Last week, on December 14th, forces of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine carried out a successful sabotage operation, destroying a freight train that carried 40 tanks filled with fuel for the needs of the russian invasion army. The cargo was blown up on the Ukrainian territory currently occupied by russia, near the town of Tokmak.
It was a painful blow leaving russian forces without an estimated 3,000 tons of fuel, provided all the tanks were filled to the brim. To add insult to injury, the explosion rendered the supply line inoperable for a long while. It shouldn't come as a surprise that after the incident, russians started to discuss the need for a proper disguise of tanker trains but the idea they offer, described by btvt_2019, sounds strange.
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According to this blog, a patent has been registered in russia which proposes to disguise railway tank cars as ordinary covered freight cars, aka goods wagons.
The installation of the camouflage should be simple: as the tanks approach a dangerous area, they pull out a frame that imitates a covered freight car and place it on top of the wagon's carcass, and proceed to the combat zone like that.
The creator of the patent believes that this kind of disguise for rail tanks should make it difficult for enemy intelligence to recognize the real purpose of the train, and thus ensure a safe delivery of fuel to its destination.
Defense Express offers the following opinion: in real conditions, these camouflage measures are unlikely to work due to a few subjective factors.
It is true that on railways with intensive traffic, disguise as a covered freight car might work out because this type of car is one of the most common, especially in russia. However, if we summarize the available information about the state of the railways in occupied territories in eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, it is so low-traffic that passage of any train there is already an unusual event and is closely monitored by Ukrainian intelligence.
In other words, even a train that looks like it carries ordinary goods can become a target for attack because Ukraine has seen such transport carrying military supplies in the past.
A whole different matter is whether Ukraine has the tools to intercept the railway logistics. In August 2024, Defense Express wrote in more detail why Ukrainian drones try to take down 276-ton diesel locomotives, and what it said about the russian army's supply system.
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