Quick update (and a larger project)

Hi all,

I know I say all the time that I appreciate the support you all provide, but one thing I want to get better at is communicating here to keep you all up to date on what I'm working on and how things work in the background.

First quick update - I've switched the release order on small drones and PMCs so that drones releases this week and PMCs later. This is because I believe I can score a fantastic interview (background only, no recording) with someone very close to the subject matter which would make me much more confident in publishing what I have planned and offer a very, very different perspective.

The second relates to a larger project I'm now involved with. As you know one of the great challenges with the Ukraine war is that the information space is saturated with people very confidently putting towards opinions - but often a paucity of evidence to support those views. I do the best to gather and analyse what I can, but sometimes that data just isn't ironclad. It's the nature of war.

To that end, I've teamed up with a number of OSINT types and another YTer to go get and analyse evidence to answer a whole range of questions we have. That means purchasing satellite imagery of many, many, many locations (some we will need time lapse for) and then manually checking and cross checking those images to help us answer some major outstanding questions on a range of topics with greater confidence.

I doubt it'll sway the info space - but it'll at least make us feel even more confident when we can show imagery supporting the other data sources out there.

Now depending on how many takes we need to task rather than just buy, I expect we'll be spending thousands by March, and it will likely grow from there. I'm lucky enough to have a major Patreon backing, so I expect to carry most of the financial cost because I can, while those who mostly work on twitter or who have smaller supporter pools can not. 

It's a cool project, and one that really is enabled by the support I get here.

So thank you, and I'll release more details as things firm up and we move from site identification into image collection and analysis.

EDIT: I appreciate the comments coming in and the votes of support but please, I'm not shilling for more cash so please don't feel any pressure there. I can cover it with what comes in at the moment. I just wanted to start giving more transparency over what's in the pipeline and some of the things I plan to use Patreon funds to do.

I should also flag that the channel will be making a disaster relief contribution in the next few days in addition to the normal focus on Ukrainian aid, I'll report on that in the channel update this week.