Russian military intervention and aid to Syria #14

The weapons directed at the Pantsirs don't seem to be ARMs or radar guided weapons... in terms of cost a blown up balloon should be cheaper than any truck... you should be able to use hundreds or thousands for the cost of the real truck let alone the real Pantsir. A camping stove can generate a heat source if needed...

Those dummy balloons are not that cheap actually. You can get older truck for less than 10k dollars and put some panels to make it looks like a pantsir and I don't mean something like in the picture showed in the other thread made by the Syrians but something made by the company producing the pantsir with real engineers.

Those balloons are static and to change their locations is pretty long compare to moving a truck.

The fact is that the extra fidelity or accuracy you would get probably wouldn't matter in terms of an autonomous drone attacking the fake target, but what it will do is dramatically drive up the costs involved in creating it and moving it... a balloon can be moved by half a dozen unskilled men holding it in place with string and tent pegs... moving an actual truck means you need a working motor and when it gets hit it is harder to clear away the pieces.

Honestly a balloon model hit wont be a matter for a puncture repair kit even a 40mm under barrel grenade would shred the balloon with thousands of holes so any air launched weapon hitting directly or nearby this decoy will make more holes than it would be worth while repairing... use the shredded fabric for something else... insulation for sleeping bags for cold nights or just fire starter rubber pieces for soldiers survival kits.

Don't place these decoys out in the open put them near buildings or trees and use camo nets to make it look like there was some effort to hide them and that will disguise any imperfections... I mean lets face it they will work it out eventually... the point is not to survive the war, the point is to distract fire away from the real ones... a few PKMs around to shoot down cheap drones to make them work to hit the fake Pantsir and they will try everything they can and the bonus is that even if they succeed they still fail because they are wasting energy trying to destroy something that has no value... all the while the real Pantsirs are killing targets and dealing with threats.

In normal combat you see a Pantsir blazing away.... it is dangerous... and then you spot a vehicle that seems to be a Pantsir but it has no missiles visible... of course you are going to try to take that on and when you do you expose yourself to enemy fire trying to get what you think is an easy target and you will probably end up punked yourself over something that seemed to be an easy kill and was... but a duck hunter sets decoys up as a trap, not a distraction... even an RPK-74 or PK with NV scope could be used to engage drones attacking the decoy with a reasonable chance of shooting down drones before they get to the decoy...

Most of the time you would not move the decoys... they are there to attract enemy fire and they wont attract more fire if they are moving.

Most of the time you would not move the decoys... they are there to attract enemy fire and they wont attract more fire if they are moving.

You need it to move with the real air defense systems. Such balloons can't be moved once full of air by people. Need first to take out the air then move it. Russian put all their AD system on truck because tgey need it to be mobile fast. A truck mounted decoy can follow them. A balloon not really.

Any country has thousands of older trucks worth nothing that can be changed quickly to looks like a pantsir or s-300. If the engine breaks you can always get another truck ready. And you need only one guy to drive it, not twelve. Having an engine means also power for a dummy radar.

You need it to move with the real air defense systems.

Not really... the Pantsir this decoy is pretending to be wont be on the front line... it will be 4-6km back from any front line and would likely rarely move except when the front line moves... as part of a proper IADS it would certainly need to move all the time but its a balloon not a land mine...

Such balloons can't be moved once full of air by people.

Dude... it will be filled with air... not helium... just dig up the pegs driven in to the ground to hold it in place and then a group of people could walk it around no problem at all... it is not going to fly away or drag them up in the air or anything...

With normal air in it it might be 300kgs or so but 8-10 men could grab the eyelets where where the cords hold it to the pegs and drag it around easily...

Need first to take out the air then move it.

Only for very long distance moves... and even then we are not talking emptying a swimming pools worth of air through a straw sized tube... not only will they have wide venting holes to allow it to be rapidly inflated or deflated, they will likely have a pump machine to do it... both inflate and deflate... it is not the dark ages you know...

Russian put all their AD system on truck because tgey need it to be mobile fast. A truck mounted decoy can follow them. A balloon not really.

The Russian AF and Aerospace Defence and probably the Naval forces use trucks... the Army use tracked vehicles for better mobility across difficult terrain to keep up with the vehicles they are protecting... there is no reason why a dozen decoys could not be rapidly deflated and put on the back of a truck and shipped anywhere... ironically the actual Pantsir vehicles will be fully operational protecting the convoys on the move... using decoys then would just slow them down...

Any country has thousands of older trucks worth nothing that can be changed quickly to looks like a pantsir or s-300. If the engine breaks you can always get another truck ready. And you need only one guy to drive it, not twelve. Having an engine means also power for a dummy radar.

Keeping a wide variety of old trucks operational would be a logistical nightmare, they would take a hell of a lot more space up than a folded balloon in a bag, but my obvious question would be... I have seen lots of balloon based decoys including S-300 vehicles which are only used by the forces you claim use trucks to move everything around... why would they have balloon versions of trucks if they use real trucks as decoys?

Why have balloon decoys at all if they are so useless?

Note the point is not that they need to very accurately and precisely emulate the target so even with a detailed inspection the enemy will be totally fooled... the point of them is to make them cheap enough to use in numbers and distract a fair share of enemy fire power in dealing with something that is not actually a threat while leaving alone vehicles that actually are threats.

I can honestly say I have never seen the Soviets or the Russians use old model equipment with minor updates or changes as decoys... most of the time they have proper upgrades and are used for their original purpose. The exception would be the really old SAMs like the SA-1 and similar systems that are now used as training targets... not decoys.

If you use disguised real vehicles as decoys, the question is - who will drive them? You'll be sending out live people as bait and that can't be great for morale. A hit on a truck resembling a Pantsir won't destroy a Pantsir, but it will still kill its crew.

As for inflatable decoys - they can be moved around at night

Or get some flat-bed trucks to drive some around inflated. It will look like the real deal, just in the process of deployment - and the driver will have a good chance of escaping unharmed as the drone won't target the cabin of the truck but the Pantsir decoy itself secured on the back. Add some extra armour behind the cabin to guard against shrapnel and it should stay secure.

Chinese inflatable models of military equipment of Russian and Soviet production
The original was taken from a dambiev colleague  in Chinese inflatable mock-ups of Russian / Soviet-made military equipment[/url]




Inflatable air defense model S-400 Triumph manufactured by the Chinese company Guangzhou Chinee Inflatable inc.


The Chinese company Chinee Inflatable inc. From Guangzhou is engaged in the production and sale of pneumatic models of military equipment of Russian and Soviet production for export. Many layouts are made on a modular basis.
Assortment of rubber "snag" under the cut



S-400 Triumph air defense missile system \



ZRPK Shell C1


Squadron missile system 9K72 Elbrus


T-72


ZSU-23-4 Shilka


BMP-2


Anti - aircraft missile system 9K33M3 Osa-AKM


anti-aircraft gun missile system (ZPRK) 2K22 "Tunguska"


SAM 2K12 KUB


ZRS S-300

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3957085.html
[/size]

If you use disguised real vehicles as decoys, the question is - who will drive them? You'll be sending out live people as bait and that can't be great for morale. A hit on a truck resembling a Pantsir won't destroy a Pantsir, but it will still kill its crew.

The crew moves the truck and leaves it. They are as much in danger the guys moving the balloon pantsir.

But it would still destroy a real truck and not some "balloon". The guys behind this inflatable devoys are not some stupid internet junkies like us. If they think it works then it´s OK with me.

when aircraft or drones are looking to target potential targets they dont have masses amount of time to keep checking if a target is real especially if they believe it to be a AD system. and they are probably more likely want to target stationery targets than moving targets to ensure an accurate hit, then you also have weather conditions which can aid the decoys. Using old trucks as decoys can work, but use more manpower and likely more costs. For instance, if its an old truck it may need basic mechanics to get it up and running and fuel and a driver to drive it to location then someone to pick him up and take him away from the area, and then theres a cost if you want to add any further pieces of equipment to it to make it more realistic, this all takes time, to get the old truck in driving condition and add ons to the truck could take days. An inflatable decoy you just need one truck and a few guys, the truck can carry many deflated decoys and it can simply drive around placing these at different locations. And in the case of Syria its very likely any old trucks they have have already been utilised as transport of equipment and troops. inflatable decoys work if done in the the right way.

Honestly the only time I have seen any vehicles owned by a superpower that have been modified to look like something they are not are various US vehicles modified and used in US training exercises.... things like Sheridan light tanks modified to look like BMPs and that sort of stuff.

I have never seen the Soviets do that... in terms of simulation they will use AT-3 missiles to simulate low flying cruise missiles, and they have a range of unguided rockets they use to simulate western equivalents... like OSA missiles to simulate HARM missiles etc etc, but AFAIK they don't use old trucks as anything except trucks.

The whole point of a decoy is that it is totally expendible... but also very cheap and simple but looks enough like the thing it is pretending to be to fool an enemy most of the time.

We can joke and laugh at balloon decoys that just look silly photographed up close with a high quality camera with no attempts to hide its shape or position... from a distance with not so great camera footage, perhaps in poor light, certainly with some sort of camouflage things are much much different... when you are hunting you often see movement first but shape and colour are also things you are looking for, and you never see the perfect shape or perfect colour in the bush... hunting a deer you might have plenty of time, but equally you might just have seconds to decide whether to shoot or not before the target moves behind cover... in combat of course if the target is real it might be a question of opening fire before he spots you and starts ruining your day with two twin barrel 30mm cannon that can spit out a cyclic rate of 5,000 rounds per minute...

Equally important this view might be via a datalink from a drone in flight that might be waiting for instructions to attack or move on from an operator... the plastic UAV model bought from China might say HD camera but in practise it might not have very good quality or vibration or return fire might reduce the quality of the image you are looking at...

As posted above there is an enormous range of inflatable decoys available and they can be very effective when used properly... not properly tied down in the wind floating like a balloon in the air they are not going to fool anyone of course.... sitting out in the open without any attempts to camouflage will also be useless... but a team that knows what they are doing will position the decoy on a set of ground tracks so it looks like it just drove there... it will have a camo net over it to hide some of the less well defined features.... the point is that you might have ten Pantsir vehicles in the area, but having half a dozen decoys as well means you get good air protection, but any attempt to kill the Pantsirs is confounded... a real Pantsir can defend itself... a fake one will probably be killed when attacked, but the enemy forces mounting those attacks to try to kill Pantsirs don't have unlimited resources so say they mount three attacks and it turns out all three are against decoys... not an accident because the decoys lacked missiles which made them look like better targets... the point is that the drones and munitions used were effectively wasted because the air defence strength is the same and the real nearby Pantsirs probably damaged a few UCAVs and ground forces near the dummies probably did some damage to the attacking forces too... there is a risk trying to take down air defence systems, using decoys means you wont lose much even if they succeed in some cases..

Sukhoi Su-57 Felon
@I30mk

From Syria with Love - #Turkish MRAP «Kirpi» in the outside of Moscow.
Captured Turkish Kirpi MRAP from terrorists in Idlib gifted to Russian War Museum.

Thank you, Mr. Erdogan.

So this is one of those instances of things falling ON the truck?

I guess that flat tire was a mission kill  



Kubinka Museum right now:

I wonder if they will put it with the US Humvees they got in Georgia....

Will make a good addition to the Jihadist vehicle & weapon exhibition train that's going around Russia at the moment  

JohninMK wrote:Do you think they don't want the Turks/Russian patrol down the M4?

Are they aware military vehicules can go off road.

Work for the engineers. Send in a few road clearing vehicles. And some jets to clear the sides of the road for the road clearing vehicles.

Many wars in the world. Two sides divided by race or religion or language. And some by politics. Yet l will not mention those that are divided by race or language or religion. Their divisions are too great for time to heal. The human mind can not easily span the gap. The concern here, is for those that are divided by politics. The human mind, able to span the gap. At least in the shorter span of time. Civil wars.

What of the political hatred created by the war in Syria.? How long for this to heal ? How long before  someone from a different side, allowing marriage between the different sides ? To melt them into one people? How long before hatreds have vanished to this point ?

There are historians and sociologists with a view on history that can answer this. How long did it take for a Russian or German or Vietnamese or Spanish to forget the civil war ?  Allow marriages between their sons and daughters?

This, I think, is important for Syria too. Since it can tell us what a realistic plan should be for return of refugees. Can they live side by side now ?  If not, are they to live separately ?  What is reasonable to expect ?  Should Syria go back to sunni villages and Shia villages?  Like it was before ?   Should they be forced together now?  Will this work?