Psychological Warfare - Modern Psychological Warfare Operations

Modern Psychological Warfare Operations

Most uses of the term psychological warfare refers to military methods such as:

• Distributing pamphlets, e.g. in the Persian Gulf War, encouraging desertion or (in World War II) supplying instructions on how to surrender
• Propaganda radio stations, such as Lord Haw-Haw in World War II on the "Germany calling" station
• Renaming cities and other places when captured, such as Ho Chi Minh City
• Shock and awe military strategy
• False Flag events
• Projecting repetitive and annoying sounds and music for long periods at high volume towards groups under siege like in Operation Nifty Package. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. counterinsurgency used music, most commonly American heavy metal or rock music, to confuse or scare local militia.
• Disturbing chicken noises were repeatedly played over a loud-speaker at Guantanamo Bay for over 25 hours as a form of sleep deprivation.
• Use of loudspeaker systems to communicate with enemy soldiers
• Direct phone calls to intimidate enemy commanding officers and their families

Most of these techniques were developed during World War II or earlier, and have been used to some degree in every conflict since. Daniel Lerner was in the OSS (the predecessor to the US CIA) and in his book, attempts to analyze how effective the various strategies were.

He concludes that there is little evidence that any of them were dramatically successful, except perhaps surrender instructions over loudspeakers when victory was imminent. It should be noted, though, that measuring the success or failure of psychological warfare is very hard, as the conditions are very far from being a controlled experiment.