Papers. More papers. Even more papers. The solar monarch breathed in the cold early morning air and sighed, her horn steadily emitting magic in an almost invisible way. There were so many reports stacked on her desk, and there were more so than usual, that it's a miracle that not a single one has caught fire despite her magically non-flammable mane and tail and the thousands of enchantments placed within her study. She quickly noted how much better her last visit of the frontlines were a week ago - inspecting soldiers, assisting officers, personally leading troops, and blasting insects in enemy positions back whence they came - compared to her current chore.
The mare sighed once more. She should be grateful for all these papers, really. During the very first days of the war, the panic and chaos that spread all the way from the front to the palace constantly ground communications to a halt. What little reports did get through to Canterlot more often than not conflicted with each other, and Daybreaker suspected that at least half of those reports were fabricated or doctored by changeling agents that had penetrated deep into Equestria's military and administrative ranks.
Wars were complicated, Daybreaker mused, and modern wars were even more so. Conflicts were a jumbled mess of numbers, organization, leadership, military thinking, intelligence and information, technology, and politics. It was the ordered systems of society having sex with the absolute chaos of people trying to kill each other.
However, in the midst of all that chaos, there were people who worked in the shadows making sure that the Equestrian war effort was not disrupted. Beyond the soldiers fighting in the frontlines, the factory workers building weapons back home, and the ministers making decisions in the palace, there were those far away from public eyes conducting business in the dark. These people were spies, agents, informants, saboteurs, and codebreakers as well as all manner of people working in the most clandestine of environments, and Daybreaker had picked only the best of the best for the arduous task of tangoing with changeling intelligence.
When Daybreaker began enacting sweeping reforms in the military, one of the first organizations of the armed forces affected by the changes was military intelligence. High command was tired of the constant struggle for information on the field, and so improving Equestria's intelligence capabilities was a top priority.
Putting a fresh stack of papers on her desk, Daybreaker continued her forming train of thoughts.
Codebreaking and radars were a particular interest of military leadership and was thus improved upon almost immediately. With a massive surge in funding that came almost out of nowhere, the already busy codebreaking rooms and radar facilities of Canterlot and Manehattan erupted with a flurry of fresh recruits, cutting-edge equipment, and new innovations in signals intelligence and radiolocation. Soon, the changeling air force was dealt a heavy blow by Equestria's brand new radars, and there was such a renewed torrent of information coming in about enemy activity that command was forced to act only upon select pieces of information while discarding the rest so as to not arouse suspicion from the enemy and risk losing the Equestrian military's advantage in codebreaking.
Moving on from ciphers and radio detection, Daybreaker also invested in more "traditional" intelligence. Agents were trained in various kinds of subterfuge and magic to compete with changelings' shapeshifting abilities, specialized forces adept at using magic and all sorts of tricks to launch information and psychological operations against enemy forces were created, and new counterintelligence units were put together and tasked with flushing out changeling agents operating deep inside Equestria using cold, brutal, and effective means that played a major role in drastically increasing the mortality rate of changeling operatives. All in all, it was utter hell for VOPS agents.
Lastly, there were the Equestrian military's most secretive research programs. Researchers of these top secret projects worked on everything from experimental weapons to new industrial substances to all sorts of magic and their possible applications. There were talks of "jet engines", "atom bombs", and black magic - the last of which Daybreaker was not the most supportive of. In any case, none of these would have been possible without Equestrian military intelligence diligently directing prying eyes away from the right places.
Daybreaker mindlessly threw one final small stack of papers in front of herself to work on as her thoughts continued.
The changelings were certainly formidable opponents in the realm of information warfare, but as the war dragged on closer and closer to the end of its second year, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the intelligence apparatus that had carried the changeling armies from the outskirts of Acornage to the doorsteps of Canterlot was getting outpaced and outmatched in the face of the vast resources that Equestria was starting to bring to bear against the changelings. With all of that in mind, Equestrian intelligence paired with economic and industrial might had truly become the bane of the Changeling Lands.
Finishing her work that morning, Daybreaker looked outside her window to the sun slowly rising over the horizon as a faint glow continued to emanate from the alicorn monarch's horn. She took a moment to rest as a bottle of hard cider floated out of a cabinet and poured its contents out into a nearby drinking glass to eventually settle beside the flaming mare.
Daybreaker could feel it. The war was reaching its final act, and the reports were starting to confirm her suspicions. Soon enough, she and her generals shall be launching an offensive into the changeling homeland itself once preparations are done and conditions are deemed optimal.
It was only a matter of time.