In order to be able to respond quickly to unforeseen or unlikely circumstances, all countries with substantial militaries possess a General Staff. A General Staff is not an intelligence unit. The purpose of a General Staff is to envision scenarios, create plans for handling them, and to file them in case they might be needed. The more ‘creative’ and unlikely the plan the better. It consumes inputs and makes requests of intelligence services. These plans are updated regularly and discarded if they no longer make any sense. For example, Norman Schwartzkopf had written a plan for Desert Storm, and they pulled it out. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and capture of Crimea was the result of previously made plans. Countries have absurd numbers of them.
The government also conducts ‘war games’ (Or did back when I was involved) where they invite you and a few others to role play various scenarios. Sometimes they are testing these plans or considering new ones.
Most of the “whacky” reporting you hear about some “plan” originates in one of these ‘unlikely’ plans. And while ‘odd’ it is exceptionally good training for top talent. Particularly for the USA because the USA has such a logistics problem – the USA is an island. Getting weapons, people, and supplies off the island and to a location is hard and expensive work.