A Czech company producing inflatable weapon decoys, including HIMARS rocket launchers and Abrams tanks, on Monday said that it had seen a spike in demand since the Russian invasion of Ukraine started last year.
The synthetic silk decoys inflated with an electric or gasoline blower are used to fool the enemy in the battlefield, making them target the air-filled decoys instead of real weaponry.
Inflatech Co’s managers have refused to confirm selling their products to Ukraine, citing military secrecy, but they said that output had jumped by 100 percent over the past 12 months.
Photo: AP
“Definitely we’re selling to a lot of governments around the world, not only in Europe,” Inflatech sales and marketing director Poven Kumaresan told reporters.
The company’s three dozen employees produce 30 to 40 decoys a month, Kumaresan said.
The decoys including tanks, armored vehicles and even jet fighters weigh between 25kg and 90kg, and take two to four people to handle in the battlefield.
Photo: AFP
The company can come up with a new design within 72 hours if it has the exact plans of the original piece of military hardware, while it takes up to two weeks if working “from scratch,” Kumaresan said.
It had taken 60 days to ship a replica HIMARS rocket launcher after the order was placed, he said.
Inflatech has so far rolled out “dozens” of fake HIMARS while the real weapon is wreaking havoc on Russian invaders in Ukraine.
Inflatech’s products are classified as military materiel and must be approved by government authorities.
The Czech government last month said that it had provided Ukraine with military aid worth about US$500 million since the invasion started on Feb. 24 last year.
Inflatech chief executive officer Vojtech Fresser said that key qualities of the firm’s products included a look true to the original.
“If I don’t have binoculars, looking from a distance of 150-200 metres, I won’t be able to tell whether it is a real weapon or a decoy,” Fresser said.
The engine used to inflate the weapons also emanates heat that fools infrared sensors.
The inflatable decoys cost US$10,000 to US$100,000, much less than the rockets used to destroy them, Fresser said.
“If I force the enemy to destroy my product with something that is at least four times as expensive, but in practice it is even 20 times, then I win economically,” he said.
Kumaresan said that the company keeps upgrading its products, looking to make the decoys mobile in the future.
Inflatech, which originally made the decoys for training purposes, used to produce toys or tailor-made models according to customers’ wishes.
“We produce according to the customer’s specific needs. We’re not an e-shop where you could choose,” Fresser said.
There is “no limit” on output or product range and the company expects rapid growth over the next three years, he said.
“Of course I would prefer to produce toys for children, but first of all we must ensure a safe world for them,” Fresser said.
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
Experts have long warned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) going rogue, but a new research paper suggests it is already happening. AI systems, designed to be honest, have developed a troubling skill for deception, from tricking human players in online games of world conquest to hiring humans to solve “prove-you’re-not-a-robot” tests, a team of researchers said in the journal Patterns on Friday. While such examples might appear trivial, the underlying issues they expose could soon carry serious real-world consequences, said first author Peter Park, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in AI existential safety. “These
The most powerful solar storm in more than two decades struck Earth on Friday, triggering spectacular celestial light shows from Tasmania to the UK — and threatening possible disruptions to satellites and power grids as it persists into the weekend. The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun — came just after 4pm GMT, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged
Using virtual-reality (VR) headsets, students at a Hong Kong university travel to a pavilion above the clouds to watch an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Albert Einstein explain game theory. The students are part of a course at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) that is testing the use of “AI lecturers” as the AI revolution hits campuses around the world. The mass availability of tools such as ChatGPT has sparked optimism about new leaps in productivity and teaching, but also fears over cheating, plagiarism and the replacement of human instructors. Pan Hui (許彬), a professor of computer science who is leading