Shrinking Army? Send in inflatable tanks
THE Army could introduce blow-up tanks to swell the size of Britain’s armed forces in the eyes of the enemy.
The ploy has already been used by both Russia and America, who have developed life-size inflatables as decoys.
Now senior British officers have been urged to adopt the tactic after a study of urban warfare concluded that the Army should boost its ‘deception capability’ to counter its ‘lack of mass’. The study was conducted in Germany this month and involved 5 senior British officers predicting what capabilities Britain will need in 2035, according to The Sunday Times.
Wendy Eagle, a warrant officer in the Royal Logistic Corps who has twice served in Afghanistan and who took part in the research, said deception was ‘absolutely necessary’.
She told the Land Warfare Conference, run by the Royal United Services Institute, that the Army needs to force its enemies to ‘spend time working out what is real’. In the Second World War the Allies used dummy tanks to suggest the D-Day landings would take place near Calais, rather than Normandy.