Surprise is one of the most important assets in a successful military operation. One of the reasons that the Normandy invasion was successful was that the Germans didn't believe that the Allies would invade at that point--it was too well defended and too difficult. Almost up to the last minute, they assumed that the attack would come further to the east.

For months, those speculating on the beginning of the war's renewal have assumed that it would occur during a new moon. Implicit in the logic of this was that it would occur in the dark of night. It was becoming clear in the past few days that the lunar phase was no longer relevant to the timing of operations, but it occurred to very few that light conditions themselves were irrelevant. This morning's attack (Baghdad time), which occurred just before sunrise, showed that this was in fact the case, and probably surprised the targets considerably.

We'll see the degree to which this changes the course of the war shortly, I suspect.

I posted an explanation on March 3 of why the moon does not matter.

Two of the points I made:

1. The American military's night-fighting, sensor and intelligence-gathering equipment does not rely on natural light to work. Full moon, no moon, broad daylight, makes no difference. Modern night-vision equipment (not the same as targeting equipment) is much less reliant on natural light than ever, and other than for small-unit, foot operations won't be used that much anyway.

2. When the Rangers and the 82d Airborne conducted combat parachute assaults against Panama at 1 a.m., Dec. 20, 1989, the moon was half full. You go when you're ordered to go. And the order to go is determined by just about everything except the phase of the moon.

I recall watching one documentary about this new test being performed on the F-16 LANTIRN system that encorporated the navigation information from the radar pod and displays the visual queues directly in the night vision goggles the pilot wear. That way the pilot doesn't have to choose between flying with his head buried in front of the MFD radar display or fly with absolutely no navigational queues while using the NOGS. Apparently the F-16's MFDs don't support a display mode that allows them to be seen through NOGS, hence the purpose of this new system. Anyways, I recall they said that for the actual flight tests they like to wait till its about a half moon becuase the night vision goggles are so sensitive that a full moon looks like a blazing inferno sun at high noon and its so bright that it washes most everything out making it hard to see. So, its possible that military planners do not consider a full moon to be the best oppurtunity to perform night strike missions.