDF did

with the lead up to the war.

The methodology of this case study is to analyze the positive actions that the Egyptian

military and government did in order to achieve a tactical and strategic attack on October 6, 1973

against Israel. There are many case studies on the subject as well as primary sources in the form

of memoirs that were used during this study. The majority of the researched material is from the

Israeli and American scholars, hence there is the possibility that this work is also biased. At the

same time every attempt will be made to not hero worship the underdog (Egypt). Most of the

Egyptian sources of information are in the form of memoirs from military and political leaders,

which offer and excellent source of information. However, many of these memoirs are attempts

to shift the blame during some of the Egyptian mistakes during the latter stages of the conflict,

and therefore are not immune to their own self-serving biases. There is enough accurate

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information within these memoirs to form a fairly accurate picture of what positive steps Egypt

took to achieve their surprise by initial applying inductive reasoning followed by deductive

reasoning in a qualitative approach. The research of this paper will primarily focus on the events

from the end of the Six Day War in 1967 to the first forty-eight hours of the October War.

Analysis and Findings

In 1970 President Anwar Sadat came to power in Egypt after his predecessor, President

Gamal Abdel Nasser, died from a heart attack. Whenever a new leader assumes command there

are changes in management and objectives, and Egypt was no exception to this. Still reeling from

their humiliating defeat and subsequent loss of the Sinai which resulted in the loss of the Sinai

Peninsula (Brooks 2006, 402), Sadat immediately began to take steps to change the Egypt’s path.

Arguably, the goals in each of the previous wars for the Arab armies and the Egyptians, with the

exception of the War of Attrition, was to eliminate the Jewish state of Israel (Bickerton 2012.

128). Whether or not this is true or not with the Holocaust so near in the minds of the Israelis any

rhetoric which threatens the survival of the Jewish state is treated as a real threat, and this is one

of the reasons for the aggressive IDF doctrine of deterrence which meets any perceived threat

with preemptive attacks and overwhelming force (Sheffy 2006, 814). After Sadat came to power

the elimination of the Jewish state was no longer and Egyptian government objective. Instead his

number one goal was to reclaim the Sinai Peninsula by any means necessary up to and including

war (Sheffy, 2013, 94). The Israelis never knew that Sadat and Egypt no longer wanted to

destroy the state of Israel, but then again he never explicitly told them this either, so it is not

necessarily a mistake that Israel made. Instead this can be looked as a positive and rational

strategic shift in Egyptian state policy.

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A second change that Sadat made that was different from his predecessor was that he

believed it was in the best interest for any state, and especially Egypt, to be aligned with the US

instead of the Soviet Union (Sela 1999, 64). The relationship with the Soviets was rocky at best,

and in July 1972 Sadat expelled 20,000 of Soviet advisors, while at the same reaching out

diplomatically to the White House (Fradkin and Libby 2012, 9). Relations between Cairo and

Moscow eventually warmed up again and a smaller number of Soviet advisors were let back into

the country, but most likely Sadat was forced to court the Soviets when the US would not help

him modernize his military. The US was pressured to not warm up to Egypt because of the

pressure of the powerful Jewish lobby (Jefferson 2005, 36). Without one of the two superpower’s

assistance Sadat could never fulfil his goals politically or militarily. Along with the expulsion of

Soviet advisors Sadat offered to sign the Rogers Plan which would have returned the Sinai

Peninsula back to Egypt, but with the Israelis controlling several strategic locations. The Israelis

were interested in this deal but felt that they were in a strategically powerfully position and did

not pursue the agreement (Aboul-Enein 2003, 52). The failure to gain the Sinai Peninsula back

diplomatically ultimately led to the Sadat’s decision to pursue a military option. Once the attack

was decided Sheffy (2006, 812) argues that Sadat wanted to achieve three political objectives

which he could not gain in the gridlocked status quo. The first of these goals was restore lost

honor to Egypt and the pan-Arab movement after their recent losses in 1967. The second goal

was to force Israel through military success and international pressure to the negotiating table,

and the final goal was and regain control of the Sinai. All three of these goals were quite

different and distinguishable from Nasser’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel.

By eliminating the goal of destroying the state of Israel, Sadat no longer needed to equip

and train the Egyptian military to do so, which shortened the time frame to launch a limited war.

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Sadat held a cabinet meeting to implement his new plan and ran into resistance from his Ministry

of War, General Ahmad Ismail, who had the same conclusions as AMAN that Egypt could not

go to war with Israel until it had deep strike capabilities (Kahana 2002, 84; Gawrych 1996, 10).

Sadat fired Ismail and replaced him with a commander willing to begin planning for a limited

war that would meet the new strategic goals but based on the constraint of Egypt’s military

(Shazly 1980, 204; Buckwalter 2012, 120). The entire plan was risky and relied upon early

Egyptian success in the form of a well-executed military crossing of the Suez Canal, and the

subsequent superpowers response to pressure Israel to negotiating table. If the US and Soviet

Union did not pressure Israel to pursue a diplomatic solution the plan would fail, Sadat

reportedly told his military staff that he only needed them to seize four inches of the Sinai in

order to attain his political objectives, which is far cry from the objectives from previous war

against Israel (Shemesh 2008, 30).

To ensure the success of the operation the Egyptian first conducted a detailed analysis of

their military strengths and weakness. There were three immediate concerns which the Egyptians

attempted to solve. These were how to achieve surprise; how to improve the performance of

combat units; and how to counter the technologically superior weapons systems of the Israelis.

All three of these issues have nothing to do with Israeli intelligence failure, and everything to do

with a military preparing for a battle and war which they are planning on winning. Throughout

history there are many “weaker” militaries which after a series of losses consolidate, reorganize,

and return to the battlefield to defeat a technologically superior enemy. Within the US history a

prime example of this is General George Washington who had the great ability to maintain the

existence of the army after multiple defeats at the hands of the British army. Like George

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Washington at Valley Forge, Sadat and his generals carefully and strategically rebuilt their army

to check the military might of a more powerful enemy.

The first step towards rebuilding the Egyptian military was to mitigate the chance that the

Israelis would find out about the surprise attack. In the beginning of the Six Day War in 1967 the

Egyptian military was surprised by an Israeli preemptive attack which destroyed 80% of the air

force on the ground. To stop this from happening again General Shazly decided to take extreme

measures to compartmentalize the intentions to go to war which were (Bar-Joseph 1999, 24-25).

In Shazly’s (1980, 211) memoir he explained the system that the Egyptians came up with to

maintain secrecy, which was to only allow a few key members to know the entire plan, then

starting on October the 1st they sent word the two field commanders that attack would begin with

instructions that they would not tell their division commanders until October 3rd, followed by the

brigade commanders on the 4th, and the battalion and company commanders on the 5th. Platoon

leaders and their soldiers were only told six hours prior to the attack. Brigadier General Hamdy

Abouseada (2000, 9), one of the Egyptian generals during war described this as a “successive

planning method”.

The extremes measures to compartmentalize the decision to launch a surprise attack was

not perfect, and there was even a leak from Sadat’s inner circle just twelve hours prior to the

attack (Honig 2008, 90). The leak was from an agent for AMAN named Ashraf Marwan who

was the son-in-law of the former President Nasser. DMI Zeria did not believe that Marwan was

reliable because he made a similar prediction in May when the Egyptian military mobilized,

which turned out to be a false alarm. This coupled with the fact the DMI Zeira believed that

Marwan was a double agent led him to ignore this crucial warning (Bar-Joseph 2008, 244).

Although there were other indicators and warnings such as the evacuation of Soviet advisor’s

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family members on October 5th (Sheffy 2006, 824), which could have tipped off AMAN, the fact

that there does appear to be any other human intelligence reports that could have confirmed

Marwan’s claim illustrates that Egyptian efforts at secrecy did contribute to concealing their true

intentions from Israel. No one to this day knows how many agents Israel had in Egypt. Sadat and

his generals certainly did not know, but by eliminating key information from the enemy they

greatly improved the chance that Israel would not and could not discover their plans until too

late. By the time Marwan reported his mostly accurate prediction the time had passed for Israel

to effectively mobilize or launch a preemptive attack.

Another factor that contributed to the early success of the Egyptian military was the

changing technology of the battlefield. Israel maintained technological superiority throughout the

entire war, and the Egyptian planners routinely admitted that their Soviet equipment was inferior.

Under Shazly’s guidance the Egyptian military analyzed every aspect of the IDF equipment.

Knowing that tank warfare in the open desert against a superior air force was suicidal, the

Egyptian planned to only fight under their SAM-3 umbrella (Shazly 1980, 25-26), which proved

effective during the War of Attrition (Ginor and Remez 2010, 53). This however would not

protect Egyptian ground forces from the better quality US made tanks crewed by the better

trained Israeli soldiers—especially during the early phase of the attack when only the Egyptian

infantry would be across the Suez. To enable the infantry to fight off Israeli tank attacks the

Soviets supplied the Egyptians with thousands of AT-3 Sagger anti-tank wire guided (ATWG)

missiles (Shazly 1980, 58, 60-62). While not new a new technology per se this was the first time

this type of weapons system was massed against this many tanks. The AT-3 Sagger is a heavy

weapons system, which slows down dismounted infantry which was going to be the leading

element in the attack. The Egyptians displayed their ingenuity with a low tech solution by using

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wagons to transport all their heavy equipment, which enabled the infantry to quickly destroy

counter-attacking IDF tanks (Shazly 1980, 60-62). While not a fancy solution in the age of jet

warfare, this small example shows the level of thought that the Egyptian planners applied while

attempting to counter IDF battlefield strengths.

Another area that was severely lacking in the Egyptian army during and immediately

following the 1967 disaster was a severe lack of professionalism throughout the military. In the

modern era Arab militaries have not fared very well on the battlefield. Atkine (1999) argues that

it is difficult to specify why exactly Arabs are mostly unsuccessful on the battlefield, because a

lot of it has to do with culture, and he goes on to state that “over-centralization, discouraging

initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership

at the junior officer level,” are all attributes which cause Arab armies to perform poorly. Shazly,

during his preparations took notice of some of these faults and set about making changes. As

soon as he was appointed Chief of Staff he began holding monthly meetings with 90-100 of his

generals, where he encouraged free discussion in an attempt to allow different levels of staff to

see the issues of those above and below their own positions. This helped professionalize the

higher echelons of staff, but left the lower ranks without any improvement. To reach every level

of leadership and subordinates Shazly began writing directives in the form of small hand held

pamphlets, and to his surprise when he joined his troops across the Suez many of them, including

the lowest ranks, cheered him yelling “Directive 41, we did it”, which was the directive on how

an infantry divisions should make a water crossing (1980, 44-46). Even with all the previously

mentioned secrecy about the surprise attack the Egyptians were still able to train their forces to

high enough level that the individual soldiers and units did not need to know the exact time or

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date of an attack, because they were trained and ready to execute their doctrine on a moment’s

notice, which demonstrates a high level of professionalism

Most importantly there was the actual deception plans which the Egyptians took. As late

as 1980 Shazly (293) still would not reveal certain state secretes to the public. We do know that

Sadat and his generals launched multiple mobilizations prior to the attack, so that the Israel

would get used to these exercises. In 1973 alone they had close to thirty three exercise and

mobilizations (Bar-Joseph 199, 11, 17; — and Levi 2009, 482). The Egyptians used these

“routine’ mobilizations as part of their deception plan, as way to have an excuse to mass their

forces along the Suez. To throw AMAN off even more forty-eight hours prior to the attack the

Egyptian military demobilized 20,000 soldiers which coincided with radio announcements about

pass and leave for the Ramadan Holiday. A final touch to the deception was to order Egyptian

soldiers along the bank of the Suez to play in the water and act “unprofessional” (Aboul-Enein

2003, 53). Granted there were indicators that this “mobilization” was really going to be an attack,

but in order for a deception plan to work it does not need to eliminate every intelligence

indicator, which would be nearly impossible for any military. Mixed signals is all that is needed

in order to maintain surprise (Betts 1980-81, 564), and the Egyptians placed enough emphasis on

this objective to make AMAN think that there may be an alternate explanation for their actions.

A final reason why the Egypt pulled off a surprise attack against Israel has nothing to do

with Egyptian success or Israeli failures, and that is the fact that the Egyptians had several

factors which can only be explained as sheer luck. While luck cannot be quantified and it is

difficult analyze in a qualitative manner it does have an influence on the battlefield. Even Carl

von Clausewitz (1882, 96) included luck in his theories which he described as “chance and

uncertainty”. The first piece of luck that favored Egypt was that on September 13th Israeli pilots

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shot down 13 Syrian fighter aircraft, which was why when AMAN noticed a troop buildup along

the Syrian border they thought it was in retaliation for the previous air battle (Sela 1999, 58;

Gawrych 1996, 23). In addition to the air battle on September 28th Palestinian terrorists took

Soviet Jews hostages on train in Austria—known as the Schonau incident. The terrorist attack

diverted much of AMAN’s resource away from the Israeli borders and towards central Europe,

which contributed to missed indicators of an imminent attack (Buckwalter 2012, 122). While no

one can say that if these two incidents did not place then AMAN would have detected the

surprise attack with one hundred percent certainty, they certainly aided the Egyptians to some

extent.

Conclusion

After achieving near universal surprise the Egyptians and Syrian forces were eventually

stopped by the IDF after about a week of fighting. Ecstatic over their successful crossing of the

Suez the Egyptian’s launched an attack outside the safety of their SAM-3 umbrella to seize some

passes at the request of their Syrian allies (Sela 199, 55), which proved to be a terrible mistake.

The Egyptians committed two armored divisions to the attack and lost 250 tanks for their effort

while the IDF lost only 50 (Shazly 1980, 248). Eventually the IDF launched a counterattack

which conducted its own crossing of the Suez and encircled the Egyptian 3rd Army where it

remained cut off from supplies. At this point both the Soviet Union and the US were actively

resupplying both sides while attempting to maintain détente between each other. As Sadat

gambled the US pressured Israel to negotiate, and tentative ceasefire was agreed upon. The

Israelis even allowed supplies to the trapped Egyptian 3rd Army. Sadat now had the full attention

of the US which was one of his primary goals at the outset of the conflict. Prior to the war he was

quoted as saying “the Russians can give you arms, but only the United States can give you a

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solution” (Fradkin and Libby 2012, 9). Once the ceasefire was in place Sadat began negotiations

with Israel, and by September 1978 he signed the Camp David Accords which normalized

relations between the two countries, returned the Sinai to Egypt, and the US agreed to supply

Egypt with military aid (Gawrych 1996, 79). The signing of the Camp David Accords fulfilled

Sadat’s three prewar goals which were to restore Egyptian and Arab honor with a military

success, force Israel to negotiate and return the Sinai, and move his country into the sphere of the

US. Sadly, Sadat did not live long to relish in his success, because he was assassinated by

Muslim extremists in 1981 (Fradkin and Libby 2012, 10).

The 1973 October war demonstrated to the world three things about the Egyptian

military, and in more general sense Arab militaries. First, although there are many long lasting

conflicts in the Middle East that seem to be fought over the same issues year after year with the

right leadership these countries can change their strategic goals, which will directly influence a

change in battlefield objective and tactics. Sadat was this type of leader, and successfully shifted

his country’s objective away from an irrational rhetoric to a more realistic and achievable

alternative, which was to fight a war to regain the Sinai and not to destroy Israel. Secondly, the

Egyptians realized that they were at a disadvantage militarily. To counter this they

professionalized their forces in a very short amount of time, and designed their planed based on

the acknowledgment that they could only be successful with limited military objectives. Lastly,

the Egyptian’s implemented an effective deception plan which was able to mask their true

intentions from one of the best, if not the best intelligence agency (AMAN) in the region. The

Egyptian deception was so effective that Israel ignored the accurate warning from their best spy

and a neighboring head of state. Not all militaries can have the fancy hardware of the US and

Israel, but that does not mean that adversaries cannot find means to overcome these advantages.

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This case study illustrates that the western intelligence community must remain vigilant and

humble when analyzing determined threats throughout the Middle East, even if they appear to

have a poor history and less military capabilities.

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