Military Deception

Deceptive Strategies

Incorporating deception in a military campaign is generally accomplished via two interrelated approaches. Strategies are formulated to mislead opponents concerning information critical to maintaining a tactical advantage; the nature of a military unit's activities, the potential plan of attack, as well as the true motives for acting in a specific manner, are misrepresented to the enemy. Camouflaging this type of critical information enables military personnel to maintain security while still advancing their position.

Additionally, deceptive strategies serve to keep details regarding strengths and weaknesses hidden from a potential enemy, thus reducing the ability to properly prepare for an impending encounter. This type of tactic, when employed effectively, serves the purpose of providing military personnel with a strategic advantage over the enemy. Intellectual resources, such as knowledge regarding the enemy's abilities, or information the enemy would benefit from, are useful in the calculation of a sound deceptive strategy.

Deceptive military strategies, commonly referred to as stratagem, share a specific group of factors necessary for any ruse to be successful. One of the key tasks of stratagem is to maintain the element of surprise. A military unit gains a significant advantage anytime its strategy departs from what the enemy perceives as the expected plan of attack. In fact, the element of surprise has been emphasized as an important warfare principle by several military stratagem theorists, including Barton Whaley. More specifically, military commanders plotting deceptive strategies that aim to sustain surprise purposefully introduce uncertainty into the minds of the enemy. By incorporating uncertainty into an enemy's perception concerning an impending attack, battlefield commanders are able to reduce the level of overall risk to their own personnel and resources, while at the same time exponentially increasing the odds of success.

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