You certainly are talking sense in these last two posts of yours, Jaeger. One of the problems with Ultra was the enormous volume of traffic that existed, and having to filter what was of extreme relevance from the milk and cookies requests (which might be a subject of analysis too). Everything had to be decoded, translated, analysed, sifted, selected. transmitted to the appropriate destinations, and then digested by those in position to act.

Not an easy cycle.

In any case, the Soviets did not have Ultra, and sometimes their British Allies supplied them some snippets from uncertain sources, so they developed their own information sources, from infiltrators at top level to the usual lower level sources like reconnaissance (air and ground), analysis of POW interrogation, radio interception, etc.

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