The Russians Planned A Surprise Mechanized Assault. But Their Tracks In The Snow May Have Given Them Away.

Packed snow registers as bright white on thermal cameras.

Ukraine’s Lazar drone team broke up a Russian mechanized assault on the town of Lyman before the assault could even begin—by bombing 14 armored vehicles “deep in the rear,” according to Ukrainian observer Special Kherson Cat.

Lazar circulated a montage of drone strikes targeting infantry fighting vehicles nestled in their snowy dugouts, seemingly confirming the claim.

It’s unclear whether the deep vehicular strikes are the same ones that Ukrainian drone operator Kriegsforscher—also fighting near Lyman—described in a recent social media post. “We know that Russians planned to attack our positions with IFVs,” drone operator Kriegsforscher wrote.

So Kriegsforscher and his team have been “trying to destroy Russian IFVs and tanks in their shelters,” blunting the coming Russian assault before it can begin. The team recently targeted four tanks and seven infantry fighting vehicles in their dugouts.

Camouflaged and tucked below ground, a vehicle can be hard to detect under normal circumstances. Traditional camo can thwart drones with optical cameras. Thermal camo, along with the tendency of an unmoving vehicle to become as cold as the surrounding environment, can thwart drones with thermal cameras.