Russia has painted fake ground fighter jets at several of its air bases, a relatively simple tactic apparently intended to trick Ukraine into targeting the decoys instead of the real ones.
But Moscow also has a strange habit of landing its helicopters directly above these decoy silhouettes, according to a new Western intelligence update, which claims this strategy completely undermines any attempt to deceive Ukraine.
The painting The creation of fake fighter jets is seen as a response to Ukraine’s growing ability to carry out long-range missile and drone attacks on Russian bases, analysts say. This is a crude but inexpensive way for Moscow to try to supply incoming weapons with false targets – thus leading to confusion.
“It is likely that as a result of continued and successful Ukrainian strikes on military sites, Russia was forced to implement a number of decoy and deception techniques in an attempt to confuse Ukrainian targeting efforts,” he said. estimated the British Ministry of Defense in a press release published Tuesday. updating information.
The United Kingdom observed This practice takes place at the Kirovskoe airfield in the eastern part of the occupied Crimean peninsula, where Russia has painted decoy fighter jets on the concrete. But he noted that this tactic has been observed at more than a dozen other Moscow-owned bases.
Indeed, decoy planes have been spotted well beyond Crimea and at bases inside Russia’s current sovereign territory. They appear in satellite images because they are often painted a ghostly shade of white, although some also feature gray or blue markings and cast no shadows, unlike real planes parked nearby.
The trend highlights “the scale of Russian concern about future Ukrainian strikes and their ability to repel them,” the British Ministry of Defense said. However, he adds, “Russian helicopters still regularly land on the painted silhouettes of the decoy fighters, completely compromising the attempted deception.”
A satellite image of the Kirovskoe base from late February, released Tuesday by the British Ministry of Defense, shows exactly this: a Russian helicopter landing directly on the silhouette of a Su-30 fighter jet.
A Russian helicopter hovers above a decoy fighter jet at a Russian base in Crimea. The British Ministry of Defense
We can clearly see the helicopter casting a shadow, while the fighter plane does not. It is not clear why Russia would want to expose its decoys in this way.
“It also reveals the true order of battle or air force at these air bases, which Russia is likely trying to hide from Ukrainian intelligence,” the British Ministry of Defense said.
Beyond fake warplanes, the full-scale war in Ukraine has given rise to other creative examples of lures and deception tactics on both sides. These range from inflatable tanks and wooden rocket launchers to radar reflectors made from oil barrels.
Some are rather dull, but some decoys are quite convincing, to the point where they have drawn enemy fire.
The military has used tactics such as deceptive weapons and fake airfields in major armed conflicts like World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. In a 2020 paperthe RAND Corporation think tank emphasized that the goal in such cases was to redirect enemy attacks away from operational aircraft.
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