Decoy - Military Decoy

Military Decoy

The decoy in war is a low-cost device intended to represent a real item of military equipment. They may be deployed in amongst their real counterparts, to fool enemy forces into attacking them and so protect the real items of equipment by diverting fire away from them.

Alternatively, large numbers of military decoys, or dummys, may be deployed as an aspect of Military deception. Their purpose is to fool the enemy into believing forces in particular area are much stronger than they really are. One notable example are Quaker Guns.

For a defense system, decoys and chaff for ICBMs would mainly work in mid-course: during the boost phase they would be inside the rocket, because separate rockets for each of many decoys would not be practical, while at atmospheric reentry light decoys and chaff considerably slow down and/or are destroyed in the atmosphere.