Operation Shadowplay was a psychological warfare tactic implemented by the Rebel Alliance amidst the Nishr Campaign.
Although Rebel forces had achieved command of the majority of Nishr, the Alliance Special Forces could not provide the Infiltrators that the Nishr Taskforce had requested for an attack against the planet's deeply rooted Imperial garrison.
As an alternative, the regional Sector Force faked an Infiltrator deployment. They achieved this by sending a spacecraft into the atmosphere, which was detected by Imperial sensors. Then, they released forty single-person gliders. These gliders, initially sports equipment, had been broadly modified by Rebel forces as a basic and cost-effective method of insertion.
Imperial reconnaissance units, upon discovering the forty discarded gliders in the desert, were led to believe that the Rebels had deployed a platoon of their notorious Infiltrators, capable of launching a direct attack on the garrison base.
The gliders were simply weighted down with ice, which dissipated due to the desert's high temperatures before the Imperials arrived.