combatreform.org/DEFEATSSCS

1. Beating enemy Surveillance-Strike
Complexes: destroy the system with
2D/3D ground fire & maneuver

2. October 6, 1973. Egyptian ground
forces storm across the Suez Canal
and surprise/overwhelm the Israeli
Defense Force (IDF) “Bar-Lev” forward
line of troops (FLOT)
3D Projected
FLOT
2D/3D
2D
2D

3. The Egyptian Army
advanced under a
complete radar-guided,
high-medium-low altitude
surface-to-air missile
“umbrella”, backed up on
the ground by
“hunter/killer” infantry
teams with Rocket
Propelled Grenades
(RPGs) and Sagger 1
Anti-tank Guided Missiles
(ATGMs) to defeat IDF
tank ground maneuver: a
Surveillance Strike
Complex (SSC) in a Major
Theatre of War (MTW)

4. When IDF tanks rushed headlong into Egyptian
Armored formations, they are destroyed by
Sagger ATGMs and RPGs: the invasion
continued
RPGs + ATGMs
= Knocked-out IDF tanks

5. "To defeat Israeli armored counter-attacks in 1973, the
Egyptians employed an average of 55 infantry anti-tank weapons
every 1,000 meters. Their anti-tank positions were mutually
supporting and in depth, using Russian-made RPG-7 armor-
defeating rockets, backed up by Sagger anti-tank guided missiles
(ATGMs), and Soviet tanks and Saggers in a third echelon. By
using the maximum stand-off ranges of all anti-tank weapons
and neutralizing the Israeli Air Force with an effective air
defense umbrella over the main battle area ( MBA), the
Egyptians repulsed attack after attack of Israeli armor."
-- Major Theodore Sendak, U.S. Army Military Review,
September 1979 "The Airborne Anti-Armor Defense"

6. The situation desperate, the IDF
launches fighter-bombers to strafe
and bomb the Egyptian Armored
Columns now just a few miles
away from the capital city of
Israel....
But they are shot down in
horrendous numbers....
Avi Zeira was one of thousands of Israeli Soldiers
who rushed to the front in a frantic call-up of every
able-bodied person in the country:
"I was so angry that we were surprised," Zeira says. "I was
really angry, too, that they had better weapons and we didn't
know about it. I watched as they just shot our planes out of the
sky, leaving us without cover."

7. Then a miracle happened...the Egyptians paused....
...giving the IDF precious time to call up its
reserves and re-organize itself to defeat the enemy
surveillance strike complex; their new tactics:
1. Artillery suppresses enemy
air defense and ATGM
locations
2. Tracked M113 Mobile infantry clears RPG/
ATGM locations
3. Tanks suppress ATGM firing
signatures, dodge missiles

8. 4. USAF emergency airlift begins from CONUS and
USAREUR to replace all lost equipment
5. Ground maneuver regained---with Artillery
suppressing and tanks destroying enemy air defense sites
so the IDF Air Force can fly Close Air Support missions
Egyptian Air Defense
Artilery Site
IDF Centurion
IDF Air/Ground Team
tank killing
ADA

9. IDF recon/covering forces
discover gap in between
Egyptian armies; IDF
ground maneuver forces
under General Sharon
cross Suez Canal and
encircle an entire
Egyptian Army! 3D IDF Paratroops!
Extended
FLOT
2D IDF Armor
Egyptians sue for peace to
prevent annihilation!: Israel
saved

10. Helicopter-borne IDF GENERAL AVRAHAM
Paratroops in ADAN
(TEL AVIV,
extended FLOT 3D 13/5/97.TRANSLATED.)
operations! www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/inter
views/episode-17/adan3.html
“I decided that I would put a
tank brigade in ambush in
the sand dunes; I would
camouflage them with nets
and they would be there to
act against the force coming
from the south. And in the
morning... no, at night, that
night we got Paratroopers,
and they went out into battle
to broaden the passageway to
the bridgehead. They arrived
quite late; they came from
Sharm-al-Sheikh, from a
very far-away front, and they
200 mile 3D Air arrived in helicopters, very
Assault..at night slowly...and we built up a
Paratrooper Battalion, which
entered into a very difficult
battle.

11. THE 2D BREAKOUT
Once across, the tankers overcame local resistance
and some determined Egyptian commando attacks on
their laagers as they reorganized. They then
quickly fanned out into the open desert, crossing the
bridges over the sweet water canals. Here was good
tank country at last, resistance scanty and targets
plentiful. Their first task was to destroy the Egyptian
missile bases to clear the skies for the IAF. During the
day, Adan's and Sharon's tankers destroyed every
missile site within a perimeter reaching some 20
miles along the western bank, breaking havoc among
administrative troops concentrated in the many army
camps in the rear zone of the Egyptian armies
now on the east bank in Sinai. As fast as the Egyptians
threw in reinforcements, they were destroyed by the
roaming Israeli armor. Freed from the threat of the
surface-to-air missiles, the IAF blazed away at
anything that moved, sowing destruction galore.

12. WARNING:
The 1973 war cost Israel 2,378 men, one third of her air
force (102 planes), and more than 800 tanks, a
shockingly high figure for a country the size of
Delaware, with about the same number of people as
Alabama. To comprehend such a loss, a comparatively
high casualty count on the U.S. armed forces would
have resulted in 140,000 dead. As in previous conflicts,
no official record of the Arab losses was ever released,
but again we estimate that they were higher: about
19,000 dead, more than 350 fighter planes, 1,300 tanks,
and 11 ships. Israel won on the battlefield, but in world
opinion it was the first three days that counted, because
it showed that superior force structure in a well-
organized system coupled with surprise were not Israeli
(nor American) monopolies.

13. Did Israel win? Did the Egyptian SSC work?
Egypt knew that she could not defeat Israel militarily, so
Egypt set out to lose the war in such a fashion as to
inflict maximum casualties on Israel and then win the
peace. Egypt did just that. Egypt halted because Egypt
did not want to over-run its air defense umbrella. As a
result of Egypt's "defeat", the Israeli government fell,
Egypt got the entire Sinai peninsula back and Egypt was
able to maneuver the U.S. into the Camp David talks
whereby the U.S. ended up guaranteeing Egypt's borders
with Israel and pledging massive aid to Egypt. Egypt's
casualties would have been less if Egypt had stuck to her
original plan, but Egypt succumbed to Syria's pleas to
launch a limited spoiler attack to take the pressure off in
Syria's losing fight with Israel. The spoiler attack was
launched outside of their air defense umbrella and was
repulsed. The ‘73 war is a perfect example of the dictum
that war is "a continuation of politics by other means".

14. Nevertheless, this doesn't change the fact that it wasn't the Eqyptian intention to
have Israel cross the Suez and surround their Army. This gave Israel a fairly
strong bargaining position and made it very clear in the mind of Egyptian leaders
that the Israelis could be in Cairo in a matter of hours. Although all Egyptians are
rightfully proud of the initial attack they don't like to talk about the end result.
Let’s not forget that Syria intended to go all the way to Haifa and Tel Aviv to
exterminate the nation of Israel if possible--a simultaneous two “MTW” type
scenario that we seem today to want to dismiss as an enemy attack option in order
to cut defense budgets. The Israelis fought a two front war of extreme violence,
beginning with surprise attacks on both fronts and ending with both aggressor
countries seeing their capitols in danger. The Egyptian pinning attack didn't
succeed as well as hoped and this is what forced the change in plans. The limited
Egyptian attack outside of the ADA umbrella didn't cause that umbrella to go
away-it remained in place and the Israelis used combined-arms to crack it.A static
defense wouldn’t have changed the outcome since Israel was planning to attack to
decide the issue (as per their doctrine).
“What ifs” are part of war.

15. IDF Colonel David Eshel writes:
"The Israeli command had anticipated the possibility of a well executed crossing in
their operational concepts. A plan based on the techniques of Soviet forced river
crossing operations was well known to Israeli intelligence; even a film of such a
river crossing maneuver was available and shown in training. But in actuality,
surprise was complete - tactically as well as technically. The Israelis were neither
prepared psychologically nor militarily to accept the fact that the Egyptian Army was
capable of effectively mounting such an intricate operation.”
The fact that there would not be extensive air support came as a great shock to the
Israeli troops who, lacking the vast artillery forces of their opponents, had been
trained to take air support for granted...
So, although we were not prepared, we attacked with part of our forces on 8th
October, just as they arrived, and again that was a mistake because we did not have
the power, and again we suffered great losses. Only later did we decide to organize
first and to switch to an offensive, when we were prepared to concentrate all our
forces.”

16. Lessons Learned for defending MTW aggression:
1. Side that establishes an effective SSC first, lands the
first blows, usually the attacker taking ground
2. He that lands all-encompassing massed/precision strikes
and/or shattering maneuver wins the first battle, which may
be the war--
3. There may be NO RECOVERY to the side receiving
massed, accurate fires if the enemy doesn’t pause (don’t
count on it) and takes ground by maneuver (no territory to
trade for time); U.S. doesn’t have ally with hundreds of
tanks/planes to resupply it if lost in first hours of battle
4. The side receiving SSC fires must be able to absorb,
misdirect and shrug off fires long enough to establish its
own SSC and combining of all joint arms to regain the
initiative--or lose the war.
5. The key is to asymmetrically attack the enemy’s SSC
boldly at its most critical points to collapse it with
unrelenting ground maneuver to not give the enemy any
time to recover, then pursue to victory: armored, 2D/3D

17. “There is no one to rescue us if we don’t get this right”
--Professor Fred Kagan, U.S. Military Academy on how the U.S. is
in the same super-power dilemma as England was in 1939, except
without a potential rescuer with huge industrial base and time to
re-arm & re-equip her if she fails to prepare for the right pattern of
future war
Israel's big brother (U.S.) made up all IDF combat equipment
losses and then some within a matter of days. We may not have
that backup in a conflict of our own. If we are defeated early on it's
entirely possible that no close airfields will exist for us to use. The
entirely competent Israeli ground forces didn't need any large
train up. They were ready-to-go as soon as they unloaded the
equipment off the planes. We have a terrible time getting ready for
gunnery and NTC deployments. Finally, our complicated
electronic equipment may not be easily adapted to an existing
situation. If the training and infrastructure don't already exist on
the ground, introducing it might make things worse.
ITS TIME FOR THE U.S. ARMY TO RE-INVIGORATE WITH 2D/3D
CAPABLE FORCES NOW USING EXISTING EQUIPMENT!

18. How Air-Mech-Strike 2D/3D maneuver warfare
defeats Surveillance-Strike Complexes
1. AMS Forces can self-deploy to any location in the world
to establish a Forward Line Of Troops despite air/sea anti-
access strategems and even in the presence of SSC fires;
organic ground armored mobility expands options to
include high-altitude delivery offset from enemy SSC, ADA
effects and forces in position
Two-Tiered airlift system
CONUS ---> ISB
Airlanding pre-loaded 747
cargo aircraft out of enemy
SSC fire range bulk deliver
AMS combat forces QUICKLY
under 96 hours before CONUS/ISB ---> Drop Zone
battle/war is lost; cargo 747s Airdrop USAF t-tail aircraft deliver Forced-Entry
available NOW in large mobile Assault Echelon (AE) forces under armor
numbers at low-cost protection to overcome enemy SSC fires to
establish expanding FLOT; aircraft fly to ISB to
shuttle-airland remainder of AMS Forces (FOE)
into the now secure Assault Landing Zone (AZ)

19. AMS: strategically and tactically agile 2D/3D
ground forces that offer NO easy asymmetric
weakness for an enemy to exploit
Space/Air Cover by
USAF/USN 2D/3D BCTs
CONUS Coast Assault Combat UAVs
Guard/USN
Echelon (AE)
NMD
Border Patrol Follow-On-Echelon Helo SEL
NG (FOE) 3D
APAF Cargo 747s, USAF aircraft, CH-47F
Army helos (in C-5s or self-deploy) airdrop
C-130X
AGS
TSB
shuttle AZ OBJ
airland
TBAMs = Theater Ballistic
Artillery & Missiles Twin 120 mortars
TMAMs = Tactical Mortars, 2D Light Mech
Humraam
Artillery & Missiles
Crusader
Patriot/THAAD
HIMARS/ATACMs
Deep rear Rear Close/Far Deep
8,000 km back to CONUS 250km from enemy TBAMs 50km from TMAMs 300km in enemy rear
All Echelons protected from enemy missile attack

20. 2. AMS 2D optimized forces extend and/or project
from the FLOT to disrupt/suppress/destroy enemy
SSC air defenses to enable 3D decisive maneuver
(encirclements, turning movements) or vise-a-versa
Extended FLOT tactics
3D
3D
2D FLOT
Enables 3D 2D
Force to
advance

21. Projected FLOT tactics
3D
Enables 2D
Projected FLOT Base Force to
of Fire/Maneuver advance
(Mini-SSC)
2D
Main FLOT

22. UAVs/UCAVs
Robust 2D/3D BCTs win in
ANY situation Road Ambushes, C4I verifies
Mines, RPGs, data, CAS
missiles, obstacles,
predictable = DEATH
City
Kills armor in
Tracked BCT Quality infantry
meeting
defeats enemy
x-country infantry engagements
mobile avoids
road threats RSTA verifies
targets hit not
decoys
Wins far 5-50km fight
2D Force Scout dogs
Swims across Wins close 1-5km
rivers/lakes fight 3D Force
blocks,
Mobile Crusader, HIMARS, encircles
EFOGM, Twin 120mm mortar fire
isolates
support KILLS verified targets
severs
enemy

23. 3. AMS 2D/3D maneuver forces employ maximum fire &
maneuver to paralyze enemy SSCs as they collapse the
enemy’s centers of gravity with lasting, decisive ground
maneuver, ending the conflict clearly on our favorable terms
“What matters in war is VICTORY, not prolonged
operations, however brilliantly executed”
---Sun Tzu, The Art of War