North Korea is being accused of parading fake weapons in its most recent show of military might.

A former US Army intelligence officer says some of the guns and missiles on show were not real.

Michael Pregent told right-wing TV network Fox News that some of the guns on display were "laughable".

But pretend displays of strength have been used in warfare for decades - and effectively in many cases.

"Tensions are particularly inflamed at the moment because of Trump," explains James Hannah, assistant head of the Asia Programme at Chatham House.

That's because the US president has vowed to "solve" the North Korean nuclear threat.

"Fake small arms are one thing but we know there are over a million soldiers in North Korea.

"It's not that North Korea thinks it would defeat the US but a question of what they might do if attacked.

"Some of the missiles demonstrated some sort of new capacity."

Real or not, he says, these "sow the seed of 'we're on this road, we can't be stopped and we're not scared of you.'"

A rich heritage of fakery

This drawing from the National Archives shows plans for a tank seemingly made from bamboo canes and canvas.

It's British and the diagrams come from the intriguingly named "Camouflage School". This was a centre for officers to learn techniques of concealment in World War One.

This kind of phoney military hardware was designed to combat aerial bombardments, tricking enemy pilots into targeting fake tanks rather than anything of value.

Large-scale strategic camouflage was also used to hide key landmarks which pilots might use for navigation.

French army artists even painted fake rivers and canals

Army officers "went up in balloons and aeroplanes to see how potential targets would look from the air" according to Nicholas Rankin in his book, A Genius for Deception.

French army artists even painted fake rivers and canals.

Such trickery was also used to great effect in World War Two.

Thousands of fake tanks 'fought' in WW2

Inflatable rubber tanks were massed on the Kent coast and deployed in northern France during the war which began in 1939.

Made by the Dunlop company and taken to France in cricket bags, the idea was to get German planes to waste their artillery strafing pointless tanks in France rather than firing on England.

Meanwhile, the First United States Army Group was an enormous and entirely fictional army based in Kent.

They even generated fake radio signals to cause confusion and chaos.

They also floated a corpse in the sea off Spain, to be found by General Franco's troops, with completely made-up war plans in his pockets.

Decades earlier logs were used to fight the American Civil War

Yes, this is just a tree trunk.

Known as "Quaker guns" these logs were painted to resemble cannons.

The idea was to mislead the enemy about where defences were strongest and they largely worked as a delaying tactic.

They were commonly used in warfare in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And more recently blow-up tanks again... in Russia

We know that the Russian military likes to blow up its own tanks.

Inflatable vehicles have been used as recently as 2010 to fool potential enemies.

Fake fighter jets and even entire Russian radar stations have also been created.

And the pantomime horse of warfare...

This image shows German soldiers running along the ground inside fake tanks in the 1920s.

However, these were used in training rather than to fool oncoming soldiers.

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