Surprise is Inevitable
Israel, Ukraine and the Enduring Nature of Surprise
Over the weekend, Hamas achieved strategic and tactical surprise against the state of Israel and its citizens. Implementing a multi-domain operation of ‘shock and horror’, Hamas rockets overwhelmed Israeli missile defence systems, while simultaneously, ground breaching teams created many breakthroughs in the border fence. This then allowed Hamas ground assault teams to advance into Israel and begin their attacks on Israeli military units, but more often, a terrible slaughter of defenceless civilians at dance parties, in their cars, in public and in their homes.
The character of the Hamas operation indicates, again, that surprise remains an enduring part of human conflict. Humans keep getting surprised. As Roberta Wohlstetter writes in her classic book on the December 1941 Pearl Harbour attack and the nature of surprise, Pearl Harbour: Warning and Decision:
The possibility of surprise at any time lies in the conditions of human perception and stems from uncertainties so basic that they are not likely to be eliminated, though they might be reduced.
Surprise is going to remain with us, regardless of how technologically sophisticated humans become and how clever we think we may be. The profusion of articles recently about contemporary battlefield transparency, created by the applications of civil and military sensor systems, indicates that some may believe we are in a post-surprise era. The events of this past weekend in Israel, and the war in Ukraine, provide a counter point.
Being surprised by an adversary is one of the most enduring elements of warfare. Indeed, achieving surprise is a principle of war in the military institutions of many nations. Sun Tzu believed surprise was an indispensable approach that should be applied by all good military commanders. He wrote that
Attack where they [the enemy] are unprepared. Go forth where they will not expect it.
Importantly, surprise creates a state of psychological shock in people. This state of shock, which slows down or even paralyses decision making and responses. This creates opportunities for those who achieve surprise. From the AD 9 Germanic tribes ambush of Roman centurions in the Teutoburg Forest to General Maurice Gamelin’s performance in the face of the German offensive in France in 1940, surprise has resulted in defeat and catastrophic failure for some, glorious victory for others.
In the contemporary era, the doctrine of many military institutions includes the concept of surprise as an important principle of war. Regardless of how well connected we might be with sophisticated technologies or how much better we become at collecting and sharing information, surprise will continue to occur in the future—perhaps even more frequently. As Colin Gray writes in Strategy and Defence Planning:
It is a reasonable assumption that future strategic history will resemble the past and present. Because it rests upon the evidence of 2,500 years, this is not a recklessly bold claim.
The Continuity of Surprise
Surprise is normally defined as striking at a place, time or location in a manner for which an adversary is not prepared. British scholar Sir Lawrence Freedman, notes that:
A surprise attack, conceived with cunning, prepared with duplicity and executed with ruthlessness, provides international history with its most melodramatic moments.
Ultimately, surprise is designed to shock an adversary and overwhelm them when they are their weakest, or when they least expect it. This is what Hamas achieved over the weekend. It is the result of careful and integrated planning, deception and good operational security to protect plans from an adversary.
The war in Ukraine has also delivered many surprises over the past 18 months. This has included Ukraine’s initial surprise that Russia did not only invade in the Donbas region, and Russia’s massive surprise at the resistance offered by Ukrainian government and military forces during its assaults on the country in February 2022.
Other surprises during the Ukraine War have included:
Defeat of the Russian Army north of Kyiv. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced, many Western commentators believed that Ukraine would not be able to hold out against the Russians for more than a few days. However, Ukrainians were able to hold, and then force the withdrawal of, the Russian forces north and northeast of their capital. It was a strategic surprise for the Russians and for the West, which thereafter significantly increased military assistance to Ukraine.
The First Kerch Bridge attack. On 8 October 2022, the Kerch Bridge from Russia to occupied Crimea was blown up, with both the railway bridge and roadway extensively damaged. This had a major had a significant impact on traffic from Russia to Crimea and the bridge took months to repair.
The 2022 Kharkiv offensive. In September 2022, the Ukrainian armed forced achieved tactical and strategic surprise against Russian forces in the Kharkiv region. The Ukrainians attacked a sparsely defended area, achieved a significant penetration into Russian rear areas, which they were able to exploit over several weeks.
The 2023 Belgorod Incursions. In May and June 2023, armed groups deployed from Ukraine into the Russian Belgorod region. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev blamed Ukraine for the attacks. And while they achieved only minor tactical outcomes, the incursions caused shock in senior levels of the Russian government and necessitated a re-assessment of Russian military dispositions.
Moscow drone attacks. In May 2023, several unidentified drones flew across Moscow airspace. All were eventually being shot down or crashed. The drones resulted in minor damage but generated world-wide headlines, as did subsequent attacks throughout 2023.
Ukrainian Offensive 2023. The initial attacks of the Ukrainian ground forces in southern Ukraine were not as successful as hoped. Given the high expectations raised (fairly or unfairly) before these offensives, the lack of initial progress could be described as a strategic surprise for many in the West.
Both the Ukrainians and Russians have demonstrated the ability to learn and adapt throughout the war in Ukraine. This capacity has often been stilted and is not always systemic in nature. Not every unit on the battlefield learns at the same speed, and often the most important lessons are slow to be transmitted throughout the military institutions of both nations.
Indeed, adaptation has been established as one of the crucial strategic, operational, and tactical capabilities of both sides in the Ukraine War. There exists an adaptation battle that is ongoing, at multiple levels, and which can inform military institutions in Europe and beyond about the modern conflict and potential evolution in the future of warfare. Military institutions must nurture the development of an institutional learning capacity before conflicts if they wish to be effective at adaption in war.
Given the events of the past weekend, it is obvious that Hamas too has learned and adapted. They have learned to employ simultaneity and mass in their operations - in multiple domains - to achieve surprise, shock their adversary and achieve paralysis in Israeli command and control, at least for a short time. They have learned from places like Ukraine the value of armed drones. They have watched and learned Israel’s use of armoured, heavy earthmoving equipment to create breaches during urban operations. And they have continued to learn and hone their ability for strategic influence operations using vision from their horrendous attacks on Israeli civilians and military personnel.
The enduring nature of surprise means that adaptation remains a core competency of individuals on the modern battlefield and in the military institutions that raise, train and sustain forces. But it is not only professional military institutions who value surprise and adaptation. Non-state actors are also invested in being able to surprise us as well as being to learn from us and adapt their strategies and tactics.
If you are interested in reading more on this, the subject of adaptation has been covered in multiple Futura Doctrina posts in the past year, and was something I explored in detail in my book War Transformed.
The Inevitable Israeli Investigation
In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli government conducted an investigation into why Israel was caught by surprise by the Arab armies attack. The President of the Israeli Supreme Court led an inquiry, called the Agranat Commission, that examined into the events leading up to the war and the tactical failures of its initial days.
The Agranat Commission published its preliminary findings on April 2, 1974. Multiple people were held particularly responsible for the intelligence and military failings demonstrated before and during the war, including the IDF Chief of Staff, the commander of Israel’s southern front and multiple intelligence personnel. Ultimately, it led to the fall of the government of Golda Meir in 1974. You can read more on this here.
It is clearly too soon to know the entirety of what has occurred; Israel is still clearing Hamas militants from its territory. However an increasing number of articles are covering the ‘intelligence failures’ and expected investigations by Israel that will follow at some point. Inevitably, some kind of failure of imagination will be a contributing factor. As David Ignatius has written in the Washington Post:
Just as Americans never imagined that the Muslim fundamentalists of al-Qaeda would have the perverse genius to fly airplanes into buildings, Israeli analysts don’t seem to have appreciated that Hamas fighters could escape the barricaded compound of Gaza with paragliders. Israelis evidently didn’t credit their foe’s ability to operate simultaneously across air, sea and land.
Ultimately, intelligence failures are human, not technological faults. It is unlikely that an Israeli investigation will find anything fundamentally new in the reasons for its intelligence failures in the lead up to the events of the past weekend. It is quite likely that a series of human decisions are at fault, which Roberta Wohlstetter describes in her comprehensive analysis of surprise in the attack on Pearl Harbour:
Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined that actions get lost. It includes gaps in intelligence, but also intelligence that like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it. It includes the alarm that fails to work, but also the alarm that has gone off so often it has been disconnected.… It includes the inability of individual human beings to rise to the occasion until they are sure it is the occasion—which is usually too late.
We Will Keep Getting Surprised
The unprecedented speed at which contemporary change, especially technology, is occurring can magnify the impact of surprise while also making surprise more likely in the future. Consequently, nations will require long-term agile strategies complemented by an integral capacity to rapidly adapt at all levels to both anticipated and surprising changes in this new environment.
Regardless of the sophistication and cutting-edge technologies of military and intelligence organisations, the agency of humans and their desire to surprise their enemies is relentless. It is an enduring part of warfare and other forms of human conflict and competition that governments and military institutions must be prepared to counter through adaptation - and good leadership.
However, we can act to understand or shape the range of events that might surprise us. We can intellectually prepare ourselves people for surprise and shock. In doing so, we might ensure that we can adapt and mitigate the worst impacts when we are surprised. This is probably the best we can do.
Surprise is inevitable. The antidote is adaptive capacity baked into institutions. IDF is demonstrating this now.
Sure, the division guarding Gaza got beaten up pretty bad. But could Hamas hold ground or do anything of real military significance like send convoys all the way to the West Bank? Nope. Israel has reserves. 1973 this is not, even if the shock is similar. Add Hezbollah to the mix and Israel still isn't mortally threatened enough to whip out the nukes like it came close to 50 years back.
Hamas, meanwhile, threw its best punch up front. Now it has to hope that the IDF will do a dumb assault straight into the heart of urban Gaza that provokes Hezbollah into joining the party and generates enough international outcry to force Israel into a ceasefire. It's locked in to a particular course of action when time is not on its side and the IDF can choose to cut Gaza into segments instead of trying to occupy the whole thing.
I can't help but see this as the death knell for Palestine. The deliberate mass targeting of civilians by Hamas transforms the character of the conflict. It's the 1990s again, and Israel won't hold pull its punches considering the dynamics of its internal politics. Biden won't be able to do anything to slow Tel Aviv's roll because he's pivoting hard to the center in a desperate attempt to win re-election. Whatever sympathy Americans felt for Palestine is dissipating fast as the media here pumps out more images of terrified Israelis than it has Ukrainian civilians in recent months.
Hamas just pulled a Putin. A hazard of surprise is that a shock to the system can rebound. Pearl Harbor was a fantastic idea in purely linear spreadsheet style cost-benefit calculation that assumed the USA would naturally see the benefit in negotiations after losing its Pacific Fleet and colonies. Instead, a majority of Americans expressed outright support for genocide against the Japanese and celebrated when their cities burned.
A great exposition on the art and effect of surprise, Mick. Failure of the imagination in the side of the attacked will always be a facilitator of surprise. But we are missing another key element: political failure that leads to the weakening of the intel and military forces or political failure that distracts the intel and military forces toward frivolous or low priority issues are also facilitators of achieving surprise. In the instant situation there was clear political failure by Netanyahu and his far right coalition assigning resources to objectives that were not so critical to security (West Bank expropriation of land and property, judicial reforms, splintering secular vs orthodox). Pearl Harbor was no different in some ways as the US was more fixated on the Atlantic and the U-Boat threat, managing the splintered US home front who wanted to avoid war at all costs vs those who saw the threats internationally, and fighting off continued challenges to new deal programs.
Yet, surprise while initially shocking and paralyzing, can come at a cost. Japan totally misread the US and the effect such an attack would have and then facing the prospect of the industrial might of the US. Hamas as well, will now reap the whirlwind of Israeli revenge, but also unfortunately, the rest of the 2 million inhabitants of Gaza who have nowhere to hide.