You're listening to a stage talk titled, Using
the Open Source Munitions Portal. This week we
spoke to Joe Dyke and Joe Emmett from Airwalls
and Nick R. Jensen -Jones from Armant Research
Services. Together they work on the Open Source
Munitions Portal, a database of different munition
types for open source research analysis. We spoke
on ways to use the tool, their latest updates
and why resources like theirs are important.
This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Ma, on
Thursday the 13th of March 2025 in the Bell and
Cactus Discord server. Today we're talking about
weaponry, specifically munitions identification.
I'm joined on stage by the team behind the open
source munitions portal. The portal is a free
to use tool that aims to provide a key resource
to democratize information about conflict and
open up access to understanding munitions use.
Bellingcat and our wider volunteer team use it
frequently. The OSMP offers nearly a thousand
reference images of a variety of munitions from
active conflict zones, each reviewed and assessed
by at least two munition experts. Key information
is provided about each image, including reported
location, tentative model of munition, and where
relevant analyst notes written by experts. You
can also find guides to munition types, explainer
videos, and a glossary of key terms on site.
Basically, they have everything you would need
to know about munition types on their website.
Recently, the team launched the first of a series
of articles using 3D interactive models to explain
how to identify some of the most widely used
munitions, which we will hopefully dive into
today. The site has agreements with a number
of other research organizations, including ourselves
at Bellingcat, Human Rights Watch and Myanmar
Witness, allowing access and re -publication
of their archive of munitions images. The team
next to me is Joe Deit, director of programs
at Air Wars and a co -founder of the OSMP. Nikar
Jensen -Jones is also a co -founder and an arms
and munitions specialist and a director of armament
and research services. And Joe Emmert, a researcher
for Air Wars with the ears of open source intelligence
experience, focusing on conflict zones and munitions
use in the Middle East and Ukraine. If you'd
like to ask a question, please do so in the chat
as we talk. And please note, as I just mentioned
within your question, if you do not want me to
read your username out, because this is being
audio recorded and will be posted on podcast
platforms following this session. Okay. I'll
be back with the questions in a second, particularly
those that you ask in the chat. But first, let
me pass the mic to the OSMP team so we can learn
a little bit more about this fantastic resource.
Guys, take it away. Okay. Well, yeah, thank you
first of all for coming. It's really interesting.
We're going to try and keep our talks like you
asked to 20, 25 minutes. So we do, we will obviously
be talking and explaining the site, but we know
it's a podcast as well. So we'll try and keep
it broad enough that If you're not looking at
what we're looking at, you can still kind of
understand. I'm going to talk briefly about where
the idea for the OSMP came from, and particularly
the problem it was trying to solve. Nick's then
going to talk briefly about how he and the Ares
team designed the kind of verification and...
methodology to a certain extent. And Joe then
we'll talk about what's actually on the site
and some of the new developments, including,
as you mentioned, 3D models, et cetera. So as
a kind of brief background of where this kind
of came from, I worked as a journalist in the
Middle East for a decade. My last job being chief
correspondent for the West Bank in Gaza with
AFP, which is a big global news agency. I was
more of a kind of traditional, no, non -OUSINT
journalist. working on conflicts, writing about
conflicts, but I never really had the time and
accessible resources to learn properly about
munitions. And I know that was a thing from my
peer group, people that, you know, other journalists
working in their world, that we all kind of felt
like it was something we really wanted to learn
about, but didn't really have the time or the
expertise. And then in 2021, I joined Air Wars.
and set up the investigations unit. And we began
using open source techniques to investigate civilians
being killed in conflicts across the globe. For
those of you aren't aware of what we do, Air
Wars is the world's leading open source documenter
of civilian harm, assessing civilian harm claims
in countries across the conflicts across the
world, including Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and Gaza.
We were set up actually the same year as Bellingcat
in 2014, and actually a lot of the techniques
that Bellingcat has pioneered, geolocation, et
cetera, we have built into our systems and the
two organizations have overlapped many years.
But then when I started doing investigations
at Airwalls, essentially I kind of realized after
doing a few that I was doing the same process
every single time as an OSINT process, where
I would kind of gather all images of munition
remnants, craters, et cetera. And then I would
send them to one of the five or six munition
experts that I knew to review. And kind of over
time, I kind of realized this was both inefficient
and pretty undemocratic. It was inefficient in
that every time I was asking a favor from the
same few experts, sometimes they would come back
and say, yep, that's a Russian artillery shell
model number, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes
they'd come back and say, yeah, you've just sent
me some metal. That doesn't really tell me anything.
Nick maybe can speak a little bit more to that,
but you had a few experts being inundated requests,
often multiple journalists sending them the same
images about the same incident asking for verification.
And it was also kind of like inefficient in that
I wasn't actually learning or getting better.
I was just doing the same thing and kind of outsourcing
that every time. And it was kind of undemocratic
because I work for Air Wars and so we have contacts
with munitions experts and those kind of things.
The vast majority of journalists do not have
that. And that includes journalists in conflict
zones, journalists in smaller news organizations,
people who are kind of experts in OSINT investigations.
So they don't have that network of people that
they can go and check information. And so there
really was no resource available to fill that
gap. And so a colleague of mine and I basically
said, wouldn't it be great to set up an accessible
library of munition images that had been reviewed
by actual experts? And so that was kind of the
idea. And then I called up Nick, who will speak
in a second, who I'd known for a little while
by that stage. And he is one of the world's leading
experts in munitions and was one of the people
that I would call up and ask if they could do
me a favor. And it turned out he'd kind of been
having the same idea for a number of years at
the other end of the telescope. Aries have trained
hundreds of journalists and researchers and others
in munitions, but at the end of the courses,
et cetera, they don't really have easily accessible
material to direct them to. Maybe six months
down the line, a journalist would be like, oh,
I did that really interesting course, but now
I've forgotten it all and now I kind of want
to come back to that information. And there was
nothing in the public. domain that's like easy
and accessible. Images also, you know, referent
images tended to be munitions in their entirety,
not how people, investigators, journalists, et
cetera, find images of munitions in the real
world, you know, once they have exploded, you
know, a particular fragment, et cetera. And even
as like practitioners, experts like Nick, who
can maybe talk a little bit more, but the of
reference material meant that like going and
saying, okay, I want to check my assumptions.
I'm pretty sure that this is this, but I want
to just see five other pictures of that just
to verify was sometimes unnecessarily time consuming.
So for that, Nick and I basically kind of came
up with the idea for the tool, which we described
as a tool for journalists, human rights researchers
and lawyers who often receive little training
in munitions and have few accessible resources.
And the aim was not and is still not to turn
anybody into a specialist. Munitions, as I've
learned over the last few years, are incredibly
complicated. Every time I think I've understood
a munition, Nick or somebody will say, well,
actually, there's an additional new variant.
And you always have to be aware of false assumptions
and matches. And we do not say that the tool
can make you a munitions expert. But what we
aim to do is to raise everybody's level up a
little bit of understanding, a little bit, and
to build an archive that would allow you to learn
from investigations that have been done over
the last 20, 30 years in an easy and accessible
fashion. And so we applied and got a grant from
the Google News Initiative and now from the European
Media and Information Fund. And we built a prototype,
which we launched in 2023. a month or so after
the war in Gaza had begun. That was a very kind
of janky prototype. So we then spent five months
getting in -depth feedback from journalists,
lawyers, human rights researchers, and others,
specifically about how the tool could be more
useful to them, what functionalities that we
didn't have, et cetera. built a whole new version.
It's not actually the same websites that we started
from scratch. And that was eventually launched
in June last year. And we see this tool and its
evolution is kind of pushed towards more accurate
and responsible reporting on conflict. And we
at Air Wars are kind of geared around this mission
to focus attention on the full impact of conflict
on, particularly on civilians. And yeah, that
is... We, the, I'm going to hand over to Nick
here, but kind of my last point would be that
we would, we have, we still see this as like
a collective tool. So like, we do genuinely want
feedback because the things that aren't there
that could be really, really useful, uh, to people,
uh, where we also want to know those. So yeah,
that's, um, that's me and Nick, maybe I'll hand
over to you. Yeah, thanks Joe. Um, right. Uh,
I think probably, uh, some of you are familiar
with. with ARIES, but for those of you who aren't
ARIES, Armament Research Services, we call ourselves
a specialized technical intelligence consultancy.
And essentially what we do is provide detailed
answers on questions about arms and munitions.
So everything from proliferation questions, how
did that get there? Where might it end up next?
To very technical, what we'd call pins and springs
questions. How does it function? You know, one
of the key components we can look at. So we came
on board in part when Joe and I spoke the first
time because we had, as Joe said, received so
many requests for the same sort of answers from
various customers, if you like, or mostly unpaying
customers that really needed sort of fairly basic
information from our perspective, but needed
it to be verifiable and needed to be confident
in the answers we were giving them. So you can
imagine that a group of technical specialists
with really niche skill sets and Joe is very
kind in what he said about me. I would maybe
push back a little and say my greatest strength
is that I know a lot of really brilliant experts
in very niche fields. We have a guy who, the
example I love to give is we had a guy once upon
a time who specialized in East German ammunition
packaging from the 1970s. That was his focus.
And he would look at the fonts and the kerning
and look at when they changed the spacing between
the R and the E and this sort of thing. You think,
oh, okay. So having access to those people, they're
often coming in at a 10, if you like, at full
bore. nails, pins, springs, bolts, whatever it
is, they're really down the details. And a journalist
or an NGO user, or even an independent researcher
might need a five or a six, right? And what's
out there on the internet might be a one or a
two, or it might come across as a five or six,
but be completely unverifiable. So the OSMP in
many ways is about confidence. And what Aries
does, I think what we bring to the table for
this is giving the user the confidence in what
they're reading. So you've got to have the really
high level as you say Charlie, niche expert sources,
but you also need to have some of those generalist
introductory sources. And ideally you need to
have something in between. And that was the bit
that Joe and I really felt was missing. We thought
you could get some introductory training from
people like us and others. You get some really
competent technical specialty work from, again,
us and others, but you really had a hard time
if you wanted to get on -ramp into some of the
sort of medium sized questions about arms and
munitions. So Aries in contributing to the OSMP,
a large part of what we do is the verification
process. So we contribute in some ways to identifying
important information that might go into the
tool, but really what we're doing is verification.
So we're checking those images, making sure that
they're of sufficient quality, that the object,
the munition can be classified, and then formally
assessing them through a process that sees it
pass through at least the hands of two different
ARIES reviewers. So sometimes it's three. If
something's really specialized, it might be four.
But generally speaking, if you see something
on the OSMP, Two ARIES technical specialists
have looked at it and they've made a tentative
identification wherever possible. We make a distinction
between identifying and classifying. And those
are two kinds of operations that are really useful
in arms and munitions investigations. Sometimes
people need to look at weapons at a much more
granular level. They need to know for attribution
purposes, for example, the make and model and
the manufacturer, what country it came from.
For forensic purposes, you need to go even more
granular and it might need to match a projectile
to a... gun barrel, you might need to match a
powder residue to a rocket launcher blast, for
example. But other times you need to look at
things at a much more macro level and you need
to understand, you know, what types of weapons
they are in broad categories or how many air
delivered munitions were used in this conflict,
how many guided munitions, whatever it might
be. So OSMP tries to sort of give people both
sets of data where possible. But as Joe said,
we're not pretending that we can put a tool on
the internet that makes you into a specialist
with decades of experience. Instead, we're helping
people walk themselves down that path and then
when they can make an informed decision about
what kind of information they might need next.
So if you know you only need that sort of macro
level classification type information, then maybe
you don't need to go and pay a lot of money to
consult someone like me to tell you something
you don't need to know. On the other hand, if
you go down the path of understanding the weapons
in a particular investigation that you're interested
in, and those arms and munitions, turn out to
be really complicated or you need to interpret
them in a way that requires specialist expertise,
then you at least have a starting point to go
to someone and have a conversation with them
and explain what you need and what you've already
done. So that was the gap we thought needed filling.
The verification process, like I say, is I think
where we put our best foot forward so that we
give people confidence. When you look at the
OSMP, you're confident that, you know, there's
a, there's a small likelihood that there's an
error in there. We're fairly confident. You know,
obviously it comes with all the usual caveats.
We're doing this from open source material. We're
doing this from a distance. In most cases, some
of these we've, you know, there might've been
a physical interaction, but in almost all cases,
these are done from a distance from test -based
research. So there are all the typical caveats
for identification, but at least the level of
confidence is hopefully higher for the average
user than it would be if they'd stumbled across
the photos themselves. I think that's probably
the gist of it in the time that we have, but
Joe can talk a little bit about the process that
each entry goes through. Cool. Okay. Yeah. Hi
everyone. I'm the other Joe. I joined Airwars
in March of last year and essentially my job
is more at the start of the documentation process.
So I will be the one sifting through social media,
so telegram pages, Twitter accounts, Facebook
groups to essentially find the actual munition
remnants and then add them to the portal with
the initial tags before they go to the technical
specialists from Ares. I kind of want to start
by taking you through the evolution of the OSMP.
So where we've come from and where we are now.
Essentially, as Joe said, we initially launched
in beta in November of 2023, and then we relaunched
last year in June 2024 with a brand new design.
And throughout this process, we've sort of been
aiming to add somewhere around 50 new munition
images each month. And that's allowed us to expand
from around 230 to now about 860 munition images.
And within these munitions, they cover around
200. different models and types from around two
dozen different locations, regions, countries
across the world. And throughout this, we've
also been trying to expand the categories of
munitions. So not just air delivered bombs or
rockets or missiles. We've now been adding tank
gun projectiles, our recoilless rifle projectiles,
and most recently drones or UAVs such as the
Iranian shayad 131 and 136 or the Israeli harap
that was used by Azerbaijan quite a lot in Nagorno
-Karabakh. We've also recently begun to sign
agreements with certain organizations, one of
them being Bellingcat as well as Human Rights
Watch and Myanmar Witness to essentially allow
us to tap into their world -leading research
and investigative practices so we can use their
images from the field. We can add them to the
portal, add tags and ID them. And a good example
would be one from Bellingcat. Look at the research,
different research organizations on the portal.
And essentially when you click on each of the
images, it will allow you to look at the original
source, as well as an external reference link
where you can go to the organization's page,
talking about the munition. Another The feature
we've added to sort of aid understanding of munitions
is what we refer to as the Analyst Note feature.
So that's when we finish reviewing a munition
and Ares technical staff will add information
to provide basically greater detail surrounding
a unique munition capability. So for one example,
might be a GBU -39, one of these ones we've got
from Gaza. And Aries added that this image shows
various munition remnants, including a fuse well
and two nose cone fragments from GBU -39 small
diameter bombs. The presence of two different
nose cones indicates that these remnants are
from at least two distinct munitions. So not
only can we show you what these pieces of metal
essentially are, but we can also say something
that you may miss is that we've actually got
two nose cones. So it suggests in this instance
that there might be two GBU -39. air -delivered
bombs that hit this location. Talking about GB39s,
they were widely used in Gaza, which brings me
on to my next point, which is how we actually
not just document munitions, but try to link
them to incidents of civilian harm, that we don't
overlook the actual impact of the munitions in
conflict zones. Through this process, we essentially
usually work with members from the Air Wars team.
to match munition debris found in a particular
location to a specific civilian casualty incident
that's being investigated. It can also match
images obviously we've found from Human Rights
Watch and other organisations to their work documenting
the munitions as well. And we'll always add an
external resource link to these munitions so
you can look at the original work essentially
as well. The reason behind adding this is that
we think it provides important context, not only
of what the munition is, but most likely for
people who are investigating say a potential
war crime, you can look and see who actually
may have deployed the munition, so who has that
in their inventory, what platform was likely
used. So is it an artillery piece, a tank, a
fighter aircraft, something like that. And in
some instances where we have markings or data
panels on the fragments, we can actually look
at who potentially made that, who the weapons
manufacturer of that specific part of the munition
was as well. And we, essentially in doing this,
we're trying to help the Samoan community gain
an understanding of what the telltale signs of
the aftermath of a strike may look like for GB
39 or Mark 84 and what to look for in the future.
But I think as Joe mentioned, you've always still
got to be very cautious and look around for any
false positives in this. In sort of recent months,
we've also moved beyond just documenting munition
images to actually helping you visualize the
munitions. So we've been essentially creating
3D interactive models of some of the most widely
used munitions in conflict zones. which a lot
of you may have seen with the GBU -39. So essentially
it will give you a 3D model with extra information
around it. And you can click on the model and
look at the model from various angles, as well
as learn about the different parts and match
them directly to images in the OSMP to corresponding
parts. And in each of these parts, images linked
to the certain sections, you can click on them
and you can look at the original image, where
the source came from, just to get some extra
context around it. And we thought the GBU -39
was a pretty important starting point as it was
one of the ones that the New York Times called
Israel's weapon of choice in Gaza. We're also
looking at more widespread munitions that are
going to be used in the future as well. I'm working
on some other 3D models and different iterations
of how we can basically mess around and change
with the way in which the model is visualized
and maybe help you compare different munitions
side by side as well. Lastly, I kind of want
to talk about how the OSMP has become more reactive
due to the nature of the conflicts we document
munitions use in. Important incidents occur on
short notice in a short period of time and they
often generate large amounts of public interest.
And so where there is this particular interest
or potentially misinformation, we're going to
try and respond as accurately and quickly as
possible, essentially to provide as accurate
as possible information about the munitions used
in certain instances. So for example, after the
strike on Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General
of Hezbollah in September of last year by the
Israeli Air Force, the Israelis actually posted
on the Israeli Air Force Twitter account an image
of one of the F -15s involved in the strike.
And there was a lot of reporting about bunker
busters being used. And we were actually one
of the first to be able to identify that the
munitions hanging off The aircraft were what
we, what were found to be BLU 109 JDAMs, which
are essentially bunker buster and what is commonly
referred to in the media as bunker busters, confirming
that. Another example might be the recent strike
on the Chernobyl new safe confinement structure.
And there was a reported drone strike on that.
And then there was a lot of back and forth claims
about who had done it. Russia said that it wasn't,
that they weren't essentially behind the strike
and often even accused Ukraine potentially of
being behind it. The issue with that is that
there were images of debris and remnants from
the scene. And we matched one of these images
to a video and some other images from one of
the gantries, the walkways at the upper levels
of the New South confinement, which showed what
we found to be an MD550 motor, which is the engine
essentially of Iranian and Russian made Russian
variant Shahed 136 UAVs or kamikaze drones as
they're often referred to, which would suggest
that Russia was most like the one behind the
strike and not Ukraine. And yeah, we've essentially
tried to expand that and remain as reactive as
possible and responding to it. So we've done
other ones when there was a storm shadow strike
in Kursk. We were able to identify some elimination
remnants and confirm that a British made air
-launched cruise missile was used inside Russia
for the first time by Ukrainian forces. So yeah,
that's kind of how the OSMP came to be and how
it's moved forward. And maybe in a little bit,
we can talk about the actual future of where
we think it might be going. But yeah, apart from
that, we'll be happy to take some questions.
Amazing. Thank you so much for doing a little
tag team there and really embedding us in the
growth of the OSMP. OSMP. It's really interesting
to hear. Keep your questions coming in. I've
seen a few pop in already. I wanted to start
just by asking though, because this is something
that often comes up when you're looking at building
a tool or building a resource, particularly for
open source research where you find a gap, is
the difficulty in getting the resources and the
time to keep it maintained and to keep it up
to date with the flood of information that comes
in. When setting up the OSMP, did you find it
at first difficult to get time investment for
documentation? How did you learn to balance resources?
For example, Bellingcat has just introduced toolkit
maintainers to keep our toolkit up to date and
they are doing an incredible job. Before it was
very, very difficult for us to keep up with the
pace of different tools being launched and to
make sure that our toolkit was representative
of the latest open source tools out there. So
how has the OSMP team been able to manage that
process? Yeah, it's an interesting question.
I think when we first set out, we very much said
that this was about quantity, not quality. And
I think, uh, Nick, uh, and so I think Joe mentioned
that we had about 50 images. Now that's not actually,
you know, by OSIN standards, that doesn't feel
like very much, but they each go through quite
a very rigorous process and it takes 50 images
per month, you know, is actually a lot of work.
And so it's about selecting the images that we
think are the most, uh, useful. Yeah. I mean,
the Bellingcat toolkit is such a useful, uh,
thing, I guess what, what We're doing, we understand
that like the archive has cumulative effects.
If you know what I mean, that the bigger it gets,
um, over time and you had the same methodology
over time, it becomes more useful and more, more
useful. And, but we, we kind of also as, and
then, uh, you know, very much you'll notice there's
lots of things that aren't on there right now
that we, we were like, okay, let's start with.
We initially started with full munition categories.
We've now added tank projectiles and recoilless
weapons, and then some drones. But yeah, there's
a lot of stuff. Mines is not on there. There's
also things that are not. So we're trying to
do it well. And I think Joe E always says we
need a minimum of 10 images of a particular munition.
for it to be useful as a reference, right? Cause
you kind of want to see it from the same thing
from multiple different angles, et cetera. And
so, yeah, I think we're not trying to kind of
keep up in that sense. And we're not in the same
way that Bellingcat is a, like a hub of all of
these methodology. Like what we're trying to
do is like build kind of slightly methodically
a really reliable and in -depth archive, I think.
Yeah, exactly. That's amazing. We also spoke
previous to when setting up this call about the
fact that you also allow people to submit images
to the site for verification. Can you talk a
little bit about that submission process, what
you're looking for and if there's any caveats
to content that you can upload for verification?
Yeah, sure. I'll take this one. In terms of It's
open to anyone to submit an image. We do say
generally they should be a decent quality image.
So it should be fairly up close to the munition
or the munition remnant should be visible. And
ultimately you can go to the website and you
can, anyone can upload them so long as they have
a corresponding source image as well that we
can add and we can reference because part of
our sort of verification process, which I was
going to get into is that We try and look for
the most reliable sources that we can take munitions
from and get as close to the original source
as possible. And then we put it through TinEye
and Google Lens. We reverse image search it to
essentially make sure that we're getting as close
to the original as possible. And we're checking
the veracity essentially of the image and making
sure that it's as accurate as possible before
we even start the process of going through the
methodology behind classifying it. But it is
open to anyone. Anyone can submit. It sends it
directly to us. We get an email each time and
then we can review it and potentially upload
it. That being said, you do have quite a large
PSA on your site about not approaching munitions
under any circumstances. You mentioned that you
get quite a lot of imagery from organizations
like Bellingcat and things like that. Where are
most of your images coming from? How do you make
sure that people aren't taking unnecessary risks
to help document munitions on the ground, for
example? Well, I can answer the first bit and
then maybe Nick is best equipped to answer the
second, the last part of that. Essentially, most
of our imagery is coming... maybe predominantly
from social media. So different accounts, we
search in Arabic language or Facebook groups.
We often save them and archive them so we can
go back because for example, the Palestinian
police force in Gaza have an explosive ordnance
disposal team and we're often looking and scouring
through that. But it's a whole range of sources.
I wouldn't say we try and balance it out, but
it's predominantly social media. And then we're
also in or signing more and more potential agreements
with other organizations to use their imagery
that they've actually got people in the field
who are going there and taking photographs of
the munition. Very often in the past, we have
some images from, I think, Human Rights Watch
of US Atacans, which is a ballistic missile with
cluster munitions from Iraq in, I think, 2000.
three or four. So a lot of our images date quite
far back as well, especially when we take them
from other organisations. But we're trying to
essentially get a wide range of sources to do
that. In terms of approaching munitions, I think
Nick maybe could talk a bit more about the dangers
of that. Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't think there's
too much that needs to be said. You know, I'll
give the obligatory safety warning, which we
have on the page, which is don't do it unless
you're unless you're trained to do so. As we
partner with different organisations, Obviously
we want to have confidence that they're not putting
their employees or their sources in positions
of risk, but ultimately you can only go so far
down the chain. So I think the remedy to this
potential threat to sources or third order effects
that we might not be able to visualize is just
promoting good safety practices around arms and
munitions. So we use the arms acronym, which
is avoid the area, record all the information,
mark the area from a safe distance to warn other
people. And then seek assistance from the relevant
authorities, whoever that might be in a place.
So at the simplest form, that just means if you
see a munition and you happen to be in the field,
you stay away from it. You talk to someone competent
and it's really that simple. Very sound advice.
And Mike, the spelling expert asked earlier,
would you ever look at creating a similar database
for full weapons systems, effectively having
someone watch a military parade in Russia and
Uzbekistan and identifying the vehicle scene,
for example? Is that something you've ever thought
about? Is that kind of resource out there that
you're aware of? Joe, do you want me to tackle
this or you want to chime in? We would have thought
about that. Yes. We love the idea. I think, and
Joe probably has some words to say, but in general
terms, there's a lot of things we could do with
this platform. We have a big document that we
all are very excited about. Of course, it's all
about time and money at the end of the day. how
we prioritize those different avenues for future
development, I think is an ongoing discussion.
But as Joe the Younger mentioned, we've already
added recoilless projectiles, for example, and
we're adding new types of munitions that we're
looking at and we're adding more detail on those
that are already in there. Going forward, yeah,
I mean, in a perfect world, I'd love to see us
tackle all arms and munitions and then maybe
even look at platforms. Yeah, just really to
reiterate, yeah, like it was kind of trying to
bite off what we can chew relatively slowly in
history, in the sense of we'd rather feel like
we built a really strong database of this. of
specifically the ammunition types that we're
looking at. And then, but yeah, like Nick and
I have talked about small arms, there's lots
and lots of worlds in which this would be incredibly
useful. And the main thing that we did with the
second version of the portal was we made it kind
of fully scalable, like the structure is scalable.
And so that was actually uh, some of the data
stuff that, but like it involves some of like,
um, stripping back some of the things that we
had coded for previously and making it a bit
less so that like, yeah, if at some point we
wanted to add in mines or we want to add in small
arms, yeah, all of that is doable within the
portal. And like, um, I think that would be a
really useful potential, uh, thing that, you
know, over time would be of use to people. There
you go, Mike. There's appetite for it. Uh, That
being said, while we're talking about resources,
we mentioned that people can submit. Is there
an opportunity for people to apply or offer to
help with the verification process? Is that kind
of lopped away to ARIES or is Air Wars volunteers
also helping with the verification process? Is
there any way that open source researchers can
apply to be part of the verification process
at OSMP? Might be another one for both of us,
but I think I'd say, you know, not to be too
proprietary because the point of this, of course,
is, as Joe said, to democratize information and
get some of this out there, not behind a paywall
where it often is. I think the real value in
what we're doing lies in the confidence we give
users. I want people to be able to look at ammunition
and know that they have confidence in how that's
gone through the process. So certainly there
are avenues for people to join Ares and Air Wars.
And we're always looking for more talented people
with a specific background and skill set. in
identifying arms and munitions in our case, and
in other kinds of open source research as well
in Airwar's case. But equally, I think, you know,
it's important that if people, you know, attach
to this project or end up working on the OSMP,
they've come from a really strong background
that gives confidence to the user base. I think
that's what's more important than the volume.
A lot of the tools, I had a conversation with
this, with a... open source intelligence specialist
about this not too longer. And he was talking
to me about the sort of different waves of OSINT
tools that have come out. And in wave one, a
lot of it was all about capturing data, crawling,
getting as much material as possible. And the
sort of second and third waves that we're looking
at now, it's more about refining and sorting
through the immense amount of data that's out
there. So I think we're quite good at what we
do within the framework that we do it. As Joe
said, that's a little bit slower than maybe the
adrenaline rush you get from jumping on Twitter
and firing off an ID if you think you know something.
But what it gives people at the other end of
that pipeline is that confident result that they
can use in a court case or a human rights investigation
or a really important article for the New York
Times or CNN or whatever. So that to me is the
focus. I think where we might expand a little
bit in the future, and this is probably in line
with what you're asking, is in getting a bigger
funnel at the front. So getting more data in
for us to process. So time and money permitting,
that would be really cool. Yeah, exactly. I think
the like, you know, I've been doing this a while
now and I can most of the time I can say, okay
Well, I think that's a hellfire right and but
like I but I don't think that's actually of use
to anyone in the like a there's a million, you
know a number of variants that I might not have
understood and like what you really want is like
somebody like Nick or some of the people are
from the Aries team who have like Real expertise
and to say okay, that's definitively a hell file
as you know, you know, there's still tentative
but you know that like the value of the tool
is that like the people who are verifying it
are not You know, it's not a it's not quite like
a community value like what we are trying to
look into and I think we talked about this a
lot is like trying to make the tool more community
focused. And we've actually been really open
to ideas about that and how we do that. Like
how, you know, whether it be more like questions
around, okay, well, the community, you know,
the thing that people keep saying we're missing
is this and some kind of process. by having that,
I think might be more, more useful. Um, but yeah,
like, I think the, the, like Nick said, the value
is in having certainty that, uh, yeah, that somebody,
you know, the methodology that like two people
who've been trained in expert in munitions, uh,
identification have reviewed that image rather
than, yeah. Um, so it's a slightly different
process, but yeah. You know, I might just take
one more thing on the end there to say. that
we really want this to be a useful tool. I think
Joe said this right at the very beginning. We
want this to be something people use. We're not
doing this as a vanity project. No one's getting
rich off this. So if this is something that is
informing your work as a professional or even
as an enthusiast, if there are ways in which
the tool can do a better job of informing your
work and supporting your work, we'd like to hear
about it. That for us is probably the biggest
community drive at the moment is how can we make
this tool more useful? Part of that's going to
be educating people about it, doing talks like
this one. Part of it's going to be sitting down
with some groups of specialized professions.
So sitting down with some journalists, sitting
down with some human rights researchers and saying,
how do you use this? How could you integrate
it into your workflow? Does it actually help?
Like does integrating this into your workflow
make your day slower and not help you? If so,
we need to change something. So yeah, we're definitely
very open to hearing from people about how we
can improve what we're doing. The very next simple
question comes is how do people give you that
feedback? How do people get in touch with you?
If they do have comments or success stories or
things that they feel like could be improved.
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a, um, an email,
which I should know off by heart, but is in the
about page. I think it's just info at OSMP. rsmp
at airwars .org Which yeah, and to be honest
like We're quite open on social media. Please
follow us on the like we've actually had some
really good feedback on Twitter and Like blue
sky and People and she's saying oh like even
even like yeah, really really interesting feedback
and saying like saying a couple of people say,
oh, I found this image here, that look, you know,
like when something happens, being able to use
the OSMP as an immediate reference and then like
linking it on social media, that kind of thing
is really, really helpful. And so yeah, like
I think we're pretty open to that. There's an
email that Joe, the Joe is in charge of, but
yeah, we'd be very open to kind of social media,
blue sky, Twitter, et cetera. Amazing. I've just
linked the blue sky in the chat. I did the X
account earlier. And Izzy Bakehoven has just
also covented the OSMP at airwas .org as the
main place to email. So thank you so much for
that. There's another question from Mike that
I want to throw in. Is there a way of seeing
known users? So for example, if someone finds
a shell that they can... they can see the countries
that are known to use that type of munition.
You mentioned, for example, you can see the different
regions in the tool. Is there a way of seeing
different munitions that are used across regions?
I suspect, uh, Joe Emmett might want to say something
here as well, but I'll, I'll jump in by saying
that's much, much, much harder than it seems
at first blush. I think, yeah, that would be
lovely. What I'd love to have, again, in a sort
of perfect world is a really deep dive data page
for each of the munition models of at least those
of particular interest, which included, amongst
other things, information on known users. But
that is quite challenging to verify. So because
we're, as Joe the Elder said, trying to keep
to verified content and giving people confidence
in those results, we are... probably being a
little more stringent than maybe some other sites
or resources in really fact -checking everything
that goes onto those, onto those model descriptions
and pages. So it's possible. I think it would
be incredibly helpful, but I think it would be
a surprisingly large and time -consuming job.
Yeah. I'll just hop in on that. Yeah. It's, and
Joe, sorry I passed you in a second, but yeah,
it's something that we've talked about a lot.
And it's not like, You can do things like, you
know, you can search by location and specific
munition and that filters automatically. It gets
very complicated very quickly. I mean, yeah,
if you take something like a Grad rocket, like
who hasn't used a Grad rocket at this point,
right? And so like it's easier in the context
of Gaza, for example, where it's fairly clear.
who is conducting airstrikes there's the app,
but in, in other contexts, it becomes very complicated,
very quickly. So it's something we're trying
to work through. It's not currently available
and it, uh, it's just something that like we
would like to do longer term, I think. Um, yeah,
but it's about doing it right. And, and maybe
Joe, you've got some, uh, yeah, I just, uh, think
re -upping what you guys have said that, um,
with certain munitions due to the broad sway
of actors that might be both state actors and
non -state actors that might be using a munition,
it won't always be necessarily as helpful as
well in a conflict zone because the same munition
might have been used by both sides or in the
case of when there's multiple parties involved
in a conflict, all of them could be using the
munition. So it won't always be that helpful.
If, for example, there's an Israeli airstrike
in Syria and you have an Israeli made ammunition,
it might be helpful in that sense. We have discussed
it a lot, I think, as the other said, but it
might be something for the future. But again,
it's just, it's really hard to pin down essentially
sometimes. Okay. We've got about 10 minutes left.
So if you have a question, get your question
coming in now. Quickly going back to one of the
updates that you mentioned you were doing was
kind of this faster response, talking about ongoing
conflicts. And you gave a few examples, Jo, of,
for example, the Chernobyl attack. Have you seen
an increase of disinformation impacting your
work a little bit with the weapons identification?
For example, Bellingcat last year published a
really fun article called Oh Shit. Seven deadly
sins of open source research because we saw,
you know, a trend of people claiming to do open
source research and not following example rules
that we would want people to follow. Have you
seen a similar trend in UNITION's identification
on social media, particularly in ongoing conflicts
or fast moving conflicts? And how are you dealing
with that within your own reporting on social
media? trying to kind of get the word out there
that you've kind of identified it successfully.
That fills that one for Nick, I think. Yeah,
I've got some thoughts. You know, I'm going to
sort of, right, we're in an environment, we're
in an information environment that's becoming
in many ways increasingly more challenging. I
think people know that. People are used to, you
know, some of the disinformation campaigns that
we've seen in recent years in particular. However,
I think I will say that On the whole, since I've
been poking around Twitter and online communities
looking at arms and munitions identification,
i .e. some time, we've got better as a whole.
I think the level of knowledge has actually risen.
I think people are less often wrong in a very
public way. I know when I founded Aries, that
was 2013. A couple of our very earliest clients
were some NGOs and in one case a government that
had made embarrassing public mistakes in misidentifying
munitions. I mean embarrassing the way that actually
affected the conclusions of their report or their
claims about attribution in particular. So bad
stuff. When some organizations, NGOs and other
organizations that work in the open source space
got started, there were some errors pretty publicly
in some of their work as well. And a lot of that
has been based around the fact that these groups
often start small and with a tremendous willingness
to assist and jump to conclusions. So I think
as a whole, the OSINT community has matured.
It's got better at not jumping to conclusions.
It's got better at sort of self reflection and
self verification and the tools that we have
to try and combat disinformation have also improved.
So I actually will strike an optimistic tone,
I think, in answering that question. Amazing.
It's actually nice to hear some optimism when
it comes to the range of disinformation out there.
So that's great. I wanted to also ask you a quick
question about the 3D models, because obviously
that's a new thing that you've introduced and
you've spoken about it a little bit. Why was
that decision made that the 3D models was the
way to go forward? And what process goes into
creating them to ensure accuracy when you're
describing the different parts of each model?
Yeah, sure. So we were thinking of the best way
to essentially help visualize ammunition. And
we thought an interactive 3D model was probably
the best way because you can view every single
angle. We can break it into parts and we can
match those parts to real world examples. And
then we could add extra detail along the side
with it. And essentially the process is we have
a really good a 3D modeler called Azul with Air
Wars. And I will work with her and sort of initial
stage. We'll discuss it with Nick and Joe about
what is the next munitions. We have a few in
the pipeline mainly to do with drones. We might
be focusing on in the coming months. And what
we aim to do is to essentially draw from technical
documents. actually the arms manufacturers pages
and their images of the munition, as well as
dimensions. So on some of the future ones, we
might potentially add dimensions to the munitions
so you can get the correct measurements. And
we thought, yeah, a 3D model essentially is the
best way to go to help people understand the
munition. Cause often we'll have images of different
parts of the munition and maybe one image of
Say a Gb39 hanging from or a market E4 bomb hanging
from underneath fighter jet in one angle. But
you wouldn't always be able to see the full thing.
So matching these images with a model will help
you sort of understand what the bomb looks like,
particularly how the munition looks like, particularly
before it's actually delivered. So before it
impacts the target essentially. Yeah. And I would
just add on that, that it's also like, I think
it's really, for me, I found it, I found it really
Yeah, useful to understand and visualize but
also it's kind of like Taking it beyond like
I'll just trust us to munition experts. I've
looked at this right. It's It's like, okay You
can you can also understand if like by linking
to the specific images and so if you're on the
3d model You can see okay Well here is here are
there and then it takes you back to the original
images that we've already classified They're
in the archive as that particular munition. So
it's taking it beyond like Like it's an extra
layer of kind of openness and transparency around
almost like, you know, here is, here is this
model. Like here are the images from our archive
that maps these specific parts and it helps you
both understand it. And also like, I think myself
that like, yeah, now I, now I see things that
I wouldn't have seen before I was working on
this project. Um, yeah. I might, if I can quickly
also just say that, you know, Joe said at the
very start. that the genesis of this project
was in many ways responding to some of those
challenges that he had as a journalist and later
as a researcher and indeed that I've had as a
specialist with journalists coming to me and
others. In fact, I can see a few people in the
crowd here who field queries from journalists
occasionally. So you'll probably know if you
have an area of specialty and people ask you,
I don't want to make this sound like we've invented
a whole thing to make my life easier, but in
many ways it has. We've got a tool now we can
point people to that sort of shows them some
of the working. You know, oftentimes, as Joe
was saying, You know, as a journalist without
a specialty expertise in the subject, you're
going to struggle to get repeatability. You're
going to struggle to get confidence in the answers.
And you can't really check the working if you
like, you just get a, you go to an expert and
you say, Hey, tell me this. And they say, yep,
it's, it's one, two, three. And you go great.
And you take it as read. And this at least is
just our step towards showing a bit more of the
working out. So you'll see at the bottom of that
GVU 39 page, for example, there's resources,
there's links to other external sites with even
more information and brochures and manufacturers
information and that sort of thing. So I'd love
us to keep going that way. Obviously they're
quite time consuming to make, but if we can keep
doing it, then yeah, we'd love to just sort of
show some of the workings so people have even
more confidence in the findings on OSMP. Amazing.
Yeah, at Bellingcat we've also found 3D models
really help with kind of showcasing how we've
determined what munition is what. We found it
really useful when comparing airstrike models.
really quickly squeeze this question. Any plans
for expanding the geographical coverage of the
datasets? As someone reporting on conflict in
Latin America and the Caribbean, this sort of
resource would have enormous implications here.
So in the future plans, is there any plans for
expanding the geographical coverage of these
datasets? Yeah, I think, sorry, I think it goes
back to what we said earlier. Like, At the moment,
it's restricted to explosive munitions and kind
of heavy munitions. And Latin America tends to
be a place where there's a lot of small arms,
right? That may or may not change if stuff happens
along the Mexican border, but yeah. But at the
moment, we would cover Latin America if there
were... like the types of munitions being used
at scale. At the moment, it tends to be small
arms and there is some stuff, but yeah, we definitely
wouldn't rule out Latin America. There's also
some other gaps. It's not that we've deliberately
ignored certain places. It's just that we've
focused on the places where there's the... heaviest
use of kind of these kinds of weapons. And yeah,
um, I was noticing the other day that we only
have one image from Sudan, for example. Now that's
a place where there's been quite a lot of explosive
munitions. And so at some point I would like
to expand that. And so, yeah, there's no, there's
no, um, restrictions in that sense. Yeah. Um,
and just, just on this, I know a lot of our munition
images are currently from Ukraine and the Middle
East and to an extent the Caucasus. But we are
starting to add more munitions from especially
parts of Africa. So in the pipeline, we have
a lot of images of the MAM -L, which is a Turkish
made air delivered bomb by the Bayraktar TB2
drone. And that's seen a lot of use in Ethiopia,
Libya, as well as parts of Mali and Burkina Faso.
So we are starting to expand the geographical
sort of range of the munitions we are documenting,
but it does take time. And as Joe said, there
are certain parts of the world where it's more
small arms rather than the munitions we're currently
documenting. But again, we'll have to look at
that maybe in the future. Yeah. And just to hop
back in briefly before I let Nick speak, sorry,
is to say that, yeah, like one of the reasons
for that has been the airwars' geographical focus
has historically been the Middle East and Ukraine.
And so like there are contexts that we don't
know that much about, which is why we're hoping
to expand these partnerships. Somewhere like
Myanmar, for example, like we didn't, and like
Nick can maybe talk about like the munitions
used in Myanmar. They're very unusual and different.
Um, but like we worked with Myanmar, uh, witness,
uh, to build that bit of the archive because
like, like it wouldn't be something that we would
necessarily be focusing on as an organization.
So like that's kind of where you would like to
build a kind of more collaborative tool over
time. And yeah. Um, yeah. Sorry, Nick. No, that's
all right. You've said essentially what I was
going to say, which is, you know, we all have
our own backgrounds and geographical biases and
the areas that we've worked on. And in many cases,
we're trying to get sort of bang for buck in
terms of the time and the funds that we have
that are both limited for this project. So we're
trying to, you know, look at in some ways the
low hanging fruit and gather as much solid materials
we can to put through the pipeline and get into
the OSMP and into people's hands. If for no other
reason than as Joe said before, it's important
to scale this up and show the kind of aggregate
value of the archive. But as we push out into
the future, and if you're sitting there listening
to this and you've got a couple of hundred thousand
bucks you want to send our way, that would help.
But as we push into the future, obviously we'd
love to bring on people with different expertise
and partner with organizations with different
expertise so we can expand both the geographic
coverage, but also the types and munitions and
maybe the types of details that we're giving
people as well. Love that little plug there.
That was fantastic. Yeah, there's quite a lot
of love in the chat. for their plan to expand,
particularly in Africa. Subtle Knife says, Sudan,
yes. Uri says, I'd love to see more from Mali,
Burkina Faso, for example. And somebody else
has said that they can help with Sudan. And they'll
definitely email open source Neosha's portal
now. So thanks so much for that. It's towards
the end of the hour. Unfortunately, we do need
to wrap. I can see people popping questions in
still. So if the team Doesn't mind kind of staying
a little bit just to answer questions in the
chat. I'm sure our team would really appreciate
that. But thank you so much for joining us today,
Joe, Joe and Nick. It's been a pleasure to hear
about this incredible project that you've launched
and have been working on for so many years now.
It's been absolutely vital to so many incredible
investigations that have gone on over those past
years. Yeah, thank you so much for investing
your time there and for spending some time here.
I just wanted to mention that quickly that we
have in two weeks time, we're continuing this
conversation on munitions and identification.
And we're actually going to have a talk from
a previous spelling cat fellow called Andrew
Matthewson. He actually created a fantastic key
guide that can help you identify the most common
types of munitions that you might come across,
particularly explosive ordinances. You can find
that guide on the Bellingcat website, but we're
actually going to have a chat from him in two
weeks' time and digging in a little bit more
on the regional differences between weaponry
and munitions. and what kind of keys and guides
you can create yourself or the other community
to try and help identify these things. So please
join us for that call. But yeah, thank you so
much, Doe, Doe and Nick for your time today.
It was a pleasure. Thanks, Charlie. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much all. Thank you for
listening to the stage talk. If you'd like to
catch a stage tour live where you can ask the
guest questions, join the Bellingcat Discord
server by visiting www .discord .gg slash Bellingcat.
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