What i have to say is mostly my own speculation, though based on what was posted in these channels said by MoD and other relevant sources. Take with a pound of salt.
Marks take several forms:
- There are fluorescent marks on paved surfaces and rooftops, as well as road signs bent upwards, which likely denote flat ground to land on, potentially.
- There are radar beacons, which presumably mark targets for further recognition through UAVs and shelling, or are somehow to be used for landings.
- There are strips of reflective tape, placed on building walls and lamp posts, which are almost certainly meant to aid navigation of troops on the ground.
- There are retroreflective survey markers, which are either used for navigation or are there just as a desinformation/fear induction method.
I have no clue if this kind of marks had any precedents, but it seems to be a necessary aid for navigation by paper maps:
- Road signs and asking civilians will not help, since those are actively taken down or can be deliberately misdirectional.
- Glonass is presumably to costly to equip everyone, or they just want a fallback.
- Things like safe places to land a helicopter can be extremely hard to deduce from satellite imagery and such and thus require a spotter on the ground and a way to designate a spot - thus, marks.
- This might also be a way to turn the eagerness to help of the civilian population against themselves by indirectly flooding phone lines of police and such with marker reports and all the paranoia associated with trying to find collaborationists and their marks.
