Army Reserve SME: military engineer + interests in critical materials, subterranea & military geology. Views and beard are my own. RTs not endorsements.

United Kingdom
Sapper Geologist retweeted
London Underground delays rise as renewals backlog reaches £6.5 billion (link to article in reply below) Ageing tracks, signals, lifts and other equipment are causing growing disruption as TfL struggles to replace infrastructure that has deteriorated after years of deferred sp
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
Whether accidental or not—it is a reminder how easy it is to cut cables in the seas and on land. Timing couldn’t be worse with #UNGA in NYC.
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
Tickets Alert: Walk through the Postal Museum railway tunnels (link to article in reply below) The Postal Museum has announced October dates for its after-hours Tunnel Walk events, including two tours on Halloween
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
And that's why they build 5-12 meter trenches in Yemen
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝗿. 𝗜 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗧𝗼𝘆𝗼𝘁𝗮 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀. 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀 "𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲" 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘁. The @Toyota Hilux is the AK-47 of modern warfare. That is not a metaphor. It is 40 years of battlefield fact, and it makes bulk Toyota shipping data one of the MOST reliable early warning signals available to an OSINT analyst, military strategists and observers. The vehicle is EVERYWHERE a war is. In 1987, a conflict between Chad and Libya was literally named the Toyota War, after Chadian forces used Land Cruisers to destroy Libyan armor across the desert. The Soviet special forces in Afghanistan preferred captured Toyotas to their own trucks. Two thirds of the vehicles in ISIS's Raqqa parades were Toyotas. US special operations command fields the Land Cruiser and Hilux as its official non-standard tactical vehicle. Every side, every conflict, every proxy force runs on them. Which is exactly WHY the supply chain and shipping data matters, and this is not theory. In 2020, a watchdog, @Global_Witness, obtained an actual spreadsheet the Sudanese RSF militia used to track its own vehicle buys. It showed the RSF had purchased over a thousand Toyota Hiluxes and Land Cruisers, more than 900 in a single six month stretch, from dealers in the Gulf, to convert into technicals. @Global_Witness confirmed it by cross checking ship manifests, satellite imagery and social media photos. That militia is now at the center of the Sudan war, a conflict people now call Toyota War 2.0. The vehicles were trackable in the data before the worst of the killing began. The Iraq case is the clearest of all. @Toyota's own sales figures show Hilux and Land Cruiser sales tripled in Iraq in 2013. The following year, ISIS convoys became the defining image of the region's collapse. The @USTreasury's terror financing unit was alarmed enough to formally ask Toyota to explain the supply chain. The vehicles preceded the war by MORE than a year. The shipping data was sitting there. Almost no one was reading it. Here is how the signal works. The baseline is normal commercial demand, governments, NGOs, oil firms, telecoms. The anomaly is bulk orders of specific configurations, no back seats, reinforced beds, particular colors, routing through grey market hubs in the Middle East, Jordan and Turkey toward destinations with no commercial reason to absorb THAT volume. Those grey zone re-export hubs are where the signal lives, because that is where the proxy networks buy, outside Toyota's direct sales controls. The patterns worth following now ALL run the same way. Bulk Toyota movements into Libyan free ports are the leading indicator of the next Sahel proxy escalation that I am seeing now, as Russia's Africa Corps equips forces across the region. The same white Hilux double cab flow through Turkish and Jordanian transit that preceded every ISIS resurgence is the clearest warning of non state reconstitution in northern Iraq and Syria. Satellites show you where a war already is. Missile data shows you how it is being fought. Toyota manifests show you where the next one starts, often more than a year before the first convoy appears on your timeline. The data is public. Almost no one is reading the right part of it. That is the gap between analysis and intelligence. If this gave you signal worth keeping, please bookmark, retweet and like. Consider following if you find my work worthy. 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!!
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
"Pickaxe Mountain is just one of many challenges that the United States faces in Iran. Tehran has many underground facilities that are difficult to strike, including the underground facility at the Isfahan nuclear complex," write CSIS experts. Read more: bit.ly/4r0A609
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
EXCLUSIVE: A wargame that tested how real-life local authorities, the emergency services and the military might respond to an attack on the UK has revealed a genuine appetite across the country for this kind of worst-case scenario training 👇 news.sky.com/story/inside-wa…
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
Multi-source imagery analysis of Pickaxe Mountain reveals a clear surge in construction activity in 2026. Further analysis of daily activity would be needed to establish the site’s pattern of life beyond its current construction footprint. More from @csisponi: csis.org/analysis/satellite-…
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
The IDF releases footage of troops scanning the inside of Hezbollah's tunnels beneath the Ali Taher Ridge in southern Lebanon, before the underground complex was destroyed last night. Some 50 Hezbollah operatives were believed to be holed up under Ali Taher when a new ceasefire took effect in June. Contrary to recent reports, no members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were in the tunnels, according to the IDF. The military says it killed many of the Hezbollah operatives during the offensive to capture the underground site, including some trying to flee the tunnels and some trying to bring reinforcements. A video published by the IDF shows two Hezbollah operatives being struck after opening fire from one of the tunnel shafts. Inside the tunnels, around a dozen bodies were found by the troops, according to the military. Still, some of the Hezbollah operatives are assessed to have fled the area. The military says it will "reorganize" its deployment in the area following the destruction of the tunnels, but will still remain in control of the ridge with surveillance and firepower.
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Switzerland has begun banning purchases and imports of Sudanese #gold and restricting #mining supplies in an effort to choke off a source of financing for the country’s three-year #war. mining.com/swiss-gold-ban-sq… @MilGeoscience
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
The Boring Company is pleased to announce our Series D funding round of $3 billion, led by the United Arab Emirates. The financing now values The Boring Company at $23 billion. Other key investors in the round include Human Capital, Vy Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, A16Z, Temasek, Shamal Holding, and Baron Capital, in addition to other valued existing and new investors. Full details here: boringcompany.com/series-d
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
Finland has completed a 200-kilometre fence along its eastern border with Russia. The fence is 4.5m high and equipped with technical surveillance systems and flanked by patrol roads. It covers about 15% of Finland’s border with Russia. The project cost €356 million, Yle reports. Finland's Interior Minister Mari Rantanen said there may be a need to extend the fenced sections in the future.
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
1/🧵 🚩After 3.5+ months of work, I finally completed mapping occupied #Kherson and #Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. Hundreds of thousands of trenches, firing positions, foxholes, and emplacements were mapped individually, by hand, to make the first map with all fortifications in full resolution of such a big area. 1/⬇️
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🇬🇮 Coming up on 17 September! Join us live from Gibraltar with Dr Keith Farrell MBE of the Gibraltar Heritage Trust for The Story of the Rock - exploring Gibraltar’s remarkable history, heritage and conservation. 📅 17 Sept | 🕖 7pm BST | 📍Online 🎟️ Register to join below.
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Using engineering techniques, old topo maps, satellite imagery of the area after the disaster, video footage from helicopters and surface features, the team triangulated the likely position of the entrance and started digging. #TunnelRescue @MilGeoscience bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dw…
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