The Russian army has found a new trick to evade Ukrainian drone attacks on its equipment: making fake trees to hide its communications antennas. According to Ukrainian officials and observers cited by the English-speaking Ukrainian site Euromaidan Press, these camouflaged structures are now appearing along the front line. So, technological ingenuity, desperate attempt or both?
Serhii Beskrestnov, advisor to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, explains that one of the major challenges on the front is to identify and destroy Russian electronic warfare systems, means of intercepting communications and control posts for Russian drones. They all have a weak point in common: their antennas, these metallic growths which betray the presence of a device, even if well buried or dispersed.
“Fake plastic trees”
To get around this problem, Moscow is now relying on trompe-l’oeil. According to the specialized media Militarnyi, Russian troops are building artificial trees designed to blend into the landscape while housing, at their heart, communications equipment. The idea is simple: if the antenna becomes an element of the decor, it has a greater chance of escaping the trained gaze of Ukrainian drone operators.
Russia is building fake trees out of foam, plastic mesh, and paint to hide communication antennas that Ukrainian drones keep spotting and destroying.
All Russian electronic warfare, signals intelligence, and drone control systems share one key vulnerability: antennas that are… pic.twitter.com/oIe4Wo8KHR— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) March 3, 2026
Concretely, these artificial trees are made from a plastic trellis frame, modeled to draw a trunk and foliage. This frame is then covered with expanding foam used in the building, in order to provide volume and rigidity, then painted in tones that recall the surrounding vegetation and soil. The whole, seen from the sky, should evoke an ordinary tree rather than a nerve center of communication.
An antenna is then installed inside the structure. At low resolution, or in an environment saturated with detail, the object can go unnoticed among real trees or groves, especially if opposing operators quickly scan large areas.
This use of cardboard trees illustrates the way in which the war in Ukraine became a laboratory for permanent technological adaptation. On the one hand, drones – modified commercial or military – track command centers, jamming systems and communications nodes. On the other hand, we multiply decoys, jamming, dummy constructions and camouflage tricks.
Seemingly trivial, this DIY can recall anti-drone nets or cages, once mocked at the start of the conflict, but still used today, for lack of anything better. Only time will tell if these forests of antennas fulfill their role or are doomed to disappear.
