Multi-domain integration must shift from a conceptual goal to an operational reality 

Antara Jha 

In the autumn of 1944, Allied camps in East Anglia were staged with rubber tanks, inflatable aircraft, and fake landing craft, while deceptive radio traffic suggested that General Patton would strike at Pas-de-Calais. Operation Quicksilver was more than a ruse; it was a carefully built illusion designed to control what the enemy saw while hiding everything else.

Eight decades later, deception has moved from physical decoys to digital arenas spanning global networks, satellites, and even the human mind. Though the tools have changed, the aim to shape and dominate perception remains the same.

Today’s warfare, from Ukraine to the Persian Gulf and beyond, is no longer driven only by force but by influence over thought and decision-making. Sun Tzu’s vision of victory without battle endures, now powered by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and a deeply digitised world, where perception itself has become the battlefield.

The Classical Inheritance

Offensive strategy has always rested on the same pillars: speed, surprise, concentration, and misdirection. That principle endures. Today, it spans domains: cyberattacks, blind radar and power, electronic warfare breaks communication, hypersonic strikes hit command before defences react, and drone swarms saturate air systems. By the time forces advance, the opponent is already disabled.

Shock and Awe has evolved as well. Russia’s deepfake of President Zelensky urging surrender in August 2025 targeted not infrastructure but morale and unity. The weapon was a video. The battlefield, the human mind.

Since the Napoleonic wars, defence has never depended solely on static resistance. An effective strategy operates in depth, not to halt an enemy outright, but to wear him down, disrupt him, and sap his momentum before it reaches what matters. The same applies in cyberspace: a breached firewall is not a failure if the network behind it is segmented, monitored, and resilient. Losing an outer layer is survivable when stronger responses lie deeper within.

Elastic defence follows this logic, yielding ground to exhaust the attacker before reclaiming control. Its cyber counterpart is the honeypot, an exposed system that lures intrusions while real assets remain protected. Apparent success becomes a controlled trap, capturing every move.

Scorched Earth becomes rapid containment: isolating compromised systems, removing sensitive data, and cutting access before damage spreads. Anti-Access and Area Denial has likewise extended beyond physical space, with pre-positioned cyber capabilities able to deny adversaries use of their own systems at critical moments, turning strength into weakness.

Deception as a Military Discipline

Deception has long been central to military strategy. The classic feint drawing attention to one front while striking another, dates back to the earliest wars. The cyber domain mirrors this logic with striking fidelity. False flag operations attacks crafted to implicate others are now easier to execute, while attribution remains inherently uncertain despite advanced forensics. State actors exploit this ambiguity by embedding rival signatures in their code, from language cues to operational patterns. The payoff is powerful: inflicting damage with plausible deniability, misdirecting retaliation, and fostering deep mistrust within an adversary’s security apparatus.

Between 2022 and 2026, offensive cyber operations evolved far beyond expectations. Attacks on power grids, water systems, railways, telecommunications, and financial networks shifted from theory to routine reality. The focus moved away from espionage or profit toward quietly planting dormant capabilities meant to disrupt national resilience at critical moments.

Campaigns such as China’s Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon illustrate this change. Among the most consequential state-backed intrusions, they emphasised long-term, undetected access over immediate use, less direct hacking and more the careful placement of hidden, strategic leverage.

The 2026 Israel–Iran confrontation underscored this trend, revealing the tight fusion of cyber and physical warfare. Digital disruption paired with simultaneous strikes showed both domains now operate as a single, coordinated force.

At the same time, agentic AI has transformed cyber offence. Autonomous systems can find weaknesses, adapt in real time, and execute attacks at extraordinary speed. Self-evolving malware that rewrites itself has made traditional signature-based defences largely ineffective, signalling a fundamental shift in cybersecurity.

The Invisible Battlefield

The electromagnetic spectrum has become a battlefield. Every platform emits, and whatever emits can be targeted. Aircraft, ships, armour, and infantry all leave signatures, cutting engagement windows to minutes. Managing those signatures is now as vital as camouflage.

Cognitive Electronic Warfare represents the sharpest edge of this contest. Rather than flooding systems with noise, it uses AI to read enemy emissions in real time and generate precise counter-waveforms. The radar keeps working but sees a convincing false reality without warning. Decisions rely on corrupted data, and an unaware enemy ca