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The story about Communications Intelligence (COMINT) and World War II’s Battle of Midway is now well known. The U.S. Navy COMINT system in early 1942 had intercepted detailed information about a major impending Japanese operation against the Americans,,
What It Was Really Like Being A World War II Codebreaker Public Domain
By Natasha Lavender/Feb. 13, 2021 10:17 pm EDT
The image of a codebreaker trying to unscramble a seemingly meaningless string of numbers and letters in the dim light of a bunker comes from World War II. But during and after the war, those people we now understand as some of the most important behind-the-scenes heroes of the war effort were as secret as the ciphers they were trying to decrypt. It s only recently that we ve started to uncover what it was really like being a World War II codebreaker.
In 2018, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph F. Dunford described how the changing character of war and strategic landscape have “accelerated the speed and complexity of war” and contributed to a collapsed decision space. This is troubling for a navy in great power competition with potential adversaries who have increasingly capable long-range antiship missiles. This extended range and lethality, combined with the vulnerability of networks and ubiquitous use of communications, means naval forces are increasingly susceptible to adversary targeting. Distributed maritime operations (DMO) strive to counter this with distributed lethality, but the limiting factor is a commander’s decision cycle. Acknowledging the need for improved decision-making, then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John M.