It sounds like a bad Yakov Smirnoff joke: “In Russia, army blows itself up!” But that’s exactly what they’re doing.
For years now the Russian army has been using inflatable jets, tanks, and trucks as decoys (video below). Not only are these dummies indistinguishable from the real thing at a distance, “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,” brags Aleksandr Talanov, Director General of the plant that produces them.
Of course they still need actual soldiers around the equipment to complete the illusion or do they? Seven words: Wacky waiving inflatable arm flailing tube man.
