Surprise is Achieved in the Commander's Mind

Humans search for a pattern and will conjure one up even if there is none

A more transparent battlefield does not mean surprise is impossible because  the fog of war exists in the mind of the commander.

Ukraine didn't actually hide their preparations for their Kursk incursion:

The Guardian, citing Russian government and military documents that Ukrainian forces seized in Kursk Oblast, reported on September 20 that Russian forces stationed in Kursk Oblast repeatedly warned the Russian military command about the possibility of a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast beginning in late 2023. ...

Russian authorities do not appear to have made any substantive efforts to improve the preparedness of the Russian military units serving in border areas of Kursk Oblast or construct additional fortifications along the international border prior to the incursion, and Russian authorities may have decided to ignore these requests due to a miscalculation of Ukraine's ability to advance deep into Kursk Oblast. ...

The American doctrinal definition of surprise is to "attack the enemy in a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared." Although Russian forces were likely aware of various points along the international border at which Ukraine could conduct an incursion, Ukrainian forces were able to leverage ambiguity around their operational intent and capabilities to maintain operational surprise.

This fits with my judgment:

Ukraine achieved operational surprise because while the Russians saw Ukrainian preparations, the Russians didn’t see it as a major threat. I’m assuming that on the tactical level the Russians across the front had some awareness because they seem to have reported activity that higher headquarters told them not to worry their pretty little heads over.

I could easily judge that because I've long thought deception isn't about hiding what you are doing as much as it about convincing the enemy that what they see validates their idea of what you are doing—or not doing:

Sure, understanding intent from satellite photos is difficult. The enemy knows you see them, after all. So movements can be to deceive. And the enemy may time movements around satellite passes. And keep in mind that surprise hinges on the enemy's thinking. The intelligence of a pending Russian invasion was loudly broadcast by America and Britain. But until the last minute, the Ukrainians thought there was another explanation and did not seem to react.

Since I wrote that, I read that at the last minute the Ukrainians believed the warning that America provided and quietly began preparing. But they lost a lot of time to get ready. Fortunately it was enough to stave off disaster.

The truth remains that an advance in surveillance and/or communications makes it possible to wrongly think surprise is dead and that firepower has gained a permanent advantage over maneuver and that we face high-tech phalanx battles:

I mentioned the UAV aspect of such a phalanx, too. 

It is a future. But I don't assume this is our future. Ukraine's recent surprise incursion into Russia was not a war-winner, but it showed possibilities. But if maneuver faces a bleak future, something will be conceived in equipment or tactics that helps break the phalanx--again. 

I just don’t think a future of what we think is a transparent battlefield that makes war a pure battle of attrition like two machines operating within predictable design parameters grappling with each other will ever really arrive. The human mind will always be vulnerable to drawing the wrong conclusion. Any three accurate dots can form a picture even in the chaos of war, eh? And I doubt AI will be able to eliminate that weakness.

The image was mined from my old DALL-E 3 account.