Achieving surprise is generally not about hiding what you are doing but by providing an alternate innocent narrative for what everyone can see you are doing.
It is probably nothing more than what the Israelis say this is, but this still makes me go "huh":
An Israeli F16 warplane crashed at sea on Sunday due to an engine malfunction and Israel subsequently grounded all its F15 and F16 combat aircraft pending a review of the incident, a military spokesman said.
The two crewmen were rescued at sea.
If I wanted to strike Iran or Syria or Hezbollah, and wanted maximum aircraft availability, I'd ground them for maintenance prior to H-Hour. Of course, that is noticable and people ask why you are doing maintenance on all of your aircraft at once.
But an engine problem that requires you to ground all your aircraft to check them sure seems like a reasonable explanation for standing down all your frontline fighter strength, no?
I'm just saying that I'd sacrifice an older model F-16 to provide that innocent explanation if I was planning something.
But that's just me, perhaps.
UPDATE: The plane was one of Israel's newest, an F-16I.
I'm not sure whether that makes it less or more likely that something is up.
