Inflatable army
 

The Russians found a nice way to produce decoys:
BBC News - Russia inflates its military with blow-up weapons

Apparently they can produce anything from tanks, missile launchers, aircraft and even radar stations. The material is supposed to trick radar and thermal imaging equipment into believing that the decoys are real too.

Re: Inflatable army
 

Yup.

Look at the decoys for Patton's 4th Army used to convince the Germans that Patton was landing at Pas De Calais.

They used inflatable Sherman tanks, inflatable aircraft, inflatable trucks, along with wooden dummy's. In some cases the inflatable vehicles slipped over jeeps to be driven around to make it look like tanks were moving.

All they have to do is create a shape close to the original, cover it with some thin metal like heavy tin foil to create a surface for radio waves to reflect off of and a space heater under the rear for IR sensors to pick up.

Disinformation is a serious subject.

Re: Inflatable army
 

The clever ones even have small pyrotechnic charges in them so that when they are hit they give off 'secondary' explosions to enhance the illusion.

Re: Inflatable army
 

And it costs all of what, $50 for a good one? How much does a Hellfire anti-tank missile cost?

Re: Inflatable army
 

about 68K a shot give or take according to wiki.

Re: Inflatable army
 

Wow thats..... atleast a decade old, great reporting BBC....

Anyway decoys are nothing new, Serbia deployed decoys to great effect during Nato's bombings, they didn't loose anything they didn't want to loose in terms of military hardware.

Re: Inflatable army
 

except for those migs that we killed.

Re: Inflatable army
 

Nothing they didn't want to loose, those migs were scrambled. Besides I'm surprised they were able to leave the ground let alone fly.

Re: Inflatable army
 

That sounds like sour grapes. Nobody arbitrarily decides to destroy a billion dollars worth of their OWN first line aircraft. Especially for no gain. But agreed. NATO did jack squat to Yugoslav forces on the ground.

Re: Inflatable army
 

Billion dollars for those Migs? lol not even close, Unless your talking about the cost of Nato's air fleet that was lost, but those 29's they were barely air worthy, Their MiG-21's were actually in much better shape than those thing, and they were all stored in concrete tunnels with blast doors that were even touched.

But as I said they weren't arbitrarily decided to be lost, they were lost fair and square no doubt, in no way were they scrambled for any other reason then to intercept if possible not air superiority, since numbers were never on their side.