In 2014, for example, the Russian government emphatically denied what most of the world knew to be true: that Russia’s Little Green Men had actively intervened in Ukraine. What revealed the truth (though Moscow never admitted it) was a flurry of pictures and videos of Russian forces and equipment that had been captured and shared on social media, including by Russian soldiers posing for selfies.
This was also how it was revealed that Russia had supplied Ukrainian separatists with the surface-to-air missile system that shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. Civilians with smartphones captured the weapon moving away from the scene of the crime, which revealed its Russian military markings, and then they photographed the same system on its way back toward the border of Russia.
Similarly, when the Chinese government denied in 2016 that it was installing military capabilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, commercial satellite imagery showed the truth in high resolution.
Militaries in the future will have little hope of hiding large traditional ships, aircraft, or ground force movements.
So, every battle will be the Somme or Trafalgar.
Genug.
Has Christian Brose ever been in a fistfight, never mind war?
Asking for some friends…
If you look at the problem from a non-academic, non-looking-to-publish-and-impress-General-Officers-looking-to-make-money-on-side-contracts…._etc_et_al…
if you look at the problem of hiding from the standpoint of you want to actually hide instead of publish…
If you live in a literal physical world of perish as opposed to metaphorical world of publish or perish [academia]….
It’s actually as easy or even easier to hide than ever. You simply send out clouds and clouds of nonsense and put a nice tagline and pretty girl pic etc etc and in all that digital chaff and viral nonsense and fact checking and counter fact checking and twitterati noise and forcing the other guys lawyers and intel* to spend time refuting and frankly covering your idiot bosses @ss etc etc you could probably hide a land bridge being built from Kamchatka to Alaska or hell from China to Taiwan …
[*Intel and JAG, the lawyers are now one, I hate them both if you haven't deduced]
See what I mean?
This BTW is simply the digital equivalent of sending out clouds of skirmishers or cavalry to cover the advance of the columns. It’s the online anyone can play at saying anything version of demonstrations of troops marching, or clouds of cavalry or skirmishers in every which way while your main objective remains obscure, it’s an updated version of what we’ve been doing for all of recorded history.
When Sherman marched through Georgia and Carolinas and Virginia his secret was no one knew where he was going, they couldn’t move their Confederate defenders fast enough to counter him effectively.
I can go on and on.
The actual way to play 4th generation warfare and hide is to hide behind a digital smokescreen and the internets ability to generate ever exponential amounts of bullshite and the entire damn human race can play. Far from being a nightmare it’s a dream world come true for those that understand in war deception is always the key to surprise, and deception means misleading your foe. Not you are INVISIBLE to your foe.
It’s as if everyone in the human race who used to be interested in war gossip now spreads and magnifies it exponentially.
This isn’t the end of the military deception, it’s a Golden indeed platinum age.
It’s as easy to hide as ever, all that was necessary was: Free-Speech + Mass-Communications for All [Internet] = if you aren’t standing there you won’t know anything at all.
It’s easier to hide than ever.
There are now only 2 truths:
1. You were present
2. Someone you trust with your life was present and tells you yes this is what happened.
The rest is the entire human race generating smokescreens and rumors at the speed of the Internet to a scale and depth that the omniscient almighty has probably lost track of.
This is the Golden, the Platinum, the Palladium Age for Deception.
It’s easier to hide than ever.
There are now only 2 truths:
1. You were present
2. Someone you trust with your life was present and tells you yes this is what happened.
The rest is the entire human race generating smokescreens and rumors at the speed of the Internet to a scale and depth that the omniscient almighty has probably lost track of.
This is the Golden, the Platinum, the Palladium Age for Deception.
So in a world of Satcom and cell phones and digital sensors everywhere it might be hard to hide battleships. Ok. And all those troops with Fitbits transmitting to the hive snoopers can easily plot movements. OK Rip Van Boomer, anything else you’ve missed since the 60s? Someone actually publishes this crap?