>In the lead up to WWII they put all their faith in the Maginot Line. This was the opposite of a reckless charge, but somehow similarly ineffective, and France fell after only six weeks.
I really should sit down and write this out at length, but in a narrow sense, the Maginot Line was entirely successful. The basic theory was to protect the Franco-German border and force the Germans to move through Belgium, which the Maginot Line proper did successfully. Step 2 was supposed to be stopping the Germans in Belgium with mobile forces, and that bit went less well for a variety of complicated reasons.
Re the bigger question, I do genuinely think this is less of a concern than it used to be. First, WWII isn't the last time we had combat experience. We're currently getting that from the Red Sea, and operating in combat-like conditions elsewhere around the world. Yes, going up against China is different from fighting the Houthis, but I think the gap between them is smaller than the one between what the British battle fleet spent the late 19th century doing and Jutland.
Second, there was a sort of mental shift on strategic issues around WWI. (Another topic I should cover at more length, and I probably should have talked about this in "fighting the last war".) The degree of casualness around a lot of really basic stuff in the RN of this era is kind of baffling, with experienced admirals making mistakes that you would need to go to the bottom half of Congress to find today. If I had to pick a start to the change at sea, it would probably be the founding of the (US) Naval War College in 1884. (The British don't seem to have set up an equivalent until 1900, and I don't think it was very prominent.) Jellicoe doesn't seem to have read Mahan until he was about to take command of the Grand Fleet, IIRC. There's other stuff, too, like much better simulation options than we used to have, and a whole infrastructure devoted to looking at this, instead of whatever officer felt like writing about it in their spare time.
> On October 7th one of the reasons things ended up as bad as they did is Hamas started by cutting communications. The Israeli military relied too much on these communications
That ought not to be possible. What I mean is that Israel, like all modern militaries, has highly sophisticated military radio systems such that you cannot shut down the radio network except by destroying all the nodes in it. You can see some of these radios advertised here:
It's said that Hamas was able to shut down the telephone-based communications the Israeli troops were using on the border. But why would they be using a system so easy to disable? No competent army would do so, and Israel has shown it has a competent army in its recent wars against Hizbollah and Iran.
I'm just passing along what I've read. I agree it should be very difficult to shut down their communication. But when you look at their response (and I would urge you to read the article I linked to, it's fascinating) that appears to be what happened. Perhaps it was human failure...
I think it would be more accurate to say Hamas disrupted local communication on Oct 7th. Tactically powerful for the limited time but ultimately not a strategic victory for them. Surprise, b y definition, is surprise and if you can achieve it you can have a potent strike unless your enemy can afford to be on alert everywhere at all times.
Israel has shown it has a competent Air Force. The Army is a much bigger question, and has a history of not being all that competent, except by comparison to their opponents. In particular, I know there have long been stories of Army units with inadequate radio gear using cell phones to communicate.
A lot gets said about the overturning of paradigms, mostly with an unstated but kind of obvious desire on the writer's part to get credit for calling it before anyone else. We have that story in naval history. Once battleships seemed like the key to naval power. Pre-WWI treaties even made setting limits on battleship numbers and size a major point. But then, the story goes, Pearl Harbor demonstrated carriers were much more important (also subs were a secondary example of a ship that started as a side act to become critically important).
But since the end of WWII there's been a huge explosion not of rational theory over empirical experience but empirical simulation both in terms of military war gaming but hobbyist gaming.
This should cause us to lower our priors over the likelihood that a major war would overturn military doctrines radically rather than raise it.
>In the lead up to WWII they put all their faith in the Maginot Line. This was the opposite of a reckless charge, but somehow similarly ineffective, and France fell after only six weeks.
I really should sit down and write this out at length, but in a narrow sense, the Maginot Line was entirely successful. The basic theory was to protect the Franco-German border and force the Germans to move through Belgium, which the Maginot Line proper did successfully. Step 2 was supposed to be stopping the Germans in Belgium with mobile forces, and that bit went less well for a variety of complicated reasons.
Re the bigger question, I do genuinely think this is less of a concern than it used to be. First, WWII isn't the last time we had combat experience. We're currently getting that from the Red Sea, and operating in combat-like conditions elsewhere around the world. Yes, going up against China is different from fighting the Houthis, but I think the gap between them is smaller than the one between what the British battle fleet spent the late 19th century doing and Jutland.
Second, there was a sort of mental shift on strategic issues around WWI. (Another topic I should cover at more length, and I probably should have talked about this in "fighting the last war".) The degree of casualness around a lot of really basic stuff in the RN of this era is kind of baffling, with experienced admirals making mistakes that you would need to go to the bottom half of Congress to find today. If I had to pick a start to the change at sea, it would probably be the founding of the (US) Naval War College in 1884. (The British don't seem to have set up an equivalent until 1900, and I don't think it was very prominent.) Jellicoe doesn't seem to have read Mahan until he was about to take command of the Grand Fleet, IIRC. There's other stuff, too, like much better simulation options than we used to have, and a whole infrastructure devoted to looking at this, instead of whatever officer felt like writing about it in their spare time.
> On October 7th one of the reasons things ended up as bad as they did is Hamas started by cutting communications. The Israeli military relied too much on these communications
That ought not to be possible. What I mean is that Israel, like all modern militaries, has highly sophisticated military radio systems such that you cannot shut down the radio network except by destroying all the nodes in it. You can see some of these radios advertised here:
https://www.elbitsystems.com/networked-warfare/secured-communication
It's said that Hamas was able to shut down the telephone-based communications the Israeli troops were using on the border. But why would they be using a system so easy to disable? No competent army would do so, and Israel has shown it has a competent army in its recent wars against Hizbollah and Iran.
I'm just passing along what I've read. I agree it should be very difficult to shut down their communication. But when you look at their response (and I would urge you to read the article I linked to, it's fascinating) that appears to be what happened. Perhaps it was human failure...
I think it would be more accurate to say Hamas disrupted local communication on Oct 7th. Tactically powerful for the limited time but ultimately not a strategic victory for them. Surprise, b y definition, is surprise and if you can achieve it you can have a potent strike unless your enemy can afford to be on alert everywhere at all times.
Israel has shown it has a competent Air Force. The Army is a much bigger question, and has a history of not being all that competent, except by comparison to their opponents. In particular, I know there have long been stories of Army units with inadequate radio gear using cell phones to communicate.
A lot gets said about the overturning of paradigms, mostly with an unstated but kind of obvious desire on the writer's part to get credit for calling it before anyone else. We have that story in naval history. Once battleships seemed like the key to naval power. Pre-WWI treaties even made setting limits on battleship numbers and size a major point. But then, the story goes, Pearl Harbor demonstrated carriers were much more important (also subs were a secondary example of a ship that started as a side act to become critically important).
But since the end of WWII there's been a huge explosion not of rational theory over empirical experience but empirical simulation both in terms of military war gaming but hobbyist gaming.
This should cause us to lower our priors over the likelihood that a major war would overturn military doctrines radically rather than raise it.