Bellingcat Challenge: Small But Deadly

Following my successful completion of Touching Tarmac, I've been attempting a number of other Bellingcat challenges. In this post I'll show you how I approached Small But Deadly.

The Challenge:

The caption reads:

"Multiple identical objects might help identification but often they can be partially embedded in soil, weathered by exposure, or fragmented into pieces.

Effective identification in such contexts requires attention to individual shape and construction as well as different unique elements of the object.

Sometimes OSINT can only do so much and exact models can only be distinguished by physically taking things apart.

What is the most likely model number of these three objects?"

Walkthrough

Although I noticed writing on the objects that appeared to be in a Cyrillic language, none of it was clear enough to be particularly useful.

My first instinct was to do a reverse image search. I decided to skip Google and go straight to Yandex. In the past I have found Google to be much less helpful with this type of image. Yandex immediately delivered:

One of the images looked extremely similar. The challenge photo is on the right.

The general shape was a match, and the search image also displayed the black fins seen on the original. Furthermore, upon closer examination, the search result revealed the same positioning of the stenciled alphanumeric writing.

The Article:

Clicking on the image took me to a Russian website.

Given that I currently don't understand Russian to this level (working on it), I copied the main text into Google Translate.

The translation was as follows:

"“Yuriy Yurov, a member of the People's Council of the Luhansk People's Republic, announced on the evening of Tuesday, August 8, that Ukrainian armed forces had shelled the outskirts of Lysychansk. This was reported by TASS.

According to Yurov, the shelling was carried out using cluster munitions. Information on casualties and damage is being clarified.

"The Ukrainian Armed Forces are shelling the northern outskirts of Lysychansk with cannon artillery, using cluster munitions," the news agency quoted Yurov as saying."

Now I was not interested in verifying whether the details of this attack were true. This article's use was in providing a potential identification of the type of object depicted in the challenge photo - a cluster munition or some part of a cluster munition.

Back to Google:

Next I returned to Google and searched 'Ukranian Cluster Munitions'.

This immediately returned a number of results. One in particular caught my eye...

I surmised that this article might hold the answer. I didn't think it was a stretch to believe that Bellingcat might recycle an image for a challenge.

Scrolling through, there were a number of images showing cluster munitions. One caught my eye:

The article is available here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/03/11/these-are-the-cluster-munitions-documented-by-ukrainian-civilians/

Looking at the Amnesty International image, there were immediate similarities in terms of shape, fins, writing type.

Amnesty International identified the model number as 9N235. To verify this information from another source, I consulted the Open Munitions Portal.

To my surprise, another potential model number greeted me. 9N210.

A quick Google search showed that 9N210 and 9N235 appear almost identical. The challenge required identifying the most likely model number, not the precise one, so I had to choose between them. Given that 9N235 was referenced in the previous Bellingcat article, I opted for this model number.

Challenge Completed.