Good camouflage is one of those military arts that doesn’t lose relevance through ages. Hiding your assets from the eyes of the enemy is very important. Especially nowadays, when the opposing forces have their eyes everywhere. But Russian camouflage tactics are less than efficient.
KILO class submarine. Russians started drawing them on docks. Image credit: Colby Drake, U.S. Navy via Wikimedia
After numerous long-range drone attacks, Russia is trying to improve the camouflage of its warships and planes to reduce losses suffered by its Black Sea fleet and air force for the past two years. While the Russians are paying close attention to camouflage, it is not helping to reduce losses, according to the report of the UK’s Ministry of Defence intelligence. Ukrainian drones find hidden targets and do not succumb to deception.
Deception, by the way, is one of the more interesting types of camouflage, because it doesn’t just hide the potential target, but utilizes dummies and painted images to trick the enemy surveillance. Ukraine is also using various dummy weapon systems to distract Russian invaders and force them to waste their ammo.
“At Russian air bases, maskirovka applications include decoy dummy models of aircraft and tyres on wings of planes. According to reports there are also painted silhouettes of airframes at nine Russian air bases. In the maritime domain, vessels of the Black Sea Fleet have black paint on the bow and stern, likely to make their warships appear smaller and a less appealing target. Silhouettes of vessels have also been painted on the side of quays, probably to confuse Ukrainian uncrewed aerial vehicle operators,” UK intelligence noted.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 20 March 2024.
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It is believed that in this way the Russian forces seek to reduce the drone-inflicted losses suffered by the Black Sea Fleet and military aviation. Ukraine doesn’t have an actual navy fleet and the Russian Black Sea Fleet has suffered major losses thanks to repeated marine drone attacks.
“Despite these attempts at concealment, Russian aircraft are still vulnerable to conventional shootdowns while in the air and Russian vessels are still vulnerable whilst on operations in the Black Sea. It is unlikely that the use of maskirovka techniques will lead to any significant reduction in losses.,” says UK intelligence.
They also noted that the lack of effective camouflage was one of the main reasons for Russia’s operational failures at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. While camouflage in theory could help, the way Russians are doing it seems inefficient. Those paintings on concrete would’ve been believable over a decade ago, but now drones have very good high-resolution cameras and can easily tell a real ship from a fake one.
Meanwhile, missiles have really good homing systems. On the other hand, the defenders of Ukraine do use dummy vehicles, which do work, so the camouflage practices in this war are a trial-and-error situation.
Written by Povilas M.
Source: Ministry of Defence Twitter