Army Reserve SME: military engineer + interests in critical materials, subterranea & military geology. Views and beard are my own. RTs not endorsements.
United Kingdom
Joined December 2017
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Sapper Geologist retweeted
Ears on the Border. Eyes on the Threat.
Deep in Lithuania’s 🇱🇹 forests, German 🇩🇪 specialists monitor the electromagnetic environment along NATO’s eastern flank detecting signals, identifying radar activity and helping build a clearer picture of developments across the border.
Their intelligence strengthens Allied situational awareness and supports forces protecting NATO airspace.
Awareness matters. Readiness starts with knowing what’s happening.
📸 Bundeswehr
#WeAreNATO
Sapper Geologist retweeted
Another mass surrender of Russian forces near Kupiansk - resulting from Ukraine's ongoing operations clearing out old soviet gas pipeline networks.
This is the town Putin claimed only 45 days ago Russia had "liberated".
Sapper Geologist retweeted
Four Russian soldiers get captured after crawling through a pipe.
Remarkable exchange:
- Guys, crawl out! Nothing will happen to you! How many are there altogether?
- 31! Will you torture us?
- Torture? You’re in your underpants telling me everything already.
Sapper Geologist retweeted
Good to be close enough to be eating delicious burgers whilst listening to explosions from Gaza.
IDF dealing with Hamas. Tunnels go boom.
Sapper Geologist retweeted
Three years of war in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen have boosted tunnel warfare everywhere, including in peer-to-peer warfare. It goes beyond terrorism, beyond the Middle East, and beyond urban.
@SapperGeologist @JaysonGeroux @JacobStoil @SpencerGuard @asherdigs
Ukraine and Russia are going head-to-head underground, with soldiers from both sides crawling through of miles of Soviet-era gas pipelines to get behind enemy lines. on.wsj.com/4i92yZF
Sapper Geologist retweeted
As drones fill the skies over the war zone, the fighting in Ukraine has moved into a network of gas pipelines deep belowground, @shustry reports. theatln.tc/YA5Ylvs4
Sapper Geologist retweeted
🇺🇦🇷🇺 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are fighting HAND TO HAND inside 4-foot gas pipelines under Kupyansk, with machine guns, gas masks and 13 feet between them
Russia has been crawling miles through Soviet-era pipes to pop up behind Ukrainian lines, dig out, launch drones and vanish underground again.
Blowing the exits didn't work, so Ukraine's 13th Brigade went in after them in an operation named Veles after the god of the underworld, sending explosive robots at sandbag barricades and finding Russian living hubs dug into the walls where men spend months.
It says it has killed over 100 and captured 30 down there.
Drones made the surface unlivable, so the war went where drones can't see.
The same pipeline network runs into Poland and the Baltics, Moscow is training dedicated tunnel units, and Iran put its whole missile program underground for the same reason.
The $2 trillion drone era just made the shovel a weapon again.
Source: WSJ / Writer: Daniel
Fascinating and terrifying insight in the #subterra #battlefront in Ukraine.
#subterranean #underground
@Proud_Sappers @HQARRC @MilGeoscience @thinkdefence @RichemondBarak @Stu_Lyle @SpencerGuard @traysartech
As drones fill the skies over the war zone, the fighting in Ukraine has moved into a network of gas pipelines deep belowground, @shustry reports. theatln.tc/YA5Ylvs4
Sapper Geologist retweeted
The U.S. needs bunker busters that can address two target sets. One is the large number of tunnels and other moderately difficult targets. The other is a much smaller but more difficult target set of facilities inside mountains, write @MarkCancian and @chrhspark.
Read: bit.ly/4i2yI9k
"Whether that is close-quarter combat in #tunnels, whether that's in derelict buildings, whether it's in devilishly thick forests and woods, or on the streets of villages.
Urban and subterranea remain one of the most wicked issues for modern close combat.
forcesnews.com/services/army…
The flip side is of course training not just to contest within these environments, but to deliberately seek to leverage and 'own' them for our own advantage.
To do so successfully requires consideration from more complex mix of stakeholders, e.g CIMIC
@Stu_Lyle @SpencerGuard
Sapper Geologist retweeted
Aujourd'hui, l'Ukraine 🇺🇦 a validé le plan de fortification du pays, objectif 2028. La construction d'immenses lignes de défenses va se poursuivre.
Pour rappel, les lignes visibles sur la photo ci-dessous sont déjà complètes dans l'est du pays. De nouvelles lignes de ce type sont en préparation au nord et au nord-est du pays pour protéger l'Ukraine des offensives russes.
Ces lignes composées de 3 fossés anti-chars, des dents de dragons et de nombreux barbelés et fils de fer sont très difficilement franchissables, ce qui augmente le nombre de pertes côté russe.
Sapper Geologist retweeted
Ukraine’s front line has moved underground — and it’s changing what defense actually means in this war.
Near Kramatorsk, soldiers of the 93rd “Kholodnyi Yar” Brigade now travel between combat positions through tunnels, not just shelters to wait out shelling. Journalists have compared the growing network to a subway system: junctions, branch tunnels, multiple exits, rest stops for troops hauling heavy gear.
The shift happened because the old solutions stopped working. Anti-drone netting over roads used to buy some protection. It doesn’t anymore. So Ukrainian units found routes drones simply can’t watch — below ground.
“They’re building tunnels and underground fortifications specifically so the enemy can’t kill our soldiers with FPV drones,” said Colonel Vitaliy Sarantsev, spokesman for the 14th Army Corps. “This is genuinely important for the front today, and it’s one way of preserving personnel.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy @ZelenskyyUa recently visited one of these underground command posts — footage shows a fully built-out facility, not a dugout. Some sites go further still: truck access, parking, mess halls, sleeping quarters, even a drone-ammunition production line the troops call their “underground factory.”
The engineering has been tested. Sergiy, callsign “Marik,” commands an engineer-sapper platoon building strongpoints with corrugated steel and three layers of timber overhead.
“The guys took a direct hit from 152mm artillery. The shelter held. Then a guided bomb hit ten meters away. It held that too. Everyone survived.”
Training has moved underground as well. Odesa’s military academy built the country’s first underground training hub, designed so classes continue through air raid alerts. Troops even fly drones indoors as coursework.
What this actually means
It’s a structural answer to a battlefield that drones have made almost impossible to survive in the open. Military analyst Kostiantyn Mashovets put it plainly: tunnels let Ukrainian forces regroup, resupply, and rotate troops while staying largely invisible to the enemy, cutting off most of Russia’s tactical-level strike options before they can even be used.
Militaries have reached for underground infrastructure before whenever air power made the surface too dangerous to cross. The technology each time is different. The logic stays the same: when the sky becomes too dangerous to move through, armies stop trying, and build somewhere the enemy can’t follow.
“The battlefield is becoming more transparent and more dangerous,” said Colonel Ihor Obolenskyi of the “Khartiia” Corps. “Right now, underground, we’re more effective — both in spirit and technologically.”
Source: ArmyInform, October 19, 2026
#Ukraine #UAF #ModernWarfare #DroneWarfare #DefendingUkraine
Sapper Geologist retweeted
A Hamas tunnel that crossed into the Israeli-held portion of the Gaza Strip was recently demolished by combat engineers, the military says.
The IDF says the tunnel, which featured several rooms where Hamas operatives would reside, spanned a kilometer and a half and crossed the "Yellow Line."
Combat engineers of the Gaza Division and the elite Yahalom unit in a recent operation blew up and sealed the underground passage, the military says.
Sapper Geologist retweeted
🛠️ Strike Warrior took readiness underground.
24 Commando Royal Engineers excavated, built & fortified an underground facility during Exercise Strike Warrior.
🇬🇧 Building the support that keeps the UK Commando Force ready.
Sapper Geologist retweeted
As @FalklandsinUK reminds me, the City of London hosted a victory parade on 12 Oct 1982 for the Falklands Task Force ~ 🇫🇰 ~ so obviously we need a map of the Falkland Islands. Surveyed and drawn by No 2 Topo, 14th (Corps Fd Svy) RE in 1943, published as GSGS 4465 in 1944. Lovely.
