"Identifying Explosive Ordnance in Social Media Imagery" with Andro Mathewson

This week we spoke to Andro Mathewson from Centre for Information Resilience on identifying explosive ordnance seen in imagery on social media. Explosive ordnance are munitions that contain explosives, and can detonate without warning, killing or injuring civilians long after conflicts have ended. Andro wrote a guide to easily identify the most common types of EO and in this talk he walked us through it.

The talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on Thursday March 27th 2025. Music featured is courtesy of Artlist.

Recorded live in the Bellingcat Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/bellingcat

Links discussed:

Andro's guide and key: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2024/07/31/a-beginners-guide-to-identifying-explosive-ordnance-in-social-media-imagery/

Small Arms Survey: https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/

Conflict Armament Research: https://www.conflictarm.com/

OSMP: https://osmp.ngo/

Repository that Andro built: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19xNmsQpcz7UwHOPy1Zrwud-2jVdctulT5W3_0fUNn8k/edit?gid=0#gid=0

CIR: https://www.info-res.org/myanmar-witness/

Bellingcat workshops: https://www.bellingcat.com/workshops/

CORD database: https://www.ordata.info/

Book recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Military-Ordnance-Identification-Investigations/dp/0815369425

Bulletpickers library: https://www.bulletpicker.com/technical-manuals.html