INTRODUCTION
Safeguarding against intentional external impacts becomes increasingly important in
system survivability and defense theory. Improving the reliability of system elements
and providing redundancy have been the main two ingredients of classical reliability
theory that can be applied to increase the system survivability. When the system is
exposedtotheintentionalimpacts,deploymentoffaketargets(FTs)aimedatmisin-
forming attackers becomes an additional important measure of survivability
enhancement. The objective of a fake target is to distract or conceal something that
someoneelsemaysearchfor(togainaccessto,control,destroy,etc).Afaketargetin
warmaybeawoodenfaketankdesignedtobetakentobeasrealbythecrewofan
attackingplane.Thedesignofthefaketargetmaybeadjustedtothetechnologyofthe
attacker,whichmaybeanautomaticguidedmissile.Anotherexamplearisesifitproves
difficulttocamouflagesomethingofvalue,e.g.apowerstationinanopenlandscape.
Analternativetocamouflageistospreadmultipleentitieswiththesameappearanceas
the genuine target, but with empty content, e.g. empty buildings of concrete, which
cannotbedetectedasfakeunlessbrokeninto.
TheefficiencyoffaketargetdeploymentinsystemdefensewasconsideredbyLevitin
and Hausken, who assumed that the attacker cannot distinguish them from the
defendedobject(genuinetarget).
1
Inpractice,whenthefaketargetsaredeployedthe
attackertriestodetectthegenuinetargetbyanintelligenceeffort.Iftheattacker’sintel-
ligence effort succeeds, he concentrates all the remaining resource on destroying the
genuinetarget;otherwisehehastodistributetheresourcesevenlyamongallthetargets
ashehasnopreferenceofwhichtargettoattack.
Examplesofobjectsconsideredaremilitaryfacilitiessuchasmissilelaunchsystems,
installationswhichmayormaynotproduceWeaponsofMassDestructionornuclear
power, headquarters or branch offices for decision-making and co-ordination, power
Defense & Security Analysis Vol.25,No.2,pp.157–173,June2009
IntelligenceandImpactContests
inSystemswithFakeTargets
Gregory Levitin
TheIsraelElectricCorporationLtd.POBox10,Haifa,31000,Israel
Kjell Hausken
FacultyofSocialSciences,UniversityofStavanger,4036Stavanger,Norway
ISSN1475-1798print;1475-1801online/09/020157-17©2009Taylor&Francis 157
DOI:10.1080/14751790902749918
25-2 master.qxp:D&SA 19/5/09 09:29 Page 157