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In the span of three weeks this June, the world witnessed three extraordinary military operations: Ukraine’s decimation of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, Israel’s sweeping overnight key leader and air defense neutralization in Iran, and America’s ultra long-range bunker busting at Fordo and other Iranian nuclear sites. Each operation shared commonality in audacity, scale, and something surprising: detailed and immediate operational disclosure. These weren’t the limited scope press briefings or carefully circumscribed military reports seen in other high profile missions, like the raid that killed Osama bin Laden or the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani. Instead, presidential statements were quickly augmented by comprehensive overviews from that nation’s senior defense officials, complete with easily distributed media: drone footage, confirmational imagery, and mission graphics.
Warfare has always been performative — the means of actions carry significance beyond their explicit destructive effects. What distinguishes the June operations is not their performative nature, but their post-operation communications methodology. Like the “shock and awe” of the 2003 Iraq War or CNN’s coverage of the first Gulf War, the June operations captured global attention using novel tools — social media, real-time distribution, and comprehensive disclosure.
This pattern extends beyond just these three operations. Russia’s increasingly significant drone operations against Ukraine may not have captured the same sense of global fascination, but they have featured heavy drone footage dissemination. These have come to (at least temporarily) displace the nuclear saber rattling that Russia was previously using to deter more direct or effective Western intervention. Iran’s own reaction to the American strike seem to have been more symbolic than serious, allowing the nation to show strength domestically without any actual escalation.
All of these raise the question: is warfare becoming more performative?
The Divide Between Signaling and Direct Effect
In the 21st century, major powers have generally separated their high profile operational agenda from their strategic signaling activities. While this separation isn’t absolute, real world operations naturally prioritize a specific and explicit mission end state. Signaling and geopolitically significant messaging operate through their own distinct channels.
This separation serves a logic of limitation and control. Military operations require disclosure constraints to preserve capabilities and maintain those advantages for subsequent missions. Strategic signaling, conversely, needs more controlled messaging to communicate precise intentions without provoking unintended escalation.
Examples of the latter include nuclear signaling — like what Russia has largely used to deter the West from taking a more active interceding role in Ukraine. Military exercises like Freedom of Navigation Operations, China’s massive joint exercises around Taiwan, or NATO’s own combined maneuvers also demonstrate capability and intent. Meanwhile, capability revelations — technology demonstrations or major platform announcements — capture the interest and attention of both the public and policy makers. The end state of each of these is influence.
Distinctly, actual military operations — whether singular clandestine missions or broader warfare campaigns — focus on military objectives and compellence. When countries conduct limited high level operations — e.g., eliminating adversary leaders or destroying critical infrastructure — they heavily prioritize mission success. The signaling — if there is an intentional effect — is in the action itself. War and extended conflict, made up of countless smaller operations, follow similar paths. Operational details are limited and messaging is meant to control, not amplify.
The June operations — deliberately, incidentally, or opportunistically — collapsed this distinction by using operational channels as primary strategic signaling mechanisms. That this may have been an after-the-fact addition does not diminish the effect. While precedents like Desert Storm showed conflict in real time, they did not bring the viewer into the metaphorical planning room. The June operations showed both conflict and the means and methods used to wage it. Details disclosed were not guessed at by talking heads or pundits, but were officially relayed by the highest levels of national authority. Rather than achieving tactical objectives through one channel and strategic communication through established signaling formats, Ukraine, Israel, and the United States integrated tactical execution with strategic messaging into single operational frameworks.
Present and Future Costs
Three major operations from three different countries in succession providing this same unprecedented release of detail indicates this is more than an isolated pattern. The trend is an evolving approach to strategic information operations — specifically, how countries conceptualize the relationship between means, effect, and message. Rather than treating them as competing priorities, the June operations demonstrated a more fundamental merger. Ukraine, Israel, and the United States all sacrificed valuable military information — details that might limit similar methods, capabilities, and flexibility in future missions — in exchange for immediate strategic communication gains.
This calculation involves complex trade-offs that can justify disclosure even when concealment would normally be valuable. Ukraine’s drone technology evolves every few months, making specific methods quickly obsolete. The U.S. strike aimed for comprehensive destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities, reducing the need to preserve methods for future similar operations. In these contexts, immediate strategic communication value may have been thought to outweigh traditional operational security concerns. Yet in both examples, the opposite case can also be made.
Consider just a few of the details provided: Ukraine revealed its months-long infiltration methodology using commercial trucks as mobile drone platforms — intelligence that will likely force future operations to develop new concealment and delivery methods. Israel disclosed its capacity to pre-position autonomous systems and the extent of deep infiltration it held inside Iran months before activation — a revelation that will certainly prompt enhanced counterintelligence efforts by both Iran and other countries that are observing closely. The United States detailed some of its deception tactics, including sending B-2 bombers towards the Pacific as decoys while the actual strike package approached from a different vector — a method now potentially unusable against sophisticated adversaries who will be wary of similar indicators in the future.
However, the strategic communication gains likely justify the costs in information. While it is challenging to fully understand the perceptions internal to the Kremlin or the highest rungs of the Chinese Communist Party, the adjacent impacts demonstrate a magnitude that would make the meaning hard to ignore. Ukraine’s revelation of coordinating 117 drones across five time zones and 4,300 kilometers of Russian territory sent an unmistakable message about Russian vulnerabilities, while simultaneously boosting Ukrainian morale and international credibility. The extent of Mossad’s infiltration into Iran likely serves to reinforce regional deterrence, rather than limit future operations. For the United States, the complexity and distance of Operation Midnight Hammer — involving over 125 aircraft, seven B-2 stealth bombers, submarine-launched Tomahawks, and true global coordination — served to reinforce a message of unambiguous American technological superiority and global reach, with a more consequential target audience in the Indo-Pacific rather than exclusively in the Middle East.
Influence as Necessity
In many ways, the evolution of performative warfare is predictable within modern information operations. Even highly successful influence campaigns face the challenge of retaining attention in today’s saturated information environments, and the natural method of recapturing audience focus is through increasingly dramatic and credible demonstrations. Traditional information operations campaigns struggle to increase scale and intensity against the rapid decay of attention spans and counter narratives by adversaries.
Ukraine exemplifies this strategic necessity. Following the disastrous Oval Office meeting, the collapse of Ukraine’s offensive into Kursk, and stalled peace negotiations, international observers assessed that Ukraine’s strategic position had deteriorated significantly. European support remained strong but faced growing pressure for a negotiated settlement. Operation Spider’s Web fundamentally altered these dynamics. The demonstration of credible deep strike capability against Russian strategic assets shifted military assessments and rebuilt external perception needed to continue the flow of aid.
Israel faced similar geopolitical imperatives. Declining international support for Gaza operations, coupled with Iranian nuclear advancement and regional power uncertainties, created a narrow window requiring decisive action. Israel needed to seize the strategic initiative while avoiding both wider conflict escalation and alienating the support of allies. Operation Rising Lion’s disclosure strategy served this delicate balance. By revealing the surgical precision of intelligence penetration and targeting capabilities, Israel shifted attention away from Gaza and showed its allies that its actions were precise, calculated, and based on extensive intelligence, not aggression.
The United States confronted different but equally pressing challenges. Perceived deficiencies in gray zone competition with China has built narratives critical of American strategic power, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. While gray zone operations represent an important competitive arena, they are not America’s core strength. Operation Midnight Hammer provided a demonstration of American global operational reach and coordination capabilities at a moment when political tensions are at a high point. While the strikes were not against a Chinese-equivalent target, they did showcase a logistical complexity, multi-domain coordination, and global scope to assert American conventional military strength. For audiences questioning the inertia of strategic competition, the details of the operation demonstrated that U.S. core military capabilities remain dominant.
The Limitations of Repetition
Historical precedent demonstrates that extraordinary military methods lose effectiveness when repeated. For example, in World War I, Q-ships — armed merchant vessels disguised as defenseless traders — initially succeeded by luring German U-boats into close-range attacks, but lost effectiveness once U-boat commanders adapted by striking from a distance. Their use also escalated the conflict at sea, contributing to Germany’s shift to unrestricted submarine warfare and the abandonment of surface engagement norms.
Precision drone strikes carried significant psychological impact and sustained media attention in the early years of the “Global War on Terror,” but by the 2010s they had become routine events that only registered in news cycles during the highest profile operations and in professional policy debate circles. Ukraine’s drone warfare revolution reintroduced the topic, but media fatigue is likely to place it on a similar trajectory.
Despite these constraints, the June operations demonstrate that more detailed disclosure strategies may serve multiple strategic functions across different power levels — force multiplication for constrained actors like Ukraine and dominance assertion for powerful ones like the United States and Israel. This versatility suggests the approach represents a flexible strategic tool rather than a niche capability for specific circumstances. It is likely that the June operations were military successes first, with performative messaging layered in after, but that doesn’t change the ultimate effectiveness.
Performative Warfare and American Strengths
These operations represent perhaps the more extreme end of a performative warfare spectrum, but their true strategic value lies in demonstrating principles applicable to other high level operations. The United States conducts more strategically significant operations than any competitor, creating frequent opportunities for performative warfare applications without requiring the global scale of Operation Midnight Hammer.
American operational tempo at the strategic level provides unique advantages. While adversaries conduct impressive one-off spectacles, America regularly executes operations that could qualify for performative treatment with proper disclosure strategies and authoritative endorsement. The infrastructure exists. The high level operations occur. Only the systematic integration of disclosure planning needs development. This means integrating disclosure strategy into operational planning from inception, not as an afterthought.
Critics have called for corrections to American information operations capabilities for years — issues which continue today. Institutional solutions are still developing but will take time to implement, even under optimistic outcomes. Performative warfare offers a different path, one that leans into America’s strength — leveraging existing operational excellence with more singular and integrated influence focus. Strategic disclosure integrated with America’s sustained high level, globe-spanning operations represents an influence advantage that competitors will be hard pressed to match.
Warfare is becoming more performative, or at the very least countries are recognizing the value of performative opportunities. The June operations demonstrate this and further suggest other countries will follow their example. The task for the United States is to more intentionally develop this warfare tool, rather than allow competitors to define its parameters.
Jordan Spector is a U.S. Navy officer and a politico-military fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He has also written in Proceedings. The opinions in this article are his own and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, or U.S. government.
Image: Joshua Hastings via U.S. Air Force
