Feels like something I’d read about in WWII.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
218 points (98.7% liked)
News
23378 readers
3057 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Decoys are as old as war itself. Every army has used them and they will keep using them. Business as usual here.
Literally. My grandfather worked for De Haviland. They painted bomb damage of the roof of the factory so the Nazis would think they already bombed it and De Haviland could keep putting out aircraft meanwhile.
The US used fake tanks in the gulf war
There are also stories that the allies also spotted Germany building a decoy airfield at some point during the war. It included wooden aircraft, trucks, etc. When the construction was complete the allies supposedly sent a single bomber that dropped a wooden bomb on the site.
No idea if these stories are true though… Snopes calls it “unproven”…
Another thing they did in WWII was to "move a town" by turning off all the lights in the town, then building matching lights a few km away. From the air, all you could really see were the lights, and if they matched the pattern for the town you were looking to bomb, that's where you dropped your bombs.
All that stuff is obsolete now to due to GPS, better maps, etc.
Normandy, IIRC had one of the beaches, the tanks were mostly inflatable of the inflatable sort to try and pull resources from the main advance.
Also, iirc the early jet program used plywood props with fake spinners to conceal the planes on the runway.
Your comment about the jet program reminded me of something I read once about the US military trying to conceal a top secret jet (I think it was the SR-71) from spy satellites. The thing I read said that the planes heated up the runway where they sat, which would show up on thermal images of the runways. Iirc, they would go out and heat the runways further to make it seem like there were more planes or to change the shape of the heat signature.
This is based entirely off of memory, and I can't find the right search terms to look for more info, so take it with a grain of salt.
There were fields of inflatable tanks and other vehicles in England during the build up to Normandy but these were not deployed across enemy held beaches for hopefully obvious reasons.
I have a captcha idea...
They're getting to the point where pictures of fighter jets is all they can afford anymore.
The sun: hol up I gotchu fam
Prior to D-Day, The Allies had inflatable tanks and trucks to disguise where the real buildup was. Pretty classical tactic.
Those cast shadows. Look at this pic again. These idiots aren't fooling anyone except NK blurry ass satellite.
Or perhaps a blurry ass camera in a drone at night. You might be surprised what can work at times. At least it will cause someone to waste a bit more time studying the photos to be sure of what they are.
i mean, with the amount of effort this took even a single quick glance resulting in a miss would be a pretty big win
its a silly idea but theres hardly any reason not to try it
not to mention that its probably still pretty effective in low visibility situations
I guarantee whoever looked at this image the first time laughed their ass off. The only reason we are even seeing it is cuz it is such a joke
We've quite literally done the same thing in area 51 and quite honestly most of our test facilities and skunk works. The sr71 pretty literally had a bunch of janky designs painted around Radar testing facilities to throw off the Russians.
Ukraine should drop a fake bomb on them, painted to look like the real thing