Military Technology -Decoy Vehicles

One way that you can frustrate the desires of your enemy in war is to deceive and confuse him.
Decoy versions of military equipment like trucks, tanks and planes can effectively deceive the enemy, help to reduce damage to the commander's real equipment, reduce casualties, and waste enemy resources of time, men, and materials. Unlike more traditional types of camouflage, the purpose is not to hide assets from the enemy but to divert the enemy from the actual forces and equipment, which can be a proactive strategy for defense or a way to gain the initiative. This idea was used extensively in WWII. The British used it in the North African Campaign, using rubber tanks to confuse Rommel's recon planes. In the lead up to D-Day, an entire strategic plan of deception was used, called Operation Fortitude. It involved double agents, false radio traffic, phantom divisions (including their shoulder patches) and of course, rubber inflatable decoys of tanks and trucks.





This idea has continued to be useful into the modern era of the Cold War and beyond. The technology has continued to advance and modern decoys are multi-spectral and can even fool some satellite and aerial reconnaissance. They can achieve this through systems that mimic the IR signature of the real vehicle. They are designed to have the same shape, size, radar reflection and infrared signature as a real tank, truck, or plane.One way to do this that has been discussed is simply putting a microwave within the decoy to give it warmth and a radiation signature. while any of these decoys would have a certain rate of failure, the basic concept is very good. No less a strategist than the great Sun Tzu recommends using deception as much as possible to put your enemies off balance.

F-16 decoys

Another thing to keep in mind with the use of decoys and deception is that it does not have to work perfectly to be effective. Even if only half of the enemy scouts, intelligence personnel, and senior leaders believe something, it can slow down their response times, lead to conflicting orders, or any other thing that will hamper and confuse a military force.while deception may not be able to turn the tide of a battle or war by itself very often, every little but helps and the low cost and relative ease of deception operations can be very effective from a cost/benefit point of view. The US Army has decoys of the M1 tank that can be set up in minutes and can be carried in a duffel bag. Sometimes they are carried with the tank formations themselves, not to distract the enemy but to inflate the number of tanks he thinks he is facing.

Air defense vehicle decoys made from flat elements, by Rusbal,Inc.

Decoy M47 Patton tank from the Cold War

There is a word in Russian that refers to military deception, camouflage and concealment. It is maskirovka (literally: camouflage, concealment). We in the west do not generally borrow words from Russian, probably because they are hard to say, but this is a good one. The Russian and the Soviet military before them were masters of military deception. Want some proof? Look at some of the pics below. Another use of decoys is just to waste enemy resources. Recon aircraft or satellite operators need time to do their work, and even a few wasted minutes can make a difference. The Russian SAM decoys below are made to force enemies to expend valuable ordinance on them, while hiding the real ones for use later. All in all, pretty clever stuff.

Su-27 decoy from Shape International, Inc.

Russian S-300 Surface-to-Air missile launcher decoys from Rusbal

USA and USSR/Russia Nuclear stockpiles

Just in case you were wondering you know. Pretty crazy to think that in 1987 there were more than 60,000 nuclear weapons, ready to be detonated. I believe the numbers have gone down a little since this was made, but probably not much, and the standard conspiracy theory is that both the USA and Russia are developing a new generation of nuclear weapons.

This Day in History- October 22

Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 22, 1962, President Kennedy announced that Soviet Nuclear Missiles had been discovered in Cuba. These were medium range missile capable of hitting most of the cities on the Eastern seaboard, including Washington. Kennedy stated that he was ordering a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place. Kennedy made it clear that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."

The Cuban Missile Crisis actually began on October 15, 1962--the day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing U-2 spy plane data discovered that the Soviets were building medium-range missile sites in Cuba. The next day, President Kennedy secretly convened an emergency meeting of his senior military, political, and diplomatic advisers to discuss the ominous development. The group became known as ExCom, short for Executive Committee. After rejecting a surgical air strike against the missile sites, ExCom decided on a naval quarantine and a demand that the bases be dismantled and missiles removed. At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. military forces went to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar era, as military commanders prepared for full-scale war with the Soviet Union.

The next day, however, Khrushchev upped the ante by publicly calling for the dismantling of U.S. missile bases in Turkey under pressure from Soviet military commanders. Later that day, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was killed. Waffling, Kennedy forbid a military retaliation unless any more surveillance planes were fired upon over Cuba. Kennedy's advisers convinces him to agree to dismantle the U.S. missile sites in Turkey but at a later date, in order to prevent the protest of Turkey, a key NATO member.

On October 28, Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle and remove all offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba. With the airing of the public message on Radio Moscow, the USSR confirmed its willingness to proceed with the solution secretly proposed by the Americans the day before. The world stepped back from the brink of nuclear war and what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis was over. By the end of 1962 all the Nuclear missiles had been removed. Soon after, the United States quietly removed its missiles from Turkey.

The removal of obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey had no detrimental effect on U.S. nuclear strategy, but the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced a humiliated USSR to commence a massive nuclear buildup. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached nuclear parity with the United States and built intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking any city in the United States. However, later review of Soviet technology leads many to believe that the design and manufacturing flaws in Soviet ICBM would result in many being unable to launch, and most unable to hit within 50 miles of their targets.

Military Technology- Atomic Cannon

Here we go. The M65 "Atomic Annie"



The Department of Defense decided that they wanted an atomic capable artillery piece in 1949 and chose a engineer named Robert Schwartz to design it. The Atomic Annie was created by Picatinny Arsenal and was designed by essentially scaling up the largest cannon in the arsenal, the 240mm, and using the German K5 Railroad gun as a basis for its carriage.
First fielded in 1953, eventually 20 of these monsters were manufactured and they were deployed to bases in Germany and Korea to threaten the commie hordes. The gun sites were reportedly moved often to avoid being targeted by enemy forces.


The M65 was rendered obsolete fairly quickly as the DoD soon created nuclear artillery shells that were compatible with standard 155mm and 203mm cannon, and later the invention of heavier rockets, and eventually the ICBM. But since it was so sweet and military planning in that era was very conservative and fully expecting Ivan to sweep into Western Europe with thousands of tanks it remained in service until 1963.


The M65 was transported by two specially designed 375 horsepower tractors, with independent steering like some very long fire engines. The result did not look very graceful, but it could get up to 35mph and make turns on a 28 foot wide road. The Atomic Annie could be unlimbered in 15 minutes and then returned to traveling configuration in 15 minutes more. The name "Atomic Annie" is said to be related to "Anzio Annie" the name of a K5 gun that was used against the US Army landings in Anzio, Italy during WWII.

On May 25, 1953 at 8:30am local time, the Atomic Cannon was tested at the Frenchman Flat of the Nevada Test Site as part of the Upshot-Knothole series of nuclear tests. The test--codenamed Grable-- resulted in the successful detonation of a 15 kt shell (warhead W9) at a range of 7 miles. This was the first and only nuclear shell to be fired from a cannon.

The Other Guns of Russia -MSP

This is the MSP( Malogabaritnyj Spetsialnyj Pistolet), from our friends the USSR. The MSP is a break action, double barrel pistol, similar in some respects to a derringer. This gun was adopted by the KGB and Soviet Army in 1972. It is only intended for close range, and would likely not be accurate beyond 5 meters. It is a fairly unique weapon, firing internally silenced 7.62x38mm bullets. The ammunition is known as the SP-3.

Internally silenced ammunition?

Well, the idea is that almost all of the sound that a firearm makes is caused by hot gases escaping from the barrel. A conventional suppressor traps these gases long enough for them to cool and slow down. The MSP uses ammo with a special strengthened case and a gas-sealing piston that pushes the bullet and then locks the powder gasses within the case. This has its drawbacks, and the Sp-3 cartridge only generates velocities of about 600 feet per second, which would severely limit its range and penetration. The gun has a single action trigger and is cocked with a rather strange front cocking mechanism, which sets the internal hammers. Once the pistol is loaded and the breach is closed, the shooter pulls down the lever to cock the pistol and then releases it.

The MSP has no projections or controls to snag when drawing from within a coat or holster. Absent from the design are any form of extractors or ejectors, and spent cartridges are removed by pulling out the small clip that binds them together.

The MSP has little military value as it is only useful at conversational distances, and it is mostly regarded as an assassins' tool. It was replaced by the much more conventional and effective PSS pistol.

Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line

The Distant Early Warning Line was a system of radar installations from Alaska to Iceland and Greenland designed to watch for a Soviet Nuclear air attack coming over the North Pole to Canada and North America. It was made up of 63 stations over a 10,000 kilometer swath.


As you can see from this azimuthal equidistant projection map (thanks google!) you can see that the shortest route between the USSR and the USA was over the North Pole. Faced with the technological obsolescence of the Mid Canada line and Pinetree line of radar stations the Governments of Canada and the USA agreed in 1954 to jointly build a third line of radar stations, this time running across the high Arctic. The line would run roughly along the 69th parallel, 200 miles or 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. America agreed to pay for the construction of the line with Canadian labor, and Canada agreed to have joint US- Canadian staffing in many of the stations. The stations used a number of long-range Pulse radars called AN/FPS-19. They were interconnected by a series of secure radio systems, often relying on tropospheric scattering to both boost the signal and ensure security.

The line consisted of Large stations with a sizable staff and amenities spaced out with intermediate stations with only 3 people ( Chef, Mechanic, and Chief) in between. There also were small unmanned "gap fillers" that were checked by aircrews only every few months during the summer. The gaps between the stations were watched by the directional AN/FPS-23 Doppler radar.

DEW site in Greenland

With the introduction of ICBMs and submarine launched missiles a few years after it was completed, the line lost became somewhat obsolete. A number of stations were decommissioned, but the bulk were retained to monitor potential Soviet air activities and to assert Canada's sovereignty in its Northern territory.

In the 1980's, the more capable of the DEW Line stations were upgraded with new technology and automation was increased. These sites were merged with the newly-built stations into the North Warning System and became a main part of NORAD, headquartered in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

In 1990, with the end of the Cold War, the United States withdrew all their personnel and turned full operation of the Canadian stations over to Canada, while retaining responsibility for NWS sites in Alaska and Greenland.

Stations of the DEW