enemy assessment Quotes

Underestimating one's enemy was a classic tactical mistake --- one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both. (Harry Smith)

It is sufficient to estimate the enemy situation correctly and to concentrate your strength to capture him. There is no more to it than this. He who lacks foresight and underestimates his enemy will surely be captured by him.

Judge your enemy based upon capabilities, not intent, you have to look at the enemy and really almost make a worst case call every time.

A fatal mistake in war is to underrate the strength, feeling and resources of an enemy.

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.

'Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

These are the six ways of courting defeat - neglect to estimate the enemy's strength; want of authority; defective training; unjustifiable anger; nonobservance of discipline; failure to use picked men.

In cases of defense, it is best to weigh the enemy more than he seems.

Consequences of linear thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq included overestimating indigenous forces' capabilities, underestimating the enemy, and the associated expectation that the coalition could soon reduce force levels and shift to an exclusively advisory effort.

If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.

Bin Laden does reprehensible activities, and we should surely take care of that by killing him as soon as we can. But he's not an irrational man. He's a very worthy enemy. He's an enemy to worry about.

You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

With difficulty he is beaten who can estimate his own forces and those of his enemy.

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

The worst mistake you can make is underrating your enemy. Assuming that they're evil - I think it's a terrible thing to do.

He however knows when the enemy is stronger.

A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.

The only situation a commander can know fully is his own: his opponent's he can know only from unreliable intelligence.

You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad.

Till the enemy's weakness is known , he should be kept on friendly terms.

To discover how much of our resources must be mobilized for war, we must first examine our political aim and that of the enemy. We must gauge the strength and situation of the opposite state. We must gauge the character and abilities of its government and people and do the same in regard to our own. Finally, we must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect the war may have on them.

When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be rout.

Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.