After the battle, Võ Nguyên Giáp argued that the failure to overrun the base could not have been due to fatigue or because the units were no longer properly organized due to weeks of fighting. Giáp believed that the only possible justification was that the French “hedgehog” was a new defensive class and, because his units had not come across such a cluster of entrenched camps before, they did not know how to destroy it. He noted that with the hedgehog, the French could exploit the fact that it was impossible for the Việt Minh to maintain a great number of combatants in the mountain and forest areas for a long time, because of the eventual shortage of food and limited means of transport. The French had only to wait for the Việt Minh to withdrawal, and then move from their cluster of entrenched camps to reoccupy the abandoned posts. The cluster of entrenched camps had become a new challenge for the advance of his army.