TYB
"The strike was fatal": Russian drones destroy Ukrainian oil refinery
Tuesday, 18 March 2025, 14:05
An oil refinery in the city of Merefa, owned by the Kharkiv-based investment and industrial group AES Group, was attacked by Russian drones on the night of 17-18 March.
Source: AES Group statement obtained by Ekonomichna Pravda
Details: According to AES Group, approximately 20 drones were launched against the facility, with the strikes lasting for two hours.
This was the fourth attack on the refinery since February 2022.
Prior to the latest strike, the facility had been operating at only 10% of its capacity, but following this attack, it has been completely destroyed.
The company stated that the strike was fatal for its business.
Quote from AES Group: "In effect, this marks the beginning of bankruptcy proceedings. The fourth attack proved fatal for the facility.
The only hope left is for international courts, but given the current geopolitical situation, the chances of justice being served are slim."
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/18/7503430/
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/18/fires-break-out-at-two-factories-in-dnipro-following-russian-drone-strikes/
Russian drone attack cuts power in Ukraine
18th March 2025
Thousands of people in central Ukraine were left without electricity on Tuesday following a countrywide Russian attack involving more than 130 drones that damaged critical infrastructure.
Kyiv and Moscow have recently escalated cross-border drone and missile attacks despite a US-led proposal for a 30-day ceasefire to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, which the Kremlin claims as part of Russia, said around 3,000 people were cut off from the grid following the attack, which he said damaged critical infrastructure.
The governor of the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region, on which Russian forces have been closing in, said the barrage resulted in a fire at another critical infrastructure facility.
In Kyiv, authorities said the debris from a downed Russian drone landed in the courtyard of a school at the beginning of the school day. Pupils were in shelters at the time of the attack, they added.
The Ukrainian air force said it had downed 63 out of 137 Russian drones.
Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile said that 46 Ukrainian drones used in overnight attacks had been neutralised.
The strikes, which targeted several regions of Russia, wounded six people, according to local authorities.
The attacks came shortly before Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump were due to hold talks on a potential ceasefire to the fighting in Ukraine.
Russia’s forces occupy swathes of its neighbour’s territory.
The 46 Ukrainian drones were “destroyed or intercepted” over the regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk near the Ukraine border, as well as over Orlov, the ministry said.
In the city of Belgorod, a man was seriously wounded by falling drone debris, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Five people were wounded in Kursk when drones struck near a truck transporting bread, interim governor Alexander Khinstein posted on Telegram.
https://punchng.com/russian-drone-attack-cuts-power-in-ukraine/
Ukrainian Sniper Shoots Down Russian Drone with .308 Caliber Rifle
18 March, 2025
A sniper of the 3rd Company of the Materik Battalion shot down an enemy drone with a .308 caliber rifle in the Kharkiv region.
The Operational Tactical Group Kharkiv released the video of the incident.
According to reports, the Ukrainian sniper fired at the UAV with a .308 caliber rifle in the Vovchansk sector.
According to the video, it took him only a few shots to hit the Russian Mavic drone, which was conducting reconnaissance or coordinating the actions of Russian invaders.
It should be noted that the Russians could have also used the enemy drone to drop ammunition on Ukrainian positions. Therefore, shooting it down is very important for many reasons.
As seen in the video, after the Mavic drone was hit, one of its propellers flew off, after which the UAV lost its ability to fly and fell.
The Operational Tactical Group Kharkiv noted that the fight against enemy drones using electronic warfare (EW) systems and anti-drone guns is not always effective.
This is due to the fact that the enemy constantly changes frequencies, and its pilots are becoming more experienced in drone control.
“But the .308 caliber doesn’t care about those frequencies. In the skilled hands of the sniper with the call sign ‘Mielkyi,’ the rifle fires bullets, and the enemy Mavics fall,” the statement noted.
Fighting drones
It should be noted that currently, one of the mandatory stages in military training is shooting at moving targets, which simulate both regular and FPV drones.
Since November 1 of last year, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine implemented a new basic military training program in all Ukrainian Ground Forces training centers, which was extended from 30 to 45 days.
As part of the updated basic general military training program, new recruits have started learning methods to counter enemy strike drones, including exercises in camouflage and self-defense using pump-action shotguns.
In October 2024, the SAFARI HG-105 semi-automatic shotgun was codified for use in the military. The weapon is designed to shoot down enemy drones.
The weapon is designed to use 12-gauge ammunition with a magazine capacity of 5 or 10 rounds. The rifle weighs a bit over 4 kilograms.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/ukrainian-sniper-shoots-down-russian-drone-with-308-caliber-rifle/
https://www.twz.com/land/army-deploys-radars-to-mexico-border-to-detect-cartel-drones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdiYL25Vvs0
Radars Deployed To Mexico Border To Detect Cartel Drones (Updated)
Mar 17, 2025
The U.S. Army is contributing ground-based radars to help spot and track drones as part of the continued build-up of U.S. military support along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Drug cartels in Mexico have been steadily increasing their use of weaponized uncrewed aerial systems, as well as unarmed types for surveillance and smuggling.
There are also growing concerns about the threats drones pose to the U.S. homeland, especially military bases and other critical infrastructure.
The Department of Defense released pictures earlier today showing members of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum in New York State, training with the AN/TPQ-53 and AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radars in Arizona.
The 10th Mountain Division is one of a number of units from across the U.S. military that has sent personnel and material to support the enhanced border security mission that kicked off after President Donald Trump took office in January.
“HHB Divarty [Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Division Artillery,] 10th Mountain Division raise their drone detection capabilities at the southern border,” the title of one of the pictures declares.
Its caption also notes that “U.S. Northern Command is working together with the Department of Homeland Security to augment U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the southern border.”
“Beyond confirming that the sentinel radar is a C-UAS [counter-uncrewed aerial systems] capability organic to 10th Mountain Division, I won’t get into specifics on what other DoD assets may or may not be at the border,” a spokesperson for NORTHCOM told TWZ when asked for more information.
The AN/MPQ-64 is a multi-purpose radar that can be used to spot various aerial threats, including fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and cruise missiles, as well as drones, and cue air defense systems to engage them.
The AN/TPQ-53, also sometimes referred to just as the Q-53, is primarily designed to detect and track incoming artillery rockets and shells, as well as determine their point of origin.
Friendly forces can then use that data to target the enemy units that launched those attacks. This is why they are currently found in Army artillery units like the 10th Mountain’s DIVARTY.
The TPQ-53 does also have a demonstrated ability to spot and track drones.
Both the AN/TPQ-53 and the AN/MPQ-64 are well-suited to spotting and tracking low-flying threats. As such, sending the radars to the border with Mexico would provide valuable additional capacity to monitor for cartel drone activity, as well as just offer useful added situational awareness.
Increasingly well-armed and otherwise equipped, in general, Mexican drug cartels have embraced the uncrewed aerial system and have continued to expand the scale and scope of their use of those platforms.
Originally seen primarily as a tool for cross-border smuggling, cartels are now regularly using drones to surveil and launch attacks against each other, as well as government security forces.
Multiple incidents in recent years have underscored how cartel-related violence in Mexico can already escalate to points where it takes on a character more in line with an open low-level civil conflict than just organized crime.
As the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, has stepped up activity along the southern border in recent months, there have been growing concerns about the potential for that violence to spill over.
This includes reported fears that cartels could launch cross-border drone attacks. Drone incursions across the U.S.-Mexican border are already a routine occurrence.
“I don’t know the actual number – I don’t think anybody does – but it’s in the thousands,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of NORTHCOM and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told members of Congress when asked about this issue at a hearing last year.
At that same hearing, Guillot became the first U.S. official to publicly acknowledge still-unexplained drone incursions over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, over a period of weeks in December 2023, which TWZ was the first to report on.
The swarming of Langley, as well as a flurry of claimed drone sightings over New Jersey and other parts of the United States bordering on mass hysteria last year, have since become national cause célèbres.
Helped in addition by constant reports about drone use in the ongoing war in Ukraine, threats posed by uncrewed aerial systems have been fully thrust into the public consciousness.
It’s interesting to note here that Ukrainian forces have also been using U.S.-supplied TPQ-53 and MPQ-64 radars.
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None of this is new, including when it comes to the U.S. homeland, as TWZ has been highlighting in steady reporting about drone activity over military facilities and training ranges, as well as warships offshore, and critical civilian infrastructure, for years now. Incursions last year at bases hosting U.S. forces in the United Kingdom further underscored that these threats are global in nature and not limited to traditional battlefields.
In addition to Langley, we have been the first to report on many other drone incidents at home and abroad, something CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” drew attention to just this weekend in a segment on this topic.
On top of all this, there has been and continues to be substantial overlap between reports of sightings of what are now often called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and drones.
By the U.S. government’s own assessments, many purported UAPs are likely to have been uncrewed aerial systems, though some incidents do remain unexplained.
“There were 350 [drone] detections reported last year on military installations, and that was 350 over a total of 100 different installations of all types and levels of security,” Guillot had also said at another hearing in January.
“The primary threat I see for them in the way they’ve been operating is detection and perhaps surveillance of sensitive capabilities on our installations.”
Despite all this, the U.S. military and the rest of the U.S. government continue to play catch-up when it comes to tackling drone threats, especially with the U.S. homeland.
“Well, I think the, the threat got ahead of our ability to detect and, and track the threat. I think all eyes were, rightfully, overseas, where UAVs [uncrewed air vehicles] were being used on one-way attack to attack U.S. and coalition service members,” Guillot told CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” for its segment this weekend. “And the threat in the U.S. probably caught us by surprise a little bit.”
At another point in the segment, CBS’ Bill Whitaker asked Guillot if, “as it stands today, could you detect a swarm of drones flying over or flying into the airspace at Langley? Could you detect that today?”
“At low altitude, probably not with your standard FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] or surveillance radars,” Guillot said, which also highlights the value of having the Army radars near the border with Mexico.
When it comes to the U.S. military more actively addressing drone threats within the confines of the United States, an often obtuse maze of rules, regulations, and legal jurisdictions presents real challenges.
Efforts have been and continue to be made to try to simplify and streamline the situation. Any discussion about trying to shoot down drones flying in U.S. airspace has to also take into account various risks, especially to innocent bystanders on the ground.
“Customs and Border Protection have various C-UAS capabilities, and the authorities to use them, in the U.S. southern border area,” the NORTHCOM spokesperson told TWZ today as part of their response to our queries about the Army radars.
“USNORTHCOM is working with CBP to tie in complementary C-UAS capabilities, and specific authorities associated with each. As with the rest of the homeland, covered DoD installations are authorized C-UAS capabilities beyond self-defense.”
The Army sending the radars to the border with Mexico now highlights the larger continued gaps just in being able to monitor uncrewed aerial activity, let alone disrupt, disable, or destroy those systems, as well as the threats that cartel drones pose more specifically.
Update: 3/18/ –
After this story was published, Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the AN/TPQ-53, sent TWZ a press release regarding that radar’s deployment in support of NORTHCOM’s Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB).
“The USNORTHCOM southern border mission demands the capability to detect and track various threats, ranging from airborne to ground-based threats,” the release says.
“The AN/TPQ-53 MMR is built to address this demand, offering agile and precise 360-degree scanning that can be deployed in under five minutes.
The system identifies rapid threats, such as unmanned aerial systems , enabling service members to swiftly detect and respond with agility.”
“This integration with the JTF-SB follows recent demonstrations [at] Northern Strike and Desert Guardian 1.0 highlighting [the] AN/TPQ-53’s ability to quickly adopt software updates and meet urgent national security priorities,” it adds.
“The successful integration of the AN/TPQ-53 MMR in the southern border deployment showcases the power of collaboration between industry, government agencies such as the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office and end-users in addressing complex challenges,” Rick Cordaro, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of Radar Sensors and Systems, said in an accompanying statement.
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https://nypost.com/2025/03/17/us-news/drone-sightings-reported-over-us-military-bases-years-ago-report/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drone-swarms-national-security-60-minutes-transcript/
Drone mystery deepens as witnesses report alarming sightings over US military bases years ago
March 17, 2025, 2:56 p.m. ET
Mysterious drone sightings in the US have been recorded as far back as 2019 — including when dozens of unidentified aircraft hovered over the country’s most sensitive military sites for 17 straight days, according to a new report.
The drone sightings — similar to ones over the Eastern Seaboard months ago — involved stalking naval warships off the California coast to more recently over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, home to dozens of highly advanced F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, CBS’s “60 Minutes” reported.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) indicated to anchor Bill Whitaker that the drone swarms over Langley — some of which were recorded with an iPhone — could very well have been spying on the US’s military capabilities.
“I am privy to classified briefings at the highest level. I think the Pentagon and the national security advisors are still mystified,” he said in a December interview that aired Sunday night.
“Clearly, there is a military intelligence aspect of this,” said Wicker, who chairs the Armed Service Committee overseeing the Pentagon.
While at his family’s cabin on the James River in Virginia in December 2023, eyewitness Jonathan Butner recorded nearly 90 minutes of footage showing “upwards of 40-plus” drones on a direct path to Langley, video he later shared with the FBI to aid in its investigation.
“I’m very familiar with all the different types of military craft. We have Blackhawks, we have the F-22s. And these were like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he told the outlet.
Butner wasn’t the only one who saw the unidentified aircraft swarming the key military installation.
“The reports were coming in 20-to-30 sightings, same time every evening, 30-to-45 minutes after sunset,” said retired four-star Gen. Mark Kelly, who witnessed the drones with his own eyes at Langley.
“What you saw was different sizes of incursions of aircraft. You saw different altitudes, different air speeds. Some were rather loud. Some weren’t near as loud,” he shared, noting the sizes of the drones ran the gamut from small to alarmingly large.
“The smallest, you know you’re talking about a commercial-size quadcopter. And then the largest ones are probably size what I would call a bass boat or a small car,” he said.
During the 17-day period where the drones were spotted before suddenly vanishing from the night skies, the military, apparently aware of the risk, moved some of the F-22 Raptors to another air base nearby, according to the outlet.
Retired Gen. Glen VanHerck rattled off a laundry list of potential threats, including that the drones could be used to bomb or otherwise disable the stealth jets, and that drones could be equipped to “do a myriad of missions.”
He dismissed the idea that the drones were piloted by hobbyists, due to their size and the duration of the flights, but wouldn’t rule out something more sinister.
“It certainly could have a foreign nexus, a threat nexus. They could be doing anything, from surveilling critical infrastructure, just to the point of embarrassing us from the fact that they can do this on a day-to-day basis and then we’re not able to do anything about it,” he said.
Gen. Gregory Guillot — a combat veteran who oversaw a 90-day operations assessment at NORAD and NORTHCOM — said the drone flights over Langley became the central focus of the investigation.
While he says the investigation is still ongoing, addressing the security gap is a high priority for NORTHCOM.
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“It is alarming. And, I would say that our hair is on fire here in, in NORTHCOM, in a controlled way. And we’re moving out extremely quickly.”
The White House in January took pains to reassure Americans that the waves of drones seen over New Jersey over the winter were “not the enemy,” with President Trump chalking them up to “hobbyists” or individuals conducting “research.”
However, these assertions only raised more questions, including among elected officials and former military leaders.
Asked how it was possible for such an incursion to take place over an American Air Force base, VanHerck pointed to a “capability gap” due to NORAD radar systems being unable to detect the low-flying drones.
“Certainly they can come and go from any direction. The FBI is looking at potential options. But they don’t have an answer right now.”
That gap was also the reason the military didn’t simply shoot the invading aircraft out of the sky.
“Well, first, you have to have the capability to detect, track, identify, make sure it’s not a civilian airplane flying around.
If you can do that, Bill, then it becomes a safety issue for the American public. Firing missiles in our homeland is not taken lightly,” the retired general said.
Gen. Guillot said updated radar systems capable of detecting drones are being installed at select strategic sites, and that he’s hopeful they’ll be up and running “inside of a year.”
VanHerck, Guillot’s predecessor, said the US government — from the Pentagon to the White House to Congress — has not treated the glaring security vulnerability with the seriousness it deserves.
“It’s been one year since Langley had their drone incursion and we don’t have the policies and laws in place to deal with this? That’s not a sense of urgency,” he said.
“There’s a perception that this is fortress America: two oceans on the east and west, with friendly nations north and south, and nobody’s gonna attack our homeland. It’s time we move beyond that assumption.
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Dr Steven Greer: JFK & RFK Got Assassinated Over Their Plan to Release UFO Secrets
Mar 17, 2025 3:30 PM
Dr. Steven Greer suggests that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he sought control over covert CIA programs, particularly those involving UFOs and advanced energy propulsion.
Greer asserts that Kennedy’s desire to rein in the CIA, dismantle its operations, and reform it following the Roswell incident, led to his downfall.
This narrative interweaves the influence of powerful figures like Allen Dulles—whose involvement with the CIA post-World War II is well-noted—and the Kennedy brothers in the context of potential extraterrestrial revelations.
Bobby Kennedy, aiming for the presidency, was similarly intrigued by such hidden knowledge, as evidenced by a 1968 letter affiliating him with UFO interests—a month before his assassination.
Greer highlights that the revelation of UFO-related secrets could dramatically alter global technological, financial, and religious paradigms.
He recounts a discussion with Lawrence Rockefeller which underscored the intense secrecy surrounding these issues.
https://www.vladtv.com/article/310016/dr-steven-greer-jfk-rfk-got-assassinated-over-their-plan-to-release-ufo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFXWkExQoxU
More Greer
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https://rumble.com/v6qhkrs-fake-alien-invasion-alert-disclosure-project-founder-dr.-steven-greer.html
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Mar 16, 2025
In today's podcast, Dr. Greer talks about Elon Musk's interview on Joe Rogan, UFO commissions over the years and answers questions from the audience.
Join Dr. Greer as he discusses breaking news on UAP disclosure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1BTVxWmTug