Ukraine deceived Russia with the same deceptions that Germany used in WWII's Battle of the Bulge

• Some observers have argued that a surprise attack is almost impossible due to extensive surveillance.

• The invasion of Kursk in Ukraine caught Russia by surprise and followed time-honored tactics.

• The question for Ukraine is whether Kursk will be more successful than Germany's Battle of the Bulge.

When Ukraine unleashed its offensive on Kursk in August, it wasn't just the Russians who were surprised.

Some experts argued that large-scale attacks were no longer possible in modern warfare. Any attempt to gather more power to enter will be quickly discovered by dronesspyplanes or satellites, the thinking went, prompting the defender to strengthen his defenses.

“The proliferation of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in the Ukraine-Russia conflict has created an open battlefield characterized by continuous surveillance, making it difficult to achieve surprise,” according to the report. blog by the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command.

But despite hordes of Russian drones keeping an eagle eye on Ukraine's movements, Ukraine was able to concentrate its best brigades with an attack that surprised the Kremlin again they are caught 500 square miles at the height of the attack.

How did Ukraine do that? Using the same time-honored tactics that Germany used in its surprise attack Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

First came careful preparation by identifying weak spots in Russian defenses. By consolidating the attack forces in eastern Ukraine, this brought down the entire 600-mile front line, including the Kursk region. Open-source intelligence “indicates that up to 75 percent of Russian ground forces, air units, and naval forces are deployed in or near eastern Ukraine,” TRADOC noted. And because Russian drones and other ISR – intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – programs were focused on areas where Russia was attacking, this meant less coverage of Kursk.

Similarly, in late 1944 – as Germany was being heavily harassed in Normandy and Russia advancing on the Eastern Front – Hitler and his top advisers identified the Ardennes region of Belgium as a weak point in the center of the Allied lines. While the American and British forces were concentrated north and south for a final attack on Germany, the Allies considered the mountainous, wooded Ardennes a peaceful sector safe to defend with a few depleted or inexperienced divisions. The heavy forests could serve as cover for German infantry and armored Panzers as they advanced.

Before its invasion in August, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief also took care to keep word of the operation to as few people as possible. “Once the intelligence was gathered and analyzed, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, led the planning with only a few senior officers,” TRADOC said. “The planning sessions may have been done face-to-face to limit the risk of Russian cyber actors or to show intelligence in detecting the plan. Interviews with the Ukrainian military indicate that the invading forces were not informed until several hours before the operation.”

In order to hide its preparations, Ukraine again resorted to disinformation, such as spreading the word that the Ukrainian military I can't to launch the attack before the spring of 2025. Ukrainian soldiers did not know the elements of deception. For example, “the Ukrainian military announced that the 61st Mechanized Brigade will move to Vovchansk, a city in the northern part of the war in eastern Ukraine,” TRADOC said. “Even after the 61st was told they were going into Russia, senior officers in the unit thought it was a joke.”

Likewise, knowledge of the Ardennes offensive – code-named Operation Wacht am Rhein – was confined to a small circle of police officers sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Allied cryptographers had broken high-level German radio codes (the “Ultra” system), but German forces used radio silence, and orders were transmitted by courier and telephone. Even the term Wacht am Rhein (“Watch on the Rhine”) was intended to convince Allied intelligence that it was a defensive strategy to stop the Allied crossing of the Rhine River into Germany.

Ukraine prepared its attack by blinding Russian ISR with strikes on Russian airfields, and using Ukrainian drones to destroy Russian UAVs. To delay Russia's response, Ukraine used rockets, drones and weapons-delivered mines against airbases and command and control centers, as well as to prevent Russian reinforcements.

This also echoes the last attack of Nazi Germany. It timed the Ardennes operation to coincide with a long period of bad weather, which halted Allied reconnaissance flights. On the foggy morning of December 16, 1944, heavy German artillery fire disrupted American communications, while German commandos – wearing American uniforms – infiltrated US lines to spread confusion and panic.

The question from Ukraine is The Kursk operation it will go better than the Bulge. Instead of the breakthrough that turned the tide of World War II, the German offensive ultimately failed due to poor terrain, lack of fuel and stiff American resistance.

While occupying some Russian territory and causing dismay in Moscow, the Ukrainian offensive failed to divert Russian forces from eastern Ukraine, and the Russian offensive undermined Ukraine's powerful forces.

However, Ukraine has shown that surprise attacks are possible even in The Drone Age. “Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk region demonstrated that effective surprise is still possible in the Ukrainian conflict by avoiding and undermining ISR – a lesson that may be widely applied to future large-scale conflicts in other arenas,” TRADOC concluded.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him Twitter again LinkedIn.

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