Are you deceiving me?

Battlefield electromagnetic deception is a vital means to sow doubt into hostile decision-making, and force enemies to divide their assets; tactics that are at the heart of the Spartacus initiative.

The United States Army’s First US Army Group, better known as FUSAG, was a formidable outfit: FUSAG contained two armies, the British 4th and the US 14th. These two formations contained four corps and three independent divisions between them. Deployed across eastern and south-eastern England, FUSAG had an ostensibly simple, but major, objective. The force would invade western Europe across the Pas-de-Calais, the narrowest part of the Channel between the United Kingdom and France. At a mere 33 km (17.8 NM), this route made sense. It was the quickest way for the Allies to attack the western flank of Fortress Europe.

Early on the morning of 6 June 1944, troops from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States thundered onto the continent as Operation Overlord was launched. This was not the Allies’ first invasion of the continent. The liberation of southern Europe had commenced on 9 July 1943 with Operation Husky, the amphibious and airborne invasion of Sicily. With this huge operation, the Allies’ Nazi adversaries knew that the invasion of Western Europe was underway. FUSAG’s build-up was impossible to keep secret as its staging areas in the east and south-east of England were full of materiel. The airwaves were abuzz with FUSAG’s radio traffic as preparations unfolded. Axis double agents scored major intelligence coups, sharing details of FUSAG’s activities and planning with their German handlers. The Allies’ adversaries had no choice but to take the First US Army Group seriously, after all, it was commanded by ‘Old Blood and Guts’, General George Patton. In his biography of Gen Patton, Alan Axelrod wrote that he was a general the German High Command feared and respected. FUSAG was primed, locked and loaded, ready to play a major role in Overlord which was great, apart from the fact that it did not exist.

 

FUSAG was part of a larger deception campaign mounted by the Allies to confuse their enemy regarding the likely shape of the invasion and its potential location. The First US Army Group was formed as part of Operation Quicksilver, a major component of the wider Operation Fortitude deception effort, which had six distinct parts: Quicksilver-1 focused on disseminating the existence of FUSAG through the double agent network. Quicksilver-2 was the creation and transmission of the fake radio traffic which would be expected to accompany a formation of this size preparing for attack. Quicksilver-3 focused on creating fake materiel and bases in FUSAG’s supposed staging areas in England. Quicksilver-4 would see the allies performing attacks against targets in and around the Pas-de-Calais to prepare the battlefield for FUSAG’s arrival across this stretch of water. Quicksilver-5 would show preparations such as landing craft embarkation performed in and around Dover on the northwestern coast of the Pas-de-Calais. Quicksilver-6 used night lighting to simulate the appearance of FUSAG working all hours to ensure that preparations were ongoing. FUSAG did not disappear once Overlord got underway. Instead, the deceptions continued into September 1944, three months after the invasion had commenced, to convince Berlin that the events in Normandy were but a side show. It was imperative to convince the German High Command that the Allies’ ‘Schwerpunkt’ (point of main effort) was still the Pas-de-Calais.

Fake it ‘til you make it

Using radio traffic for deception has never gone out of fashion as a tactic, as it has much going for it. Firstly, it is relatively inexpensive from a personnel and equipment perspective to achieve. All you need are a few radios to move false traffic between them, and personnel to draft and disseminate this. False traffic can be used for elegant double-bluffs. Such deception can be transmitted on protected, encrypted channels. Should the enemy be successful in breaking into this traffic, they may feel they have stumbled on an intelligence goldmine. Mixing fake and real traffic hands the enemy a dilemma: Which traffic should be distrusted and which should be ignored?

Fake traffic can relate to genuine past, present and future events. Suppose an enemy first person view uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) sees two Blue Force infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) moving down a road towards a Red Force position. The radio traffic reiterates that the objective for the squad of Blue Force troops is to clear Red Forces from a local railway station. The traffic also shares that the squad is to capture a signal box 1 km or so further down the line. Both these missions now seem contradictory. Is the signal box or the railway station the objective? What if both targets are the objective? How should the Red Force prepare? Should it redeploy some of its troops to protect the signal box, but risk reducing the railway station’s defences? What if neither the signal box, nor the railway station are the real objectives? Ultimately, what should the Red Force believe or discard?

 

As the FUSAG plan underscored, radio traffic can be simulated to create entire army-size formations with all their attendant and complex tactical networks and backhaul trunk communications at the operational level. Moreover, fake traffic does not need to be confined to voice communications. Land forces are as reliant, if not more so, on data, thanks to digital command and control (C2) and battle management systems. Fake zeros and ones can be as devastating in the discord they can sow as deceptive radio chatter. Mixing fake and real traffic on the battlefield creates an additional problem: Electronic warfare (EW) cadres use communications intelligence (COMINT) to locate and identify troops and deployments on the battlefield. Find a radio and you find a soldier, as the adage says. You may also find a platform, weapons system, sensor or base, given the preponderance of radio connectivity not only within armies, but all military forces.

Identifying a radio’s signal parameters can tell you a lot about that transceiver, and hence a lot about the user and/or asset it equips. Perhaps an electronic support measure (ESM) equipping a COMINT unit has detected a cluster of signals spread over an area of roughly 1 km² (0.38 square miles). The signals are transmitting on frequencies of between 2.4–2.4835 GHz. The ESM’s antennas triangulate the source of the transmissions, indicating they are around 7 km (4.4 miles) away. Having ascertained the frequencies, the ESM determines the signals have a strength of around -114 dB when they arrive at the COMINT antennas. An accompanying signal on a frequency of 157 MHz with a received signal strength of -108 dB has also been detected. The COMINT cadres will be able to deduce by ascertaining the frequency, geographical concentration of the signals and their strength that they have, with some degree of confidence, detected a squad of troops using their Personal Role Radios (PRRs). The single 157 MHz signal seems to be from the squad commander’s handheld radio. The fact that the signals are mobile and comparatively spread out indicates that that the soldiers have dismounted and are moving. Matching a signal’s characteristics provides a good indication of who, or what, is using a radio to transmit these signals. All this information is ascertained without even needing to break into the actual radio traffic.

Thus, it becomes immediately clear that faking such transmissions could yield significant tactical, and in the case of FUSAG, operational and even strategic, benefits. Let us return to our 2.4–2.4835 GHz -144 dB, and 157 MHz -108 dB signals the ESM detected from roughly 7 km away. For all intents and purposes, the COMINT cadres have detected a dismounted squad, and their commander, with their accompanying ESM. This information is shared with their commanders to inform them that the red force squad has dismounted and is mobile. The ESM has derived the coordinates of the enemy which are also shared. Commanders now must decide how the red force squad will be engaged. Should a call for fires be made to engage them with artillery? Are Blue Forces nearby which can engage them? Should the PRRs, and the squad network they inhabit, be engaged with jamming? Would it make sense to attack the squad’s C2 system with cyber effects? Perhaps all these effects should be used synchronously or sequentially? The riposte will absorb and expend personnel, materiel and time. Expenditure is productive if it achieves effect, but wasteful if it achieves nothing and all battlefield resources are ultimately finite. Deception helps generate waste. What if the PRRs are fake? What if there is no deployment of dismounted squad troops? Resources used to engage this fictitious unit have been wasted.

 

The PRRs, and the single handheld, were not radios at all. They were decoys transmitting similar signals mounted on small uninhabited ground vehicles moving in patterns indicative of dismounted soldiers. Time and treasure have been wasted on a deployment that never occurred. To make matters worse, while this fictitious unit was being engaged, an actual dismounted tactical action was happening nearby, but it was never noticed. Those latter troops exhibited exemplary emissions control (EMCON). Robust EMCON ensured that radios were never used and the COMINT cadres took the bait.

I’m Spartacus

Deception clearly provides significant tactical benefits, and hence potential tactical advantage. This has not been lost on the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD), which has launched the Spartacus programme, with the ministry’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) responsible for the programme. In its own words, “DASA finds and funds exploitable innovation to support UK defence and security quickly and effectively.” DASA’s vision is “to have strategic advantage through the most innovative defence and security capabilities in the world”. The organisation is backing the Spartacus initiative developed by a UK-based consultancy company called PhoenixC4i. The company says that Spartacus “provides commanders with the ability to mimic C2 systems, increasing uncertainty as to where the true target is”. As well as mimicking C2 radio emissions, Spartacus can be used to generate multiple emitters, which could be deployed in such a fashion as to replicate the locations of radios typically used by deployed land formations.

Reports have noted that Spartacus has already undergone trials at the Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE). The AWE is a regularly-occurring British Army effort to evaluate key technologies. The most recent AWE occurred in October 2024 and focused on urban warfare, according to the MoD. The ministry says the AWE’s stated goal is “to inform investment decisions and find capabilities suitable for rapid exploitation.” Spartacus is an apt appellation for this capability. Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 epic Spartacus featured a now-legendary scene. When Roman soldiers are attempting to find the eponymous slave who has led a rebellion against their rule, they tell the defeated slaves they can avoid death if they give up Spartacus for crucifixion. One by one the slaves step up and announce that they are Spartacus. The Romans realise that they will never find the man they seek and simultaneously witness the slaves’ resolve. Like their namesake rebels, the Spartacus decoys will all claim to be a desired emitter. An oft-quoted analogy in EW is that trying to find the signal of interest can be trying to find a needle in the haystack: What do you do when you have to find a pin in a pile of needles?

PhoenixC4i told the author that three products constitute the Spartacus family; Air, Echo and Coeus, which are currently at Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) between Three and Eight. The UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council denotes TRL-3 as the successful demonstration of a proof-of-concept. TRL-8 denotes that an actual technology has been completed and qualified through test and demonstration. The three products are being incorporated into a product called Digital Deception in a Box (DDIAB). DDIAB provides tactical level brigade and/or battlegroup with “radio frequency and infrared deception.” All the development of these products is being performed inhouse by the PhoenixC4i. The decoys are designed to “mimic a battlegroup command post.” Alternatively, the decoys can electromagnetically replicate an event such as an obstacle crossing. Another option is to distribute decoys widely to “provide more coverage around the battlespace”. Decoys can be controlled via standard cell phone networking or “any bearer of opportunity if planned”. PhoenixC4i is now awaiting any decision by the British Army, and the UK MoD, to move ahead with procuring Spartacus as a programme of record. Should this occur, “the capability can be productionised very quickly” according to PhoenixC4i.

Decoy technologies have come a long way since the days of FUSAG. Nonetheless, the architects of that brilliant deception would instantly recognise the principles at play in Spartacus. As history shows, fooling your adversary can sometimes pay unimaginable dividends.

Dr Thomas Withington