The Ukrainian Air Force were able to save their planes and punk the shit out of the Russians by simply taking aerial pics of the damage from previous attacks, printing them out on large sheets, and then putting the sheets up as covers housing the planes, according to a lengthly white paper by a British military think thank assessing Ukrainian tactics so far in the war.

“The poor Russian battle damage assessment process made the Russian military highly vulnerable to deception, which has been consistent throughout the conflict. Early strikes on Ukrainian airfields, for example, destroyed many hangars. By photographing this damage and printing the resulting pattern on to sheets, it became possible to clear the rubble and erect covers for aircraft to return to the site, sheltering in positions that the Russians would confirm as destroyed. This led – somewhat amusingly – to the Russians debating whether Ukrainian fighter aircraft were operating from subterranean shelters at several sites. Repeated strikes on dummy air-defence positions also saw a considerable wastage of ammunition, while Ukrainian troops could confirm that sites were destroyed over the radio even when they were still functioning, causing Russian aircraft to ignore air-defence systems in their mission planning. The already-publicly reported use of dummy HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket system) later in the war to lure Russian fires is indicative of the systematic use of deception to ensure survivability by the UAF, and it has proven widely effective,” says the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies paper titled “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022.”