UK sends "Ikea-style" mock-ups of weapons to Ukraine to fool Russians
www.pravda.com.ua
Sat, 10 May 2025 20:13:44 +0300
The UK military is sending decoy models of air defence systems and tanks to Ukrainian troops, designed to deceive Russian forces into targeting fake weapons instead of real ones.
Source The Times, as reported by European Pravda Details The decoys are part of a strategy to make it appear as though Ukraine has received more weapons from the UK than it actually has.
The goal is to trick Russian forces into expending valuable resources on destroying cheap, printed models, rather than attacking real military equipment.
We havent gifted a huge amount of these, so anything we can do to make the quantities look greater on the front line is advantageous to us, explained Squadron Leader Lowri Simner from the Royal Air Force.
As Russian forces increasingly use satellite imagery and drones to identify targets, experts have developed new, more sophisticated methods of deception.
Unlike the inflatable tanks of World War II, the UK has now developed mockups that are harder to distinguish from real vehicles.
Taskforce Kindred, a Ministry of Defence team that handles Ukrainian requests for new equipment, collaborates with industry professionals to create and deploy these mockups.
Digital photographs of the UKs real weapons are printed on material that Ukrainian troops can assemble quickly.
These decoys are then placed on the front lines to confuse Russian systems.
Colonel Ollie Todd, a Royal Marine and procurement officer for Taskforce Kindred, explained that the team has worked on various models, including replicas of Challenger 2 tanks and AS90 armoured selfpropelled artillery systems, both of which are in limited supply.
They look just like the real thing.
You could be quite easily fooled, Todd said.
If the UK sends five real vehicles to Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence may provide up to 30 decoys.
From a distance of about 25 metres, the models are difficult to distinguish from actual military hardware and have become fundamental in battlefield tactics.
Kateryna Chornohorenko, Ukraines Deputy Defence Minister, mentioned that Russia is also deploying its own decoys.
Decoys are a very necessary element of warfare today, she said.
She highlighted that while Russia uses drones to attack Ukrainian troops, many of them are fake with small amounts of explosives, forcing Ukraine to waste valuable resources shooting them down.
In 2023, it was reported that the Czech company Inflactech, which specializes in the production of inflatable military equipment models, had begun manufacturing fake HIMARS systems to mislead Russian forces amidst the ongoing invasion.
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