First, you always spy.
Second, you monitor public information to determine enemy tactics and develop wargames around those strategies.
For instance, anti-aircraft strategies against the USA changed radically as the USA launched preliminary drones to set off Iraqi radar stations then launched cruise missiles against all known pings.
Spies are so common all over the world, they called them diplomats and gave them their own offices.
War gaming, which is basically thought experiements with some rules and writing down results.
If red team had this stuff and blue team has that stuff what would you attack and how would you defend it. If you lost it what would you do to make up for it?
The art of war is extremely complex and there is no way to cover everything in one Lemmy comment.
However, I can summarize: An attacker or defender simply needs to prevent the opposing side from being able to support a war.
While there are thousands of different things that can support war, it usually boils down to raw manpower, food/supplies, weapons, energy, logistics and communications. Failing to defend, or not having the capability to replenish/repair those things is usually a quick game-over as those items are highly dependent on the other. Anything that supports those key items is a target of the enemy, so those are the things that are stockpiled, fortified or should be rebuilt quickly.
I’m still not clear how post 1950 governments, especially the united states, never made any effort at all in creating underground cities.
The ONLY reason we haven’t paid for it, is because the USSR wasn’t actually dumb enough to start the nuclear war. Because there were times where we sure were.
But in any event, if you put a city 2 miles underground, you can bomb the fuck out of the surface. It’s just grass.
Obviously you can’t make the whole country underground, but you could make individual cities. Concentrated pockets of people, all safe from all bombs.
Although, if we transitioned 100% to that model in the 1950s, covid in 2020 may have been 10000x worse.
So, you take the good, you take the bad, you put them together, and what do you get? The facts of life. The facts of life.
There’s always a script, so spies are not needed.
