Chapter 3

Intelligence, the First Defense? Information Warfare and Strategic Surprise ¹

One of the most spectacular aspects of mobilization in the military domain of information warfare over these last 20 years has affected the evolution of either civilian or military intelligence services. Often seen as a “first line of defense”, these services may be considered as the guarantors of the impossibility of a State being the victim of a strategic surprise.

Increasingly more present in literature (yet nonetheless still hardly defined), strategic surprise amounts to a diplomatic or military surprise which could radically bring into question the security of the political organization subjected to it¹.

This assertion of intelligence able to guarantee that a strategic surprise will not take place, albeit through intelligence as the first defense which is often seen in literature on the revolution in military affairs (RMA), may come across in varied forms of political and doctrinal crystallization.

The most spectacular form is undoubtedly the link between the new strategic function of “intelligence/anticipation” and strategic surprise from the last French White Paper on Defense and National Security [GOU 08].

As the fundamental material for intelligence services, information is becoming one of the supporting pillars of the French security system². However, the link between information and intelligence services, and the prevention of a surprise attack deserves to be questioned. This is not only from the standpoint of strategic studies, but also intelligence studies which is prolific in the USA and the UK, having gained the status of a discipline of social sciences in its own right, with its own academic journals and having generated a relatively important source of theoretical literature.

This chapter will be the basis for a solid apprehension of a set of problems which should enable us to consolidate a theory of information warfare which is still affected by real, theoretical weak points [HEN 08], [VEN 08]. These shortcomings stem from an almost anarchic proliferation of studies dating back to the 1990s, at a time when assets such as the boundlessness of information technology was still not properly understood, and yet at the same time was greatly appreciated in armies (particularly American forces), centers for research and also on a political scale³.

At this time, a biased perception of the contribution of state-of-the-art technology in military operations (after the Desert Storm operation in particular) opened up a debate on the RMA where a certain number of technologies were bound to trigger a radical change in the conduct of conflict, enabling the person controlling the conflict to systematically win the operations he engaged in. The RMA mobilized many technological categories: first and foremost came precision strike systems (lasers, GPS, cruise missile, etc.), C4ISR (command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) systems⁴, and more broadly, information warfare techniques and tactics – technologies inherent to stealth. Some authors only saw an initial technological “wave” in this, which was followed by an “RMA after next”, led by biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and even cognitive sciences⁵.

Affected by technological determinism, the historical context where the theme of information warfare emerges from is also affected by an over-simplification of the relationships between belligerents, with the RMA having to change the nature of the war by denying the adversary any possibility of hitting its target. Any threat, and on whatever level it might be (and therefore, on a strategic level) had to be systematically and immediately detected before being eliminated⁶. As a theoretical construction which hardly takes strategic models into account other than those based on regular strategies⁷, for a long time now the RMA has found itself being put back into question, particularly due to experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also due to its own theoretical limits and the context in which it sees the light of day [WAS 06].

In this framework the chapter aims to demonstrate the limits of the link between information warfare, intelligence and two large types of military strategic surprise. The first deals with a surprise attack through conventional methods (armies) or further still by terrorist attacks (in the example of 9/11). The second goes back to the possibility of a massive surprise attack on a country’s computerized infrastructures, bringing back the question of a digital Pearl Harbor⁸. The limits of the link between intelligence, information warfare and strategic surprise will be analyzed in turn from three different angles:

– the existing relationship between war (understood as the dialectic of opposed wills using force to resolve their differences⁹) and the different meanings of information warfare;

– the relationship between intelligence and strategic surprise (in its conventional or terrorist forms) by focusing in particular on the entire intelligence cycle which not only includes its collection, but also its processing and analysis, its exploitation and its distribution;

– the relationship between strategic surprise (this time, as a sort of electronic Pearl Harbor), intelligence and information warfare. Here too, it is a question of taking the entire intelligence cycle into account.

3.1. Information warfare, information and war

Before going into the heart of the subject, we must still note beforehand that the different interpretations of what constitutes information warfare are different depending on the authors. These interpretations may, for example according to Libicki [LIB 95], [LIB 09] incorporate attack and defense:

– networks and information infrastructures (cyberwarfare, strategic information warfare);

– mediatized and psychological operations;

– intelligence in the broadest sense (including tactical reconnaissance); the different reprisals of electronic war¹⁰;

– the strategies and tactics aiming to eliminate opponent leaders, from the tactical front to the political front (or even their developments in nuclear or air strategies);

– paralysis or destruction of their command and control infrastructures or even deception¹¹ strategies and tactics, or C3D2 (camouflage, cover, concealment, deception, denial).

If we are not careful, defining the scope of information warfare would be similar to that for operational strategies, which could scramble the essential categories of the art of warfare¹². Therefore information warfare and combat (and not war in the Beaufrian or Clauswitzian meanings) might have similar definitions but would lose all their operative range.

Information plays a vital role in the art of warfare: just like any technicallyoriented system, armies and combats are fed and motivated by information. Thus, anything which may affect, both near or far, C41SR modalities is highly considered as being crucially important in practically all the world’s armies, whatever their doctrines may be [VAN 87]. To a certain extent this is also the case for sub-state governed group fighters, such as Hezbollah or al-Qaeda whose strategic acts (“manual” and other information given to their fighters) show just how much attention is paid to the subject.

We must, then, “see and control”, so as to be able to optimize military action, be it tactical, operative or strategic. “Knowledge” is an integral element to the art of warfare. When intelligence is not available (or not available enough), one of the commonly accepted trends of the Clauswitzian “genius” is to know where the adversary is, by a sequence of successive deductions, at the same time correctly maneuvering so as to defeat him.

From this perspective, we may say that the vast majority of technological artifacts produced in the wake of the RMA and then Transformation¹³ boils down directly to “knowledge”, to its prohibition or its transformation. Various sensors (air, terrestrial, naval), targeting pods, experimental stealth technology, modernizing infantries and reticulation, are examples of representations of a willingness to “know”¹⁴. In the same view, the concept of “network-centric warfare” (NCW), created in the wake of the RMA, is first and foremost a concept of information sharing [DEN 06]. Moreover, we must specify the range of an RMA (and its resultant transformation) which has been widely interpreted as an “information revolution”¹⁵. If information warfare follows in its footsteps, then it above all constitutes a new reprisal of Western operative art, which tends to reproduce old trends of the American art of warfare. Therefore, it would not count as a revolution but a radicalization of pre-existing trends [GER 00]. But it also tends, in the debauchery of the capabilities it promotes, to make the important distinction between information, intelligence and knowledge be forgotten. We notice this jamming behind the information quadrisection that Arquilla and Ronfeldt were operating, i.e. information which is thus equivalent to intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom [ARQ 96].

Whatever the approach used may be, and behind all the academic quarrels, we must understand that accumulating information does not mean very much for the analyst, or the decision maker. First of all the information has to be checked, correlated and confirmed in order to be considered as intelligence. It also has to be analyzed, contextualized and distributed. It will only become knowledge when it is discussed outside the circles of intelligence services and thus used by political decision makers. Faced with the probability of having to deal with rumors or information which has been manipulated by an opponent party, the distinctive feature of an intelligence service and its main quality are precisely to validate or invalidate received information and to put it in their own domains (political, military, economic). Information alone is not enough: only the analyst will give it added value. The perception of intelligence services with regard to the “information revolution” has evolved considerably in this perspective.

Firstly, intelligence services have upheld a certain mistrust for new sources of information appearing by means of the Internet, but also and above all as a new source of vulnerability¹⁶. Therefore in several European intelligence services, analysts’ computers were not linked to the Internet in the development of wordy literature on information warfare and hacking, which could have compromised the information at their disposal. Secondly the Internet has also been considered as a particularly rich and open source of information, and therefore more and more newspapers and research institutions are putting their editorial content online, notably post 2000. As such, intelligence services were considerably expanding the already outdated technique of open source intelligence (OSINT), offering intelligence on the political, economical or military aspects of a nation, and based on freely accessible content produced by the “7 tribes”¹⁷. Thus in 1949, Kent Sherman estimated that 80% of the information from US intelligence services came from open sources [SHE 49]. At the same time, certain services, depending on their legal attribution and the scope of the missions entrusted to them, launched penetration operations into the enemy’s electronic networks in order to take information.

From this point of view, the dissemination of computer networks and the Internet may be considered as the cornerstone of the revolution in intelligence affairs (RIA) concept in two respects:

– on the one hand, through the organizational cultures and means of networking intelligence services whose respective cultures have led to a certain mistrust. The main aspect of the RIA would, then, be an organizational order for Barger, and would involve coordinating intelligence services depending on their specific features, but also developing a common doctrine [BAR 05]. Computers and networks are considered as the infrastructure which makes this evolution possible, particularly in a post 9/11 backdrop, having seen the blow by blow failure to prevent attacks [GOO 05] and the failure on the question of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction¹⁸;

– on the other hand, with the generalization of the Internet and adapted software, it is composed of a “web 2.0”, an application where users can collaborate and share information quickly in a few minutes or a few hours¹⁹. According to Samuel Wilson, ex-deputy director for the American Defense Agency, the status of OSINT in intelligence increased to providing 90% of the information for intelligence services in 2000. OSINT is considered to be a “vital component of NATO’s future vision” [STE 07]. The RIA stems from exploiting new characteristics of information flow, here also via networks [WHE 08]. In such a context, the rate of acquiring information in an age where threats are increasing by the minute, this would become a crucial factor for national security.

The truth still remains, however, that it is a particularly complex task to make such visions go from theory to practice. Culturally, intelligence services are hesitant towards organizational evolutions, particularly those affecting the balance in their relations, more on an international scale (where multi-nationalization is one of the obligatory factors of new forms of the art of warfare) than within the intelligence community of a given country. Speaking from a technical point of view, accessing more sources of information in an OSINT does not require a through reconfiguration of the intelligence cycle [STE 07]. From this point of view, Web 2.0 has an impact on the information collection process, but causes a problem for processing and analyzing it. Therefore, the value and quality of this information is a far cry from being systematically attested. If a researcher’s work appearing in a peer-review journal is probably more likely to be true than an anonymous contribution on Wikipedia, then we cannot help but notice, just like any intellectual work, that they are vulnerable to manipulation by their author, whether this is knowingly or not. By extension, the work of any analysis is also vulnerable to being, in a certain way, distorted. However the enormous volume of information washed up by the Internet operates a growing geometric, whereas the resources in terms of intelligence service analyzes are limited. If the systems for processing information and calculation have seen a wide increase in their capabilities, then this is not necessarily the case for human resources which were allocated to them, particularly in terms of analysis.

Consequently, intelligence services are confronted with the need to define strategies which will make it possible to avoid seeing themselves drown under the mass influx of information, and to remain focused on the prioritized questions which are unique to them. However the sheer volume of information available on the Internet must be put into perspective, in two aspects.

On the one hand, in 1999, this information was evaluated at 6 Terabytes, i.e. the equivalent of a library containing 450,000 books [LAW 99]. And so, NATO’s Open Source Intelligent Reader indicates that if the information can be found quicker on the Internet, then it only represents a fraction of the information available in open sources [NAT 02 and STU 93]. As a prudent document, it also indicates that the growth of the Internet is exponential, and so the volume of available information is also just as exponential. In fact, the volume of available information “on the surface” (accessible via search engines) does not seem to have greatly increased. On the other hand, the deep web would be much more important and would see a bigger growth following Moore’s law [GUO 09].

Moreover, the information available on the internet, whether it is published as news articles, academic publications or even blogs, only makes up a small portion of open sources which are more widely available, which includes publications on paper or conference proceedings.

On the other hand, the problem of the volatility of this information is raised. Some estimates indicate that the average lifetime of a page on the Internet is 75 days, whereas entire sites disappear from one day to the next [KAH 97]. If the question of the cost of storing the information makes it possible to moderate this phenomenon (over these last 10 years, it has not stopped getting smaller), a certain amount of information, particularly in the media, is frequently being renewed. As such, information in open sources must be processed quickly, requiring in return sufficient human resources.

Finally, the effective value of the resources offered to intelligence services by information warfare from day to day may be difficult to evaluate, whether it is from OSINT or even from penetrating opponent networks. Modern literature, faced with the discretionary measures around questions of intelligence, undoubtedly has not gained enough retrospect to show the decisive role that such or such information gathered by these means could have on an operation. For all this, the importance attached to OSINT compels many analysts to say that it plays a vital role in terms of the intelligence’s architecture, not only allowing it to provide contextual information or to monitor the other side, but also to play a “tripwire” role. When correlated, this information would then make it possible to, taking Van Creveld’s expression of the “directed telescope” [VAN 87], towards the technical and human means towards a given problem, thus making it possible to purge all the intelligence that it harbors. As appealing as this structure may seem on the theoretical front, however we cannot help but see the need for a strengthened capacity to analyze and interpret. In this respect, the OSINT on the Internet confirms the following axiom once more, one where the higher the technological intensity of the strategic action is, then the more the human factors must be evolved [HEN 08].

3.2. Intelligence and strategic surprise

This question of the link between human and technological factors and intelligence is also at the heart of the theme which is prominent in strategic studies: strategic surprise. A concept which is little defined and goes back to a somewhat instinctive apprehension, in truth the notion covers very different connotations. If it implies an event which could put the State’s security in danger [CHE 08], then we cannot help but notice that it may take extremely different paths to reach this point: is it economical? Is it military? Is it computerized and does it aim to destroy the enemy’s networks? Does it affect the energy sector? Or even the population? For Tertrais and Debouzy, it has plenty of aspects and it has become one of the permanent factors in international relations [TER 08]. As a notion which brings together perceptions and connotations around this concept, a major strategic effect occurs when the party suffering the attack has failed to predict it, or is the result of insufficient anticipation [BRU 08].

What is understood to be “strategic” is little defined in existing literature, but the territorial integrity of the targeted state is directly put into question. This may mean its capacity to ensure the security of the majority of its citizens, or still, the serviceability of its vital infrastructures. On the highest level, strategic surprise puts national security, or even the State’s very legitimacy, into question, (forcing a decision to go to war).

3.2.1. Strategic surprise

However, after this positive portrayal, strategic surprise may also be characterized negatively. Strategic surprise could, then, be distinguished from operative, tactical²⁰ or technological surprises, and more specifically military surprises, and those inherent to the hazards of the battlefield which may naturally be considered as a characteristic of warfare [GRA 05].

In this context, the examples of strategic surprise throughout recent history are limited to the Barbarossa operation against the USSR (1941), the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941), the Korean War (1953), the Kippur War (1973) or even the 9/11 attacks in 2001. In a similar idea, the attack on Hiroshima, for example, may be understood as a technological surprise, at the very most. Still in the same schema, the 1940 German offensive on France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands is an operative surprise. From September 1939, high magnitude operations were expected and war was declared. The only unknown factor lies in the form taken by these operations, and the place where these operations happen.

But this concept is naturally ambivalent. For example, C. Brustlein considers the surprise, for the USA, stemming from the launch of the USSR’s first Sputnik in 1957 as being strategic [BRU 08]. However in practice, it quite rightly indicates that a strategic surprise is the result of hostile intentions. But between the launch of Sputnik and the start up of the first strategic Soviet nuclear charged, ballistic missiles capable of striking the USA, a certain time had passed. In this example, if the Sputnik was effectively a technological surprise, then it had above all warning value with regard to the course that Moscow could have taken by means of the vectors of its nuclear arsenal.

Even if operative, tactical or technological surprises can have strategic consequences (let us think back to the German’s attack in 1940), then there was nothing strategic about the surprise in 1940. In truth, there were only a few strategic surprises in the 20^th Century and more generally, the phenomenon is actually rare in terms of history. In the 19^th Century, the battle of Sadowa could come under this category, along with the Mongolian invasions further on in history. The reasons behind this rarity can be quickly grasped: implementing a strategic surprise seems eminently difficult. For the attacker, his plans and the safety of his devices must be maintained, and he must act promptly.

At the same time, most strategic surprises also require that the means be concentrated, implying not only the provision of such means (generally in large quantities) but also important organizational and conceptual abilities, and therefore the concentration followed by the implementation of forces must be achieved in both time and space. These forces must also be exploited, militarily or politically, in order to be able to come entirely into operation. They do not exist on their own, as though they were disconnected from the international environment. Above all they involve a violent break in the given international order so as to try to produce an order which is more preferable to those implementing it: no one goes to war to lose it, or at the very least, not to reach the success hoped for. There are several pre-conditions needed for success.

Another one of its characteristics can be added to its rarity, which relates to the volatility of its strategic effects. As John Keegan shows, in the stead of military history, no strategic surprise has ultimately led to the defeat of the State suffering it [KEE 03]. Its value as a “decisive strike”, alone capable of bringing down an enemy (by gaining clear and definitive victory) is low due to the magnitude of what it must achieve. If a decisive strategic surprise must not be excluded from a strictly theoretical point of view, then it does involve considering such a variety of factors so that its probability of materializing remains low.

To take the Soviet example from 1941, the Germans were forced to penetrate the Soviet territory, and managed to take Moscow, neutralize the Soviet political leadership at the beginning of the operation, and without a doubt, eliminate the huge capabilities in terms of defense industries before they could be transferred to the East²¹. In modern contexts, the question of our dependence on computers and networks brings the problems of decisive strategic strike up to date: it would be possible to strike everything at the same time. We will come back to this problem further on, however we must point out that, always in theory, organizations in hierarchies are more susceptible to this type of strike than reticulated organizations [ARQ 96].

Yet, not only do computers per se induce reticulation, moreover the physical domains (military units, political and decision making staff, industrial capacities) are clearly defined from computer systems²².

Furthermore, strategic surprise has fundamentally transitory effects, which are wiped out by adapting the plan belonging to the targeted State. If the surprise can suspend the fight between the opponents by radically reworking the very structure of the confrontation, as James Wirtz points out, then there never seems to be a total paralysis as the complexity of the effect to be reached is too important²³.

In terms of the combat’s morphology, it generally represents the sign of a long and expensive commitment, as much in costs of human lives as it is financial, and it tends to be more strategically expensive for the instigator than for the victim.

This was the case for Japan after Pearl Harbor or for Germany after the invasion of the USSR. The Korean War led to the re-establishment of a status quo ante, and the 9/11 attacks, if they did not lead to defeating al-Qaeda, nonetheless brought the attention of the intelligence services to the risks of Jihadist attacks, thus rearranging their devices and enabling them to anticipate a new strike²⁴.

In the end, the probability of actually suffering this type of attack, if it still exists, has decreased since 2001, whereas the number of attempts tends to increase.

3.2.2. Perception of surprise

These characterizations nonetheless leave several questions hanging which may relativize the very concept of strategic surprise.

Firstly, this concerns the perception of what a surprise represents by different State-controlled activists which might come to suffer it. “Surprise” may first of all be considered as a perception which may vary between political decision makers, intelligence specialists and average citizens²⁵. In the attacks of 9/11, the US political, military and civil worlds were obviously surprised when faced with the magnitude of the attacks, but also with the form taken by the attacks. But the possibility of business planes being turned around to become, in fact, cruise missiles had been mentioned in US intelligence circles from the end of the 1990s, particularly by Bruce Hoffmann at the RAND Corporation.

In the current context, how should we consider the possibility of Iran being equipped with an effective military nuclear capacity? In the absolute, it could come as a technological surprise (if, for example, Tehran very quickly acquired this capacity), but would it represent a strategic surprise in the military sense, or even the diplomatic sense, in light of the thousands of publications that this question has generated since the beginning of the 1990s, without even counting the negotiations which are frequently portrayed in the media? In this, without a doubt, can be seen one of the flaws in the concept of strategic surprise, particularly such as it is referenced in the French White Paper.

In the same view, a high magnitude hypothetical military conflict, which also slots into the category of strategic surprise in the French meaning, is not lacking in raising problems from a conceptual point of view. The armies’ equipment processes in major materials (combat buildings, planes, tanks and armored tanks) are currently taking place over a period of years, and preparing the forces themselves is a both complex and visible process for the observer interested in it²⁶. On a more frequent basis, these preparations are processed by open sources which are or are not specialized in questions of defense. In return this raises the questions on the nature of, in terms of doctrine (and not in terms of theoretical strategy) a strategic surprise. All too often it is interpreted as a wildcard in a pallet of strategic scenarios, a sort of guarantee of abiding by reason, which demonstrates that the unforeseeable has also been taken into account. And so, strategic surprise becomes the equivalent of an et cetera, complementing the detailed list of the possible strategies. If the concept has its own characteristics, then strategic surprise, whether military or diplomatic, tends to be cliché.

There is also a second series of questions to be asked, this time inherent to the use and perception of intelligence (or information) by the different parties which might have to confront a strategic surprise.

3.2.3. Perception of the possibility of surprise

There is often a difference of understanding between the different parties who will have to process or exploit intelligence, insofar as several writers under the heading of “intelligence studies” are not lacking in underlining that the problem of surprise does not so much lie in the fact of possessing intelligence and making it possible to cope with it, but in the perception of an emergency by political and military decision makers.

In the Yom Kippur War (1973), for instance, the Israeli intelligence services, just like the American services, had warned the political leader of the Hebrew State that Egypt and Syria were preparing for a joint attack. Too much trust in the capabilities of Israeli forces to retort and the perception, on the political front, that Egypt would not launch into such an adventure both meant that the order to put all forces on alert was not given [RAZ 99].

Persuaded of the solidity of the German-Soviet pact, in 1941 Stalin ignored intelligence sent in by his own services. In spite of accurate information coming from Richard Sorge in particular (friend to the German ambassador of Japan regarding the USSR’s preparation to invade) or Germans who were “returned” by the Soviet services, Stalin clearly believed in the rumors sent to him by Hitler in their secret correspondence²⁷.

Still in 1941, the tense diplomatic situation between Japan and the USA left a wide space for envisaging the probability of a war, with some doubts remaining as to the whereabouts of its launching point. In spite of the fact that Japanese codes had been broken, and that the intelligence services had access to communications in Tokyo, analysts believed an attack on Pearl Harbor to be improbable (considering it too far from Japan). They imagined it to be more towards the Philippines, i.e. closer to the Japanese bases. Numerous warnings and alerts from US forces in the zone were given in vain, which led to fatigue and the alerts given by intelligence services to be discredited. However, going by the hypothesis that the Japanese were looking to operate their attack by sending in land forces, the American analysts supplanted the possibility of a surprise attack which would have been limited to reducing the US Navy’s capabilities, just like at Pearl Harbor.

Furthermore, when devices are detected on the base’s radars, the officer will interpret the echoes as an American bomber plane returning, and will not push his questions any further, not triggering the alarm. Yet, demonstrating that possessing information is not everything, American teams had broken Japanese codes and were then in a position to get first hand direct access to decrypted data [WHO 62].

Moreover, producing intelligence is proving to be particularly difficult, and more often that not, with a vast amount of information not being available, the analyzes finally produced are partial and of little use. In 2001, the FBI and the CIA investigated the possibility of major attacks on American soil. But the lack of collaboration between the two institutions means that they could not share their information or provide the political and military worlds with information any more accurate than that preparations for attacks were being made [HEI 04]. However, the question of knowing whether it is relevant to only have one single opinion faced with the possibility of a strategic surprise is raised. Therefore a number of States have several services at their disposal, and so they are in a position to produce different warnings. In some meanings, this multitude of advice sent to the political world would also constitute as a political guarantee. But these different opinions also put political staff in a delicate position. In fact, it is then up to the politician to mitigate the different interpretations (and to take the necessary precautionary measures), or even to decide in favor of one hypothesis over another. But the decreased aptitude for controlling strategic questions from the political world is being considered as a recurring problem in Europe, and also in the USA.

In intelligence studies, one of the major problems concerned is related to the distinction between “signals” (representing utility in terms of intelligence), and “noise” (which represents no utility). However, it may hide signals and may scramble or deceive perceptions. Roberta Wohlstetter, analyzing the deep-rooted causes for the lack of reactivity on the USA’s part in the face of a possible Japanese attack, indicates that signals which are useful for intelligence services were drowned out in the “noise” of the traffic of ordinary communication.

This being the case, she underlines a difficulty which is only worsened by the age of information: the increase in available sources may saturate the capabilities of the analyses, generating a mass of noises, such as additional, potential signals. The skill of the intelligence services is to be able to extract signals from noise; a rule which still applies in modern contexts. However, the preparation of a surprise (be it strategic, operative, tactical or technological) by a given party frequently calls for deception and dissimulation, so as by remaining hidden from the adversary for as long as possible, the surprise will increase its effects tenfold once it is materialized²⁸. Thus deception brings about an increase in the amount of “noise”, to the detriment of the signals.

In this vein, the problem goes far beyond accessing information. The allies had means to intercept and decipher German communications (Ultra messages) [HIN 93]²⁹. All the same, they were able to break through Japanese codes before Pearl Harbor. We note, then, that just having the capacity to access the adversary’s secure information is not, in itself, a guarantee of lifting the “fog of war”. This depends on more complex factors. However, debates on the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in the 1990s clearly established a semantic shortcut (which tends to continue on³⁰) between accessing the information and extracting useful intelligence.

Consequently, the problem of intelligence is raised in terms of capacity – acquiring information collection systems (human or technical) – so that the aspects inherent to analysis and exploitation were almost systematically ousted or, at least, were undervalued³¹. Some authors, then, consider the RMA as a school of knowledge which is dominant in battle zones [JOH 96], ready to “lift the fog of war” [OWE 00].

3.3. Strategic surprise and information warfare

In each of the examples of strategic surprise given here, the surprise lies in an armed attack, an invasion or even a diplomatic surprise. But over the last few years, the mobilization of the concept has also given power to the domain of information warfare. Consequently, the idea of a digital Pearl Harbor became a central theme in American strategic debates in the second half of the 1990s and has been recurring since [WAL 95], [SCH 96]. Strategic surprise may come as a massive attack on networks, aiming to paralyze them, or even break down their software, eventually creating damage in the “real world”. The concept of strategic surprise is systematically perceived as being catastrophic or even, in the context of a cyberwar, apocalyptic³².

An electronic strategic surprise could also replace more classic, diplomatic forms, or those based on military action in the most extreme of interpretations. In this example, evolutions in cyberwar allow the attacker to lead a frontal and massive strategy of engagement. This would authorize a decisive strike, letting the attacker reach a new speed in strategic-political results which are disproportionate in relation to the agreed strategic investment. This would be simpler to plan and lead to a conventional strike. Moreover this type of strike could be led away from security measures and it would affect all sectors within a country. This would especially be the case when (the USA, at a time when the Internet is massively available and there is a high awareness of its possibilities), for the economic evolutions willingly rely on computerization and online business. In such conditions, can the characteristics of a “classic” strategic surprise as we have discussed here still be considered as in use? First of all, here the analyst must note that this Strategic Information Warfare (SIW) scenario has not yet happened [SCH 00] in spite of high magnitude attacks, such as those aimed at Estonia in 2007.

At the same time, however, this type of attack does not happen against institutions and infrastructures which are totally defenseless, and so a considerable amount of progress has been made in network protection³³. Furthermore, an ever increasing amount of specialized units are placed inside the armies. In information warfare as with classic operations, the dialectic of the defensive and offensive also plays a part, as it is governed by their law [MOL 96]. But if the possibility of a cyberattack on the scale of an entire country which systematically aims to disrupt its networks has already been frequently discussed in literature on strategic surprise, then analyst D. Londsdale feels that the fact that this has not yet happened must not be taken lightly – it is simply a question of time [LON 04].

In this view, the probability of seeing this type of attack happen could increase over time through a development in the capabilities of hardware, of new software tools and new tactics to use them. There may also be an evolution in the awareness of the possibilities offered by information warfare, just like the attention it would get from potentially hostile organizations, whether they are state or non-state governed. In this regard, some analysts have suggested that $10 million would enable a substate governed organization to have the capacity to launch information warfare equivalent to that on a State level [LON 04]. A certain number of these organizations actually have such means (the Lebanese Hezbollah, or the Columbian FARC, for example) and are seeing their financial capacities increase over time. In fact, it seems wise to oust any historical determinism from the analysis, according to which an electronic strategic attack has not already happened, would tell us that the threat is by no means major. On the other hand, the material and tactical evolutions which have been observed over history show that those practicing such strategies are working more and more on the possibilities of information warfare in all its aspects, from digital attacks to mediatized operations [HEC 09].

In practice, information warfare cannot be removed from classic war laws, including the dialectic between offensive and defensive. So if the offensive capabilities advance, then this will also be the case for defensive. In addition to advances in software, this is what is attempted to be shown by intervening military organizations, specialized in network security but also detecting attacks and knowing how to avoid them. In itself, the question is raised more and more in national documents which define security and defense policies. Moreover, it seems dangerous not to consider such a form of strategic surprise in terms of its capacities by focusing the analysis on the fact that it is led electronically. Taking place in the “real” world and not on a conceptual level, an electronic Pearl Harbor raises several questions:

– firstly, how can we exploit the initial attack beyond the paralysis of enemy systems? A strategic surprise is often followed by exploitation through the development of a military thrust, as the surprise is only rarely sufficient on its own. This exploitation may be direct (German thrust on the USSR after the launch of Barbarossa, North Korean thrust towards the South of the peninsula), or indirect (Japanese thrust in the Pacific but not on Hawaii after having reduced US naval forces). But, how can we exploit a massive electronic attack by a single digital channel? Except for considering that the coup is substantial enough in itself (a valid hypothesis for a terrorist scenario³⁴ or within a limited strategy³⁵), resorting to “concrete” forces, and those capable of transforming the initial attacks into a longlasting political victory seems necessary. In fact, the single digital attack is not sufficient in itself. When all our societies – and therefore our armies – are incapable of functioning without computers, then attack alone would not be enough to take possession over the attacked State;

– secondly, how can we assess, either before or after the attack, the consequential impacts, whether they are real or perceived? In several respects, the lack of available historical examples limits the range of the analysis, and confines it to a simple hypothesis. However, one of the major assets of strategic surprise is its ability to make an impression and be remembered, paralyzing the reactions of the victim for a certain time [BRU 08]. In such a context, the visibility of the action taken (particularly through its echoes in the media) seems like an important aspect, whereas by definition an electronic attack has much less visible consequences than a standard military attack in terms of physical destruction. This factor, then, tends to relativize the perceptual range of a digital strategic surprise³⁶. Moreover, let us note here also that the Pentagon, with a relatively low amplitude and generally causing no major damage, also raises the question of what a strategic surprise should be. In such conditions, it should undoubtedly involve massive attacks on the entire infrastructure, include unprecedented violence and last over time³⁷, which raises a few questions on the difficulties a party could encounter when launching these attacks;

– thirdly, the probability of an electronic strategic surprise occurring (getting the exact figures is a tricky exercise) also involves a reflection on the nature of its real effects on the attacked organizations. It seems obvious that the dependence of our States and institutions on computer systems has not stopped growing over the last 20 years, which once again raises the question of the function and vulnerabilities of the technically oriented system which was brilliantly analyzed by Jacques Ellul [ELL 77]. This is particularly the case when our institutions and kinds of political organization themselves have become metaphors for the network and that they are considered to be new fields of conflict [HEN 02]. This single conceptual change, which carries within itself the appropriation of the characterization of specific forms of a reticular act [FOR 97], tends to make others perceive of an increase in the risks induced by an electronic strategic surprise. In such a configuration type, society, institutions or even armies are naturally mobilized by computers and networks and appear especially vulnerable.

In such conditions, applying rationalities specific to networks also brings about several advantages in terms of defense. Reticulation induces redundancy, in such a way that attacks performed on one node in particular might not necessarily have repercussions on others. This type of phenomenon has been particularly well explored in publications on terrorist and guerilla groups, showing that bringing down the head of these organizations brought about their loss less often than hierarchical organizations.

For Arquilla and Ronfeldt, the consequences are as such: the networks have to fight with other networks. In their view, networks have their own resilience, which is considered as being superior to hierarchical organizations [ARQ 96]. At the same time, we cannot help but notice also that an electronic strategic surprise is enhanced by the fact that several vital and critical systems³⁸ (water and electricity supply, rail networks, air traffic, banking systems, etc.) are not entirely automated and that human and direct control is still possible. In other words, governing systems could be affected but total paralysis is difficult to imagine. However there is a lack of experience of serious attacks on these systems, which hardly allows us to draw lessons from it and understand the interactions which could probably take place with the rest of society. Only alarming information on the quality of water will be available (its truthfulness is hardly important), and the reaction of the population will undoubtedly be impossible to predict [HEN 10].

At this stage in our discussion, the question of knowing to what extent a strategic surprise aimed at paralyzing armed force networks may occur. As François Géré points out, the best way of paralyzing these networks for a long time is, without a doubt, to physically destroy them rather than stopping them from working by the only arsenal of possible measures in information warfare [GER 97]. The conduct of military operations led over these last 20 years shows how, in the preparation for strike plans, the enemy’s detection and command and communication systems have been targeted by a combination of computer and air strikes and jamming. Information warfare takes place as often in software spaces as “real” places, and just constitutes one aspect of what the most apt military organizations are in a position to do [HEN 05].

Military history, as with the sociology of innovation, shows that new weapons and new war methods must be combined with older methods and systems in order to produce maximum effects. This does not fail, however, to raise the question of information warfare as the military revolution as many analysts see it³⁹.

The sole use of electronic massive attacks on military systems in an attempt to paralyze them seems difficult indeed. The Pentagon recorded 43,785 attacks in the first semester in 2009, against 54,640 for the year 2008, and 1.415 in 2000 [MCM 09]. This sequence is absolutely astonishing and yet, at no point does the American force’s capacity to lead its missions seem to have been put into question⁴⁰. The attacked systems have been both the most exposed (email networks, websites accessible to the public such as the Naval War College’s site) and yet the less criticized at the same time.

Similar examples have been seen in the private sector41. If the digitalization processes of military units themselves are making advances and networks are becoming vital factors there, then the adopted position is still, in France, the UK and the USA in particular, to keep training the staff for action in an environment described as being “damaged” [DEN 05].

A paralysis of computer systems, whatever the reason, would not lead to a physical paralysis of the units using them – at least if the adopted principles are applied⁴². They could, however, considerably slow down their actions on the other hand.

New computer attack systems that we could liken to electronic warfare systems, however seem to be reaching a level of “maturity”, like Suter for instance. Supported by a combat device, it enables the user to enter enemy air defense networks to gauge what their operators are seeing, but also in order to delete the radar echoes of attacker devices from their screens⁴³.

In practice, these radar paralysis systems (if we were certain of their existence⁴⁴) by no means prevent us from resorting to more classic detection methods (like visual observation), and it is not certain if they can be used on a large scale⁴⁵. We must add here that the single paralysis/destruction of an air defense system (if it is a real military challenge) in itself is neither a sign nor the materialization of a strategic surprise, nor is its decision to strike which is capable of almost instantaneously submitting the enemy’s will. The loss of control over the skies is not the guarantee of a near defeat. From a strategic point of view, any attack must be combined and involve hitting practically all the sectors allowing the enemy’s forces to act. Moreover, infiltrating command and communication networks and controlling an army, on the operative and tactical front, far beyond the only servers connected to the Internet and from where emails are forwarded, seems necessary but eminently complex and requires, in exchange for and from strategic entities attempting to do it, strong abilities.

If literature on the subject only mentions this possibility⁴⁶ (consequently, there is no truly available example), then historical examples on the use of electronic warfare on enemy radar and radio networks (intrusion, jamming or listening) show that, if the adversary were able to see a serious reduction in his capacities, then he could have continued to fight⁴⁷.

Despite its assets, electronic warfare has never been able to carry away the decision by itself and, by analogy, we are able to estimate that this could also be the case for information operations whether they use systems like Suter or more conventional information warfare capacities. Moreover the question of the possibility that States other than the USA and European countries can design them, and also the question of their potential spreading (even their proliferation) is also being raised. But in the end, for now the threat does not seem to be imminent. The capabilities of information warfare do not seem to be in a position to send armies into a state of failure.

If the hypothesis of a strategic surprise targeted at military networks cannot be completely isolated, then we cannot help but notice that it would require a concentration of the enemy’s extremely high computerized capabilities, were it only in view of a saturation attack. The resultant hypothesis of an infiltration into to the most vital sectors of the software for a weapon system or a C4ISR network, if it cannot be isolated, however depends on the difficulty of accessing it – at the same and in a more general way, to fully produce a strategic surprise in due form. This is especially the case as a lot of military software is relatively simple in comparison to civilian software, and any potential error can be detected quicker⁴⁸. We could add here that, if it was confirmed, using a system such as Suter would raise the question of the quantity and quality of the intelligence needed before its use. The types of command systems targeted, the radars through which the system penetrates have been involved a considerable intelligence infrastructure, as this type of action could not be reproduced on a large scale, in a strategic surprise, for example⁴⁹. The classic measures for operational safety, from this point of view, certainly constitute a factor which makes it possible to limit risks but it is also important to be aware of the risks run by new forms of information warfare, such as Suter or similar systems which might be developed.

In this regard, the intelligence services clearly have a part to play in defining information safety measures, but also in describing potentially critical network operators. Fundamentally, knowing the flaws in these networks or more generally their modes of function, creates a certain vulnerability, with their operators being able to forward sensitive information to an adversary, questioning again the networks’ natural resilience. The threat is, then, real, with the majority of the malicious acts led by a company coming from their employees who are often misinformed of elementary safety measures [BAU 06]. This threat indeed raises the question concerning the evolution in recruiting armed forces⁵⁰.

The intelligence services also have an important part to play, perhaps a more classic one, in the implementation and maintenance of a device combining both monitoring and research on the arsenals of information warfare that a potential enemy could be capable of putting into place. At any rate, intelligence has always run into the above mentioned problems, as a matter of analyzing the adversary’s intentions and apprehending the threat on the decision front – in the space where adversary actions have been, essentially, converted into strategic surprises. From this point of view, the problem does not concern the many methods used by an enemy to create a strategic surprise (conventional or electronic attack, diplomatic action) but rather the sociology of strategic organizations.

The only exception to this type of reasoning might stem from using strikes with directed enemy weapons (DEW) which are capable of creating an electric saturation phenomenon similar to that seen with nuclear weapons. This type of threat, if it is located around the concept of information warfare as we have been using it in this chapter, is nonetheless real: any non- “hardened” electric or electronic system will be “grilled” by such an attack, which amounts to a rationale of destroying the targeted systems [KOP 04]. In the meantime, several States are working on the concept, moreover with this type of weapon seeming relatively cheap. In view of the operations aiming at enemy information infrastructures, the penetration of networks in light of the difficulties that it brings could not be the option with the best return for a strategic surprise. Using weapons with DEW effects, comparatively, offers long-lasting physical paralysis of the system (the effects of such of an attack are irreversible) and engaging targets is made easier by the wide variety of vectors available⁵¹. In this regard, using this type of weapon seems more suitable for paralysis and surprise on a strategic level. Here too, however, the first strike might lead the enemy to exploitation, running the risk of seeing the attacked entity recover.

3.4. Concluding remarks: surprise in strategic studies

If it is obvious that the excellent technological and doctrinal evolution observed for the last 30 years in the armed forces does not, by any means, make strategic principles and laws outdated and obsolete [COU 99], then we cannot help but notice that the different ways of applying force (lethal or not) have become considerably more diversified. Information warfare has a major role in this evolution, and the thousands of publications produced over the last 20 years can bear witness to this idea. However, we cannot help but question the real strategic effects of the appearance of this new type of art of warfare, particularly with regard to the concept of surprise. The analyst’s feelings are shared here.

Surprise implies an element of cognitive shock, which is both disorienting and paralyzing to the victim, at least in the short term.

Yet how, when computer attacks on large companies and state-governed infrastructures and armies are frequent, can we consider that one attack being more violent than another would count as a strategic surprise? Here we find ourselves, logically, in the permanent dialectic of opposed wills, in what we can call the “routine of conflict”. Indeed, the attacks may be extremely violent (and historically tend to be increasingly more so, as much in quantity as in quality) but they hardly ever only occur in a dialectic continuum between defensive and offensive. This implies, in return for phenomena of adapting materials, software and organizations. All in all, these attacks will not be the first, and for those getting information on the subject, there is nothing surprising to be learned. But if this is not a question of surprise, then is a strategic surprise in its electronic form, for all this, impossible to conceptualize? Here the analyst is questioning the deep dynamics of the surprise. Historically, surprise (whether it is tactical, operative, strategic or technological) stems from the combination of many factors, as much in terms of doctrine and capacity as political, which do not all constitute as surprises.

The German invasion on the USSR in 1941 thus relied on a finely balanced combination of a doctrinal corpus and relatively well tested capacities from September 1939 (which the USSR also contributed to). It takes it roots from Hitler’s desire to conquer and to make Europe submit to the Nazi order, whose content was known to intelligence services – including Soviet services. The space/time where the attack took place was preceded by a logic which was accessible to any person with some knowledge of military history: attacking in June, Hitler sought to benefit from the best season, avoiding the terrible raspoutitsa (quagmire season) and thus taking advantage of a better level of mobility, which would not have been limited by a low number of roads in a bad condition. The method used is also well known, so much so because the forces there were relatively used to the army officers wanting to avoid having to suffer the winter, and thus the offensive was led at a high tempo. From this point of view, military logic is irrefutable and, on the strategic front, everything proved to be predictable. But in fact, the surprising element of the offensive lies in the decision to conduct it. Already engaged on the West front, Hitler should not have attacked, according to what we might describe as “strategic wisdom” [SCN 06]. Added to this is Stalin’s deliberated belief in the German promise to respect the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Consequently and in return, the Red Army was not prepared for what was going to happen. It was the Soviet military system, all the way to the tactical front, which was shocked by the intervening surprise on a political-strategic level⁵².

Military logic, regardless of its relevance, has thus been subjected to political logic. In many respects, we can still learn lessons from the German invasion, including the hypothesis of a surprise attack via computer systems/electronic channels.

Firstly, being controlled by political views is still current. If it has been proven that a large number of the attacks on the Pentagon have come from China or North Korea, and that the attacks on Estonia had come from Russia, then these strikes have not met any real retaliation from the victims. Military logic has not managed to win out against political logic, with this reigning over the military domain.

Secondly, a surprise attack will probably intervene by a complex combination, if it does occur. Only using arsenals from cyberwar will, undoubtedly, be insufficient. This is especially so when faced with the degree of apprehension of the threat, which is currently the States which could be a victim of it – even if an awareness of the threat might legitimately be considered as being not enough. This is particularly the case with the exception of a terrorist attack with limited objectives; a computer attack in the backdrop of a war between strategic organizations (state-governed or not) would need to be exploited. Just like the air forces, computer viruses do not conquer terrorists in the “real” world, even if they commonly show an undeniable strategic utility.

Thirdly, surprise cannot come so much from the types of capacities used, but from the attacker’s intentions, and these capacities are all political and not technical.

On the other hand, the new types of strategic surprise that we could assist with might involve combinations of more complex means than in the past, or even build on technological surprises. Thus, as a result, these forms of strategic surprise must be not conceptualized or analyzed in a monocausal approach, but actually in a system analysis.

Considering a system analysis approach rather than one based on capacity in methodologies for conceptualizing future threats seems especially adapted, as we cannot fully understand the concept of surprise without considering the fact that it, in itself, is part of the art of warfare. It is both the component and, to a certain extent, one of the conditions of its materialization. However, considering that a strategic surprise could come via an electronic channel does not mean that we can take into account the very complexity of what a new form of strategic surprise (taking inspiration from past experiences) might represent. Until now, through a lack of tools or shrewd judgment, strategic surprises have not acted as a factor of victory for the party putting the surprise into action. Of course we can, in the absolute, conceive of an efficient strategic surprise and lead on to victory by operating it, or even taking it into account using information warfare⁵³. But it would also involve considering other factors, whether they are technical, tactical, doctrinal, and above all, political. At this stage, we are only able to understand the role played by intelligence services in the totality of the analyzes they can provide. Whether intelligence services use information warfare methods or not, for these services it is a matter of considering the entire correlation of an enemy’s forces, from his intentions to his capacities and operatory modes.

If these services’ analytical methods are not fundamentally put into question by new technologies, then their work is made much more difficult, with the mass of information to be analyzed ever growing. However, the fact still remains that the real difficulty caused by using information warfare in a strategic attack could, and more than probably would, come from its combination with other more classic military approaches.

Historically, using new weapons has only proven to be greatly useful, revealing their potential to break, when combined with technological systems and older forces. It is without a doubt in this type of context that information warfare would prove to be the most efficient, shocking the enemy’s devices and heightening the chaos following on from a combined attack.

It is, then, a completely plausible idea that new combinations of forces engaged in strategic surprise will come forward, and will, in fact, raise the question of knowing the exact place where information warfare will play out. However this is a question which falls beyond the boundaries of this chapter: such a use of information warfare would fall into the classic context of strategic surprise.

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1 Chapter written by Joseph HENROTIN.

1 We will return to this later in the chapter, on its types and characteristics.

2 Moreover, information is very widely considered as such elsewhere in the world, without such a degree of doctrinalization of its role necessarily being reached.

3 A classic problem in the sociolgy of innovation.

4 Particularly allowing for target acquisition and also force command and control.

5 See [BRA 93].

6 A type of situation summarized by the acronym “O3” [CRO 97].

7 Through opposition to irregular strategies (terrorism, guerilla, insurgency) or even alternative forms of regular strategies. One of the main critical schools of the RMA will highlight the difficulty of defeating asymmetrical adversaries [HEN 08].

8 We may contemplate other kinds of military strategic surprise, particularly those using nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological weapons.

9 A definition that we will borrow from André Beaufre [BEA 85], pg. 16.

10 Anti-radar operations (active or passive), electronic intelligence, scrambling, intrusion, etc.

11 Military deception, a loanword from the Russian maskriovka (literally meaning concealment/camouflage) goes back to connotations of systematization, which is an element of tactics but also part of the search for cognitive confusion in the enemy.

12 In strategic studies, traditionally we distinguish three spheres of action from military strategy: strategy of means, declarative strategy and operational strategy [COU 99].

13 The concept of transformation was used for the first time by Donald Rumsfeld when he took the post of American Secretary of Defence in 2001. Transformation seeks to apply a certain number of lessons (via C4ISR and their interoperability or even concepts such as NCW in particular) to American armed forces (then NATO forces, from 2002 with the creation of the Allied Command Transformation in the Prague summit) which were quickly applied from the RMA.

14 In the American case, since 1992 and the initial works on the occurrence of an RMA, only two new types of combat platforms went into US armed forces services. The first was the F-22 Raptor, planned in the 1980s. The second was the arming of Predator drones, therefore systems intially designed as intelligence platforms.

15 A wrongly worded description, as it is also a revolution of the generalization and diversification of precision strike capabilities.

16 The author’s various interviews with operation chiefs in security services led from 1999 to 2009.

17 Either governments, armies, security services, the business world, the civil world (citizens, unions, religious groups), the media and NGOs and the academic world [STE 07].

18 In fact considered as existing but have turned out to be practically non-operational, only representing a very limited danger.

19 In this last case in particular, when Web 2.0 is used by fighter groups.

20 Tactical surprise intervenes on the battlefield; where operative surprise intervenes on the scale of a theater of operations.

21 From this point of view, we may consider that on top of a lack of means, the Germans ran up against a defective conceptualization of the action and its implications.

22 At least for the time being. The increased dependence on networks induces new forms of reticulating ergonomy, by interpenetrating humans and machines. There are also works focused on exoskeletons in the domain of infantry combat or more generally, on the omipresence of computer systems in a country like Estonia. Always theoretical, certain conceptions developed in the current post-humanist framework, forming a hybrid between man and machine, by interconnecting brains and computers, could way to such a capacity. For now, the perspective goes backs to possibilities in the long term, mainly affecting science fiction [GRA 97], [SUS 05].

23 In many aspects, the idea of a definitive suspension of the dual by surprise goes back to a wrongful interpretation of John Boyd’s works on air combat and the OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act), when he said that the operational ability of a given system was a decisive factor in its capacity to permanently surprise an adversary, and yet which is incapable of continually adapting itself. What is true on a technico-tactical level (an air combat takes place over a few minutes at most) is not true, however, on the strategic level. Not only is the magnitude of the desired effect more important, but the strategic level does not only represent the increased and homothetic projection of the tactical level, and therefore the former fulfills real constraints [COU 99].

24 However, let us note that if the Jihadist ideology is not defeated, then al-Qaeda as an organization, has been largely reduced. It no longer possesses the same material, human means or infrastructures that it had before September 2001, whilst at the same time however keeping a certain capacity to motivate others, particularly via the Internet.

25 On this set of problems regarding the differences of perception between the categories of public opinion and the political level, see [STE 07] and [HEN 10] in particular.

26 We will add here that these processes of rising to power are getting longer and longer due to the design time and delivery of equipment, but also due to organizational and conceptual rearrangements imposed by their integration into military institutions.

27 Sorge was then arrested by the Japanese. They wanted to exchange him for a Japanese officer captured by the Soviets but Stalin refused, saying that he had never laid eyes on Sorge [MUR 05].

28 Suspecting (rightly so) the allies of being able to listen in, the Germans did not use their systems in the preparation for the attack on Ardennes in the winter of 1944, totally surprsing the US forces. The allied forces had just developed excessive dependence with regard to sources [AMB 89], [DEL 04].

29 “Ultra” was the codename for messages coming from German Enigma decoding machines, whose code had been broken by the Polish before the hositilities started. There were several applications of Ultra, from the knowledge of submarine mission orders to the knowledge the Germans had of ally preparations for leaving Normandy. Ultra was so secret that it was only revealed at the beginning of the 1970s [HIN 93].

30 At least, in the debates of strategists not devoted to studying intelligence, but the morphology of modern day operations [STE 09].

31 Or have been transformed, as was the case on the tactical front, into issues concerning capability. The question of bringing data together and their automatic processesing has often been discussed as the condition enabling a multitude of sensor systems to exist (drones, ground sensors, vehicle observation systems).

32 An apocalyptic theme which was reinforced by the exercises methodologies such as The Day After … In Cyberspace, carried out in March 1996, which made an open reference to a total nuclear war (in the wake of the TV film The Day After).

33 In practice, the capacity to detect attacks on networks has also been put into question, particularly by conducting several exercises showing that the majority of attacks went undetected or had not been reported to higher officers by those suffering the attacks.

34 In this example, a single strike is considered to be self-sufficient. Except if it is coupled with a guerrilla strategy, terrorism essentially has a semiotic value, of expression a political position by the one implementing it. Creating a strong impression, it is considered as a poor strategy in terms of the potentiality that it offers its user and tends, in literature, to be considered more as the marker of a strategic powerlessness than as being able to (once again, alone) lead to victory.

35 This is true to the extent that the very idea of strategic surprise is traditionally associated with total strategies, understood as trying to defeat all a State’s forces. Within a limited strategy, an electronic strategic surprise could, for instance, come as an attack trying to break down a country’s banking network.

36 The example has been shown in fiction. In the “Debt of Honor” trilogy, Tom Clancy presents a scenario where an super-nationalist Japanese government engages computer operations on Wall Street, taking Washington and Tokyo into a virtual war. However, it is kept as a secret by both governments, both fearing for their respective governments. In practice, Tokyo used the economic crisis created to take a series of territorial guarantors, in fact leading to a military confrontation, obviously discreet but nonetheless real.

37 In fact, disruptions to networks, computers or water conveyance, either accidental or deliberate, are relatively abundant. Regarding water supplies in industrialized countries, these disruptions have never led to panic and terror. There are many reasons which can explain this phenomenon, including that they have only ever been temporary [LEW 02].

38 We traditionally distinguish vital and critical systems according to the degree of dependence that our societies, and more particularly their cohesion, maintains.

39 In this sense, it would not change the deep nature of war, not sweeping away underlying laws.

40 The policy on the matter still remains that we must not communicate on penetrations which would have been successful and the extent of the damage they could have caused. Several computer systems belonging to US forces are still blocked off and are ultimately not linked to the Internet. Networking systems happens by links, such as data links which are still easy to control.

41 Thus in 2000, Ford suffered an attack of 140,000 infected emails in 3 hours, shutting down its network for just under a week. The company’s 114 factories however pursued their operations and the affected networks ordering and sending spare parts were never infected. Communication with the sales centers were not affected either [LEW 02].

42 Most land force units do not require computers to fight. The digitialization process essentially involves sharing information via portable terminals, making it possible to locate friend or enemy forces. The limits specific to these systems (particularly problems of perfect information regarding th position of enemy forces) are considered in the doctrine corpuses of the armies implementing them. And so, the systems are considered more as tactical decision aids than systems describing the behaviour of other forces.

43 The system was used in the Israeli strike on a Syrian nuclear plant in September 2007.

44 This seems to be the case, a study from the US Congressional Research Office seems to warn of the existence of a program based on an article from the magazine Aviation Week which, in the past, has spread false information about US programs [CRS 07].

45 Already in 1991, rumors on the use of a virus able to paralyze Iraqi air defense systems had started to circulate. It was then confirmed to be a rumor.

46 When it refers to it, at least in the public domain: the Israeli attack, relatively recent, only led to descriptive analyzes which appeared in magazines and whose prospective analytical value remains limited [FUL 07].

47 This is, notably, the case for the least technologically advanced adversaries. Egypt or Syria in the face of Israel during the war of Kippir (1973) pursued combat (but it is also true that the Israeli capacity for electronic warfare, although real, were still limited). In 1982 the Syrian capacity to use their networks was also reduced but organizational modalities (implemented by autonomous anti-tank units) partially made it possible to compensate for the Israeli actions which turned out to be more useful in the fight against air defenses in Damas.

48 We estimate that the software systems of F-22 count around 2 million lines of code, versus 8 million for F-35. Comparatively Windows XP counts around 35 million lines of code.

49 This is particularly the case as national defense systems involve different types of sensors and management systems, potentially put onto a network. The hypothetic paralysis of a single type of sensor does not compromise the functioning of the other sensors.

50 Where the recruitment of civil workers according depending on their qualifications tends to increase, to the detriment of more traditional methods of miltary recruitment, based on loyalty to the institution and the country.

51 According to some analysts, such weapons could be of a similar size to those of a classic aviation bomb weighing 227 kg. they could be dropped by combat devices but also by equipping with ballistic and cruise missiles. The possibility of such weapons being implemented on the enemy’s side by putting them into sea containers also allows them to imagine using them without a classic military attack taking place beforehand.

52 If it is true that some Soviet generals had pre-empted the possibility of this attack, then the politically incorrect nature of such a hypothesis was sufficient, where purges having brought down the forces still reigned supreme, to naturally block necessary preparations.

53 Were it not only from its mediatized aspect.