By Charles B. Vandepeer & James L. Regens , Matthew R.H. Uttley
“A general-in-chief should ask himself several times in the day, ‘What if the enemy were to appear now in my front, or on my right, or my left?’”
—Napoleon Bonaparte[1]
Replica of Trojan Horse (Wikimedia)There is a long history of commanders using surprise assaults—often in conjunction with demonstrations, feints, and ruses—to break through, envelop, or outflank an enemy on the battlefield. Examples span millennia from the 12th or 13th century BCE Trojan Horse recounted in Homer’s Odyssey, the Battle of Cannae in 206 BCE during the second Punic War, the Battle of the Teutoburger Wald in 9 CE, the 1187 Battle of Hattin, the Battle of Trenton in 1776, the 1940 Battle of Taranto, Pearl Harbor in 1941, the 1950 Chinese intervention in the Korean War, the 1967 Six Day War, and the 1973 October War, illustrating that surprise is a recurring tactic that is sometimes executed with devastating impact on the opposing force.[2] Moreover, surprise itself occurs militarily because the defender either fails to obtain advance warning or fails to respond quickly and effectively to counter the attack despite having prior warning. In other words, surprise is an action on the battlefield that is unanticipated by the enemy’s decision calculus.
Surprise by its very nature, therefore, is a psychologically traumatic, not just a physical, event happening at a specific time and place. Shock constitutes the cognitive and emotional responses, individually and collectively, to surprise. In essence, shock is a potential but not automatic effect of varying impact associated with surprise. As a result, because it is unexpected, a surprise attack may make the difference between success and failure, especially in the early stages of an armed conflict due to the amplified stress it generates. As Clausewitz posited, “Surprise therefore becomes the means to gain superiority, but because of its psychological effect it should also be considered as an independent element. When it is achieved on a grand scale, it confuses the enemy and lowers his morale.”[3] Hence, this article examines the interplay of surprise and shock in military operations and analyses the implications of that interplay on decision-making in warfare.
According to Clausewitz, surprise is essential in gaining superiority at the decisive point.[4] Surprise, therefore, is not an end in itself but is a means for gaining opportunities that must be rapidly and continuously exploited to achieve an advantage over the adversary.[5] In essence, surprise in the context of military operations is typically intended to achieve a decisive outcome tactically, operationally, or strategically. Usually, that advantage over the enemy is gained at the tactical or operational level.[6] More rarely, deftly employed surprise at the operational level may be sufficiently impactful that it produces strategic victory.
The World War I Battle of Cambrai from 20 November to 3 December 1917 is a prime example of the possibilities for surprise. Although the effects of surprise were overwhelming, the British Expeditionary Force was unable to exploit the opportunity presented before the Germans were able to rally and counterattack, thereby avoiding a strategic defeat.[7] Similarly, Lee and Jackson’s decision to split the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and outflank the numerically superior Union Army of the Potomac on the 2nd day of the 1-3 May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War was audacious and produced a crushing operational, but not strategic, success.[8] On the other hand, during World War II, the German May-June 1940 campaign in the West overwhelmed the French military’s ability to deal with fighting coming from behind them versus where they expected it, leading to France’s collapse and surrender.[9] Neither campaign, however, was decisive in terms of winning the war, underscoring the difficulty of transforming well-executed operational surprise and its attendant shock into strategic victory.
Regardless of echelon, the cognitive effect of surprise needs to be large enough to generate shock—shattering the enemy’s will to fight and win.[10] In effect, the impact of a surprise hinders decision making because it is beyond an enemy’s abilities to recognize and adapt quickly enough to react effectively and avoid defeat. This aligns with the observation that surprise often appears unimaginable, indicating that it leverages a cognitive reaction.[11] Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s testimony to the Falklands War inquiry illustrates this point: “I never never expected the Argentines to invade the Falklands head-on. It was such a stupid thing to do, as events happened, such a stupid thing to even contemplate doing.”[12] Yet the unexpected and unreasonable is a recurrent feature of the battlefield. As a result, this assumption about surprise is a core principle of war that is consistently articulated in doctrine intended to define the entire range of military operations linking actions to objectives.[13]
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visiting troops in the Falklands in 1983. (RareHistoricalPhotos.com)
Obtaining battlefield advantage can involve dedicated deception plans, as in the case of Operation Overlord, or simply be the result of the unexpected, whereby the specific actions of an adversary, the performance of one’s own forces, or some combination of both are unanticipated. This is particularly evident during times of technological and doctrinal change when newer forms of warfighting emerge and exemplify changes to the current character of war.
The success of Japanese land-based torpedo aircraft in sinking the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse days after the attack on Pearl Harbor provides an example of surprise achieved through the successful combination of tactics and technology. Senior Allied naval officers failed to acknowledge the potential air threat to major warships, including the task force commander, Admiral Tom Phillips.[14] Operating out of Singapore without guaranteed air support, Phillips’ force was located by the Japanese and attacked by torpedo bombers with the loss of the two ships and 840 sailors in an action later described as “the end of the battleship era.”[15] The surprise and subsequent shock were profound for the crews as well as military personnel and political leaders beyond the immediate battle. In Singapore, Admiral Phillips’ Chief of Staff was described as “completely stunned and virtually inarticulate,”[16] and a British Army officer described how, on hearing the news, “our sense of security and faith in the future vanished completely.”[17] In Britain, Churchill later stated, “In all the war I never received a more direct shock.”[18] And one Minister of Parliament called it a “day of despair and despondency.”[19] The minimization of Japanese capabilities, the British military’s overconfidence in their own forces, and a general unpreparedness for war in the Pacific was further evidenced by the fall of so-called fortress Singapore 67 days later.
Successfully overcoming surprise and countering unexpected changes in warfare has been achieved, but it requires the ability to quickly adjust to battlefield realities. Moshe Dayan describes countering the quantitative and technological advantages held by the Egyptians and Syrians in their surprise attack on Israel in 1973. The use of Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank weapons by the Egyptian military to devastating effect in the opening days of the war particularly required the Israeli military to rethink how to fight in real-time. In the absence of immediate technological solutions, Dayan highlights the central importance of the human element in rapidly adapting battlefield tactics, exploiting advantages and playing to strengths of existing armed forces in order to regain “battle initiative.”[20] That the Israeli armed forces were able to successfully counter adversaries on two fronts is remarkable. However, the cost of the nation’s initial unpreparedness went beyond the loss of lives, infrastructure, and weapons. The initial successes by the Egyptians and Syrians demonstrated that the Israeli military could be defeated, significantly undermining a perception of battlefield invincibility Israel had developed during previous military conflicts.
A Tank Destroyed in the 1973 War (Getty)
The idea that immediate tactical reverses can have strategic consequences, even when overcome, is further evident in U.S. operations with the United Nations humanitarian mission in Somalia in 1993.[21] The special operations raid to capture senior members of Mohamed Farrah Hassan Aidi militia was planned as a short mission that became a twelve-hour battle between U.S. forces and Somali militias on the streets of Mogadishu. The downing of two Black Hawk helicopters in rapid succession were low-tech but high-impact events, representing not just the loss of aircraft, but also a shock to the task force’s sense of invulnerability.[22] American forces eventually overcame the initial confusion and chaos, albeit with significant loss of life and casualties, and were finally extracted with assistance from UN forces without regaining the initiative.[23] The death of 18 personnel, further magnified through the television footage of an American soldier’s body being dragged through the streets, led to both societal and political shock reflected in President Clinton’s question to his staff: “How could this happen?”[24] The following year American forces were withdrawn from Somalia, a move that reinforced a perception amongst some that the United States would not accept casualties in conflict.[25]
The potential for enormous costs in countering battlefield surprise and shock were witnessed with the fall of Mosul to Islamic State forces in 2014. In just days, an estimated force of some 1,500 Islamic State fighters were able to take control of Iraq’s second largest city as the Iraqi security forces collapsed.[26] Apart from the use of social media to magnify fear on both a local and global scale, there was nothing particularly new about the character of warfare evident in the capture of Mosul. The city the Islamic State captured in just days took Iraqi and Coalition forces three years to recapture, and only then after rebuilding Iraqi capabilities, an extensive air campaign, and a nine-month ground operation described as the largest conventional land battle since the 2003 capture of Baghdad and the world’s largest military operation for over a decade, longer than the Battle for Stalingrad.[27] This underscores the reality that the cost of overcoming battlefield surprise and shock might be enormous and perhaps never recoverable in terms of blood and treasure.
Battlefield surprise can be overcome, and shock avoided, if commanders and soldiers quickly adapt to an unexpected reality, by understanding what is happening, selecting appropriate tactics, and implementing these. However, it appears that if the gap between expectations and reality is too great to either understand or implement appropriate actions, then surprise can turn into shock and battlefield defeat. Liddell Hart describes the overly optimistic Polish military prior to conflict and their subsequent “disintegrating disillusionment” in the face of German blitzkrieg.[28] Similarly, in describing the British Expeditionary Force’s reaction to these same German tactics just months later, David Fraser notes, “Nothing prepared them or their seniors for the storm which now broke. The sheer speed of events was numbing. The psychological shock was profound. It was necessary to struggle against both physical exhaustion and paralysis of the will.”[29]
An increasingly technological future battlefield envisaged in current defense guidance appears to present more opportunities to both achieve surprise and to be surprised.[30] What does not appear likely to change is the human element and its susceptibility to surprise and shock. As Hart observes, “Human nature…changes but slowly, if at all; and human nature under stress of danger, not at all.”[31] Given that warfare is ultimately a human activity, irrespective of changes in the character of war, surprise and shock will remain consistent factors of conflict.
Surprise needs to be a core part of training, planning, doctrine, and strategy, particularly the ability to adapt to situations as they are. Even then, no military has ever consistently overcome the problem of battlefield surprise, meaning that it will remain an ongoing challenge and opportunity. Napoleon’s opening observation that avoiding surprise requires constant mental vigilance echoes earlier Roman and Byzantine military guidance, namely that a general should never have to say, “I did not expect it.”[32]
No comments:
Post a Comment