“Operators of Russian air defense systems won’t have time to identify the origin of air strikes, and the response will be immediate. Any illusions about ‘invisible’ jets will inevitably be crushed by disappointing reality.”

While Moscow makes bold claims about the counter-stealth capabilities of its S-400 and S-300V4 missiles, the fact remains that even if Russian low-frequency search and acquisition radars can detect and track tactical fighter-sized stealth aircraft such as the F-22 or F-35, fire control radars operating in C, X and Ku bands cannot paint low observable jets except at very close ranges.

For sure, tactical fighter-sized stealth aircraft must be optimized to defeat higher-frequency bands such the C, X and Ku bands — that’s just a simple matter of physics. There is a “step change” in an L.O. aircraft’s signature once the frequency wavelength exceeds a certain threshold and causes a resonant effect.

Typically, that resonance occurs when a feature on an aircraft — such as a tail-fin or similar — is less than eight times the size of a particular frequency wavelength.

As a result, fighter-sized stealth aircraft that do not have the size or weight allowances for two feet or more of radar absorbent material coatings on every surface are forced to make trades as to which frequency bands they are optimized for.

But at the UHF and VHF band wavelengths, designers are not trying to make the aircraft invisible. Rather, engineers hope to create a radar cross-section that will blend in with the background noise inherent to low-frequency radars.

“Stealth is ‘delayed detection’ and that delay is getting shorter. [Surface-to-air missile] radars are shifting their frequencies into lower frequency bands where U.S. stealth is less effective,”

“Early warning radars are in the VHF spectrum where stealth has limited if any capability. These radars are networked into the SAM radars, giving the SAM radars cued search.”

However, low-frequency radars do not themselves provide a “weapons quality” track that is needed to guide a missile onto a target. There are various proposed techniques to use low frequency radars for such purposes, but none of those are likely to prove viable.

The Type 10 was designed to be a smaller tank, and thus more tactically and strategically mobile. Much of Japan’s road infrastructure is built to accommodate smaller cars and trucks, and mountainous terrain often includes bridges with specific weight limitations. There are also laws that prohibit heavy vehicles—including GSDF tanks—from operating on most roads. The Type 10 was designed to be a smaller tank to comply with road laws and be small and light enough to cross some of the larger civilian vehicle bridges. This also makes the Type 10 more suitable for air and sea transport.

The Type 10 was designed to be a fast, highly mobile tank. It is powered by a four-stroke, eight-cylinder diesel engine generating 1,200 horsepower. The results in a horsepower-to-weight ration of twenty-seven horsepower per ton, making it speedy for a main battle tank. It is capable of forty-three miles per hour on roads and, thanks to a continuously variable transmission, can go just as fast in reverse.

The Type 10’s armor is described as an improvement over the Type 90. The base armor configuration gives the vehicle a weight of forty tons, or just 60 percent the weight of an M1 Abrams. Additional bolt-on armor raises the weight of the vehicle by another eight tons. The armor itself is a ceramic composite. The modular, replaceable nature of the armor and the high horsepower-to-weight ratio should help ensure that the Type 10’s armor can remain state-of-the-art while the antitank threat evolves.

In addition to armor, the tank is protected by a laser warning receiver [4] that informs crews when the tank is painted by a laser-guided missile beam. The warning receiver is connected to a set of smoke dischargers that automatically enshroud the tank in a smokescreen whenever it detects an enemy laser.

The main armament is in the form of the 120-millimeter smoothbore gun developed by Japan Steel Works. The gun is fed by an automatic loader, which removes the need for a human loader. The L44 caliber gun is the same as that on the M1A2 Abrams and can be more safely traversed in forested terrain, but the gun position can accommodate a longer L55 caliber gun as a future upgrade. The tank has a 360-degree day-and-night sight, and front-facing sights for the commander and gunner.

Secondary armament for the Type 10 consists of a M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun at the tank commander’s station in a remotely operated turret. A coaxial 7.62-millimeter machine gun is mounted at the base of the main gun and is operated by the gunner.

One of the more interesting aspects of the tank is a networking capability that allows tanks to form wireless networks on the battlefield. Little is known about this Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) system, but it can allegedly tie into the infantry-oriented networking and communications “Regiment Command Control System” for tank-infantry cooperation. The tank can even share data collected from the 360-degree sight on the RCCS.

Another feature worth noting is the active hydropneumatic suspension system. This allows for a smooth ride during cross-country travel, making firing while on the move much more accurate. It also allows the tank to adjust its stance like a low-rider car, raising the left side, right side, front or rear in order to mold itself to the local terrain. The suspension system can help the tank make full use of broken terrain to fight from a hull-down position, in which the tank uses terrain to minimize its profile while remaining capable of engaging targets to the front.

The Type 10 is an excellent overall design, but much of its early development period took place before the use of improvised explosive devices—especially those using shaped charges—became commonplace. The tank’s light weight also makes it likely it has only minimal protection against blasts from below.

Japan’s relaxation of its arms export ban means the Type 10 could be the first Japanese tank ever exported. Ultimately though the advantages it has over similar, time-tested vehicles such as the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 are relatively minimal, and it is unlikely the Type 10 will have much overseas success. Regardless, Japan is set on producing its own tanks, so overseas success or not, Japan will continue to pay the premium for its own homegrown main battle tanks.

The Object 279’s most visible features include the sharp, saucer-shaped chassis and four distinct, enormous tracks. The latter was to give the 60-ton tank more traction in difficult or soft terrain, always a problem for heavier tanks prone to bogging down. A 1,000-horsepower engine powered the beast.

The design’s obvious downside? One could only imagine the difficulty repairing the two inner tracks running underneath the chassis’ belly, let alone the complex transmission. Equally bizarre is the shape of the chassis to protect the vehicle and its four crew members from shock waves generated by an exploding nuclear bomb.

The Object 279 came with serious armor — 319 millimeters thick in the turret and 269 millimeters at the thickest point in the hull, significantly greater than the far more widespread T-72 which entered service in the 1970s.

An impressive, stabilized 130-millimeter rifled cannon and 14.5 millimeter machine gun rounded out the turret.

But the quad-tracked juggernaut’s technical specifications are somewhat moot, as the prototypes came at the worst possible time.

FILE -- In this June 18, 2015 file photo U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters support soldiers during the NATO Noble Jump exercise on a training range near Swietoszow Zagan, Poland. Polish leaders say the country is buying Polish-made Black Hawk helicopters as it modernizes the army. The announcement comes days after Poland scrapped plans to buy 50 French-made military helicopters from Airbus Helicopters for 3.14 billion euros (US dollar 3.5 billion). (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, file)

Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said the Airbus deal would have allowed the company to take over a servicing plant in Lodz, in central Poland, something the government was against. He spoke at the plant, where he and Szydlo assured workers they won't lose their jobs.

The four-star general and former NATO commander had first heard the plans in 1991 or 1992 from Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, who were pitching a new American strategy to Washington. In November of 2001, he tells director Johan Grimonprez, he recognized it in a classified memo detailing a five-year plan to “go after” problem countries—specifically Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

American politicians and their allies have been in bed with the arms industry for decades. (Watch Clark recount the story in an exclusive clip below.) The net effect, the film argues, is one eternal, self-perpetuating war that’s taken us from the Reagan administration through Obama, fueled by greed, corruption, and an endless string of shady Saudi deals.

The Shadow World: Inside The Global Arms Trade, the film weaves a timeline tracing the gradual corporatization of war going back decades to Reagan’s dealings with Margaret Thatcher and the $87 million slush fund used by British arms manufacturer BAE to wine and dine Saudis in deals that left officials like Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, reportedly £1 billion richer.

One arms dealer, Riccardo Privitera, revels in the memory of the lucrative deals he sealed with military officials by greasing the wheels with cash and women. “With sixty grand I signed a contract worth three million,” he boasts, “so it wasn’t a bad deal.” Bribing politicians, he says comparing them to prostitutes, can be pricey. But “at the end of the day, they do what they’re told.”

It emphasizes the overlapping of Cheney’s political career and Halliburton tenure as a turning point in the privatization of arms in America. “What we’ve essentially done is create a network of corporations that have the firepower of small nation-states that could overthrow some small governments around the world,”

Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, condemns the intel that led Powell to recommend war with Iraq in 2003. “We were indisputably lied to,” he says. Representative Cynthia McKinney describes the death threats she received after challenging Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on $2 trillion missing from the Department of Defense’s ledgers: “That’s what happens when you go against the big boys.”

On October 2nd, in Irbil, Iraq, a drone flown by ISIS injured two French paratroopers, who were supporting Kurdish forces. Two Peshmerga, or Kurdish soldiers, were killed in the blast, according to French newspaper Le Monde. The attack is possibly the first where a drone fitted with an improvised explosive device has inflicted casualties on troops from a Western nation.

Le Monde reports:

The two commandos were struck by the flying, booby-trapped drone, sent by a group linked to ISIS. The exact context/circumstances of the attack remain to be specified. The soldiers reportedly intercepted the drone before it exploded on the ground. This type of attack against French forces is in any case without precedent.

Unlike drones used by the United States for attacks, ISIS is converting small, cheap commercial models into one-way weapons. Kurdish forces spotted these drones at least as early as last winter. Iraq is not the first battlefield to see cheap drones. The Washington Post notes:

Drone use by militants and insurgent groups has steadily risen years as cheap off-the-shelf models have become easily acquired and simple to fly. In Ukraine, store-bought quadcopter drones are used on the front lines in the country’s east by both government troops and Russian-backed separatists in primarily a reconnaissance role, helping locate trench lines and spot for artillery.
In Iraq and Syria, a host of insurgent and opposition groups have used the drones in similar roles, though there have been a few instances of the remotely piloted craft being used to drop what appear to be explosives. Insurgent groups, including the Islamic State, also use the vehicles to film propaganda videos.

After being targeted by two missile launches off the coast of Yemen, the USS Mason, a guided missile destroyer, fired two missiles in defense.

The USS Mason fired missiles defending itself and the USS Ponce, an amphibious dock ship, after it detected inbound cruise missiles presumably fired from Houthi militants on shore in Yemen.

While the Mason did fire defensive missiles and the incoming missiles didn’t hit their target, it’s not clear if the SM-2s did their job

SM-2s, in service with the US Navy for more than 20 years, cost nearly $1 million each.

Erdogan said al-Abadi himself had asked for the formation of a military base in Bashiqa, located some 12 kilometers northeast of the Daesh-held city of Mosul, during the term of former Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"We have live records of all of them and it will be broadcast on television channels today or tomorrow," he said.

"Now, he [al-Abadi] says 'withdraw from here'. The army of the Republic of Turkey has not lost its standing so as to take instructions from you," he said. “You are not my interlocutor, you are not at my level.”

"It's not important at all how you shout from Iraq. You should know that we will do what we want to do," he added.

"Who's that? The Iraqi prime minister. First you know your place!"

The troops are in northern Iraq under an agreement with the Kurdish Regional Government, which has close economic and political ties with Ankara, but Baghdad is opposed to their presence.

Ankara maintains an estimated 2,000 troops in Iraq - around 500 of them in the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq, training local fighters who will join the battle to recapture Mosul, according to Turkish media reports.

Baghdad has repeatedly called on Ankara to pull out its troops, with Abadi warning the Turkish deployment risked a regional war.

A recent military exercise in southern Russia saw the first real-time test of the state management system that allows the Defense Ministry to assume direct control over municipal and regional authorities, police, state security and emergency services.

“In the course of the strategic war games Caucasus-2016, the Defense Ministry has for the first time tried how a military district command can directly manage the regions of the Russian Federation,” popular daily Izvestia quoted an unnamed high-placed military source as saying.

“Exercising the interaction with state power bodies was one of the main objectives of the war games. In general it went well, but we also encountered some problems and presently we are preparing some legislative proposals that would correct the revealed drawbacks,” the source added.

In particular, the military wants to switch completely from the previous scheme, under which in times of war all regional authorities and federal ministries worked on their own dedicated tasks and the Defense Ministry only had a coordinating role.

The new rules of wartime administration would give all administrative powers to the military, which would issue direct commands to regional authorities, law enforcers, rescuers and the National Guard.

Russia currently has five military districts that comprise the Defense Ministry’s territory division units. In times of war, the command of each of these districts will be divided into two parts – the Operative Strategic Command and the Wartime Military District. The former will be in charge of military operations and the latter will control the draft, logistics and execution of all special regime measures, such as maintaining public order and the increased security of strategic installations and communications.

The new system was tested in southern Russia’s Stavropol Region, Ingushetia and Crimea.

Russian “air defense systems are designed to intercept high flying targets at a maximum range of  about 250 miles,” said Sutyagin. While this does pose a threat to US and coalition aircraft operating normally in the region, the missile defense can be outfoxed, as they less optimal against low flying planes or missiles.

Even though the Russian systems have great radar range and capabilities, in the real world obstacles abound, and that makes it very hard to get a clear picture of real world air spaces. 

But they battery is still just a truck on the ground. Parking it on a hilltop makes it visible. Parking it in a valley severely limits the range due to natural obstacles. So just as the US fantasy of “invisible jets” doesn’t completely pan out when the rubber hits the road, neither does the Russian fantasy of a 250 mile air defense zone.

Indeed to flesh out this idea of the Russians, they’d need to operate Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACs), or planes that carry large radars and can survey battle spaces free from obstructions on the ground, which Sutyagin says Moscow does not currently have in Syria.

According to Sutyagin, stealth US planes like the B-2, F-22, and F-35 could knock out Russian SAM sites in Syria, but not without a fight.

“There is no 100% reliability, but still it will be much more difficult” for Russian SAM sites to intercept missiles fired from US stealth aircraft that can get up close and personal and locate the site first.  “If the standoff weapon is also low visibility,”

“One air defense battalion with an S-300 has 32 missiles. They will fire these against 16 targets (maybe against cruise missiles they would fire a one-to-one ratio) but to prevent the target from evading you always launch two… but what if there are 50 targets?”

it takes “40-50 minutes to reload launchers.” The SAM sites are then unarmed, with their positions exposed and they’re “not well prepared to meet another threat.”

Oct. 9, forces aligned with Ansar Allah—aka the Houthis, Yemen’s Iran-backed Shia political movement—fired two cruise missiles toward the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Mason and the amphibious ship Ponce while the two vessels were sailing in international waters north of the Mandeb Strait.

The 510-foot-long Mason fired three surface-to-air missiles—including two high-tech, long-range SM-2 missiles—and launched a radar decoy in attempt to first destroy, then distract, the incoming Houthi munitions.

Mason packs a sophisticated radar and scores of surface-to-air missiles plus short-range defensive guns. Ponce is the first Navy vessel to carry a defensive laser cannon that can quickly blast enemy missiles out of the air from miles away.

The problem for the U.S. Navy is that more and more of its ships are aluminum like Swift is, including the dozen catamaran transports the sailing branch is buying and the 40 planned Littoral Combat Ships.

The Littoral Combat Ships are meant for combat, although there are reasons to doubt they’d last very long in a shooting war. The LCSs are lightly armed compared to guided-missile destroyers such as Mason.

It’s unclear which of these weapons the Houthis apparently launched at Swift, Mason, and Ponce. The munitions’ identity matters. “There are a couple of issues that go into the kind of danger a missile would present,” Wertheim said, including “warhead size” and “the speed of the missile.” Warhead size and missile speed vary widely, depending on the type of weapon.

The military is “adjusting our force posture in that area in reaction to the entirety of things that are going on in Yemen and the waters surrounding Yemen,” Carter said. That could involve pulling even the best-defended U.S. warships farther away from Yemen, out of the emerging missile kill-zone.

The US and Saudi Arabia have agreed to grant free passage to thousands of Islamic State militants before the Iraqi city of Mosul is stormed. The jihadists will be redeployed to fight against the government in Syria

"More than 9,000 Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) militants will be redeployed from Mosul to the eastern regions of Syria to carry out a major offensive operation, which involves capturing Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra,”

US President Barack Obama has already sanctioned an operation to liberate Mosul, due to take place in October.

During the storm of the city in northern Iraq the US-led coalition’s planes would only strike detached, vacated or uninhabited buildings, while keeping terrorists as targets

"Apart from the purely political dividends, the other purpose of this operation, obviously, will be to discredit the success of Russian Airspace forces. And, of course, it’s an attempt to undermine Syrian President (Bashar) Assad,”

The leadership of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate will be the mediators and guarantors of the agreement on safe passage for the jihadists from Mosul

In 2015, a Saudi-led coalition of nine Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain — launched a military intervention in the Yemeni civil war, which has raged with frequent and often lengthy interruptions since 2004.

Likewise, there are reasons to doubt Saudi Arabia’s claim that it’s defending Yemen’s legitimate government. Actually, Pres. Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has next to no popular and political support in Yemen. His predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh is much more popular than Hadi is within the Yemeni armed forces.

Between September 2014 and March 2015, up to two-third of the Yemeni army either sided with the Houthis — because Saleh also did so — or were overrun by them. This included five out of 10 brigades of the 3rd Military District in Ma’arib, 10 of 13 brigades of the 4th Military District in Aden, four out of seven brigades of the 5th Military District in Hodeida, all nine brigades of the 6th Military District in Sa’ada and at least two of the six brigades of the 7th Military District in Dhamar.

Only the units of the 1st and 2nd Military Districts based in eastern Yemen remained untouched by insurgency. However, several of these were subsequently overrun and disarmed by AQAP— and some outright butchered, too.

At least three brigades of the Defense Reserve Forces, nearly the entire Special Forces Command, most of the Missile Defense Command and all four crack brigades of the Presidential Protection Force — some of these equipped with T-80 main battle tanks — sided with the Houthis, as did nearly all of the Yemeni air force’s air-defense brigades.

In total, more than 50 out of around 90 brigade-size formations of the Yemeni military aligned with the Houthis, only four or five with Hadi and three with southern separatists. AQAP overran four.

Considering that the total pre-war strength of the Yemen military was around 400,000 personnel, this means that the Saudi-led expeditionary forces of around 40,000 Bahraini, Emirati, Sudanese and other troops — deployed in southern Yemen since August 2015 — faced up to 200,000 Yemeni troops hardened by years of bitter civil war.

Moreover, it’s not the Houthis who are firing ballistic missiles including Scuds, Frogs, SS-21s and SA-2s at Saudi Arabia, at Saudi bases inside Yemen and — more recently — at the American destroyer USS Mason. Rather, the three brigades of the Yemeni army Missile Defense Command and several air-defense units are the ones lobbing the missiles.

But you won’t read that in many mainstream news reports. Most of what we in the West think we know about the war in Yemen bears little resemblance to what’s actually happening on the ground.

One hard reality is that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), despite its 14 years in power, has not developed a senior bureaucratic team that deals with security and intelligence affairs.

Hence, a power struggle was inevitable at the senior echelons of the National Intelligence Service (MIT), the Gendarmerie Command, the Ministry of Defense and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)

One of the schools of thought is that of the Homeland Party, also known as the Patriotic Party, which received only 120,000 votes (0.25%) out of 50 million votes cast in the Nov. 1 elections under the leadership of Dogu Perincek. It is popularly called the Perincek Group.

This group — renowned for its staunchly secular, isolationist, ultranationalist, socialist, anti-US, anti-West, pro-Russian and Euroasianist characteristics — has no strong standing as a popular political party, but its influence in the upper echelons of the state’s security and intelligence services is steadily growing.

High-level military police and intelligence personnel affiliated with this group were the Fethullah Gulen movement's most prominent targets for replacement between 2006 and 2014, when the Gulenists had the AKP's cooperation in ending military tutelage.

Those Gulenists who replaced Perincek Group personnel are themselves being eliminated. Now, amazingly, the Perincek Group has become the entity that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is relying on most to purge the state of Gulenists and in the struggle against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Perincek, who is seen by some in Ankara as even more influential than Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, attracted much attention on a TV talk show Aug. 16 when he said, “The AKP with its current cadres cannot govern Turkey. This is why President Erdogan is trusting our presence in critical posts of the state.”

citing his sources in security and intelligence units, "[A] second coup attempt is very close. [Gulen's group] is after a new coup together with the PKK and foreign powers.” (Ugur referred to the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization, or FETO, a term Ankara uses for Gulen followers.)

Perincek, who spent more than five years in prison — for, of all things, allegedly plotting a coup against Erdogan's government — upon his release declared, “We will eradicate all cults.” He is perceived to be the "secret hand" behind the current purges, especially in the state security and intelligence bureaucracies. Many believe the Perincek Group played a key role in the renewal of the state of emergency that was set to expire Oct. 19.

The other clique vying to secure a strong position in state security/intelligence is the "Virtuousness" bloc made up of conservative-nationalists of the AKP base.

This group, which has the support of religious devotees such as the Menzil (Range) community of the Nakhshibendi persuasion and the Suleymanist community, is seriously concerned about the increasing influence of the Perincek Group in critical state posts and its determining role in the purges.

The worst fear of the conservative-nationalist clique is that the Perincek Group will take advantage of the state of emergency extension to Jan. 20 and totally eliminate entire conservative-nationalist and pro-AKP cadres from state posts under the guise of purging the Gulenists.

A most critical question in Ankara corridors is who will be appointed to fill the 400 key vacated MIT jobs — the Perincek Group or conservative bloc sympathizers?

Kurdish forces have revealed the 'Mad Max' style armoured-plated cars they hope will help them free the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS control.

The Peshmerga troops have converted large cars and lorries into war vehicles by adding metal plates, grills and missile launchers to the top and bonnet.

They have been forced to take the initiative of bolstering their cars and lorries after ISIS jihadists captured Mosul and fought off the Peshmerga, who only use Soviet-era military equipment.

The US officially entered the conflict in Yemen with a salvo of cruise missile strikes on three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, retaliating after failed missile attacks this week on a US Navy destroyer, US officials said late Wednesday.

There was no immediate word of any casualties in Yemen.

US officials told Reuters that the Arleigh Burke class USS Nitze launched the Tomahawk cruise missiles around 4 a.m. local time Thursday.

“These radars were active during previous attacks and attempted attacks on ships in the Red Sea,” the officials said, adding that they were in remote areas where the risk of civilian casualties were low.

“Targeting US warships is a sign that the Houthis have decided to join the axis of resistance that currently includes Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran,” Michael Knights, an expert on Yemen’s conflict at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Reuters.

The strikes authorized by President Barack Obama represent Washington’s first direct military action against Houthi-controlled targets in Yemen’s conflict. The Pentagon said initial US assessments indicated the radar sites were destroyed.

Iran sent two warships to the Gulf of Aden on Thursday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, establishing a military presence in waters off Yemen where the US military launched cruise missile strikes on areas controlled by Iran-backed Houthi forces.

"Iran's Alvand and Bushehr warships have been dispatched to the Gulf of Aden to protect trade vessels," Tasnim reported. The Alvand is a destroyer, while the Bushehr is a logistics vessel.

Saudi Arabia accuses Tehran of providing support to the Houthis, a charge It denies.

Tasnim said the Iranian ships will patrol the Gulf of Aden, south of Yemen, which is one of the world's most important shipping routes.

The announcement comes hours after the US said it had fired cruise missiles at three Houthi-contolled radar stations after anti-ship missiles were fired at a US navy destroyer.

The missile launches from the USS Nitze on Thursday morning mark the first time the US had directly attacked the Houthis in Yemen.

A new company has branched into making a different kind of weapons system for use on the modern battlefield—inflatable balloons.

Rusbal, a Russian toy company started in 1993 by a hot air balloon enthusiast, originally made hot air balloons, inflatable children's play sets, and inflatable costumes. Eventually the company began making inflatable jets, tanks, and surface-to-air missile batteries as part of a Russian tactic known as maskirovka—warfare by deception.

Deceiving the enemy into thinking you are weak when you are strong—or strong when you are weak—is a time-honored practice. The United States and its allies practiced extensive deception operations in World War II, such as fooling the Germans into believing that the D-Day landings would come at Calais and not Normandy. It also created an an entire fake army, complete with inflatable weapons, to support the invasion.

Rusbal has an entire line of inflatable weapon systems, all blowup copies of the important Russian military gear and facilities. It has fake MiG-31 and Su-27 fighters, T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks, and a complete inflatable version of a S-300 surface-to-air missile battery similar to that sent to Syria last week. It also sells inflatable command and control tents, radar stations, and even the Tochka short-range tactical ballistic missile.