Underground warfare and drone warfare in Ukraine

'I saw naked children with eyes gouged out. Now I cheer every time I see a dead Russian': Ukrainian drone unit reveals the secrets of hunting Putin's forces, with their 'champion' killing 500 in a day - despite bizarre trick enemy troops use to stay alive

• Ukraine has seen the most intensive use of drones in the history of warfare
• Sergey Panashchuk spoke to operators deep underground on the frontlines

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the Philip K. Dick novel 'Second Variety'. It starts with two soldiers sitting in their bunker, watching a single enemy infantryman approaching their position. 

Seconds after, the underground 'claws' drones reveal themselves and use sharp blades to tear the intruder to pieces. The idea of a human life being taken right in front of you by man-made robots was blood-chilling.

I could not ever imagine that 30 years later, I would be sitting in a bunker and watching a similar picture, and both the bunker and the picture would be as real as it gets.

Our bunker is just a mile from the frontline, and it is well hidden underground. It can probably survive a direct hit from a 500-kilo KAB [Russian air-guided bomb]; no one would want to check if that is true, of course. But chances are high, as Russians constantly use their air sovereignty and KAB's as the last argument, up to 10 times a day.

I am a guest here, but the bunker is a temporary home for four army men. It is equipped with four bunk beds, Starlink, boxes with ammunition, and food.

An operator sits at the table and monitors online streaming from the drones. Casually clicking the mouse and choosing one live stream over another. Another two soldiers are playing backgammon. The fourth is cleaning his AK rifle.

'Look guys, that might be interesting!' calls the operator. All of us are glued to the screen. A drone detected a group of four Russian soldiers.

Sergey spoke to a team of drone operators deep underground in Ukraine, working tirelessly to repel the Russian invasion

Ukraine has seen the most intensive use of drones in the history of warfare

Safe inside an underground base, Ukrainian soldiers can operate drones topside to neutralise enemy forces

'Drones are the blood of this war. One drone pilot can kill up to 20 Russians a day. Our champion killed 500 once,' a soldier recalled

'Too bad it already ran out of grenades, so it may take longer', says the operator. Even without grenades, a drone can be deadly for the enemies, as the operator knows their coordinates.

In a few seconds, artillery hits near one of the black figures on the screen. Other figures looked unharmed and tried to make their way out, but the second artillery strike gets them first.

Soldiers are yelling, greeting each other, and cheering. Just like when you celebrate an unexpected but long-awaited goal from the team you support.

It is not a football game, of course; these are living people. They were. And they are not anymore because they came to kill us.

'I saw piles of dead bodies in de-occupied areas. Women and children. Some were missing limbs, some had their stomachs cut open, and some had their eyes gouged out. They were all naked,' a soldier from the bunker explains.

'The Russians set them on fire, and signs show many of the victims were still alive and died from the smoke poisoning. After that, I have no mercy for Russians, and I cheer every time I see the dead one.'

The frontline is infested with drones. If there is a soldier close to it, he will be detected and most likely killed. Drones are as deadly as the claws from the Philip K. Dick story. They can see in infrared, and they have thermal cameras.

We are watching another live stream. Two Russian soldiers are marching their way to Ukrainian positions. A grenade thrown from a drone met one of them and tore him to pieces. His comrade, who doesn't look hurt, instead of running away, walks in circles.

'Why is he not trying to retreat?'. I ask.

'Because there is a barrage detachment waiting for him. He is dead anyway; he is probably looking for the cover'.

Indeed, the soldier found an abandoned armed military carrier and crawled beneath it. The drone keeps hovering around him.

'Drones are the blood of this war. One drone pilot can kill up to 20 Russians a day. Our champion killed 500 once. Without drones, we can do nothing, and they are disposable. One drone can live up to three days here', says a soldier.

Meanwhile, a drone found another Russian soldier. He is hiding in the trench. A grenade lands a few feet from him. His body is pierced with the shell's fragments. He is twitching. Another grenade lands in his stomach.

'Would it not be enough to use just one?' I ask. 'He would have probably died from the first one.'

'He probably would have, but they are good actors', a commander replies. 'Once, our drones hit the group of Russians. By all the signs, they were dead; even thermal cameras showed their bodies did not emit any heat. 

'In a couple of hours, our group came to check on them, and they started shooting at us. How did they manage to play dead and trick the electronics? I have no idea. 

Life in the bunker gives soldiers access to electricity, warmth, food and Starlink comms

In their downtime, soldiers can sit and clean their weapons or play board games to pass time

Only two drones are continuing their duty. No Russians in sight. Soldiers are back to their backgammon and rifle cleaning routine.

'So now we are always trying to double check.'

I was thinking that that would have made a perfect warning sign. In Soviet times, we had a warning sign in the lobby of our buildings saying, 'Make sure you turn off the electricity when leaving'. 

Now imagine that drone pilots have this one: 'Make sure the enemy is dead before going to the next target.'

An operator not glued to the laptop anymore checks messages from home.

I am standing, thinking, and trying to digest what I just learned and saw. And a thought creeps into my mind: 'Russians probably have the same bunker, the same livestream, and kill our boys just the same.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12926561/I-saw-naked-children-eyes-gouged-cheer-time-dead-Russian-Ukrainian-drone-unit-reveals-secrets-hunting-Putins-forces-champion-killing-500-day-despite-bizarre-trick-enemy-troops-use-stay-alive.html

Space News: New images reveal Neptune and Uranus are not the colours we thought they were

 

New images reveal Neptune and Uranus are not the colours we thought they were

A team from the University of Oxford has used data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Imaging Spectrograph to show the planets in their true colours.

By Sky News, Friday January 2024

https://news.sky.com/story/new-images-reveal-neptune-and-uranus-are-not-the-colours-we-thought-they-were-13042392

                             A photo issued by NASA of Uranus seen from Voyager 2

New images have revealed Neptune and Uranus look more like each other than was previously thought.

Many people will think of Neptune as being a rich blue colour, and Uranus more green.

However, Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford and his team found that the two ice giants, the most distant planets in our solar system, are a similar shade of greenish blue.

Experts suggest the idea that both planets were different colours arose because images of them captured in the 20th century - including by NASA's Voyager 2 mission in the 1980s - recorded images in separate colours.

The single-colour images were later recombined to create composite colour images, which were not always accurately balanced to achieve a true colour image.

Particularly in the case of Neptune, these composites were often made too blue.

Webb’s Spectacular Image of Uranus: How It Compares and Contrasts to the Old One

Early images of Neptune from Voyager 2 were strongly contrast-enhanced to better reveal the clouds, bands, and winds that shape what we have come to think the planet looks like, scientists say

Prof Irwin said: "Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus were published in a form closer to 'true' colour, those of Neptune were, in fact, stretched and enhanced, and therefore made artificially too blue.

"Even though the artificially saturated colour was known at the time amongst planetary scientists - and the images were released with captions explaining it - that distinction had become lost over time."

He added: "Applying our model to the original data, we have been able to reconstitute the most accurate representation yet of the colour of both Neptune and Uranus."

In the new study, the researchers used data from Hubble Space Telescope's Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

In both the STIS and the MUSE, each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colours, meaning observations from them can be processed to determine the true apparent colour of Uranus and Neptune.

The researchers used the data to re-balance the composite colour images recorded by the Voyager 2 camera, and also by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3.

However, the study also found that Neptune has a slight hint of additional blue, which the model reveals to be due to a thinner haze layer on that planet.

The study also provides an answer to the long-standing mystery of why Uranus's colour changes slightly during its 84-year orbit of the sun.

According to the findings, this is because of how thick certain gases are at the planet's north and south poles, and how they appear when these poles are closest to the sun.

   An undated photo of Neptune seen from NASA's Voyager 2 in what was believed to be its true colour

Prof Irwin said: "This is the first study to match a quantitative model to imaging data to explain why the colour of Uranus changes during its orbit."

"In this way, we have demonstrated that Uranus is greener at the solstice due to the polar regions having reduced methane abundance but also an increased thickness of brightly scattering methane ice particles."

Dr Heidi Hammel, of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, who has spent decades studying Neptune and Uranus but was not involved in the study, said: "The misperception of Neptune's colour, as well as the unusual colour changes of Uranus, have bedevilled us for decades.

"This comprehensive study should finally put both issues to rest."

The findings are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

See Uranus' seasonal changes in color! 168-year animated time-lapse

PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS PAGE & FOLLOW THE SPUTNIKS ORBIT AT HTTPS://DISQUS.COM/HOME/FORUM/THESPUTNIKSORBIT-BLOGSPOT-COM

Exercises of 14th Century French Knight Jean Le Maingre: Somersaults wearing full armour ...

 

Did the 14th-century French knight Jean Le Maingre publish an exercise regimen?

Wall climbs, vaults and somersaults while wearing full armour, leaping on his warhorse fully armed ...

In medieval warfare, a man-at-arms had to be in excellent physical condition. He had to be able to rise from a fall in full armour, which would be tough in the heat of battle, where he might be stunned, lying on a muddy battlefield among a sea of enemies. Fitness could, therefore, be a matter of life or death.

Jean II Le Maingre knew this. He was a soldier, diplomat and royal councillor to France's King Charles VI. Born in Touraine in 1366, he was known by the nickname Boucicaut, of unknown origin but thought to derive from boce or bosse in reference to a fishing basket.

Boucicaut acquired such a fearsome reputation as a warrior and jouster that he was appointed a marshal of France in 1391, while still in his 20s.

He commanded the French forces, which suffered a disastrous defeat by the Ottoman Turks at Nicopolis in 1396, led an expedition to support the Byzantine emperor Manuel II in 1399 and served as governor of the city of Genoa (then under French protection) from 1401 to 1409.

Jean II Le Maingre was a soldier, diplomat and royal councillor to France's King Charles VI

Le Maingre was taken hostage at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 (pictured) where he commanded the French vanguard

During his lifetime, a lively chivalric biography — entitled Le Livre Des Fais Du Bon Messire Jehan le Maingre, Dit Bouciquaut — was published, lauding his achievements and detailing his 'workout'.

This included wall climbs, vaults and somersaults while wearing full armour: 'He practised leaping on his warhorse fully armed; sometimes he ran or walked long distances on foot to develop length of breathing and endurance; sometimes he wielded a heavy and long axe or hammer to strengthen himself for his harness and to build up his arms and hands for striking for long periods, and to adapt himself to lifting his arms with agility.'

Le Maingre was taken hostage at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, where he commanded the French vanguard. He was captured by the English and died in 1421 in Yorkshire. 

He was buried in the Collegiale Saint-Martin (which is now the location of the Basilica of St Martin), Tours, in his family's chapel, with the epitaph 'Grand Constable of the Emperor and of the Empire of Constantinople'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12927819/Did-Jean-Le-Maingre-publish-exercise-regimen.html

Space News: How to plan the ‘perfect’ meal to feed long-term space travelers

 

How to plan the ‘perfect’ meal to feed long-term space travelers

Astronauts in space burn more calories than humans on Earth and require extra micronutrients such as calcium to stay healthy during extended exposure to microgravity.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH, Jerusalem Post, JANUARY 5, 2024 

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-780924

                                American astronaut in space. (photo credit: PEXELS)

If you were going on a space voyage to Mars for a few years, astronauts would probably be provided with a diet of bland, prepackaged meals like TV dinners – not much to look forward to like a steak, schnitzel, or hamburger with chips. 

As space agencies plan for longer missions, they’re challenged by the problem of how to best feed people who would look forward to their meals. 

Now, researchers in the US, the UK, Australia and Spain reporting in journal ACS Food Science & Technology under the title “Modeling of Space Crop-Based Dishes for Optimal Nutrient Delivery to Astronauts and Beyond on Earth” have designed the optimal “space meal.”  

The food constraints considered were based on the recommendations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), considering up to 36 nutrients and 102 crops. They chose fresh ingredients that meet male astronauts’ specialized nutritional needs – a tasty vegetarian salad whose ingredients can be grown in space.

Astronauts in space burn more calories than humans on Earth and require extra micronutrients such as calcium to stay healthy during extended exposure to microgravity. Additionally, future long-term missions will require growing food in a sustainable, circular way within the spacecraft or space colonies.

While researchers have explored methods of growing food in space and what nutrients astronauts require to stay healthy, specific fresh meals have not been developed. So, Dr. Volker Hessel at Austailia’s University of Adelaide and the School of Engineering at the UK’s University of Warwick and coworkers wanted to optimize a space meal that meets those unique requirements of spaceflight and tastes good.

Hurricane Gonzalo is seen over the Atlantic Ocean in this NASA image taken by astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station. (credit: REUTERS/NASA/Alexander Gerst/Handout via Reuters)

Testers say the vegetarian space food isn't half bad

First, the researchers assessed combinations of fresh ingredients, using a method called linear programming that computationally balances different variables to meet a specific goal. In this case, their model identified how well the combinations of different foods could meet a male astronaut’s daily nutritional needs while minimizing the water required to grow the foods. The team was also concerned about the sustainability of the foods in space, selecting ingredients that needed little fertilizer, time and area to grow and whether inedible portions could be recycled. 

Of the 10 scenarios the researchers examined, they found that a vegetarian meal made up of soybeans, poppy seeds, barley, kale, peanuts, sweet potato and/or sunflower seeds provided the most efficient balance of maximal nutrients and minimal farming inputs. While this combination couldn’t quite provide all the micronutrients an astronaut needs, those missing could be added in a supplement, the researchers suggest.

To make sure that the identified combination was tasty, the team whipped up the ideal space meal as a salad for four people to taste test here on Earth. One tester gave rave reviews and “wouldn’t mind eating this all week as an astronaut.” Other people were cooler in their praise, even though they went back for second helpings. In the future, the researchers plan to see what their computer model dishes up as options for female astronauts and expand the variety of crops in their database.

How Do Astronauts Eat and Drink in Space?

'Space makes eating a lot more fun!' Astronauts explain food prep

PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS PAGE & FOLLOW THE SPUTNIKS ORBIT AT HTTPS://DISQUS.COM/HOME/FORUM/THESPUTNIKSORBIT-BLOGSPOT-COM

Cosmic Cinema: NASA Unveils Stunning 14-Year Time-Lapse of the Gamma-Ray Sky

By F. REDDY, NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER Jan. 1, 2024

https://scitechdaily.com/cosmic-cinema-nasa-unveils-stunning-14-year-time-lapse-of-the-gamma-ray-sky/

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has created a stunning all-sky time-lapse movie from 14 years of data, capturing the dynamic universe. It highlights the Sun’s path, the gamma-ray glow of the Milky Way, and distant galaxies known as blazars. The movie reveals both the beauty and complexity of the cosmos, showcasing high-energy events from across the galaxy and beyond, including eruptions from supermassive black holes. (Artist’s concept.) 

Credit: SciTechDaily.com

NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope presents a 14-year time-lapse movie, revealing the dynamic universe through gamma-ray imaging. It highlights the Milky Way’s gamma-ray glow, solar flares, and distant galaxies powered by black holes.

The cosmos comes alive in an all-sky time-lapse movie made from 14 years of data acquired by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Our Sun, occasionally flaring into prominence, serenely traces a path through the sky against the backdrop of high-energy sources within our galaxy and beyond.

“The bright, steady gamma-ray glow of the Milky Way is punctuated by intense, days-long flares of near-light-speed jets powered by supermassive black holes in the cores of distant galaxies,” said Seth Digel, a senior staff scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, who created the images. “These dramatic eruptions, which can appear anywhere in the sky, occurred millions to billions of years ago, and their light is just reaching Fermi as we watch.”

From solar flares to black hole jets: NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope team has produced a unique time-lapse tour of the dynamic high-energy sky. Fermi Deputy Project Scientist Judy Racusin narrates the movie, which compresses 14 years of gamma-ray observations into 6 minutes. 

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA/DOE/LAT Collaboration

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. The movie shows the intensity of gamma rays with energies above 200 million electron volts detected by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) between August 2008 and August 2022. For comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 electron volts. Brighter colors mark the locations of more intense gamma-ray sources.

“One of the first things to strike your eye in the movie is a source that steadily arcs across the screen. That’s our Sun, whose apparent movement reflects Earth’s yearly orbital motion around it,” said Fermi Deputy Project Scientist Judy Racusin, who narrates a tour of the movie, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Artist’s conception of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in orbit. 

Credit: NASA



Most of the time, the LAT detects the Sun faintly due to the impact of accelerated particles called cosmic rays – atomic nuclei traveling close to the speed of light. When they strike the Sun’s gas or even the light it emits, gamma rays result. At times, though, the Sun suddenly brightens with powerful eruptions called solar flares, which can briefly make our star one of the sky’s brightest gamma-ray sources.

The movie shows the sky in two different views. The rectangular view shows the entire sky with the center of our galaxy in the middle. This highlights the central plane of the Milky Way, which glows in gamma rays produced from cosmic rays striking interstellar gas and starlight. It’s also flecked with many other sources, including neutron stars and supernova remnants. Above and below this central band, we’re looking out of our galaxy and into the wider universe, peppered with bright, rapidly changing sources.

Most of these are actually distant galaxies, and they’re better seen in a different view centered on our galaxy’s north and south poles. Each of these galaxies, called blazars, hosts a central black hole with a mass of a million or more Suns.

Somehow, the black holes produce extremely fast-moving jets of matter, and with blazars we’re looking almost directly down one of these jets, a view that enhances their brightness and variability. “The variations tell us that something about these jets has changed,” Racusin said. “We routinely watch these sources and alert other telescopes, in space and on the ground, when something interesting is going on. We have to be quick to catch these flares before they fade away, and the more observations we can collect, the better we’ll be able to understand these events.”

Fermi plays a key role in the growing network of missions working together to capture these changes in the universe as they unfold.

Many of these galaxies are extremely far away. For example, the light from a blazar known as 4C +21.35 has been traveling for 4.6 billion years, which means that a flare-up we see today actually occurred as our Sun and solar system were beginning to form. Other bright blazars are more than twice as distant, and together provide striking snapshots of black hole activity throughout cosmic time.

Not seen in the time-lapse are many short-duration events that Fermi studies, such as gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful cosmic explosions. This is a result of processing data across several days to sharpen the images.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.

Recommend this post and follow

Sputnik's Orbit

forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/

Posted by Chuck

forum/lifeofearth/