1) It is always better to protect than to defend.
Shouldn't that be "attack," instead of "protect?"
5.56mm
Nope. Judo rule: “You cannot imbalance your opponent without first imbalancing yourself.”
This applies to attacks as well. When you attack you must both overcome defenses, and anticipate being counterattacked. But the defense has different rules.
The most important part of protection defense is to deny the enemy their mission objective. This can be done by removing it; concealing it; making it “not worth their while”; distracting them with what they think is a more valuable target, but isn’t; and to make their efforts increasingly expensive in all ways. Optimally they don’t even know what they want exists in the first place.
The Russians were always careful that in their battle plans, they always had a plan for “obscuration and deception”. It was mandatory, in the attack or the defense.
So protection isn’t easy. It takes a lot more thought than defense. It could even be said that if you must defend, you have already fouled up your protection. And that raises yet another military maxim:
Never reinforce defeat.
When you are fighting a superior force, you can either go up in a sheet of flame like Custer, or you can get away with minimum damage like Kit Carson did in the First Battle of Adobe Walls, while inflicting serious hurt on your enemy.
But the best alternative of all is for your enemy to think a fight with you just isn’t worth it.