Russia’s practice of placing car tires on military aircraft, including bombers and fighter jets, is intended to confuse weapons systems using image recognition, according to a senior U.S. military official. This tactic, first observed in 2023, has been employed as part of Russia’s broader efforts to protect its aircraft from attacks during the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Schuyler Moore, Chief Technology Officer for U.S. Central Command, confirmed that the unusual strategy is designed to interfere with munitions that use image-matching technology to lock onto their targets. By placing tires on the wings and fuselage of aircraft, Russian forces aim to obscure the aircraft’s shape, making it harder for weapons guided by machine vision to identify and strike the planes.
The tactic first emerged at Russia’s Engels-2 Air Base in late 2023, where tires were placed on Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers following long-range Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian air bases. The War Zone, a military news outlet, initially speculated that the tires were meant to break up the infrared signature of the planes, a theory now confirmed by Moore.
CNN published MAXAR satelite pictures form Engels’ airbase which show in high resolution how Russians are trying to protect their strategic bombers with rubber tires. https://t.co/r3klDLD01r pic.twitter.com/OlxaWPUTzv
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) September 5, 2023
Russia has used various deception tactics throughout the Ukraine conflict. In addition to placing tires on planes, it has painted aircraft silhouettes on airstrips and deployed decoy military equipment, such as inflatable tanks and wooden rocket launchers, to confuse enemy targeting systems. These measures are designed to evade Ukrainian drones and missiles, which use image recognition and thermal sensors to hone in on their targets.
This technique is particularly relevant as both Ukrainian and Western forces use advanced missile systems, like the Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG, which employ thermal and image recognition technology to strike enemy assets. While the tire tactic may complicate image recognition, military experts note that targeting systems can be quickly retrained to recognize such countermeasures.
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