“It was actually a big play, and everything had to be perfect,” says military historian Christ Klebb. “To make sure the military equipment looked realistic, the British film industry was called in, because they had experience in building film sets.”

General George S. Patton, who, according to the historian, feared the Germans, was put in command of the fake army. He played this role energetically: he gave speeches and deliberately leaked photos showed him inspecting so-called armored units.

“Thousands of people knew about the plan, so it’s impressive that it was never leaked,” Klepp says. “I guess you could say this is the largest diversion in history.”

But even today, eighty years and many subsequent technological breakthroughs later, decoys play an important role in the military strategies of world powers like the United States and Russia. Klip: “We know that North Korea is building many fake weapons depots on its territory to appear militarily stronger. The United States is working with drones that look like fighter planes on radar.”

Kleeb says the “props” have to be more subtle these days than they were during the stabilization process. “The equipment needed to distinguish real equipment from fake is now much better. To be effective, the decoy must now, for example, emit radio waves and heat up to make it appear as if the engine is running.”

Such traps are now also playing a role in the war in Ukraine. It is equipped with technology that ensures it resembles real equipment even with infrared projectors, thermal imagers and radar.

Last year, NOS visited a factory where these traps are produced. The company does not want to say whether it also supplies these products to Ukraine, but since 2022 sales have increased by 30 percent in one year:

The Ukrainian military is known to have placed mannequins in trenches around Kharkiv at the start of the Russian invasion in 2022 to divert Russian fire away from actual targets. But they also use more realistic decoy weapons, which resemble, for example, the US-supplied HIMARS missile systems. According to experts, this may explain why Russia claims to have destroyed a greater number of these types of weapons than the United States handed over in the first place. The Russians are also known to use booby traps on the battlefield.

Military historian Kleb believes the diversionary action is unlikely to be decisive in the war in Ukraine. “And if you see how quickly technology is developing, I expect it will be much easier to identify booby traps within a few years. Then physical traps will become less important.”

It is expected that armies will continue to try to mislead their enemies – this is part of war, after all – but this will be done mainly digitally. “If an army can control their enemy’s radar, so they can’t see your forces coming, that’s actually the ultimate deception.”

Artificial intelligence can also play an important role in this. “For example, you can imitate the voice of a leader, but you can also send false information to enemy systems. I think this is being discussed at a very high level.”