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🇨🇦 🇺🇦 Grandfather, OSINT of 🇺🇦 and 🇷🇺 sources: drone warfare and munitions, EW, landmines. ❤️my family (grandchildren!), reading, history.
Apr 6 7 tweets 3 min read
The accelerometer in the flight controller (FC) of an FPV drone measures linear acceleration, helping the FC understand the drone’s current direction and the force with which it is moving.
1/ Image The solid-state accelerometer has a tiny “proof mass”suspended by springs.
When the drone accelerates or tilts, inertia shifts the mass slightly.
This movement is measured electronically along the X, Y, and Z axes, telling the FC the FPV’s direction and which way is down.
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Apr 4 6 tweets 2 min read
The Telegram messenger app was supposedly blocked in Russia on April 1, but I have seen no change whatsoever in the activities of the many Russian channels that I follow.
On his channel, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov explains why:
1/ Image “😎 Telegram was banned in Russia — yet 65M Russians still use it daily via VPNs, with 50M+ sending messages every day. The government has spent years trying to ban VPNs too.
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Mar 31 10 tweets 4 min read
Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) satellite navigation systems have played a crucial role in the electronic warfare (EW) struggle between Ukraine and Russia.
These electronic systems provide powerful protection against EW systems that try to jam GPS/GLONASS signals.
1/ Image GPS signals are extremely weak when they reach earth from the satellites 20,200 km overhead (10^{-16} watts!).
This makes jamming these signals (overwhelming with a stronger signal) relatively simple, and a powerful jammer can prevent reception of GPS signals over a wide area.
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Mar 30 9 tweets 2 min read
The official journal of the israeli Defense Forces, Maarachot, has issued a warning that the IDF must not only operate FPVs but also dramatically upgrade its FPV countermeasure systems:
1/ Image “At a time when only Russia and Ukraine have achieved full-scale production of operational FPV systems and continue to improve and expand them, it becomes clear that the Israel Defense Forces need to make a leap forward not at the experimental or pilot level, ...
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Mar 27 6 tweets 2 min read
The cows of peasant farmers are being slaughtered by the State in Siberia (apparently for hoof and mouth disease), which has caused much outrage in Russia.
Russian blogger “Russian's People's Militia” contrasts this to the silence about the tremendous loss of life in Ukraine:
1/ Image “I wanted to write a long and complicated text, but then I realized it was unnecessary.
This photo did it for me instead.
Everything here!
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Mar 27 7 tweets 2 min read
Russian blogger Alexei Zhivov believes that the catastrophic effects of the war in Ukraine and increasing bans and restrictions will result in a “Great Russian Exodus”.

“A purely subjective feeling from communicating with different people.
1/ Image “A series of bans, restrictions, and an increase in financial burdens against the backdrop of a five-year military conflict will do much more harm to us in the medium term than the military conflict itself.
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Mar 26 7 tweets 2 min read
Ukraine's dynamic new Minister of Defense Mikhail Fedorov continues to really impress me:

“I held a closed meeting with assault troops and infantrymen from 13 units, who daily hold the front and personally carry out extremely difficult tasks.
1/ Image “Sergeants and soldiers are working on the Donetsk, Sumy, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson fronts.

We discussed the real situation on the front and identified problematic issues: the duration of stay in positions, the complexity of entry and exit operations, …
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Mar 24 12 tweets 3 min read
Russian milblogger Alexander Karchenko concludes that the absolute dominance of the battlefield by drones means that even a Russian mobilization would just increase losses with no breakthrough.

“On the realities of the front.
1/ “Drones have completely taken over the battlefield. In 2024, you could still get through on a motorcycle, in 2025, you could run through the landing zone, but now only the lucky ones reach their target. Aerial control is total.
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Mar 23 7 tweets 3 min read
A reporter from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘵 was admitted to Unmanned Forces Commander “Madyar's” headquarters with its “darkly eccentric atmosphere.”
In his tiny cubicle, Madyar explained his conviction that to defeat Russia, Ukraine must kill more Russians than can be replaced.
1/ Image He claims his command now kills 400 Russians for every one Ukrainian, and each kill costs just $878 in materials.

“We should be swapping plastic and metal for dead Russians. It’s the best exchange rate.”
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Mar 18 20 tweets 3 min read
Russian blogger and (now former!) pro-Kremlin loyalist Ilya Remeslo has completely turned against Putin and his catastrophic war in Ukraine.
Remeslo charges that Putin is a war criminal and thief.

“Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.

Someone had to say it.
1/ Image “1. The war in Ukraine.
Started as a "police operation", the war has already claimed 1-2 million victims.
In 2014, I supported the annexation of Crimea precisely because it was bloodless. We all thought then that Putin was a unifier of Russian lands.
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Mar 14 10 tweets 3 min read
Commander of Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces “Madyar” will increase the size of his forces to 100,000, and speaks forcefully to draft dodgers and deserters that must come forward now to serve:
1/ Image “**Attention‼️ By April 1, the enemy’s unmanned systems forces will reach 100,000 personnel, and this is not an April Fool’s joke. More than a month ago, the drone units already had 86,000+ people working in them.
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Mar 13 4 tweets 2 min read
The first anti-tank landmines were urgently developed by the Germans after the first British tanks appeared in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Initially, different improvised variations of projectiles and mortar bombs with modified fuzes were buried vertically in the ground.
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Another type used Perdite explosive placed in a shallow box.
Perdite was a German substitute explosive based on ammonium perchlorate, developed due to shortages of more conventional materials, serving as a lower-power alternative to TNT, Lyddite, or other standard fillings.
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Mar 12 17 tweets 4 min read
Israeli-Ukrainian analyst Yigal Levin contemptuously derides Russian insistence that Britain and NATO—but not Ukraine—are responsible for Russia's latest military defeat:

“After the epic demolition by Ukrainians of the strategically important electronics factory…
1/ “… ‘Kremniy EL’—I emphasize, strategically important—a cohort of Z-supporters crawled out again, cranking up the same old tune that it's not Ukraine fighting them, but perfidious Britain or even the whole of NATO.
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Mar 10 8 tweets 3 min read
Russian blogger Andrey Filatov laments that Ukraine is using very high frequencies for FPVs (and at ranges of 50–60 km!) that can’t be detected by standard drone detectors or jammed.

“The sky is falling again. The obvious has happened. We need to catch up again...
1/ Image “Our turbo-degenerative society, defending military incompetence and condemning reporters who are willing and able to engage in development, demands that everyone do their own thing.

Shit.

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Mar 6 10 tweets 3 min read
Russian blogger “Philologist in Ambush” (Svyatoslav Golikov) realizes that Unmanned Systems Forces Commander “Madyar's” plans to have all UAVs remotely operated at a distance from the combat zone will restore maneuver to Ukraine's most effective combat arm:
1/ Image “Madyar declares as a goal the mass implementation of solutions for remote control of drones and robotization on LBS, and, speaking about the planned withdrawal of SBS units from the combat contact zone, he emphasizes the problem of staff shortages…
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Mar 6 11 tweets 3 min read
Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov describes how the Russian State extracts information from cell phones to monitor every movement and communication of the entire Russian population.

“Today, an interesting topic of SORM in Russia was raised.
1/ Image “SORM [System for Operative Investigative Activities] is a [Russian] system of operational-search measures. Once, before 2014, I communicated with system integrators from Russia and learned a lot about this topic.
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Mar 3 6 tweets 3 min read
Advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Serhii “Flash” urges defense manufacturers to develop interceptor drones with the speed to catch Russian jet-powered UAVs.

“Friends, if you trust me, then listen up.
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[Geran-3] Image “We are increasing the effectiveness of anti-aircraft drones and sooner or later we will reach an efficiency of up to 90%. I believe this will happen quickly.
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Mar 3 4 tweets 3 min read
A new Russian air-launched cruise missile called “Izdeliye 30” has a jam-resistant 12-element “Comet-M12” CRPA satellite navigation system.
The estimated range of the new missile is 1,500 km, with a speed of 600–800 km/h, and an 800 kg warhead.
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Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas resist jamming by adjusting reception.
Using multiple elements, directions of lowest sensitivity (nulls) are aimed toward a jammer, while maintaining gain for GPS signals.
Adaptive beamforming defeats multiple jammers for stable reception.
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Mar 2 17 tweets 5 min read
Excerpts from a TV interview given by Kirill Budanov, the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

“The [Russians'] achievements this winter in terms of territory are minimal. Probably the least compared to all other periods of all campaigns against Ukraine.
1/ Image “But it's also true that there's a factor of influence on society, primarily through attacks on energy. They were, let's say. And here they achieved significant success in that, not in terms of influencing society, but in terms of destroying our energy system.
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Feb 18 12 tweets 3 min read
A Russian artilleryman tells a story that illustrates the complete disconnect between “higher-up” commanders and frontline units.

“A subscriber, an artillery soldier, shared another bureaucratic nightmare that could cost soldiers their lives:
1/ Image “The D-30 battery received an order from the army commander to move forward because they weren't meeting the average distance from the front line. There's a certain distance in kilometers that the guns should be from the front line.
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Feb 13 13 tweets 3 min read
Following close on the heels of losing their Starlinks, the Russians are stunned and baffled at the abrupt throttling of the Telegram messenger app by the State, since it is used for a wide variety of critical military communications.
Blogger “Battle Unit” expresses it best:
1/ Image “From tomorrow, many units are being ordered to switch to MAX, close Telegram, and delete work channels, right up to completely deleting accounts. They promise checks, controls, and IT security.
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