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CNN
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Last fall, as Ukraine won back large swaths of territory in a series of counterattacks, it pounded Russian forces with American-made artillery and rockets. Guiding some of that artillery was a homemade targeting system that Ukraine developed on the battlefield.

A piece of Ukrainian-made software has turned readily available tablet computers and smartphones into sophisticated targeting tools that are now used widely across the Ukrainian military.

The result is a mobile app that feeds satellite and other intelligence imagery into a real-time targeting algorithm that helps units near the front direct fire onto specific targets. And because it’s an app, not a piece of hardware, it’s easy to quickly update and upgrade, and available to a wide range of personnel.

US officials familiar with the tool say it has been highly effective at directing Ukrainian artillery fire onto Russian targets.

The targeting app is among dozens of examples of battlefield innovations that Ukraine has come up with over nearly a year of war, often finding cheap fixes to expensive problems.

Small, plastic drones, buzzing quietly overhead, drop grenades and other ordinance on Russian troops. 3D printers now make spare parts so soldiers can repair heavy equipment in the field. Technicians have converted ordinary pickup trucks into mobile missile launchers. Engineers have figured out how to strap sophisticated US missiles onto older Soviet fighter jets such as the MiG-29, helping keep the Ukrainian air force flying after nine months of war.

Ukraine has even developed its own anti-ship weapon, the Neptune, based off Soviet rocket designs that can target the Russian fleet from almost 200 miles away.

This kind of Ukrainian ingenuity has impressed US officials, who have praised Kyiv’s ability to “MacGyver” solutions to its battlefield needs that fill in important tactical gaps left by the larger, more sophisticated Western weaponry.

While US and other Western officials don’t always have perfect insight into exactly how Ukraine’s custom-made systems work – in large part because they are not on the ground – both officials and open-source analysts say Ukraine has become a veritable battle lab for cheap but effective solutions.

“Their innovation is just incredibly impressive,” said Seth Jones, director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has also offered the United States and its allies a rare opportunity to study how their own weapons systems perform under intense use – and what munitions both sides are using to score wins in this hotly fought modern war. US operations officers and other military officials have also tracked how successfully Russia has used cheap, expendable drones that explode on impact, provided by Iran, to decimate the Ukrainian power grid.

Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations,” said one source familiar with Western intelligence. “This is real-world battle testing.”

For the US military, the war in Ukraine has been an incredible source of data on the utility of its own systems.

Some high-profile systems given to the Ukrainians – such as the Switchblade 300 drone and a missile designed to target enemy radar systems – have turned out to be less effective on the battlefield than anticipated, according to a US military operations officer with knowledge of the battlefield, as well as a recent British think tank study.

But the lightweight American-made M142 multiple rocket launcher, or HIMARS, has been critical to Ukraine’s success – even as officials have learned valuable lessons about the rate of maintenance repair those systems have required under such heavy use.

How Ukraine has used its limited supply of HIMARS missiles to wreak havoc on Russian command and control, striking command posts, headquarters and supply depots, has been eye-opening, a defense official said, adding that military leaders would be studying this for years.

Another crucial piece of insight has been about the M777 howitzer, the powerful artillery that has been a critical part of Ukraine’s battlefield power. But the barrels of the howitzers lose their rifling if too many shells are fired in a short time frame, another defense official said, making the artillery less accurate and less effective.

The Ukrainians have also made tactical innovations that have impressed Western officials. During the early weeks of the war, Ukrainian commanders adapted their operations to employ small teams of dismounted infantry during the Russian advance on Kyiv. Armed with shoulder-mounted Stinger and Javelin rockets, Ukrainian troops were able to sneak up on Russian tanks without infantry on their flanks.

The US has also closely studied the conflict for larger lessons on how a war between two modern nations might be waged in the 21st century.

The operations officer said that one lesson the US may take from this conflict is that towed artillery – like the M777 howitzer system – may be a thing of the past. Those systems are harder to move quickly to avoid return fire – and in a world of ubiquitous drones and overhead surveillance, “it’s very hard to hide nowadays,” this person said.

When it comes to lessons learned, “there’s a book to be written about this,” said Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

US defense contractors have also taken note of the novel opportunity to study – and market – their systems.

BAE Systems has already announced that the Russian success with their kamikaze drones has influenced how it is designing a new armored fighting vehicle for the Army, adding more armor to protect soldiers from attacks from above.

And different parts of the US government and industry have sought to test novel systems and solutions in a fight for which Ukraine needed all the help it could get.

In the early days of the conflict, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency sent five lightweight, high-resolution surveillance drones to US Special Operations Command in Europe – just in case they might come in handy in Ukraine. The drones, made by a company called Hexagon, weren’t part of a so-called program of record at the Defense Department, hinting at the experimental nature of the conflict.

Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at the time, even boasted publicly that the US had trained a “military partner” in Europe on the system.

“What this allows you to do is to go out underneath cloud cover and collect your own [geointelligence] data,” Sharp told CNN on the sidelines of a satellite conference in Denver last spring.

Despite intense effort by a small group of US officials and outside industry, it remains unclear whether these drones ever made it into the fight.

Meanwhile, multiple intelligence and military officials told CNN they hoped that creating what the US military terms “attritable” drones – cheap, single-use weapons – has become a top priority for defense contractors.

“I wish we could make a $10,000 one-way attack drone,” one of these officials said, wistfully.

CNN
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Hundreds of emergency personnel on Monday resumed a search and recovery mission in Nepal following a deadly plane crash that has once again highlighted the dangers of air travel in a country often referred to as one of the riskiest places to fly.

Of the 72 people on board, at least 68 were killed when a Yeti Airlines flight crashed near the city of Pokhara Sunday.

Four others remain missing, but Kaski District Police Chief Superintendent Ajay K.C. said Monday that the chance of finding survivors was “extremely low” as workers used a crane to pull bodies from the gorge.

The crash is the worst air disaster in the Himalayan nation in 30 years. It is also the third-worst aviation accident in Nepal’s history, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network.

Experts say conditions such as inclement weather, low visibility and mountainous topography all contribute to Nepal’s reputation as notoriously dangerous for aviation.

The Yeti Airlines flight Sunday had nearly finished its short journey from the capital Kathmandu to Pokhara when it lost contact with a control tower. Some 15 foreign nationals were aboard, according to the country’s civil aviation authority.

Pokhara, a lakeside city, is a popular tourist destination and gateway to the Himalayas. It serves as the starting point for the famous Annapurna Circuit trekking route, with more than 181,000 foreigners visiting the area in 2019.

A government committee is now investigating the cause of the crash, with assistance from French authorities. The Yeti Airlines plane was manufactured by aerospace company ATR, headquartered in France.

The plane’s black box, which records flight data, was recovered on Monday and would be handed to the civil aviation authority, officials said.

Fickle weather patterns aren’t the only problem for flight operations. According to a 2019 safety report from Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, the country’s “hostile topography” is also part of the “huge challenge” facing pilots.

Nepal, a country of 29 million people, is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains, including Everest, and its beautiful rugged landscapes make it a popular tourist destination for trekkers.

But this terrain can be difficult to navigate from the air, particularly during bad weather, and things are made worse by the need to use small aircraft to access the more remote and mountainous parts of the country.

Aircraft with 19 seats or fewer are more likely to have accidents due to these challenges, the Civil Aviation Authority report said.

Kathmandu is Nepal’s primary transit hub, from where many of these small flights leave.

The airport in the town of Lukla, in northeastern Nepal, is often referred to as the world’s most dangerous airport. Known as the gateway to Everest, the airport’s runway is laid out on a cliffside between mountains, dropping straight into an abyss at the end. It has seen multiple fatal crashes over the years, including in 2008 and 2019.

A lack of investment in aging aircraft only adds to the flying risks.

In 2015, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, prioritized helping Nepal through its Aviation Safety Implementation Assistance Partnership. Two years later, the ICAO and Nepal announced a partnership to resolve safety concerns.

While the country has in recent years made improvements in its safety standards, challenges remain.

In May 2022, a Tara Air flight departing from Pokhara crashed into a mountain, killing 22 people.

In early 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka to Kathmandu crashed on landing and caught fire, killing 51 of the 71 people on board.

And in 2016, a Tara Air flight crashed while flying the same route as the aircraft that was lost Sunday. That incident involved a recently acquired Twin Otter aircraft flying in clear conditions.

Editor’s Note: Jake Cline is a writer and editor in Miami whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic and other national outlets. He was a member of the team that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s coverage of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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Thanks in large part to bitcoin evangelism by top officials in Miami, the city has spent the past couple of years in full-blown cryptomania.

In the vision of Mayor Francis Suarez – the city’s chief cheerleader for digital currency – Miami will one day become the national capital for cryptocurrency.

Two years ago, Miami published its “Bitcoin White Paper” – a blueprint for its transformation into a 21st century city. Around the same time, prominent crypto figures began relocating to the city, and Miami began hawking its own digital currency, MiamiCoin.

As the fever quickened, cryptocurrency exchanges began advertising on Miami billboards. Bitcoin ATMs were installed at neighborhood gas stations and convenience stores.

And perhaps the most visible symbol allowing Miami to flex its crypto bragging rights was the announcement in March of 2021 by Miami-Dade County that it had sold naming rights for its main sports arena – home of the beloved Miami Heat NBA franchise – to FTX, the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange founded by disgraced crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried.

That partnership, which is not even two years old, came to an unhappy end last week. On Wednesday, the beleaguered company and Miami’s local government finalized an agreement to terminate the deal and remove the now tarnished FTX logo from the sports venue.

Over the past few months, as the scale of Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud became clear, some city elders and the business community scrambled to unwind what many of us had suspected from the start was a simply terrible business deal. Bankman-Fried, who has maintained his innocence, pleaded not guilty to federal fraud charges during a court appearance in New York earlier this month.

We now know just what a fiasco Miami’s love affair with crypto has been. The financial costs of last year’s crypto crash have been enormous for the many thousands of investors who invested – and then lost funds they could ill afford to forgo.

But my own reservations were not rooted in certain knowledge that crypto would crumble, although its collapse was far swifter and more spectacular than even most skeptics anticipated.

My opposition to crypto is based on its deleterious effects on the environment. The fact that Miami, considered “the most vulnerable major coastal city in the world,” would go all in for a currency created by a climate-wrecking technology always seemed to me to be a particular kind of madness.

Many people don’t understand how a currency that exists largely in the digital space can have real-life destructive impacts on our environment. Bitcoin mining uses vast amounts of resources. As the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in an April 2021 article, “bitcoin-mining operations worldwide now use … about the annual electricity consumption of the entire nation of Sweden.”

Citing data scientist Alex de Vries’ Digiconomist website, Kolbert reported that “a single bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of power that the average American household consumes in a month.” Similar reporting could be found at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.

Bitcoin mining hardware has ramped up as the cryptocurrency’s popularity has increased. Between January 1, 2016, and June 30, 2018, the mining operations for four major cryptocurrencies released an estimated three to 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to a study in the research journal Nature Sustainability.

Even China, the world’s largest polluter, banned bitcoin mining in 2021, citing its high carbon emissions. Now we are in what has been called “crypto winter” after enthusiasm has plummeted for cryptocurrencies worldwide. Nevertheless, the carbon footprint of bitcoin, still the world’s most valuable digital currency, continues to be enormous.

This past September, a report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy found that crypto mining in the United States emits as much greenhouse gas as the nation’s railroads and cautioned that “depending on the energy intensity of the technology used, crypto-assets could hinder broader efforts to achieve net-zero carbon pollution consistent with U.S. climate commitments and goals.”

But despite all that data, Suarez remains convinced that it’s possible to produce bitcoin in an environmentally friendly way.

“I’d love to sort of dispel some of the, I think, myths — I call them myths — of [crypto] mining as a not-environmentally-friendly activity,” the mayor said during his Crypto Conference, a live-streamed event held in June 2021.

And because there are renewable-energy sources in South Florida, his argument goes, crypto miners could eventually be incentivized to stop contributing to the destruction of our planet. He has argued, in effect, that because renewable energy sources exist, miners might just in the future opt to use them. It’s an extraordinarily weak argument. It would be a wonderful outcome, if only we could interest bitcoin miners in abandoning their pursuit of cheap and dirty energy sources.

But he’s not wrong – it is entirely possible to mine bitcoin responsibly, as bitcoin’s leading competitor, ethereum, proved last year. A decentralized global network used for verifying billions of dollars of cryptocurrency transactions, ethereum in September completed a system-wide transformation known as the Merge.

Essentially, ethereum moved to a mining process, known as proof of stake, that requires significantly less computing power than bitcoiners’ preferred process, proof of work. In doing so, ethereum appears to have reduced its worldwide energy consumption by more than 99%.

While some bitcoin miners say they want their industry to go green, the majority resist calls to adopt the proof of stake system over fears it would eat into their profits. Meanwhile, residents of Miami seem torn on environmental matters. According to a survey conducted by Yale University, as well as George Mason University, they believe that local officials, and state officials, including the governor “should do more to address global warming.”

But Miami voters helped to propel a “red wave” that installed Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the Florida legislature — a body that under GOP control allows fossil-fuel companies to write its bills.

Residents of Miami-Dade County this past November also voted to reelect Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said that while he doesn’t consider himself a “climate change denier” he hopes never to be mistaken for a “climate change believer.”

And despite everything that has happened with the digital currency’s plummeting value, Suarez, who is also president of the United States Conference of Mayors, remains a bitcoin believer.

Miami-Dade County will once again play host later this year to Bitcoin 2023, the next installment of the annual conference. And Suarez told a Miami TV station that he continues to receive his government salary in bitcoin, as he has since November 2021.

Some dreams, it would seem, die hard.