Beginner’s Guide to Identifying Explosive Ordnance in Social Media Imagery

Note: Explosive ordnance (EO) are extremely dangerous. Never approach them unless you are explicitly trained to do so. When posting about potentially explosive objects online, do not encourage others to interact with them. If you come across any potential EO, call the police or other relevant authorities. 

Land mines, rockets, bombs, grenades, and other explosive weapons that were fired but did not explode can remain dangerous for decades after wars and conflicts end.

Commonly known as unexploded ordnance (UXO), these weapons can detonate without warning, killing or injuring civilians long after conflicts have ended.

Global estimates vary, but in 2023, the Landmine Monitor recorded 4,710 people injured or killed by landmines and explosive remnants of war. In Ukraine alone, between February 2022 and May 2023, the HALO trust identified 855 civilians that were hurt or killed in 550 mine-related accidents.

The rise of conflict imagery on social media has provided civil society and researchers valuable material to identify explosive ordnance (EO), including UXO. However, this has also increased the risk of misinformation and disinformation surrounding weapons use. Misidentifications of EO can result in fake narratives spreading online, false accusations in times of war, and physical harm or death to individuals during clearance efforts.

What This Guide Covers

EO is defined by Oxford Reference as “any munition that contains explosives, including bombs and warheads; guided and ballistic missiles; artillery, mortar, rocket, and small arms ammunition; mines, torpedoes, and depth and demolition charges.”

This guide aims to provide a starting point to decipher the origin and characteristics of EO featured in social media imagery as accurately as possible. Doing so can provide evidence to counter false or harmful narratives, and assist with post-conflict clean-up efforts.

There are many different types of EO, but this guide will focus on how to identify some of the more commonly seen ones, with reference to existing open source resources that can be found online. We have compiled a list of some of the most useful online resources for this purpose, which you will find at the end of this guide.

We will not cover naval ordnance as these are very rarely found in social media imagery, except for the occasionally washed-up anti-ship mine.

The guide also focuses on UXO found as complete objects, and does not include detailed analysis of remnant pieces of shrapnel after explosive ordnance has detonated and functioned as designed, or craters and damage left from such weapons. While it may be possible to identify EO post-detonation based on clues such as visible text, and some of the tips in this guide can also be applied to such cases, this is generally more difficult than for intact objects.

It is important to note that online identifications of munitions are always preliminary and will need to be followed by thorough comparisons and checks.

Starting Your Investigation

The first step in investigating any online imagery is to ensure that it is authentic. Any imagery or content online could be altered or posted with misleading information, which could result in a misidentification of EO or the spread of false information. Thus, verifying the authenticity and originality of any content is important before exerting time and effort to identify any munitions visible in the imagery. You can refer to Bellingcat’s guide to social media verification for advice on how to get started with this.

If the item in the imagery is high enough resolution and not damaged or dirty, a reverse image search can be a good next step. This can reveal previous efforts to verify the same image, as well as potential matches for the type or model of the weapon shown. Reverse image searches are not limited to Google — Bellingcat has detailed the core differences between several reverse image search engines and outlined strategies for using them for investigations here.

Before investigating further you may also want to first check the Open Source Munitions Portal, which has hundreds of verified images of EO which you can search through based on where and when the images were reported to have been taken.

Identifying Features

Once you have established that the image is authentic and that the object it shows has not been previously identified, a closer examination can often provide clues on what the object shown is.

1. Text

Very often larger munitions will be labelled or stamped with the exact model type and other information, such as manufacture date and production lot. If any writing is visible on the item or any other related objects nearby, such as ammunition crates, this can be an easy way to decipher the exact model.

For example, weapons produced by NATO countries would typically carry a CAGE code (Commercial and Government Entity Code), a unique five-digit number unique identifier assigned to suppliers to various government or defense agencies. These codes, which can be found through an online database of US Department of Defense’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), have been used to trace the origin of EO in Syria and Yemen.