(Kharkiv) On Friday the 10th May (The day after the Russian 9th of May celebration and where Putin gave a speech about fighting the Nazis) Moscow open up a new front against Ukraine by crossing the border into the northern part of the Kharkiv Oblast with 35000 troops.
Monday, May 13, 2024
Ukraine: Russia opens up new front above Kharkiv.
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5/13/2024 07:39:00 PM
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Sunday, May 12, 2024
UN: OCHA revises Gaza death toll of women and children and halves it.
(UN) There's a very interesting story regards Gaza that came out a week ago, which for some very strange reason not many MSM news outlets have bothered to report and that story is, the UN revised the death toll from Gaza and halved the death toll of women and children stating it couldn't trust the figures promulgated by Hamas. Other than been covered by Israeli news outlets (naturally) the only other news org I can find other than an Israeli one is the Canadian National Post:
The United Nations has significantly adjusted Palestinian casualty figures for the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, halving the number of women and children previously reported killed. While more than 9,500 women and 14,500 children were reported among the fatalities by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on May 6, two days later that number was revised significantly downward. Today, under 5,000 women and 8,000 children are now officially listed by the UN as casualties David Adesnik, director of research at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told the National Post he suspects the discrepancy stems from the UN’s decision to quietly stop using figures provided by the Hamas-run Government Media Office (GMO). “So you see May 6 and before, the GMO (is listed as a source); all of a sudden, May 8, they don’t cite a source,” Adesnik told the Post over the phone on Sunday. He pointed to the similarity between the new figures and those from a May 2 Gaza Health Ministry (GMH) report as a tip-off suggesting the UN had ditched the media office’s figures in favour of those from the health ministry, “even though they don’t say (the Gaza) Health Ministry in the thing. “So clearly here we’ve done a switch from GMO’s big number, which never had any clear basis elaborated; like they just offered nothing but their own assertion. Whereas the Health Ministry does more to back its stuff up,” he said. The differences between the two datasets was investigated by Gabriel Epstein of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an American think-tank, who found in late March they yielded “wildly different and irreconcilable results, indicating that the media reports methodology is dramatically understating fatalities among adult males, the demographic most likely to be combatants.”
Epstein argued that his analysis of the two Hamas-run institutions “undercuts the persistent claim that 72 per cent of those killed in Gaza are women and children.” Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, an organization that monitors the body’s constellation of agencies, told the Post that the UN’s approach to monitoring Israel and Gaza is unique. “The UN’s method of reporting deaths in Gaza is the complete opposite of what they do in other conflict situations,” Neuer said, pointing to the UN’s recent efforts in Ukraine where it has established “a defined methodology using individual records of civilian harm, where a standard of proof was met, namely, reasonable grounds to believe that the harm took place.” Neuer suggested the divergent approach is due to institutional anti-Israel bias plaguing the international community.
“But when Israel can be blamed, it’s the complete opposite. For reporting Gaza deaths, there is no method, and no standard of proof. All the UN does is parrot figures supplied by Hamas, which is laundered and legitimized by the UN as the neutral-sounding ‘Gaza Ministry of Health,’ or ‘Government Media Office,’ when in fact both are run by the Hamas terrorist organization.” Neuer called the significant update, which was not announced, as an admission “essentially … to have been feeding the media and the world completely false numbers.” The UN Watch leader encouraged the body to take a page out of its own playbook used during the Syrian Civil War, “when the UN Human Rights Office announced it had stopped updating the death toll … because it could no longer verify the sources of information, acknowledging its inability to verify ‘source material’ from others.”
The news comes a month after the Hamas-run Ministry of Health publicly disclosed that more than 10,000 previously reported fatalities had “incomplete data,” lacking basic biographical information such as their names. Such recent developments have cast serious doubts on earlier Hamas claims that 70 per cent of Palestinian casualties in the Israel-Hamas War were either women or children. According to the Times of Israel, the latest revision would bring the ratio of combatants to civilians killed in the conflict to nearly 1:1. “Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare,” West Point’s urban war studies chair John Spencer wrote in late March, contextualizing the conduct of Israel’s military operations compared with other recent urban combat theatres such as Mosul, Iraq, in fighting against the Islamic State.
Two days after Spencer’s article, University of Pennsylvania professor Abraham Wyner spoke with the Post explaining a recent analysis of the Gaza Health Ministry he conducted, suggesting that the numbers were largely fabricated by Hamas to fit its political narrative. “Hamas hasn’t provided detailed data since early in the war. And why should it?” Wyner said via email. “You use what you can.”
National Post
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pounce_uk
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5/12/2024 11:24:00 PM
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Labels: Gaza, Israel, Misinformation
Saturday, May 11, 2024
US: Trialing novel Mine clearing system.
(Yuma) Mine warfare is where a military force plants small explosive devices (mines or Improvised explosive devices aka IEDs) in which to form a barrier so as to force the other feller to do as directed , be it halt their advance, be channeled down a path not of their choosing and in the case of nuisance mines just be a pain in the ass resulting in forces to be redeployed in the anti insurgency role .
Posted by
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5/11/2024 07:47:00 PM
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Labels: US army, Weapons news
Ukraine: and the use of decoys
(Kyiv) Throughout history decoys and misdirection have been used to great effect by one side to gain an advantage over the other, this we saw during the Second World War when the allies hoodwinked Nazis Germany regards the invasion of Europe, when the US deployed the 23rd headquarters special troops to the Uk in January 1944 who used dummy tanks, aircraft, fake sounds played over loud speakers and even dummy radio traffic in which to send the message across the channel that the Allies had a huge army around Dover ready to cross the shortest distance between the Uk and France, which tied up German thinking and units around the Calais region where actually they struck around 170 miles further south in Normandy.
You know, some decoys are hard to recognize but others are way too obvious that you better hide from your superiors that you just wasted a $3 million missile on plywood. This was the latter case.
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) May 10, 2024
No secondary explosions of missiles, not even secondary burns, tubes look pretty… pic.twitter.com/sjPUXDc0jS
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pounce_uk
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5/11/2024 12:08:00 AM
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Thursday, May 9, 2024
Interlude: Donna Summer – This Time I Know It's For Real
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pounce_uk
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5/09/2024 08:00:00 PM
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Labels: Good Music
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
UK: Testing direct energy weapons regards UAV defence.
(Thorny Island) The war in the Ukraine has seen the UAV (of all sizes) come of age, initially with larger UAVs, but as the air defence of both sides have become more proficient, then the larger UAVs have been replaced by the much smaller, much cheaper and certainly much more numerous First Person View (FPV)drone which are basically hobby drones fitted with an explosive device and their effectiveness has resulted in cages been built around vehicles to protect them with the latest iteration the Russia turtle tank where instead of a cage, the Russians have built a complete layer of armour around a tank , which has proved to be a very effective form of defence from FPV drones, problem there is, it does limit and degrade spatial awareness.
Whilst the above may be effective against FPV drones, it isn't against other tanks, anti armour missiles and only protects that lone vehicle (Russia is using such as the lead element in armoured thrusts in the Donbas) meaning those following are still vulnerable. But as stated, the Russians have used such a modification to great effect, so at this moment of time it is working No doubt the threat from FPV drones has become a cause for concern around the world and a lot of time and effort has been expended in which to try and nullify the threat. The British army set up Project Ealing where they aim to disrupt the electronics on the FPV by using directed energy in the form of radio waves and the other day they revealed the set up they have been testing with:Video of an armored assault by Russia's 5th Motorized Rifle Brigade on Krasnohorivka, and another appearance of a tank with a massive counter-FPV shelter and EW jammer, which continues to driving after a DPICM strike. It looks like the lead tank in the first video has a… pic.twitter.com/fQk3FN6ymx
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 16, 2024
The interesting thing here is the British Government started this project in Sept 2021 when it handed over £75 million for 3 such projects , 6 months before the war in the Ukraine started, so it appears the Uk was somewhat ahead of the game here.Project EALING unveiled: the Radiofrequency "cannon" in development for the British Armed Forces seen with 7 Air Defence Group at Thorney Island. A lot different from the early concept art, it is shown carried on a smaller HX60 truck rather than an HX77 and is visibly demountable pic.twitter.com/C8HRsL0x89
— Gabriele Molinelli (@Gabriel64869839) May 7, 2024
Posted by
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5/08/2024 06:05:00 PM
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Labels: British Army, UAV
India: Unveils first '“first indigenous bomber drone”,
(Bengaluru ) So last Friday India revealed to the world its first medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned airborne combat vehicle the FWD-200B developed by the Flying Wedge Company is capable of carrying out precision strikes out to a range of 200 kilometers, has a maximum speed of 209 MPH, a endurance capacity of 12 to 20 hours, and a payload of 100kg and comes in at 1/10th of the price of a Reaper UAV . Whilst on paper that sounds like a win, win win, questions have been raised on the veracity of such claims after the FWD-200B was unveiled to the public.
Posted by
pounce_uk
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5/08/2024 04:52:00 PM
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Labels: India, Weapons news
Somalia: Amnesty International demands that a Somali/Turkish drone strike should be investigated as a war crime
(Mogadishu) On the 18th March 2024, the Somali terrorist group 'Al Shahbab' attacked the Busley military base in the Lower Shabelle of the country, using several Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) aka suicide car bombs to breach through the defences
Amnesty International remotely interviewed 12 people, including four victims and eyewitnesses, and four family members of victims. Researchers also reviewed satellite imagery and medical reports, analysed photos of victims and weapons fragments, and geolocated videos from the scene of the attacks and of Turkish drone operations at Mogadishu International Airport.
Based on the photos of the munitions scrap metal, Amnesty International’s weapons investigator was able to confirm that the strike was conducted with MAM-L glide bombs, which are dropped from TB-2 drones. Both are manufactured by Türkiye. Attacks that fail to differentiate between military objectives and civilian objects are indiscriminate and may amount to war crimes.
I be honest , I'm all for NGOs such as Amnesty to hold countries to task, but I do feel that a lot of the projects they take simply embolden terrorist groups to play the victim card in which to further their own cause. Here a terrorist group attacked a military base using several car bombs and managed to get inside killing numerous soldiers , they were beaten back and Amnesty isn't bothered about the terrorist attack which started all of this, nope they are more concerned about the deaths of 23 people 14 children, 9 women whom they were informed just happened to be at the base when this all kicked off. This they came to the conclusion of by interviewing people remotely. Am I the only one to see the problem here?
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pounce_uk
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5/08/2024 03:11:00 PM
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Labels: Amnesty International, Somalia
Friday, May 3, 2024
Ukraine: Kyiv targets Russian troop deployment with devastating results
(Mozhnyakivka) The other day it was revealed that the US had furnished Ukraine with the
or the latter (but better known) HIMARS.
Unlike its siblings ATACMS is much larger and a single missile will take up the space that 6 will take.
However that does afford the missile a number of advantages such as increasing the range to hit targets from around 50 miles out to 190 miles and increases the speed to Mach 3 (around 2300mph) which makes it nigh impossible for most anti-missile systems to take them out. The warhead of the M39 version contains 940 small bomblets around the size of a baseball and in the Ukraine similar warheads used in the smaller MRLS missiles have proven to be very deadly in use against the Russians. So the other day in Mozhnyakivka in occupied eastern Ukraine.
Posted by
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at
5/03/2024 03:30:00 AM
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Labels: Ukraine
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Interlude: Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet – Dance of the Knights (The Royal Ballet)
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pounce_uk
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5/02/2024 08:00:00 PM
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Labels: Good Music
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Russia: Decides to add additional armour to its equipment.
(Ukraine) One of the things that we can take away from Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, is how badly its armoured forces have suffered at the hands of the defenders using Anti-tank missiles, mines, artillery and even drones, Well it appears that Moscow has put its best scientists on the job and they have come up with a armour upgrade which can be carried out in the field on its Mstra 152mm self propelled gun , but saying that I'm not sure what happens when they undertake a fire mission:
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pounce_uk
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5/01/2024 12:58:00 PM
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Labels: Russia, Ukraine, Weapons news