Russia is launching ballistic missiles loaded with decoys to help the weapons evade attack from Ukraine’s air defense systems, The New York Times reports. The decoys are being launched with Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles, which have proven difficult to bring down. That may be because the white-and-orange decoy devices, which are about a foot long, create radio signals that interfere with the other side’s radar systems, making the missiles harder to locate. The devices also have a “heat source” that makes them targets for other missiles. Photos of the decoys made their way online, but weapons experts were unfamiliar with the crafty devices. “That Russia is using that size of weapon—the Iskander-M — and quite a few of them I believe, that’s why we’re seeing this now,” bomb technician Richard Stevens told the Times. “It’s just that, post-conflict in the past 10 to 15 years, no one has had the opportunity to see this.”
