Deception

Deception can be defined as follows:

1. The process of influencing the enemy—by supplying or withholding information—to make decisions disadvantageous to the enemy.
2. A purposeful attempt by the deceiver to manipulate the perceptions of the targets' decision-makers in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Deception has never been a principle of war. Deception is only a means to achieve surprise (which is a principle of war) and not an end in itself. Although the principles of deception have not changed throughout history, deception itself has, in this century, changed in magnitude and scope. Formerly considered an improvised tactical method, it has evolved into a complex activity occurring on all levels of war.

More than two millennia have passed since Sun Tzu stated unequivocally that "all warfare is based on deception," and four hundred years since Niccolò Machiavelli asserted, "Force without fraud is not enough." Both of these strategists elevated deception close to the level of a panacea when extolling it as the key to victory. Admittedly, deception might have been relatively more important in premodern history, when firepower and mobility were limited. For example, the Bible, Greek mythology, and Chinese and Byzantine history alike abound with detailed accounts of the primarily tactical use—though often with strategic consequences—of deception in war. Even the oldest recorded histories of war, from the conquest of Jericho to the story of the Trojan horse exhibit all of the basic patterns of deception as they exist today. Such diversions, feigned withdrawals, acclimatization, and double agents are ultimately based on manipulating enemies' perceptions and reinforcing their preexisting beliefs or wishful thinking.

Reinforcement of the intended victim's existing perceptions is often considered the most critical ingredient for success. Deception operations are unlikely to be exposed because they reinforce, rather than attempt to change, the enemy's perceptions. Even the most sophisticated intelligence organizations will seldom expose a deception operation indicating the accuracy of their analyses. When Adolf Hitler expected the Allies to attack the Balkan and Romanian oil fields in 1943, the Allied deceivers obliged by passing along information indicating that such an attack was to begin in Greece and Sardinia; the Allies actually intended to invade Sicily. In much the same way, Hitler and the German high command believed that the expected Allied invasion of northwest Europe had to take the shortest possible route and would depend upon the availability of a port. The British then reinforced their beliefs by suggesting that such an invasion would take place at the Pas de Calais.

The second most important factor in effective deception is supplying the opponent with largely accurate (though typically obsolete or trivial) information that can be verified "independently." Third, the victim must not obtain the information easily. The greater the investment required to win the "prize," the more the target will trust in its veracity. To achieve this end, therefore, the deceiver must be intimately acquainted with the intended victim's level of sophistication, beliefs, and methods of collecting intelligence. This brings us to the fourth important factor—determining whether the proposed victim has "swallowed the bait."

Deception is never a game played for its own sake: it is always a means to achieve surprise. It gives the deceiver a significant advantage over the opponent through an attack in which the time, place, or methods are unexpected. Defenders can also use deception to lure an attacker into striking at their strongest point, thereby causing the attacker to waste time and resources. By helping to achieve surprise, deception thus acts as a valuable force multiplier.

Weakness and military inferiority produce a particularly strong incentive for the use of deception: the "underdog" is only too happy to seize upon ways to use his forces more effectively and weaken his opponent at a lower cost. Conversely, stronger forces tend to rely less on deception and fraud because they expect to emerge victorious anyway. Consequently, the stronger side must make a greater conscious effort to incorporate deception into its strategic repertoire in order to achieve a less costly, more decisive victory.

Always dependent on strict secrecy, deception can be passive (concealing) or active (disseminating misleading information). The means of passing on deceptive information include using unwitting agents and double agents; exposing some force concentrations while concealing others; and, in modern times, making extensive use of radio traffic (allowing the enemy to intercept and decipher messages or detect bogus transmission activity representing nonexistent headquarters and troops). Although deciphering the enemy's encoded radio messages is the most reliable method of verifying the success of deceptions operations, other methods might include aerial observation of troop movements and concentrations, or the use of double agents.

Deception can be very convincing when used to "inflate" the strength of a weaker side, as illustrated in the classic paradigm of the "Potemkin village" ruse. In 1936-1937, the Luftwaffe managed to impress the chief of the French air force with the numbers and quality of the aircraft ostensibly at its disposal by surreptitiously flying its aircraft from one field to the next on his itinerary. The weaker side can also exaggerate the order of battle to pin down some of the opponent's forces with nonexistent troops. Thus, the Allied threat to the Pas de Calais in 1944 was maintained by FUSAG, a fictitious army group that succeeded in projecting as much additional strength (or more) as was involved in the invasion of Normandy; in this way, FUSAG "attracted" a substantial number of German troops that would otherwise have been able to reinforce those fighting the invasion in Normandy.

Even if the deceivers intend, as an overall strategic threat, to project a larger number of troops than they actually have available, most military deception efforts on the operational level want to conceal the number and location of troops available for an attack: this would include "exposing" notional or real troops at a point where the attack will not occur while camouflaging the troops concentrating for the real attack.

Better intelligence, especially of the technological sort, should make the use of traditional deception more difficult. Deception should not be confused with electronic warfare per se, although the two are often related. The principles of deception, that is, its objectives as well as its basic method of manipulating and reinforcing the opponent's perceptions, are not likely to change. As long as human beings go to war, deception will play a pivotal role as an inexpensive, effective measure that allows the achievement of the decisive factor of surprise.

Michael I. Handel

Donald C. Daniel and Katherine L. Herbig, eds., Strategic Military Deception (1982); Michael I. Handel, ed., Strategic and Operational Deception in the Second World War (1987); J. C. Masterman, The Double-Cross System (1972); Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (1954) and Beyond Top Secret ULTRA (1978).