The Russian Defence Ministry has ordered elaborate inflatable copies of its most ubiquitous planes, tanks and missiles at a cost of almost £2,000 per model to fool its enemies in future conflicts.
The purchase has drawn sharp criticism from military analysts, who say the Kremlin should be spending its oil wealth on buying real military hardware rather than rubber copies.
"Inflatable military hardware is most effective in conflict situations when there is a need to confuse the enemy," the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper argued on Tuesday.
"But at a time of peace, duping foreign intelligence networks with such expensive toys is a questionable luxury."
Alexander Talanov, the director of the scientific research centre that makes the rubber models, told state TV that the defence ministry was particularly keen on acquiring more copies of the truck-mounted Soviet-era S-300 surface-to-air missile system.
He said such models were designed to fool satellite and air reconnaissance and that the United States and China had invested heavily in replicas of their own hardware.
The precise number of rubber models ordered by Russia's defence ministry is a military secret, but the inflatable missiles are expected to be ready by the end of next year.
Russian designers boast that the tanks can be inflated in just four minutes, while replicas of missile systems take only five minutes to set up.
The models are allegedly indistinguishable from the real thing from as little as 350 feet away. The controversial shopping spree comes as Russia rushes to upgrade 75 per cent of its real military hardware by 2020.
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