Russian Army Blowing Itself Up

Rusbal designers came up with an idea to inflate tanks like air balloons. That the new dummies look very similar to real military hardware is by far not their only virtue.

They can reproduce a radar band, a thermal and near infra-red band similar to those produced by night vision instruments. All these makeshift models appear as real hardware on all these instruments.

The dummies irradiate warmth, making an impression of engines being warmed up and repel the radio waves of enemy radars as if they were real combat vehicles.

Moreover, to make the illusion more convincing a launcher, for example, can assume traveling or combat positions when photographed from air or from outer space.

Yury Stepanov, the enterprises laboratory chief explained:

In a real district, a tanks tower can be fixed more to the left or more to the right, so we show all these positions. There can be additional fuel tanks. The real vehicles can have them.

It takes an inflatable tank four minutes and a missile launcher five minutes to be set up on the battlefield.