Loose Lips Still Sink Ships: Old Lessons Speak to Today’s Warfare
Jason Criss Howk / Nov 17, 2021
Intelligence information warfare
It was 1864, and General Sherman was sharing his latest plans for invading Atlanta, cutting across the South, with his trusted friend General Grant. Sherman also decided to send his operational plans to the Southern newspaper reporters that he saw near his camp. Next, Sherman drafted up a detailed accounting of the number of soldiers he had in each regiment, and listed how many were not fit for duty. He sent that report to his friend in the U.S. Senate and asked him to read it aloud in the next week’s session. Finally, General Sherman answered a request for information from a bureaucrat in Washington D.C. that wanted to know how much ammunition and how many days of rations Sherman had on hand for the invasion. That unelected bureaucrat then published that information in public report that contained all the data from all Union Forces units. When that report was published later in the week, a courier carried copies of the reports to each of the Confederate generals across Georgia, Alabama, and South and North Carolina.
Of course, none of this ever happened. General Sherman, General Grant, President Lincoln, the U.S. Senate, and the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. were not suicidal. They knew that keeping even the most mundane information about a military unit away from your enemy is crucial. They knew it was foolish to share operational plans and strategies with their enemy. The leaders in the Civil War had studied history; they knew when and what to share in public, so that they would not provide their enemy an advantage in battle.
Post-September 11 War fighting
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