The Importance Of Military Deception

Over the course of history, the strategic environment has changed rapidly and is now more complex than ever before – it is currently characterized by unpredictability and disorder, and may yet manifest itself in the collapse of nuclear armed nations, destabilizing conflict in geo-politically vital regions, and humanitarian crises. A world of disparate actors – not all nation states – now exists. Unpredictable events will continue to cause strategic surprise. The widespread effects of past conflicts such as World War II, Vietnam and the Iraq war are still being felt and have created significant strategic repercussions. The failures of these conflicts are the result of our military and political leaders’ failure to quickly adapt to wartime conditions. This occurs because of a general refusal to commit to a military culture of learning that encourages serious debate, critical assessments of our military operations, and challenges to our doctrine in the face of emerging change. Additionally, leaders have struggled with the critical responsibility of forecasting and providing for a ready force, one that is well-resourced and prepared to conduct future operations. It is the responsibility of our military and political leaders to send our military to war with a ready force, and a strategy that will ultimately result in victory. But understanding war and warriors is critical if societies and governments are to make sound judgments concerning military policy.

Deception is the act of deceiving; it takes the shape of an underlying theme in each of the texts. It is a common occurrence in literature such as Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘On Chesil beach’ but in almost every incident, the degree of deception is different. Deception is performed by all characters to different extents and purposes, depending on the context of the situation. Othello displays deception between colleagues, whereby Iago uses deceit to cause carnage in the lives of his associates. Tennessee Williams illustrates deception within a family in his play A Streetcar Named Desire, as the main protagonist Blanche, lies to her own family about her sinful past. Finally, Deception is conveyed in Ian McEwan’s

In a statement provided by the text, “ Those who are the best at deception succeed.” Looking at this quote, it appears to be very negative, and potentially evil. Deception is a negative term implying manipulation of people. Deception isn't a way to success, it false success. Those who use deception as their pinpoint key to success aren’t the right kind of leaders. Leaders should have good intentions, and be the guide for the people under their command. Leaders shouldn’t be mistaken for dictators, since there is a certain way to direct those on their team that shouldn’t include

In the following sections, the author explains how “Search and Destroy Strategy” uses the soldiers as bait to attract the enemies. Soldiers were dehumanized by basic training, proceeding by American’s war strategy. Appy also explains that the helicopters were useless to locate the enemies in thick terrains. As the war progresses, the soldiers have little idea whether they were dealing with their enemies or the defenseless civilians. Formulate rules of engagement offers

Deception According to Hyman (1989) deception implies that an agent acts or speaks so as to induce a false belief in a target or victim. Deception can occur in everyday life. Whether it is telling someone they look nice or not telling them that they look fat. This is an important process for forming relationships and general social interaction.

As the country goes through its tenth year of the war on terror one can look back and see some of the policy differences that has plagued this country when, as a nation, our young men are sent to war. Everything, in this author’s view needs to be on the table, and transparent. Of course, troops strength, strategy, and general war plans should be kept from the enemy, the need of informing our own people has been a tight rope that is not easy to balance on for any one person. This was especially true of the “enhanced interrogations” used by the Bush administration at the beginning of the War on Terror. What this paper plans to do is to explain the four greatest

Intelligence gathering and collection in the United States has significantly increased over time. This paper examines how intelligence reporting and pre-mission planning was crucial to the success of the United Nations involvement at The Battle of Inchon during the Korean War. By examining how intelligence played a role in this battle, you will be able to understand why it is important to gather and collect intelligence prior to every mission executed. Intelligence collection should be the baseline for all military operations. Inchon Landing has an ample amount of actionable intelligence; collected and disseminated appropriately we will discuss how it played a role in a low probability mission accomplishment to the last great amphibious assault in history. This paper provides detailed explanations on why The Battle of Inchon was a success and what could have been the outcome had it gone the other way.

The article also addresses the difference between covert action and traditional military activities. Several historical instances of U.S. involvement in unconventional warfare (UW) touch upon this subject. ATP 3-05.1 Unconventional Warfare states “UW often inhabits the gray area of political engagement where it blends into warfare. It is crucial that Soldiers planning and executing UW pay careful attention to legal considerations and respect for authorities” This is a point of contention with the Title 10 and Title 50 debate as the word “covert”, and

Diplomacy is the art of dealing with foreign countries and their people in a sensitive and effective way. The ability to influence people and situations contributes to effective American diplomacy. In The Ugly American William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick comment on the nature of American diplomacy in 1950s Southeast Asia. They identify the characteristics and effects of both inept and skilled diplomacy. The book highlights knowledge of language, history, and culture as critical components to the ability to influence indigenous populations. In many ways the situations and characters described in the book mirror situations and challenges faced by Special Operations Forces (SOF) today. Special Operations Imperatives are a planning tool that SOF use to influence people and situations they encounter. In order to understand the influence and effects of proper application of the Special Operations Imperatives the stories of Homer Atkins, Colonel Hillandale and Solomon Asch provide a setting to compare and contrast with my own experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan.

In order to develop effective solutions for complex military problems, the Joint Community within the US Military adopted the methodology of Operational Design in Joint Doctrine. This methodology addresses the concept of complex, ill-structured or “wicked” problems. In fact, Lessons Learned as a result of operations conducted over the last 15 years played an instrumental role in the continued development of this doctrine. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) illustrates a perfect case study for evaluation utilizing this methodology. Therefore, the intent of this paper is to evaluate US Military campaign planning for OIF by using operational design as the framework for this analysis. First, this paper looks at how planners and commanders interpreted pre-invasion civilian policy guidance, their understanding of the current operational environment, and how these commanders defined the problem. Next, it identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the initial approach. After discussing this initial approach, this paper examines how commanders assessed the campaign and refined the approach – to include how the reframing occurred. Lastly, it provides examples of how these lessons learned shaped current joint planning policy and doctrine.

Winston Churchill famously said, “In time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies” (Churchill, 1986, p. 338). The bodyguard of lies which attended the Allied Forces invasion of Normandy, France (codenamed Operation NEPTUNE) on 6 June 1944 was a large-scale deception operation, codenamed Operation FORTITUDE. A single British double agent operation was the linchpin of this deception operation. This double agent succeeded in stalling Nazi reinforcements to the Normandy for two months, thereby reducing Allied Forces’ casualties and saving the beachhead expansion. Had German intelligence prioritized acquiring additional human intelligence and taken greater care in vetting this agent, they would have seen through the deception and sent adequate forces to counter the Allied beach landings at Normandy.

When discussing covert operations, the truth of the matter is that we do in fact need them. To better understand how covert operations play a legal role under our Constitution, we need to go back to when the National Security Act of 1954 was enacted during the Ronald Regan Presidency. Regan exercised an executive order to extend the powers of the United States Central Intelligence Agency in response to foreign overseas intelligence agencies collecting American information during the War of Vietnam. This order allowed the CIA to conduct covert operation under the President’s orders with Congressional supervision. After 9/11, Bush placed even more power onto the Director of National Intelligence, allowing them to advise on the best action and

Clausewitz defines war as an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” The nature of war is enduring yet the character of war changes over time. Current US strategic guidance is advancing the point of view that since the character of war has changed to focus on irregular wars then the US military should prepare for a future of irregular wars. This shift in focus forgets that the nature of war is enduring and in order to be successful, we must prepare for all types of conflict. This paper will define the types of conflict and the likelihood of each followed by a discussion of US strategic guidance and ending with an analysis of the training resources and force structure requirements needed to achieve success for all types of

Giulio Douhet, in his seminal treatise on air power titled The Command of the Air, argued, “A man who wants to make a good instrument must first have a precise understanding of what the instrument is to be used for; and he who intends to build a good instrument of war must first ask himself what the next war will be like.” The United States (US) military establishment has been asking itself this exact question for hundreds of years, in an attempt to be better postured for the future. From the Civil War, through the American Indian Wars, and up until World War II (WWII) the American military’s way of war consisted of fighting traditional, or conventional, wars focused on total annihilation of an enemy. Since that time, there has been a gradual shift from the traditional framework towards one that can properly address non-traditional, or irregular wars. While the US maintains a capability to conduct conventional warfare, the preponderance of operations where the US military has been engaged since WWII have been irregular wars. Therefore, this question articulated by Douhet, as to understanding the character of the next war in order to properly plan, train, and equip, is certainly germane to the current discussion of regular war versus irregular war. In today’s fiscally constrained environment, the questions remains, which will dominate the future and therefore, garner further funding and priority. Based on the current threats and the US role as a superpower, the US

As military members we are educated to think very linearly about strategy. For many years we have been trained to have a strategic thought process based on the use of a methodology that espouses three major steps: Ends (Objectives), Ways (Strategic Concepts), and Means (Resources). (Barber 1997)