NextFin News - Russian forces have begun deploying a new, psychologically-driven tactic in their ongoing aerial campaign against Ukraine, attaching mock-up R-60 missiles to Shahed-type kamikaze drones to deceive and intimidate Ukrainian interceptor units. The development, confirmed on March 31, 2026, by Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, a prominent military technology consultant and advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, marks a shift from simple radar saturation to a more targeted attempt at manipulating the decision-making of Ukrainian pilots and ground-based air defense teams.
Beskrestnov, who has long maintained a cautious but technically rigorous stance on Russian electronic warfare and drone capabilities, noted that these "missile-laden" decoys are specifically designed to attract the attention of Ukrainian interceptors. By making a relatively cheap drone appear as a high-value strike asset or an armed threat to aircraft, Russia aims to force Ukraine to expend disproportionate resources—including expensive Western-supplied interceptor missiles—on targets that carry no actual warhead. Beskrestnov’s analysis suggests that while army aviation units are trained to identify such ruses, the sheer variety of interceptor units across different military branches makes a unified response difficult.
The use of these mock-ups is part of a broader "Phony War" strategy that has seen the proportion of decoy drones in Russian strike packages rise significantly. According to data from the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, decoys now account for as much as 40% of some large-scale drone waves. These "imitator" drones, often manufactured at the Yelabuga plant in Tatarstan using plywood and cheap foreign components from the U.S., China, and Switzerland, are visually and radar-similar to combat UAVs but lack an explosive payload. Their primary function is to exhaust the inventory of Ukraine’s air defense systems, which are currently facing a critical shortage of interceptor missiles.
The economic asymmetry of this tactic is stark. A plywood "Gerbera" decoy costs a fraction of the price of a single IRIS-T or Patriot interceptor. By forcing Ukraine to treat every radar blip as a potential lethal threat, Russia effectively "taxes" the Ukrainian defense budget and depletes its strategic reserves. However, some military analysts argue that the effectiveness of this tactic may be reaching a plateau. As Ukrainian forces integrate more sophisticated AI-driven radar recognition and deploy cheaper "drone-on-drone" interceptors, the cost-benefit ratio for Russia could shift. There is also the risk that over-reliance on decoys reduces the actual destructive power of a strike wave if too many combat-capable drones are replaced by empty shells.
The introduction of mock-up missiles adds a layer of tactical complexity that requires new identification protocols. Beskrestnov emphasized the urgent need for Ukrainian forces to develop methods to distinguish these "fake" threats in real-time. As Russia continues to iterate on Iranian-designed technology, the aerial battlefield is becoming less about raw power and more about a high-stakes game of electronic and visual deception. The success of Ukraine’s defense now hinges not just on the number of missiles in its launchers, but on the speed and accuracy of its threat assessment under the pressure of a saturated sky.
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