A Czech company has unveiled an inflatable decoy of the F-16 fighter, notably wearing Ukrainian Air Force markings. The inflatable fighter, from a firm that is already known to be providing Kyiv with decoys of other items of military equipment, appears only a matter of weeks after it was confirmed that the first real F-16s had arrived in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian-marked F-16 decoy from the Czech Inflatech company is currently on show at the Industry Days defense exhibition in Denmark, organized by the Danish Ministry of Defense Acquisition and Logistics Organization (DALO).
The full-scale inflatable replica of the gray-painted F-16 includes a transparent ‘cockpit canopy,’ wingtip stores, and a centerline ‘fuel tank.’
It’s unclear if the F-16 decoys will be heading to Ukraine, or whether the Ukrainian Air Force insignia has been applied to drum up interest in the product.
However, there have been uncofirmed reports of U.S.-supplied F-16 decoys having been procured for Ukraine as well as accounts of decoys of the same aircraft being built in Ukrainian workshops, too.
Overall, the war in Ukraine is seeing a considerable spike in demand for decoys, with inflatable types being just one solution.
Inflatech is very much a specialist in this area, with a website that now lists more than 30 different inflatable military decoys. Among the various tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery pieces are other aircraft types, including the Russian-made Su-27 and Su-30 Flanker and the U.S.-made UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. As of March 2023, the company claimed that business was up by more than 30 percent compared with the previous, with the expectation that growth would continue rising in double figures for at least another three to five years.
Only recently, there were reports that a U.S.-made M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), which Russia claimed it had destroyed in the Sumy region, was actually an inflatable decoy version from Inflatech, deployed by Ukraine. Those claims cannot be independently verified.
What’s clear is Ukraine’s need to protect its F-16s at all costs, an issue we have explored in the past.
At this stage, the first F-16s are in Ukraine, but only in small numbers, reportedly only with six Ukrainian pilots qualified to fly them, and these are likely proficient only in a limited number of missions.
Already, however, Moscow has put a bounty on the Ukrainian F-16s, and this will only reinforce the necessity of protecting the jets. At the most basic level, this will almost certainly involve rotating the jets around different bases within Ukraine, including operating from temporary airstrips, where possible. It’s almost inevitable, however, that even with these measures in place, Russia will target them on the ground.
This is where decoys come into play and it’s a tactic that Ukraine has already used to good effect.
Late last year we reported on how a remarkably accurate (non-inflatable) decoy of a Ukrainian Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft was destroyed on the ground by a Russian Lancet loitering munition. So accurate was this decoy that Russia claimed it had successfully hit the real thing.
Overall, Ukrainian decoy-makers have revealed themselves to be notably skilled practitioners of this craft, with various mock-ups of armored vehicles, multiple launch rocket systems, air defense systems, and other items of equipment having appeared. On many occasions, these have succeeded in drawing attacks from the Russian side, each of which increases the chances of the real piece of hardware surviving to fight another day.
Subsequent Russian attacks on Ukrainian air bases may well also have claimed unserviceable Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker fighters, parked out in the open perhaps deliberately to entice attacks. This is much harder to verify, however, although Ukraine has no shortage of out-of-commission aircraft that could be sacrificed in this way.
What’s beyond doubt is the very real threat that Russia poses to Ukrainian F-16s (and other aircraft, for that matter) while they are on the ground. In the last few months, a spate of ballistic missile strikes has targeted Ukrainian air bases and the Soviet-era equipment that makes up the vast majority of its combat fleet.
In fact, the vulnerability of the F-16s and their highly prized status means that Ukraine plans to keep only a portion of the total fleet in the country at any given time, even once more aircraft and pilots are available. On top of the jets being used for training outside of Ukraine, there will be an additional strategic reserve that is kept at readiness in allied countries in Europe. In this way, it will also be possible to ‘swap out’ F-16s exposed to combat with ‘fresh’ jets that have undergone more in-depth maintenance outside of the country.
It’s also worth noting that Russia, too, has been making strenuous efforts to protect its aircraft on the ground, as its air bases come under repeated attack from Ukrainian long-range one-way attack drones.
So far it’s not clear that Russia is using decoy aircraft, although a range of other measures have been seen in use on their airfields. These include the bizarre arrangements of tires that are very likely intended to confuse the image-matching algorithms used by certain hostile missile seekers. Another ruse involves Russia painting the silhouettes of aircraft in parking revetments, as you read about here. The effectiveness of these measures is hard to ascertain, although real Russian military aircraft have continued to be targeted, regardless.
Outside of Ukraine and Russia, the lessons of the conflict are being keenly felt by air forces around the world. The survivability of aircraft on the ground during a potential future conflict in the Indo-Pacific theater was already something that the U.S. military had been grappling with. Now it is clear the deception and guile, including decoys, will be critical to keeping forward-deployed forces alive. You can read more about these developing plans here. The prospect of Russian aggression against other countries in Europe means that the same concerns are increasingly relevant there, too.
With that in mind, it’s very likely that the Czech-made inflatable F-16s will find interest among other customers outside of Ukraine, as part of the gathering efforts to better protect aircraft against attacks on their air bases and infrastructure.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com