Tu-95 Decoys Are Being Painted On Russian Air Base's Apron
Tu-95 Decoys Are Being Painted On Russian Air Base's Apron
Moscow’s efforts to disrupt Ukraine's ability to target and strike its bomber force while on the ground now includes painted silhouettes.
Moscow’s efforts to disrupt Ukraine's ability to target and strike its bomber force while on the ground now includes painted silhouettes.
Are they painting cope tires on them?
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.
Indeed, as described in the article, they put some cope tires on top :-)
Looney Tunes logic
Hey, if it's stupid and it works it ain't stupid.
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.
Gonna have to send drones with spray paint
Cope paint.
Cope paint.