Hi everyone! 

That was different, wasn’t it? After geolocations, satellite imagery analysis and researching old criminal files, we now identified explosive ordnance! While familiar territory for some, it introduced a whole new area of open source research for many of you. 

This newsletter will provide you with last month’s answers, show you the methods that others used to solve the exercises and reveal how Bellingcat researcher Youri van der Weide got on with the challenges in our latest livestream. But first, here’s a little teaser of what's coming up next: Bellingcat staff brought home some souvenirs from their summer vacations.

September Challenge - Puzzling Postcards

Writing this newsletter feels bittersweet. We’re excited about a new series of challenges, but also, September already? Summer flew by too quickly for our liking! Luckily, we can reminisce about our holidays. In this series of challenges, we look back at the summer adventures of five of our colleagues. 

Kolina went on a road trip, Viktorija enjoyed an ice cream, and Charley investigated some interesting creatures. We all spent our holidays in different places around the world; it’s up to you to figure out where. Or in some cases, when, exactly, we were there. 

Think you’re ready? Find the latest challenges here. 

If you get stuck or are visiting one of the locations soon, join our Discord Server for tips on the challenges or for your upcoming trips!

We’ve made sure not to share too many details of our vacations with our colleague Pooja Chaudhuri, who is trying the challenges this month. Pooja will go live on Wednesday, September 10 at 5PM CEST on our YouTube channel.

August’s Hidden Hazards

SPOILER ALERT: From this point on, we’ll be discussing last month’s challenges. If you still plan to complete them, you may want to skip this section.

Here are the answers to the “Hidden Hazards” challenges:

1. Type1 Fuze

2. 9N235

3. PMN Landmine

4. VOG-25PM

5. KH-101

Thanks again to everyone who shared their learnings with us, whether it was on Discord, our social media channels, or in your own blog posts or videos. We’ll highlight some of our favourites here.

Before we dive into this, we’ve asked Afton from our Toolkit Team to identify some of the most useful tools and resources for identifying explosive ordnance (EO). Remember, there is no substitute for technical expertise, so if possible, consult an expert to confirm your findings. 

Useful Resources

Last month’s challenges show how EO isn’t just dangerous battlefield debris – the engineered hardware has distinct anatomical features, manufacturing signatures, and specifications that can be systematically classified, even in fragments. Since it’s a technical field, familiarise yourself with specialised language using:

1. Open Source Munitions Portal’s Glossary (OSMP) for easy-to-understand descriptions

2. OSMP’s video guide, which covers key munitions categories and features 

3. Basic identification of Ammunition in Ukraine

EO appears in different conditions on the battlefield: it can be intact, partially intact, or fragmented. Effectively identifying EO requires an assessment of observational clues like shape, colour and markings. 

Tools for intact EO: CAT-UXO and Bulletpicker show ordnance collections by category with mostly intact images.

Tools for non-intact EO:

1. Logic trees: Andro Mathewson’s version or those in Tom Gerbeck’s practical ordnance identification book (Annex).

2. OSMP’s collection of mostly post-impact fragment images. It has more filtering options than the tools above and is ideal for beginners relying on observable characteristics or looking for reference photos.

Your Approaches

For “Failed to Detonate”, we’ve turned to the blog OSINT Expedition. They started the identification process by translating the engraving on the device. Google Translate suggested “one pomegranate”, but anyone who entered that answer would have found out that it’s not quite what we were looking for. They then searched the CAT-UXO database, filtering the results for EO of Chinese origin and visually comparing similar fuzes. Several candidates matched, including the “Type 1 Special” and “Type 1 Fuze (PD)”. After trying multiple names, “Type 1 Fuze” was accepted as correct. 

Dam Coffee began “Small but Deadly” by noting the Ukrainian domain (.ua) in the image description. A reverse image search led them to the image in a Ukrainian Wikipedia article that identified the submunitions as 9H210 or 9H235. Close inspection of the image confirms that the item is marked “9H235”. After recognising that the Cyrillic "H" corresponds to "N" in the Latin alphabet, they managed to find the correct answer: 9N235. 

In “Among the Roots”, Sindre Langmoen hypothesised that the photo depicted a metallic anti-tank mine based on size and appearance. They initially dismissed the PMN anti-personnel mine due to its plastic material and band, but eventually revisited it after browsing CAT-UXO’s database of landmines used in Ukraine. The mine wasn’t easily recognisable because it was covered in dust in the challenge photo. 

For “Target Not Required”, Dam Coffee began by analysing the visual clues and context information from the photo. This approach is consistent in all their blogs and offers a great reference for anyone looking to improve how they structure their investigations. The initial analysis helped narrow down the search in databases like including the Basic Identification of Ammunition in Ukraine, where they successfully found a visual match. 

Ronn13_OSINT found that the distinct u-shaped external component stood out in “Larger Than You Think”. He used a reverse image search to find visual matches; he tried Google first, but Yandex proved more useful. After identifying a likely candidate, he confirmed the match using the Open Source Munitions Portal, landing on the correct model: Kh-101. Ronn13_OSINT emphasises the importance of cross-referencing different sources for accuracy. 

Rather watch someone tackle the challenges? Last month, Youri van der Weide joined our livestream! You can see how he managed with the puzzles here:

And Finally…

We also wanted to highlight this video by GeoPeter, who recently tackled one of the earlier challenges, “A Sticky Situation”, on his YouTube channel. Find his video here:

That’s it for this month’s Bellingcat Challenge Newsletter. We’d love to hear your feedback on the challenges. Join us on Discord and let us know if you have ideas for future challenges.

If someone forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like to subscribe, you can do that here.

Elsewhere on Bellingcat

Before we go, here are some links to other exciting projects from Bellingcat:

• What Can Open Sources Reveal About Beijing’s Deadly Floods?

• LLMs Vs. Geolocation: GPT-5 Performs Worse Than Other AI Models

• A Chinese Fentanyl Smuggling Network’s Footprints in Japan

• The Open Source Tool That Has Preserved 150,000 Pieces of Online Evidence

• Former Indian MP’s Terror Trial Was Largely Conducted in Her Absence

See you next month!