Operation Shadowplay

Operation Shadowplay was a psychological-warfare operation staged by the Rebel Alliance during the Nishr Campaign.

Rebel troops had gained territorial control of most of Nishr, but the Alliance Special Forces were unable to spare the Infiltrators requested by the Nishr Taskforce for an assault on the planet's entrenched Imperial garrison.

Instead, the local Sector Force simulated an Infiltrator deployment, by sending a spaceship into the atmosphere, which caught the attention of the Imperial sensor grid, and then deployed forty one-man gliders—a type of sports equipment that had been widely adapted by Rebel forces as a simple and inexpensive insertion vehicle.

Imperial scouts, venturing out into the desert and finding forty abandoned gliders, were left to conclude that the Rebels had deployed a platoon of their feared Infiltrators, with the ability to make a direct assault on the garrison base.

In fact, these gliders had merely been weighed down by ice, which had melted away in the desert heat by the time the Imperials arrived.

Text and facts from the “Operation Shadowplay” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.