What’s also of interest is that the finished painted- on decoy has tires laying across its central wing and fuselage area, just like the real Tu-95 to the left of it. This is clearly added for realism in hopes the decoy will prove more convincing as the tires are now a common countermeasure that is used by some Russian Air Force aircraft while parked.
No, they use real tires, according to the article.
I don't really understand what it's intended to defeat, though. Like, it's not clear to me that this does work.
Humans are pretty easily picking out the fake ones, and that's with just relatively low-resolution commercial satellite footage and a single static image. So it's not likely going to help if humans pick the target.
There are missiles that can recognize a target -- a tactic for anti-ship missiles, where the target is moving, and you just put a missile in the general vicinity and have it home in on the right thing. Those might use optical inputs as one input, though I don't know if something like this would fool them. But I doubt that something like that exists for specific aircraft on the ground or that that's what Ukraine is using. At least one airfield strike was conducted using those Australian cardboard drones, which are about as simple as a drone can get. They aren't going to be homing in visually themselves.
It may not really be expected to work. So I am no expert, so grain of salt and all. My understanding is that for a few reasons the Russians military has a strong emphasis on always doing something even if it is completely ineffective or plain dumb. This comes a lot from the top down nature of their military.
So some General says stop losing so many planes. So a commander says put up decoys. And down the order goes. Now there are no decoys and no way to ask for them even if they exist, but telling your commander that is not acceptable. So out comes the paint because you have paint. Then it reported up the chain of command that the decoys are in place. Everyone can act like they did something even if it is completely ineffective
They have a word for this смекалка (smekalka) It means ingenuity or wityness, but is used with a subtext of because everything is always shit…
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