Especially for SME – 60: Selecting when only- example of Israel Egypt war.

05 October 2022

SME 2: After selecting the relevant SS1, what only to do, where only to do and who only would do it, what is step 5 of strategy formulation?

Mr. Lowe: Now combine steps 1,2,3 and 4 into one step to make the area further less and our application of resources more pointed. That is, decide how to give unconditional plus to the SS1 of the role we are in by doing what only, where only we will do it and thru whom we will do it. This is step 5.

SME 3: Oh, this is easy but it helps not to miss out any key aspect of strategy formulation. Is there anything else we must choose, to make this even more pointed?

Mr. Lowe: Of course, yes. It is selecting the most powerful of all resources namely Time. We must time the execution of whatever we have decided to do in step 5 i.e., steps 1 to 4.

SME 1: This you must explain with a lot of examples as it is as important as what only to do or even more important than that also.

Mr. Lowe: In the Israel Egypt war I talked about, the Israelis wanted to get to the Cairo air base and bomb its runway out of shape, but when to reach there and do this high- risk job? If they are spotted, Israel would be made into a paste by Egypt. How to choose the right time for this job?

To do what time to choose we can preferably approach this by elimination i.e., by deciding when not to do this. Obviously day- time is ruled out because even if the Israeli jets are not spotted by radar because they are flying low, they can be spotted by eyes and ears. Even within the night time span, ideally we should choose a time when people cannot hear the sound. This happens when people are in deep sleep state. Deep sleep is normally between 12 midnight and 3 am in the morning. So Israeli jets took off from Tel Aviv at a time such that they can reach Cairo air base around 2 am so that even the people who are watching the radar would be sleeping on them! And they were right. Nobody spotted them and they were right at the Cairo airbase on time for the operation. Americans chose the same timing when they captured Osama Bin Laden in the middle of the Pak army head-quarters. Here again we have to ask the question why that time 5 times to arrive at the most suitable time.

The Israelis also took care of another major element in timing and that is surprise element. Do not let people at large know, do keep the timing a secret until the execution starts at least, preferably announce after the execution ends. One is not supposed to start a war against any nation without prior announcement, according to International laws. But Israel did exactly that with telling effect on the end result. We have an energy law based equation I=2F, meaning I,impact is equal to twice the force applied. Impact is an unexpected, surprise hit and when the same force is applied unexpectedly and suddenly the impact is twice the force you apply. In strategy formulation, the surprise element is not just twice the force or energy but much more than that. America would not have succeeded in tracing and killing Osama Bin Laden had they told this even in the last minute to Pak. It was a total surprise to Pak that Osama Bin Laden was no more and it came to know about only after the job was done and the result was achieved.

A more recent example is by India’s surgical strike on the terrorist camps created and maintained by Pakistan, all along the line of control between the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan. India chose the same time as Israel did and without announcement, following a well-known military strategy known as preemptive strike. Pakistan’s military camps right behind the terrorist camps created to oversee the entry of Pakistan trained terrorists into India came to know about the surgical strikes all along the border- but a little too late for them to do anything- the next morning, a good 4 hours after India had erased the terrorist camps to the ground. And sure enough, following their State policy of lying, Pakistan completely denied that any such strike by India happened at all. But as they could not control terrorists themselves, one Let terrorist claimed about 4 months after the strikes that Pakistan had already taken revenge on India’s surgical strikes on Pakistan by Pakistan’s strikes on Indian army camps. At least Pakistan and its terrorist gang accepted there were indeed surgical strikes by India. …………………..Contd.