Experts are amazed: Russia is using unknown weapons to deceive in the Ukraine war
Created: 03/15/2022, 12:20 p.m
By: Yasina Hipp
Images of the decoys that accompany the Iskander-M missiles.
© Screenshot/Twitter/CAT-UXO
In the war in Ukraine, Russia is apparently using new types of weapons that nobody has heard of before.
An expert believes that this shows negligence on the part of Russia.
Kyiv/Moscow - In the war in Ukraine, the troops of both sides use a variety of weapons.
Rockets, ammunition and air defense systems can be seen in photos from the war zones.
Russia is said to have even detonated phosphorus bombs in the town of Popasna west of Luhansk*, according to the local police chief Oleksiy Bilochytsky.
These types of bombs, containing chemical phosphorus, have been used in past wars.
Now, according to the American
New York Times
, US secret service employees discovered something surprising in the barrage of the Russian army in the Ukraine conflict*: missiles were equipped with decoys that had never been seen before.
Ukraine war: decoys to trick air defenses
Russian troops are firing short-range Iskander-M missiles from launch pads across the border, according to an American intelligence official who asked to remain anonymous.
The rockets are equipped with the new decoys and then release them.
The submunition appears to be about a meter long, arrow-shaped, white with an orange tip.
The organization CAT-UXO (Collective Awareness to Unexploded Ordnance), whose goal is to collect information and knowledge about explosion hazards using a database, publishes photos of the decoys on Twitter*.
Each decoy is equipped with electronics and generates radio signals to disrupt or deceive radars from the Ukrainian side.
These radars are actually trying to locate the Russian Iskander-M missiles.
In addition, the submunitions contain heat sources to attract incoming missiles.
The New York Times
reports that the use of decoys could explain why Ukrainian troops are having trouble intercepting Russian missiles with their air defense systems
.
Ukraine War: Decoys resemble penetration aids from the Cold War
At first, many experts and analysts were surprised by the new weapons.
Richard Stevens, a former ordnance disposal soldier, civilian bomb technician and founder of CAT-UXO, says of the missiles: "I've never seen anything like it." According to Stevens, the devices are similar to so-called "penetration aids" that were used as early as the Cold War.
These escorted nuclear warheads and were designed to bypass missile defense systems so the warheads could find their target.
According to the anonymous secret service agent, there is no documentation on the use of the new Russian decoys on weapons such as the Iskander-M missiles, which are equipped with conventional warheads - until now.
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Ukraine War: Reasons for Using the Unusual Ammunition
Why is the Russian army now using such a new type of submunition in the Ukraine war*?
Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of nuclear non-proliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, told the
New York Times
for two reasons.
On the one hand, he recognizes a certain degree of negligence in the operation and, on the other hand, an urgency on the part of the Russian military leadership.
Because: Russia knows that the decoys would inevitably be collected and examined by Western secret services.
As a result, the air defense of NATO* could then be programmed in such a way that the decoys would become unusable and the Iskander-M missiles could be switched off again.
In addition, Lewis believes that the use of decoys shows the relevance of the Ukraine war for Russia.
He thinks it is highly unlikely that the newly equipped Iskander missiles were sold abroad by Russia: "That suggests to me that the Russians place a certain value on keeping this technology close by and that this war is important enough for them to give up.” *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA