ABSTRACT
Few nations fail to list surprise amongst their principles of war, and throughout history the military benefit of achieving surprise at strategic, operational or tactical level has almost always been high. In the last half century, for example, the impact of surprise upon the outcome of military operations has been impressive. The 1940 German blitzkrieg against France, Operation Barbarossa a year later against the Soviet Union, the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor and many more recent examples in Korea and the Middle East all attest to the value of achieving surprise. Of course, surprise alone is not an end in itself but merely a means to an end, a means of helping ensure eventual success. Some observers have even attempted to quantify the extent to which surprise enhances the combat effectiveness of attacking forces and have concluded that it does so by the order of two to five times.1 Whilst such calculations should quite properly be regarded with some suspicion, it undeniably must be the case that, at any level, surprise is a significant force multiplier.2
