Comment on What's so important about keeping military operations secret?
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
A few things
- If it’s an operation you end up not committing to you don’t want the infamy of having planned it.
- Advanced knowledge of the strike may allow the target to reposition to avoid or oppose the strike.
- Persons involved in the strike may be endangered due to the association.
- You look like fucking ass clowns.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 4 weeks ago
#4 still applies even if you already looked like a “fucking ass clown” before. Fuckingassclownery is limitless!
I would only add that depending on size it may not be possible to keep an operation secret. D-Day or Gulf War 1.0 come to mind when the world knew it was about to happen, maybe not the exact hour but we still knew. And then it’s a game of obfuscation, i.e. deliberately leading enemies down garden paths so you can surprise them with your real plan. But you wouldn’t want to leak your disinformation campaign in your text group either.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
D- day is a great example of why opsec matters so much. The Germans knew that the allies were going to invade, and if they had been prepared they very well might have rebuffed the invasion. But the secrecy worked, and operation overlord succeeded instead of being a bloody failure.
If the target of the military raid had known when it was coming, they could have simply relocated anything actually important away from the target zone.
A useful analogy is probably a boxer and a ring: your opponent knows that you’re going to throw a punch, but you really don’t want him to know exactly what punch you’re going to throw when.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Another good example would be actions Brits took in order to protect the fact that Enigma was broken. For example, when Enigma deciphering indicated that there’s warship in a specific area, they would send spotter plane first before attacking it, in order to provide enemy alternative explanation as of how they were discovered. Some operations were aborted entirely for this reason