Wooden HIMARS systems? Ukrainians must trick Russians with dolls
08/31/2022 12:04
According to a media report, Ukrainians are protecting valuable Western military equipment by using mannequins as bait. Russia is being forced to waste expensive cruise missiles.
According to a Washington Post report, the Ukrainian military is also using fake weapons in its defense against Russian invaders to trick attackers. These are wooden replicas of modern US missile systems, the paper wrote, citing unnamed senior US and Ukrainian officials. In this way, the Russian military was tricked into wasting expensive Kalibr cruise missiles on harmless replicas. The newspaper was also able to examine photos of these decoy targets, he said.
Russian drones, which relayed the location of the alleged missile systems to the Black Sea fleet, could not distinguish the dummies from actual artillery batteries. “When the drones see the battery, it’s like a VIP target,” the paper said, citing a Ukrainian official. After a few weeks, these “dummies” would have fooled at least ten Kalibr missiles. Given the success, the production of replicas was expanded.
According to the Washington Post, replicas could also be a reason why the number of Western weapons systems allegedly destroyed in Russian reports is so high, especially with regard to the US missile launcher HIMARS. “They claimed to have hit more HIMARS than we actually delivered,” the paper said, citing a US diplomat.
The use of mannequins has a long tradition in military history. A famous example is the fictional tanks and planes that the Allies mounted on the coast of the English Channel from 1943 onwards to deceive the Third Reich about the landing points of the planned invasion of France. As per the Washington Post report, Russia also relied on dummies until recently, such as MiG-31 inflatable fighter jets and S-300 air defense system dummies.