Bellingcat Challenge #47 "Small but Deadly" Writeup

This article was automatically translated from Japanese by AI.

Challenge

Bellingcat Challenge #47 “Small but Deadly”

What is the most likely model number of these three objects?

Solution

A reverse image search led to a photo on Wikipedia, which helped identify the objects as submunitions from cluster munitions.

The candidates were 9N210 and 9N235, but CAT-UXO states, “The 9N235 is externally identical to the 9N210.” I tried both answers, and 9N235 was accepted (there may have been a way to distinguish them).

Flag

9N235

Note

Looking more closely afterward, I found that the label visible in the image reads 9Н235, confirming that it is a 9N235.

I also found a VFRAME article presenting an object detection model for 9N235/9N210 submunitions. I could not get the model running, but it was an interesting example of using 3D models to generate training data.