Why open-ocean warfare rewards deception

The open sea gives a force few physical features to hide behind, so disguise, decoys, and control of detection matter. Submarines show how exercise assumptions can fail in combat. An uncertain contact may be watched cautiously during an exercise, but in wartime it can draw active sonar and immediate attack. Heavy submarine losses in both world wars warn against treating concealment as invulnerability. The Falklands War is a limited test because Argentina fielded weaker anti-submarine forces and made little operational use of its own submarines, while British forces attacked many suspected contacts.