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Russian Army Upgrades Its Inflatable Weapons
jamax writes "According to the BBC: 'The Russian military has come up with an inventive way to deceive the enemy and save money at the same time: inflatable weapons. They look just like real ones: they are easy to transport and quick to deploy. You name it, the Russian army is blowing it up: from pretend tanks to entire radar stations.' But the interesting thing is these decoys are not dumb - actually they appear to be highly advanced for what I thought was a WWII-grade aerial photography countermeasures. Apparently they have heat signatures comparable with the military tech they represent, as well as the same radar signature."
Looks like reasonable radar decoys have been around for 24 years
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/H000308.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5786786.html
Run out of ammo, paint logs black, prop them on a wall pointed at the enemy, retreat, profit!
This is not new. Back when I was in ROTC (the 1980's), I recall an article where photorecon people found out that they were duped. They assumed that a set of nuclear subs were berthed for a long period of time for repairs. A storm came through and bent one of the "submarines". So the presumption was that the Soviets knew when our sats went overhead and between the times they set sail on one sub and inflated another in its place. So the Soviets had a sub patroling somewhere unknown because we thought it was in for repairs.
Inflatable and cardboard tanks were used along with fake radio broadcasts and intentional disinformation by double agents to help trick the Germans to believing that the Allies, led by Patton, were going to invade France via Calais(where the Channel is most narrow) instead of at Normandy. This actually caused the Germans to locate a significant number of men and tanks in the Calais region. I believe some units were actually pulled from Normandy to bolster the defenses at Calais.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
In World War II there was an entire army of inflatable weapons in England right across from Calais, France. Its purpose was to convince the Germans that the invasion would come at that point. It really came at Normandy.
During the invasion they even dropped chaff over the Channel near the fake army to make the Germans think the invasion was happening there. Both sides had radar, but the secret was that the Allies had microwave radar and not just VHF radar. The chaff looked like an invasion fleet to the radar.
As part of the ruse, they had General Patton running around inspecting the "troops" and getting them ready for the invasion.
Inflate them with poison gas. Then, it really is a weapon. Without, isnt really just an inflatable replica and not a weapon?
And why would it need to be a weapon when its purpose is to make it hard for the enemy to know real information about your asset's numbers and positions?
Put down the comic books and pick up the Art of War.
You can't take the sky from me...
Except Minuteman were never railroad deployed.
They were always road delivered to silos.
And since railhubs were always 2nd and 3rd tier targets right after C3, nuclear bases and air fields, having them hidden in the rolling stock of the US wasn't that much of a decoy.
Russia on the other hand was better suited to hiding things out in the boondocks on rail sidings.
A few things to note about the class 7 Radio Active placards. If you are in a large city, often the law requires the truck to take a bypass route unless they are delivering inside the city, then you must take the most direct route to the destination. This is true for all Placarded Trucks and in most cases, even non-placarded Hazmat loads. (yes, there are some loads (or there were 10-15 years ago) that contain hazardous materials but not in a quantity to require being placarded but you had to otherwise follow the hazardous material routes.
The other thing is that certain types of X-ray films will require a 7.1 radioactive placard. I'm pretty sure they got rid of subclass placards for radioactive so it would just be a "7 radio active" placard now. I also had an old bomber sight from an some WWII bomber that was actually radioactive. I found it in a garage where I moved to and found out it was radioactive when attempting to see what it might be worth. I was able to FedEX it to a museum that handled it from there. Strangely, it was going to cost around $2500 to dispose of it, I couldn't legally sell it, and the museum took it for free but I had to pay an additional $10 to ship it to them.
Anyways, I figured I would mention that so you would know that simply staying off the outer belts of most large cities would be enough to avoid the class 7 placarded trucks and even if you get close to one, it's quite possible- actually more likely, that it is because of any number of relatively harmless materials in comparison. But yea, I agree, I wouldn't be following one either just because of what it might actually be.