- Russia has a history of painting decoy military aircraft at its airbases around the country.
- Analysts say the tactic is an attempt to mislead Ukraine when it carries out long-range attacks.
- Both Moscow and Kyiv have used decoys to try and deceive the other side throughout the war.
And America had inflatable tanks during WWII to take attention off of real units. I love dunking on the Russian military as much as the next guy but this is just a good common sense move. The enemy keeps striking your targets? Install fake targets, make their lives just a little more difficult.
Sir, as much as I like giving people the benefit of the doubt for trying their best I need you to really sit down with me and look at this picture.
They painted it to the fucking tarmac. It doesn’t have shadows. It doesn’t even have shading. It looks like they spilled some paint and thought “fuck fuck fuck try to make it into a plane shape before it dries!”
Additionally, nobody had advanced spy satellites in World War 2
Yeah just because this worked in the 40’s when aerial surveillance was a new and rapidly changing technology does not mean it is a reasonable strategy now. Image intelligence doesnt fuck around, and between modern aerial tech, satellite imagery, and modern analysis techniques this could never be a valid strategy. Not to mention the insider knowledge of russian assests in sectors besides image intelligence. Dont mistake this for anything else other than sheer desperation and outdated methodology.
But they didn’t paint the tires on too. It’s just sloppy.
As more aircraft get taken out of commission, Russia’s going to need more plane drawings.
I think were gonna need more paint…
these decoys cant be very effective with the intel ukraine is likely receiving
If you paint hundred fakes and one works, it’s already worth the money spent.
The only way these work is if Ukraine’s highest resolution recording device is 144p in which case I question the usefulness of their intelligence overall.
It just needs to look like a jet from afar.
The idea is to make the surveyor have to zoom in and validate each decoy, each and every time they would check the area. Sometimes they would have a jet parked directly on top of a decoy in the hope that the surveyor wouldn’t zoom in and skip it thinking it’s still just a decoy.
It is more of a psychological practice than anything else and pretty sure it related to or is change blindness
Are they to fool humans looking at the satellite image, or to fool warheads that are using image recognition for final guidance?