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."

Comments

Not new

[KDN]

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.

Re:"Quaker guns"

[Nidi62]

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.