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🇨🇦 🇺🇦 Grandfather, OSINT of 🇺🇦 and 🇷🇺 sources: drone warfare and munitions, EW, landmines. ❤️my family (grandchildren!), reading, history.
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Nov 6 14 tweets 4 min read
A Ukrainian primer explains how Russia gathers information from cell phone use in the grey zone and its consequences.

“Why you need to be careful when using a phone at the front line. Let's consider the issue using the example of the ELINT system (Electronic Intelligence).
1/ Image “ELINT usually works only on group targets. Three or more phones in one place in the forest and the artillery gets the target designation. The radio intelligence complex shows the SIM card number, the phone's serial number, and the signal strength from the phone.
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Nov 6 15 tweets 3 min read
Russian blogger “Military Manager” reveals the tremendous importance of the huge Ukrainian “Baba Yaga” heavy drone fleet, while the Russian's hardly have any.

“The heavy drones of the Ukrainians started causing problems literally from the moment they appeared on the front.
1/ “Today, they have become literally ubiquitous and perform a huge amount of incredibly important and complex work for the enemy. Heavy drones have become the backbone of the enemy's FPV drone operations; without their work as relays, the effectiveness of enemy strike drones…
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Oct 28 10 tweets 3 min read
Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov has witnessed the vast scale of the comprehensive operations of the Ukrainian SBU to track and document every Russian crime and atrocity.

“No one will go unpunished.
1/ Image “In our country, there are many structures and agencies that perform important work, but few people talk about it.

Did you know that all crimes committed by Russians against the Ukrainian people are documented and recorded?
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Oct 22 5 tweets 4 min read
The progression in capabilities of the Russian UMPK guided glide bomb series for FAB-500 aerial bombs

The original UMPK for the FAB-500 M62 aerial bomb was guided by a 4-element “Cometa M4” CRPA jam-resistant satellite navigation system, with up to 75 km in range.
1/ Image The first major upgrade is the extended-range UMPK-PD, with increasingly difficult to jam 8 and then 12 element “Cometa M8–12” satellite navigation.
Extended wings and a new FAB-500T bomb with better aerodynamic qualities increases the range to 100 km.
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Oct 19 18 tweets 5 min read
A Russian soldier describes in detail the deadly conditions on the frontline.

“Small groups are fighting a huge war. An ‘Opornik’ [dugout] can be held by a handful: two, three, or four people. The line of combat contact has completely changed.
1/ Image “In 2023, our task was to bring a company into the village on ten BPM-3s. That was already difficult back then.

Now the equipment is stationed tens of kilometers away from the LBS.
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Oct 18 18 tweets 4 min read
VictoryDrones's Maria Berlinska argues that victory for Ukraine will come by winning the race to an army of fully autonomous drones, and not with Tomahawks.

“I do not claim to have the ultimate truth; this is purely my broad vision of the next stages of the technological war.
1/ Image “A conditional division.
Just to understand the overall picture and trends.

The first stage - drones are controlled by humans directly on the battlefield. Mainly for artillery fire correction and reconnaissance. The first attempts at strike operations - drops, kamikaze.
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Oct 17 12 tweets 4 min read
A Russian manual entitled “Countering ‘Baba Yaga’ Type Drones” starts with vivid descriptions of the capabilities of three types of Ukrainian bombers.
Described first in some selected excerpts from the manual is the Nemesis drone, a heavy quadcopter guided by Starlink.
1/ Image “If it goes to bomb some armored vehicles or bunkers, it takes PTABs [submunitions] or small cumulatives [shaped-cgarge]. If it goes to work specifically on air defense posts, it mainly takes 60 mm anti-personnel mines.
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Oct 14 17 tweets 4 min read
Military analyst Yigal Levin vividly explains that many Westerners like Mark Rutte don’t seem to comprehend that a Russian “lives in an invented world” and only understands strength.

“NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte explains why they don't shoot down Russian planes— …
1/ “…because NATO is vastly stronger.

The logic is clear — it's the condescending logic of a noble gentleman: if you're the boss and the alpha, and there's a pygmy jumping at your feet, you don't necessarily have to kick him, you can just smile — …
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Oct 9 4 tweets 3 min read
Ukrainian encrypted radio communications are all ready to defeat quantum computers.
Tactical mesh radio manufacturer Himera has partnered with Canadian cryptology company Quantropi to incorporate post-quantum cryptology.
1/ Image The rapid development of quantum computing technology implies that the ability to break current cryptography methods is approaching.
Quantropi has developed special random-number algorithms designed to defeat even quantum computer attacks on Himera's encryption.
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Oct 8 10 tweets 4 min read
Russian blogger “Rybar” (Mikhail Zvinchuk) unfortunately is correct in this short summary of one the major capabilities that have been added to the “Geran-2” (Shahed) strike UAV system.
But he also reveals something important.

“Linked by a chain”
1/ “With each passing month, the "Gerani" become increasingly deadly and are equipped with technical devices that significantly enhance their combat capabilities. They now have network radio modems installed.
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Oct 7 14 tweets 4 min read
The inevitability of autonomous drones and drone swarms is often dismissed with “microwave weapons will drop them all.”
EW and radio expert Serhii “Flash” reviews the state of development of this much-hyped anti-drone technology including the best-known, the “Leonidas” system:
1/ Image “Electromagnetic weapons are being actively discussed online. Many different devices can be classified under this term based on their operating principles, but in my opinion, only the concept of directed ultra-high-frequency radiation looks realistic.
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Oct 6 19 tweets 3 min read
Russian blogger Alex Kartavykh confirms that civilians are wary of signing very lucrative contracts because they know the Russian army consistently deceives.

“The issue is not with the civilian authorities, but with the employer — with how the Army has positioned itself.
1/ Image “Since 2023, when contract soldiers for wartime were recruited en masse, many thousands of these contract soldiers have encountered deception from the employer and brought this knowledge home during leaves or after being discharged as disabled.
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Oct 5 14 tweets 4 min read
Russian blogger “Atomic Cherry” argues that Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries will cause Moscow to perversely respond by forcing a reduction in consumption and the Russian economy itself.
1/ “Refined ideas about state governance imply the search for some highly effective symmetrical solution to any threat or crisis prospect.
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Oct 4 7 tweets 3 min read
Blogger “Russian Engineer” reacts to “Madyar's” announcement of a big expansion of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces.

“So the enemy already has 5 brigades with a fundamentally new organizational and staffing structure (ОШС), which are based on completely different…
1/ Image “…principles compared to the rest of the army. That is, those elements that do not fit well in a regular infantry unit (the Ukrainians also have stories of sending lazy drone operators to assault units) are gathered there together to work on interaction, …
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Oct 3 7 tweets 2 min read
A delegation from my volunteer group Defense Tech for Ukraine spent two weeks in Ukraine meeting with military units and defense manufacturers.
My strongest impression was of Ukrainian civilians completely ignoring the frequent air raid sirens and calmly going about their day.
1/ Even a Shahed attack on Kharkiv one night had no apparent effect other than an earlier blackout.
The Milky Way was vivid in the middle of the city!
The Ukrainian people seem determined to ignore the hated Russians as much as possible, and refuse to let them affect their lives.
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Sep 30 7 tweets 3 min read
Two Russian bloggers have opposing views on the effectiveness of steel mesh at protecting energy infrastructure from Ukrainian long-range strike UAVs.
“Two Majors” is scornful of these, arguing that the blast wave of a 50 kg warhead is hardly mitigated at a 2 meter stand-off.
1/ “We get a blast wave pressure of 9089 kPa.

That is, at the moment of the explosion, at 2 meters from the top of the tank, the pressure of the blast wave (excluding damaging elements) on one square meter of the protected object will be 9,089,000 N/m².
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Sep 28 17 tweets 4 min read
Semyon Pegov (Wargonzo) reports on the return to analog communications in the Russian army, and even a revival of horse cavalry units.

“RETURN OF THE CAVALRY

On the front today, it is often heard that the war has reached a technological deadlock.
1/ Image “Moreover, there is a feeling that this is believed both on our side and on the other side of the trenches. We often use technical means in a mirrored way, starting with electronic communication and navigation devices, including the notorious FPV drones, and ending with…
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Sep 26 10 tweets 3 min read
Ukrainian Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov explains the origin and purpose of the mystery UAVs over Europe.

“✈️ Appearance
UAVs do not appear out of nowhere. They either fly in from afar through the air, and this route is clearly recorded by NATO air defense.
1/ Image “Or they are launched locally in countries by some ‘DRG’. [sabotage-reconnassaince group]
There is no information about all this. Although NATO has it. My personal opinion is that the launch was from the decks of Russian naval vessels in the Baltic Sea area.
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Sep 21 16 tweets 3 min read
Ukrainian analyst Yigal Levin insists that Russia isn’t fighting the collective West or NATO as they like to believe.
Russia is only fighting Ukraine.

‘A characteristic trait of Russians is inventing nonexistent worlds, entire realities, …
1/ Image “…sometimes for very specific tasks, but then sincerely believing in that very world they themselves invented.
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Sep 13 18 tweets 3 min read
Russian blogger “Philologist in Ambush” (Svyatoslav Golikov) has written a series on the problems of drone units entitled

“Problems of Practical Implementation of the Drone Component in the Active Army.”

“1⃣ A Number of Specific Problems in Implementing the Unmanned Aerial…
1/ Image “…Component in Combined Arms Structures

First. The problem of insufficient understanding by the command staff of the technical capabilities and specifics of drone use, starting from the tactical level up to senior officers.
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Sep 10 11 tweets 5 min read
As Russia increases its production of Shahed (Geran-2) kamikaze UAVs that led to the recent 800 drone raid, Ukrainian interceptor drones are urgently needed.
Missile systems are too expensive, so a cost-effective, very fast, and rapidly produced solution is required.
1/ Image Standard quadcopters are too slow and lack altitude reach to intercept a Shahed.
They were designed for hovering and flights at low level.
The key design change for interceptors is a fixed wing or hybrid frame that trades hovering for high speed and climb rate.
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