• catloaf@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    With enough analysis, yes, you could distinguish. Often, in reality, you’re limited by tree cover, weather, distance, sensitivity of your equipment, and experience of the operators and analysts. And, of course, time pressure.

    But if you end up spending a significant amount of time and effort distinguishing a real tank from a fake one, that’s already a win for the decoy.

    • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      That’s why every fire mission targeting a single tank gets up to date satellite images, high res thermal drone photos, and dedicated analysts reviewing the intelligence.

      At least, that’s according to other users in this comment section.

      And here I thought it was forward observers and drone pilots using whatever off the shelf drones they have available.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        If it was the US, maybe. For a high-value target, probably. But satellite time is expensive and very limited, so maybe those people are watching too much TV. Ukraine doesn’t have anywhere near those resources. I don’t even know if their drones have IR capability.

        • pandapoo@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          It wouldn’t even be true for the US Army, although they would have better unit level technology i.e. military grade recon drones, but yes, also potentially access to ISR.

          I was being sarcastic, because the replies I read were so ridiculous e.g. all artillery recon had analysts reviewing thermal, IR, satellites, etc. to determine if a lone tank was real, or a decoy.