Ukraine's military has tricked Russia into wasting expensive missiles on dummy targets, according to interviews with senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials and photographs of the replicas reviewed by The Washington Post.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine may be outgunned but in the latest sign it is not yet outfoxed, a fleet of decoys resembling advanced U.S. rocket systems has tricked Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range cruise missiles on dummy targets, according to interviews with senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials and photographs of the replicas reviewed by The Washington Post.
The destruction of Ukrainian replicas may partially account for Russia’s unusually boastful battle damage assessments on Western artillery, particularly the U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS.The lengths at which Ukraine has gone to protect Western-supplied rocket systems underscore their importance on the battlefield.
The Russian habit of embellishing battlefield performance is hardly new, but experts say the decoys probably account for a dramatic disconnect.“If the Russians think they hit a HIMARS, they will claim they hit a HIMARS,” said George Barros, a military researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. “Russian forces very well may be overstating their battle damage assessments after hitting HIMAR decoys.
Another advantage of decoys is they could force Russians to take precautions and move their ammunition depots and command and control nodes farther from the front lines — beyond the anticipated range of the HIMARS.“Such a reorganization would degrade the Russians’ ability to mass artillery fires — a tactic they’ve relied on to make gains in eastern Ukraine,” Barros said.
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