Category: Security

One of the most interesting historical sections so far in David Khan’s The Code-Breakers describes the campaign in North Africa during WWII. Because of a spy working in the US embassy in Rome, the American BLACK code and its accompanying superencipherment tables were stolen. This had a number of major tactical impacts, because it allowed Rommel to read the detailed dispatches being sent back by the American military attache in Cairo.

Khan argues that this intelligence played a key role in Rommel’s critical search for fuel. His supply line across the Mediterranean was threatened by the British presence in Malta. Knowledge about a major resupply effort allowed him to thwart commando attacks against his own aircraft and turn back two major resupply convoys. It also provided vital information on Allied defences during his push towards Suez.

The loss of Rommel’s experienced cryptographers due to an accidental encounter with British forces had similarly huge consequences. It cut off the flow of intelligence, both because of changed codes and loss of personnel. As a result, the Allied assault at Alamein proved to be a surprise for Rommel and an important turning point.

As with so many examples in warfare, this demonstrates the huge role of chance in determining outcomes. Had security been better at the embassy in Rome, Rommel might have been stopped sooner. Had the German tactical intelligence team not been intercepted, Rommel might have had detailed warnings about Alamein. The example also shows how critical intelligence and cryptography can be, in the unfolding of world affairs.

Anyone who has been trawling the internet in a search for information on the suppression of air defences during the first Gulf War might be well served by this article. In particular, it goes into a lot of detail about the location, identification, targeting, and destruction of Iraqi RADAR installations using weapons like the American AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) and the British ALARM (Air Launched Anti-Radiation Missile). The article highlights how the use of Soviet equipment by Iraq made this a kind of test situation for NATO versus Warsaw Pact air defence and attack equipment.

What this suggests is that the NATO-Warpac central European air battle would have probably followed a similar course, leading to the defeat of the Communists’ IADS within a week or so, in turn leading to air superiority in the following week, as the Communist air forces would have withered under the fire of the Allied counter-air campaign. Fortunately this never had to happen and the world has been spared the inevitable nuclear response to the lost air battle and hence total conventional defeat through attrition by air.

Not a very comforting conclusion for the world at large, though no doubt gratifying for all the companies that built American planes and missiles and things.

One interesting tactic was the use of Brunswick Tactical Air Launched Decoys. These simulated the appearance of incoming aircraft, causing Iraqi RADAR installations to ‘light up’ in order to target them. Sometimes, they would draw fire from surface-to-air missile batteries. Often, this would leave the former temporarily defenceless at a time when their position – and that of their supporting RADAR – had been revealed. Both could then be targeted by NATO aircraft. The ruse was apparently so effective that the Iraqi armed forces maintained the false belief that they had destroyed several hundred British and American planes.

There is also a fair bit of information about jamming and other forms of electronic countermeasures. All in all, it provides an interesting glimpse back into a period when conventional warfare against standing armies was something NATO still did.