“[T]he exigencies of determined survival do stimulate smart leaders to hunt such unorthodox options.”
—Barton Whaley, Stratagem
On the evening of Jan. 5, 2025, my first mission within the Pokrovsk command put up was to make a faux radio name. We knew Russian forces had been listening in. We didn’t know whether or not the place our males had been resulting from occupy the subsequent day, the Homar trench at Kotlyne, was nonetheless in our arms or if the enemy had already taken it. I did as instructed: I pretended to be within the trench and referred to as the command middle for assist.
Two minutes later, by means of the thermal digital camera of the drone hovering above the place, we noticed two white silhouettes emerge from a bunker, together with a 3rd, unarmed particular person. The three of them started patrolling and checking the ditch. The Russians intercepted our name and despatched the 2 troopers holding the place, apparently with a prisoner, to confirm. We had induced the adversary to change its habits, and we had learn the place’s true standing in its response.
The preventing at Pokrovsk hit us with brutal readability as an example of mass autonomous warfare — a battlefield dominated by superior tech and unmanned aerial property, reshaping conventional tactical doctrine. Within the preventing that adopted, we gained additional benefits the identical approach, pretending to carry parts of terrain whereas we had been evacuating the survivors elsewhere.
Three options of that episode generalize. First, the faux name served as reconnaissance. Second, it produced a kinetic response and uncovered the enemy’s state of affairs (they had been already infiltrated, listening to our communications, and holding a prisoner). Third, it hid our actual goal by diverting the enemy’s consideration to the incorrect sectors. These lies created an important informational fog. At platoon scale, deception prices little; forces can improvise it from gear already in hand, and it returns data in addition to safety. This is a matter I care deeply about resulting from my wartime expertise, which led me to begin an organization referred to as Fog Defence, which develops decoys: firmwares and state machines that replicate tactical signatures.
The Problem of Battlefield Transparency
On a battlefield made clear by sensors, concealment alone not protects maneuver. One resolution is deception: producing a false narrative (decoys, faux maneuvers, deceptive intelligence), in coordination with actual motion, so the adversary is induced to make incorrect assumptions or can not inform what issues from what doesn’t. As we speak’s navy deception goal isn’t solely the enemy commander however the whole automated chain of sensing, classification, and choice, and the tempo at which that chain produces choices. An up-to-date doctrine ought to deal with this sensor-fusion chain in addition to the adversary decision-maker, with specific concern for financial and operational profitability. I outline profitability right here as two measurable issues: whether or not the adversary spends greater than the deceiver to have interaction a decoy, and whether or not the deception buys freedom of motion. At Kotlyne I noticed a human response to a faux name. The impact on automated classifiers is my proposal, not an noticed outcome — and never each focusing on chain is automated.
Analysts now broadly acknowledge the issue of floor maneuver and battlefield air interdiction. If one can not conceal whereas transferring, one ought to muddy the waters and push the adversary towards false assumptions. Diversion has by no means been so mandatory within the face of drone interdiction on open terrain.
Turner Shaw’s latest article, “Prepare to Lie: Small-Unit Deception on a Clear Battlefield,” appropriately identifies a doctrinal hole at squad, platoon, and firm ranges. I share his evaluation that concealment alone is inadequate underneath persistent surveillance throughout a number of environments. Shaw focuses on institutionalizing small-unit deception. I suggest nesting deception throughout echelons — from part to corps — right into a single coherent system, and emphasize that stratagems deal with the automated classification chain fairly than the human commander alone.
Attrition and Corridors: The Function of Decoys
The attritional logic of deception is best to see within the air. Since 2024, Russian strike packages have relied on unarmed decoys: Gerbera foam drones and wood Parodiya drones, each fitted with a Luneburg lens that provides a radar signature shut sufficient to an armed Shahed or Geran to be handled as a menace. The media has reported that these decoys made up 50 p.c of swarms launched at Ukrainian territory, with the remaining armed. The ever-expanding Alabuga advanced manufactures all of it, protecting these faux drones’ value under $10,000. A Western surface-to-air interceptor prices a number of hundred thousand to a number of million {dollars}. That lopsided change ratio explains why Ukraine developed cheaper interceptors such because the Wild Hornet’s Sting drone ($2,500) and manufactured its personal long-range decoy, OM Defence System’s Spectr, to exhaust Russian air defenses as effectively.
This documentation exposes that decoys can drain interceptors. A mimetic signature could exploit a window of first publicity, however a system skilled on confirmed examples will label a identified faux signature. Neither end result is computerized. A decoy will produce both a false image if it succeeds, or, within the worst case, it is going to eat analyst consideration or classifier bandwidth earlier than rejection. Each are hypotheses, not demonstrated battlefield habits, as the selections of classifiers will not be publicly observable. The size of the window is unknown however probably brief, as adversaries retrain and adapt.
The arithmetic is tighter on the bottom, as a result of the decoy ought to be cheaper than the low-cost munition that engages it. Excessive-end inflatable decoys of armored autos can vary from $10,000 to $100,000, and their return on funding lies within the preservation of actual property — towards, for instance, the price of a Javelin spherical, which itself can differ relying on who the client is and once they purchase it (as of Fiscal Yr 2021, the Division of Protection’s unit value for a G-model Javelin missile was $216,717). However that logic doesn’t carry over to a drone-saturated battlespace. A primary-person view drone with a thermal digital camera value roughly $2,500 in 2024. In accordance with Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Programs Forces, mass manufacturing of first-person view kamikaze drones now places them at $400 per unit, excluding a selected sensor and explosive payload.
The best value goal for an attritional decoy geared toward consuming first-person view drones could be a fraction of that $400 determine: a radio-frequency emitter constructed from business off-the-shelf elements utilizing a couple of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors to mimic a thermal signature would want to satisfy that focus on. No documentation exhibits such low-cost disposable emitters, matching the worth tag of first-person view drone builds, in precise use. However the want for electromagnetically mimetic lures has emerged because the Russo-Ukrainian Battle demonstrated how signature administration has turn into important. Past attrition, mass mimicry would purchase two issues: operational ubiquity, with actual property combined amongst false signatures, and “corridors” for actual offensive property, when defenses are saturated. Aerial warfare exhibits each. On the bottom, the mechanism is similar, however must be demonstrated throughout the complete spectrum — past using a single decoy signature within the bodily or aural spectra, like dummies or loudspeakers dropped by drones. The addition of transistors and radio-frequency emitters to inflatable armor enriches the decoy’s signature so as to lure machines, however as we mentioned, these deception instruments will not be low value.
Even when a floor decoy exceeds the price of the drone that investigates it, the deception can nonetheless be worthwhile if it produces a tactical impact the defender values extra extremely than the outlay: opening a hall, reinforcing an current enemy perception (Magruder’s precept states that it’s simpler to bolster an current perception than to create a brand new one), producing shock, or saturating cognitive and classification chains. The return then displays restored freedom of motion, not solely expended munitions.
The Return of Maneuver By means of Deception: Operation Vivaldi
Saturation consumes sources, but it surely doesn’t produce a selected false choice. A extra consequential type of deception builds a coherent fabricated image that leads the adversary to purpose in a selected course. That is reflexive management: not merely hiding data or creating noise, however shaping the informational situations from which the adversary constructs its personal choices. Reflexive management emerges from the broader Soviet and Russian apply. In essence, it means feeding the adversary tailor-made data in order that it reaches, by its personal reasoning, the deceiver’s supposed choice.
Operation Vivaldi illustrates this logic. Performed in September 2026 and orchestrated by Ukraine’s Third Military Corps commander Andriy Biletsky (who declared that “deception had been a key issue of the success”), the primary sequences geared toward blinding the adversary. Mid-range strikes degraded Russian digital warfare programs and focused the adversary’s drone-piloting groups. In accordance with deputy commander Maksym Zhorin, strict data silence and a “protecting dome” of digital warfare programs (course finders and jammers) helped to disrupt and suppress round 20,000 Russian drones. Ukrainian forces then feinted towards deploying “narrative-coherent” intoxication and finally retook the Nove settlement and its heights. A particular unit inside the corps, devoted to ‘’operational safety,” undertook the creation of “an image on the battlefield that doesn’t correspond to the truth,” shaping the adversary’s illustration by means of faux signatures and operational narratives (Third Military Corps’ report of September twenty fifth). The outcome isn’t solely territory liberated, however maneuver restored by means of deception and tactical consistency.
Cross-echelon stratagems, together with those who unit-level practitioners use, work solely when forces genuinely share situational consciousness and technique inside an electromagnetic order of battle. The Delta system, Ukraine’s real-time mapping system, goals to gather inputs from a number of battlefield sensor feeds to construct a shared operational image. Delta allows complete mapping of the battlespace and helps execute situationally conscious maneuvers and stratagems.
Navy Deception Doctrine: What Exists and The place It Strains
Joint Publication 3-13.4 defines navy deception as actions to mislead adversary decision-makers, “thereby inflicting the adversary to take particular actions (or inactions),” and counts dummy gear and deliberate emissions amongst its means. Discipline Handbook 3-13.4 provides the class of tactical deception. Behind each stands Chilly Battle scholarship: Barton Whaley’s typology of hiding (masking, repackaging, dazzling) and exhibiting (mimicking, inventing, decoying), and Donald C. Daniel and Katherine L. Herbig’s A-type (ambiguity-increasing) towards M-type (deceptive) distinction in “Propositions on Navy Deception.” In “Navy Deception in Peace and Battle,” collected in Battle, Technique, and Intelligence, Michael Handel argues that deception is a rational drive multiplier even when it misses its authentic purpose.
The prevailing framework nonetheless strains towards a machine-read battlefield. First, the deceiver augments the goal. The joint publication’s ideas purpose the deceiver on the decision-maker’s actions fairly than his beliefs. That presumes a human whose image the deceiver can mannequin. On a clear battlefield, the primary reader of a signature is a classifier, and the human sees solely what it lets by means of. The choice-maker is a sequence consisting of a sensor-fusion engine, a classifier, and an operator, and a decoy can saturate or idiot every hyperlink by itself phrases.
Second, the rating of strategies has additionally developed. The deceiver addresses an intermediate goal: the machine that constructs the operational image, as in Biletsky’s operation. This implies an ambiguity-to-misleading-type deception continuum during which ambiguity-type results first enhance inside the sensing and fusion chain (false signatures, competing tracks) so as to saturate it. If the deceiver then resolves the ensuing uncertainty in favor of a intentionally induced false interpretation, the impact strikes towards misleading-type. The continuum runs from disrupting data processing to shaping the false image that emerges. The deceiver induces the machine to supply an inaccurate illustration of the battlespace. Deception strikes from hiding a signature to manipulating the detection-fusion-classification-decision cycle. On its commander’s account, Vivaldi aimed on the misleading-type endpoint by means of cumulative ambiguity-type stratagems.
Third, deception has decentralized. Doctrine requires central planning for navy deception so that each means portrays the identical story. A piece’s emitters that contradict the brigade’s story expose each, and the extra channels a narrative runs by means of, the more durable it’s to maintain. Shaw’s treatment is preapproved small-unit deception. It settles who could deceive, however not how native signatures keep per the upper story and with each other. That coherence drawback calls for signature administration nesting: one story, areas of accountability that movement downward, and a shared image the place each signature aligns.
Lastly, the tempo of deception has additionally shifted. A classifier shortens intervals to seconds and offers the deceiver one thing again: The response turns into seen nearly directly, as at Kotlyne, when two Russian troopers emerged two minutes after the decision and the thermal digital camera hovering above might see them. At this tempo, forces not execute a deception plan towards an anticipated response — it turns into a loop they sense, check, and iterate. When sensing and response strategy machine velocity, deception ought to turn into a repeatedly up to date interplay. In any other case, the benefit of the cycle belongs fully to the quicker aspect.
Constraints and Dangers
Probably the most critical objection is that sensor-fusion chains and adaptive classifiers will finally acknowledge repeated patterns. A decoy that works at present can turn into an indicator of deception tomorrow. The difficulty is due to this fact considered one of adaptation fee. A digitally reprogrammable emitter can alter its sign parameters extraordinarily quickly, whereas a defender counting on knowledge assortment, labeling, retraining, and redeployment could require longer to adapt. However mannequin studying and cross-corroboration can shorten the defender’s response time. A helpful comparability is between the deceiver’s variation interval and the defender’s efficient adaptation cycle — the benefit persists solely whereas the previous is shorter than the latter. The deceiver also needs to preserve coherence throughout sensors and steady variation to maintain the benefit. Ultimately, the adversary could not want to acknowledge the deception in any respect — he can probe cheaply or just cease reacting because the deceiver supposed. The identical measure-countermeasure adaptation cycle seen in drone innovation governs the competition between luring emitters and the classifiers they purpose to deceive.
A doctrine constructed on deliberate signatures leaves no room for improvisation. Decoys provoke a response that may endanger pleasant forces close by and escalate uncontrollably. Every deployment requires a documented perimeter: what the signature is, why it exists, how far it extends, for the way lengthy, and what response the deceiver expects it to attract. The legislation of armed battle permits ruses (decoys, feints, navy disinformation) and prohibits perfidy, which invitations the adversary’s confidence within the deceiver’s protected standing, solely to betray that confidence by killing, wounding, or seizing the adversary. Article 37(2) of Extra Protocol I settles solely that query — a ruse is lawful if it isn’t perfidious and breaches no different relevant rule — but it surely doesn’t make any specific deployment lawful. Distinction, proportionality, and precautions towards the consequences of assaults apply independently, and deception that intentionally attracts fireplace carries authorized publicity wherever civilians could also be current. A Western doctrine that institutionalizes signature deception ought to due to this fact specify: a ban on imitating protected indicators (medical, humanitarian, civil aviation, and maritime misery) and on mimicking civilian infrastructure; a documented civilian-presence evaluation, with abort situations; exclusion zones sized to the response provoked; energy and spectrum limits; deadlines with self-expiry; coordination with adjoining pleasant items; an accountable authorizing commander; and a authorized overview of the platform and its employment. With out these safeguards, the danger of deadly and authorized publicity is actual.
A drive that saturates its space with false thermal, radio-frequency, and acoustic signatures additionally degrades the image obtainable to its personal items and coalition companions. One nation’s decoy fleet is one other nation’s false goal set. Commanders ought to due to this fact deconflict stratagems contained in the shared situational consciousness that programs similar to Delta purpose to supply. Items ought to log, geolocate, time-bound, and share each deployed signature with their companions. In any other case, the danger of operational fratricide and coalition friction is excessive.
Suggestions
Particular person signature administration can shift to the combat-group degree, so that each small workforce treats its personal thermal, radio-frequency, acoustic, and behavioral footprint as a managed variable. On the firm degree, items ought to orchestrate restricted fleets of signatures (radio-frequency emitters, false thermal, acoustical, and bodily decoys) in coordination with actual motion. On the battalion and brigade ranges, the main target shifts towards reflexive management stratagems. Offensive and defensive digital warfare capabilities ought to routinely accompany floor platforms. Acquisition authorities ought to concern focused requires proximity camouflage programs and low-cost energetic decoying options fieldable at scale. Planners ought to prioritize the survivability of the asset, whether or not it’s aerial, terrestrial, or naval, by means of “operational ubiquity”: a mimetic signature that replicates its presence on the adversary’s battlespace image.
And none of that is free. An organization carrying emitters and decoys is carrying much less of one thing else. As an example the issue, let me relate an anecdote. Earlier than we moved to the defensive positions close to Pokrovsk, every soldier selected what to pack. Ammunition was limitless, and we every carried our 5 fragmentation grenades. We might additionally take a transportable anti-drone system with a spare battery. It simply weighed 5 kilograms, and with its antenna and battery it crammed two-thirds of a 50-liter “24-hour bag.” A few of us left this equipment behind and took water and ammunition as a substitute. No matter gadget is invented at present to spoof an adversary by imitating the signature of a soldier or a car, carrying it ought to be neither burdensome nor disproportionate. Its value to institutional patrons also needs to match a positive equation: proportionate to what it protects or allows, or to its attritional worth, that means the price of the munition that will finally have interaction it.
Western armies have reduce deception and digital warfare specialists to little or no over three a long time. Reintroducing the potential requires both inside reallocation or new capability. The institutional query stays open: Ought to signature fleets be natural to maneuver items, or ought to the next echelon centralize and task-organize them downward? A reputable proposal ought to state approximate prices, establish what it displaces, and identify the institutional proprietor. Possession might sit at battalion degree, inside decentralized electromagnetic spectrum operations cells. Such a signature administration cell can maintain the library and reprogram the emitters whereas corporations make use of them. This follows from the speed argument above: Variation wants central management to be quick and coherent, whereas employment requires decentralization to remain credible and native. Natural firm fleets would give velocity of use, however neither coherence nor renewal, which is a specialised accountability.
Conclusion
Tunnels and deeper fortification purchase time however don’t restore freedom of motion on the floor. Excessive lethality on the floor needn’t turn into destiny. The identical logic already utilized to long-range effectors extends to the bottom, too: multiplying signatures in order that the true asset’s presence is not the one factor the sensor sees. The way forward for navy deception rests on addressing a sensor-fusion chain with concern for financial and operational profitability. The evening at Kotlyne was a miniature of this precept: one false name, one response learn by means of a thermal digital camera, and later a handful of survivors who received out as a result of the enemy was trying elsewhere.
The operational deadlock created by the air exclusion zone successfully narrowed our choices to the purpose the place practitioners had no selection however to innovate within the area of deception and tactical stratagems. Simply once we believed we confronted sure doom, as in Pokrovsk in January 2025, the prospect of attaining tactical victories by means of deception emerged because the final viable plan of action. Past and all through the electromagnetic spectrum battlespace, the final word battleground stays the adversary’s cognitive system, and deception exists to govern it.
Édouard R. Maurin, name signal FIDES, is a French author and veteran who served with a world volunteer part connected to a Ukrainian special-purpose battalion close to Pokrovsk in 2024 and 2025. His warfare journal, La Chair à Drone, recounts that deployment. He’s creating business off-the-shelf tactical deception {hardware} and software program.
Picture: ArmyInform by way of Wikimedia Commons
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