re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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What are the red dots?

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Fire/hot spots

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What does a fire detection mean on the ground?

The satellites take a ‘snapshot’ of events as it passes over the earth. Each hotspot/active fire detection represents the center of a pixel flagged as containing one or more fires, or other thermal anomalies (such as volcanoes). For MODIS the pixel is approximately 1km and for VIIRS the pixel is approximately 375m. The “location” is the center point of the pixel (not necessarily the coordinates of the actual fire). The actual pixel size varies with the scan and track (see: What does scan and track mean?). The fire is often less than the size of the pixel (see: What size fires can be detected?). We are not able to determine the exact fire size, what we do know is that at least one fire is located within the flagged pixel. Sometimes you will see several active fires in a line. This generally represents a fire front.

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LINK

You can use this to follow some events on the ground. Here's February 26 data around Antonov airport in Hostomel. LINK

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Fire/hot spots

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That’s interesting. Makes you wonder if the Russians have a bunch of troops in the field in Kaliningrad and are using camp fires to keep warm. I still don’t really know how that site works or if it even picks up something as small as a camp fire.

LINK

Here’s an article from 2018 that probably explains it. Not very exciting.

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This pattern—with many more fires burning in Kaliningrad than in neighboring Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus—is common in the spring, usually in March through mid-May. There are several reasons for the disparity, explained Alexander Prishchepov, a University of Copenhagen geographer who studies this region. “While intentionally lighting fires is illegal in all of these countries, enforcement of the law is much weaker in Russia,” he said. “Also important is that Kaliningrad farmers abandoned fields at a much higher rate than their neighbors after the Soviet Union collapsed.”

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Damn, did I stumble onto plebbit in this thread? Y'all are buying the media lies left and right. Quit watching Fox, NBC, and CNN, reading Twitter and reddit. They are all propaganda machines for Ukraine. Ask the reddit figs that volunteered to fight in Ukraine how everything went. Oh wait, you can't because they are mush and guts.

News Flash. The ocean is a corrosive environment....

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Quit watching Fox, NBC, and CNN, reading Twitter and reddit.

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How about ABC, PBS, NPR or the BBC?

What should we be watching/reading? Pravda?

Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing, March 16, 2022

We're at -- we've already started actively working on the $200 million. And so, now, of course, with today's announcement, we'll get to work on the inventory list that the White House released.

I can't give you an exact timeline of when every one of these shipments is going to go. All I can tell you is that obviously we certainly knew this was coming. So, we already started working on how to source all these items and get them there as quickly as possible.

And there have been things arriving even as we've been on this trip. I mean, so it's not like there's been a pause. But we'll just keep going as much as we can as fast as we can.

And thus far, things are still getting into the hands of the Ukrainians. Again, we've been very careful about talking about the physical means by which it's making its way in, but those routes are still open. Those things are still flowing. And as far as we're concerned, there's not going to be like a pause here, where we're just going to keep executing on all of this material.
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Q: Great. I just wanted to make sure and clarify a statement you made a few minutes ago, when you talked about the forces that Putin now has dedicated to the Ukraine invasion. You said 75 percent of his total military. I wanted to make sure that was correct, because I believe in previous conversations, we discussed that it was about 50 percent of his total military.

SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I don't remember saying 50 percent. Again, we have guessed that he's got about three quarters of his military dedicated to this fight.

Q: Sorry for the delay. So, really quick, on the 75 percent. I'm trying to understand how that math works, because I thought there was only, you know, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 Russian forces in Ukraine involved in the war. And I think that the Russian overall force structure, you know, as an order of magnitude, much, much bigger, just to the active-duty forces not including a couple million reservists they've asked. Could you explain the 75 percent?

SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah, I was talking -- I appreciate that. I'm talking mostly about battalion tactical groups, which is the units that he has primarily relied upon in the structure he's replied upon -- or relied upon. Again, this is an estimate. So it's an estimate.

Q: So it's 75 percent of the BTGs that's what you're -- OK. And then my other question --

SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yes.

DoD Transcript

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How about ABC, PBS, NPR or the BBC?

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Dont stop watching them. Those are definitely the most trusted new sources

Didnt they bring us the Ghost of Kiev?

Have we discussed how the global chip shortage is having an impact (if any) on supplying weapons for either side?

It takes 6 months to receive a laptop yet we are next day air shipping $1B in smart weapons