[borski]

Not necessarily. The Trojan Horse wasn’t so disastrous because it was filled with way more soldiers. It was because they had penetrated all of the defenses and had the element of surprise.

Iran just sent I-don’t-know-how-many drones and missiles at Israel like a few months ago. A few of them landed, but most were caught and intercepted in the air. Here’s the thing: if even one of them had hit, say, the center of Tel Aviv, or the old city in Jerusalem, it would have been a massively successful attack, even if none of the other ones had done any damage. The size of zero armies was measured in that exchange.

[latexr]

The Trojan Horse is a myth. It’s as meaningful an example of military strategy as Gundam robots.

But even if those were real they would still not support Schmidt’s point that “offense always has the advantage because you can always overwhelm the defensive systems”. The Trojan Horse didn’t overwhelm defenses, it penetrated them and destroyed the enemy from inside.

[borski]

Sure, that's fair - I don't mean to imply that it is always true, and 'overwhelm the defensive systems' isn't the language I'd use. All I mean is that specifically targeted strikes, at the right targets, at the right time, can sometimes be far more important than who has the bigger army. Sometimes if you cut off the head, the rest of the snake really does kind of just die.