Quote:
Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers
Lieutenant,
What you've just described is an operational nightmare. I cannot say anymore without a further study in how the res are called up and deployed but in an offence where you don't even know who's doing what and where they are coming from, I'll just say it's not a scenario I would have tolerated.
I'm sure there are contingency plans left, right, and centre for all the res but to expect a guy jump from the office to the front lines without even being briefed on OPSEC and SIGSEC rules would simply be a recipe for a disaster.
I need to learn alot more before I can understand and appreciate how the res works within the IsDF. From what little that has been pointed out to me ... I get the shivers if such were to face a Guards or a Shock Army.
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It is and was an operational nightmare at that time. It is not something that was planned. The reserves in 1973 were supposed to report directly to bases to be briefed. Coded messages went out on the radio to all reservists, there is a lot of old video footage of Israelis standing around huddling next to a radio waiting for their unit orders. Many went straight to the front. It was Yom Kippur so most of the nation was in Synagogue and wasn't listening to the radio or answering telephones and it something that everyone knew. Truth be told the army should have planned a beter deployment should a war break out on Yom Kippur of all days. It wasn't planned to work that way of course, it just happened and Israel got lucky. It is not like that anymore. I'm sure it is a brigade commander's nightmare to have to organize something like that in the thick of battle. Remember Israel's size and remember that It can be sliced in a day should its active defense units be smashed.
But the reservists of the northern command fought to take the Golan just six years prior in 1967 and knew the area well. The few active tanks did a historic job in slowing the advance of 250 Egyptian tanks and the Artillery in the north did a fabulous job of grinding the Syrians to a halt. If the active army didn't do such a good job the nightmare scenario you think of in which you have unbriefed tank crews hopping into their armour would probably have unfolded in a horrific way.