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SURPRISE AND DECEPTION
“To achieve victory we must as far as possible make the enemy
blind and deaf by sealing his eyes and ears and drive his
commanders to distraction by creating confusion in their
minds”.
- Mao Tse Tung, on Protracted War, 1938.
INTRODUCTION
Throughout history surprise and deception have played a major part on the
outcome of all major military conflicts. It is the desire of every military commander to
achieve victory against the enemy with minimum attrition to own forces and equipment.
In striving to realise this goal, military thinkers both past and present, have recognised
the vital role which surprise action and deceptive practices play in achieving the
objective. Although surprise itself cannot guarantee ultimate success in war, surprise
combined with creative and military planning, adequate firepower and manpower,
audacity, innovation, boldness, unconventionalism and perhaps a little bit of luck does
provide an important foundation for eventual winning .
Because of its importance, surprise has been one of the principles of war since
ancient to modern times. Surprise and deception are the most important tools that
enable the military commander to dominate the will of his enemy. He achieves this
through moral ascendancy. Surprise enables psychological dislocation of the enemy’s
command system. Surprise in war is a force multiplier. While increment in force or
firepower provides arithmetical advantage, successful surprise gives geometrical
advantage. Analysts have concluded that surprise changes ratio of casualties in favour
of the attacker from about 1 : 1 to about 5 : 1.
Surprise can be achieved by speed of action alone, but it is most usually
achieved by deception alone
1
. Deception can be put as subset of surprise. Deception
on its own has not been included as a separate entity amongst the principles of war.
However, Deception Operation is being considered as one of the five pillars of
Command and Control warfare, itself a subset of Information Warfare, along with
Operational Security, Psychological Operation, Electronic Warfare and physical
destruction.
AIM
The aim of this essay is to analyse the concept of surprise and deception at the
strategic, operational and tactical level and suggest measures to achieve the same.
