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<ul class="summary-list"><li>The M1 Abrams tank was built to fight the Soviets, and it appears to be at war on Russian soil.</li><li>Ukraine shared a video this week of an Abrams in combat alongside a Bradley fighting vehicle.</li></ul><p>The American-made M1 Abrams was built during the Cold War to fight the Soviets, and after several decades of service and combat, this tank appears to be at war on Russian soil.</p><p>The Ukrainian military's 47th Mechanized Brigade shared video footage this week showing <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-abrams-better-than-russias-best-tanks-in-war-commander-2024-7">an Abrams tank</a> in combat operations with an M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, calling the US-provided armor duo a "terror for the invaders."</p><p>"American equipment decides on the battlefield. In this case, it's personnel rotation, fire support, and destruction of enemy infantry stuck in houses," Ukraine's 47th <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://t.me/brygada47/1031'">wrote in a Monday post</a> on the Telegram messaging app, praising the skills of its soldiers.</p><p>The 47th did not say when the footage was taken or disclose where the fighting occurred. However, several open-source intelligence accounts and Ukrainian <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.kyivpost.com/post/40933">media</a> <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1848487072366989362">geolocated it</a> to Novoivanovka, a small village in Russia's Kursk region.</p> <p>Ukrainian forces launched a surprise invasion of Kursk in early August, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-kursk-invasion-russia-hasnt-eased-pressure-off-front-line-2024-9">the biggest attack on Russian soil</a> by a foreign enemy since World War II. The region has been the site of intense fighting in the months since, with Moscow having reclaimed some of its initial losses in the early weeks of the daring assault.</p><p>While other Western armored combat vehicles have already been deployed to Kursk, the video published by the 47th on Monday appears to be the first known instance of Abrams tanks operating there.</p><p>A Russian commander previously said that an Abrams was destroyed in Kursk, according to Kremlin-run state media, but the claim remains unconfirmed.</p><p>George Barros, the geospatial-intelligence team lead and a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider that "this is definitely the first time" the Abrams tank has been observed operating in Kursk. ISW analysts reviewed the OSINT geolocation and said it looked solid.</p><p>The Pentagon referred BI "to the Ukrainians to comment on their operations" when asked about the apparent Abrams tank activity inside Russia.</p><div type="image" title="A US-provided M1A1 Abrams tank at an undisclosed location in Ukraine." height="853" width="1280" msid="114479609" hostid="261" sizebytes="49276"></div><p>The Abrams is a third-generation main battle tank that was designed and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/07/05/archives/armys-planned-new-tank-assailed-as-too-expensive-factor-of.html">built with the Soviets in mind</a>. Robert Greenway, a former US Army Abrams operator and defense expert at the Heritage Foundation, previously told BI that the tank "was made for central European plains <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-new-heavy-abrams-tanks-mud-experts-2023-10">against Soviets</a>," adding that it was "<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/abrams-tank-built-to-kill-tanks-destroy-soviet-russian-armor-2023-9">built to kill tanks</a>."</p><p>The Abrams has been in service since the 1980s and has <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-soldiers-look-up-abrams-tanks-face-new-threats-ukraine-2024-8">logged extensive combat experience</a> in the decades since.</p><p>The US sent 31 M1A1 variants to Ukraine last fall, and earlier this month, Australia said <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/australia-boost-ukraine-abrams-tank-force-2024-10">it would send nearly 50</a> of its own in a move that would more than double Kyiv's existing inventory.</p><p>Abrams tanks are highly advanced and heavily armored, but Ukraine received older export models without some of the latest upgrades, like the newest armor. It has taken extra precautions and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-operation-builds-cage-armor-protect-us-made-abrams-tanks-2024-6">outfitted them with added layers</a> of protection to help defend against inbound munitions like rockets, missiles, and exploding drones.</p><p>Both <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-made-abrams-bradleys-taking-hits-but-surviving-in-ukraine-2024-8">the Abrams and the Bradley</a> can be seen outfitted with some additional armor in the recent footage said to be from Kursk.</p><p>However, despite the added protection, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-abrams-tanks-keep-drones-away-need-more-protection-commander-2024-7">the Abrams is still vulnerable</a> to the same threats that have challenged other armored vehicles on the battlefield. Some <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" class="" href="https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html"><u>open-source estimates suggest</u></a> Ukraine has lost up to 16 tanks, but this has not been confirmed.</p>

The Abrams tank built to fight the Soviets appears to be at war on Russian soil

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"><html><body><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Experts and pundits have been heralding big data's promise to give companies a strategic edge in their ability to cut costs and anticipate and meet evolving customer-service requirements. But there's a large piece often missing in this puzzle: Data holds little value for companies without smart analytics.</p><p>Successfully innovating a supply chain requires a carefully designed plan, visualization software, and an understanding of how to leverage analytics and establish a collaborative business model to improve customer service, product quality, or inventory management.</p><p>Patagonia, the California-based outdoor-apparel maker, has a supply chain that enables it to manufacture clothing and gear in 15 countries. Analytics and reporting play a "critical" role in its supply-chain operations, says Doug Freeman, chief operating officer at the company.</p><p>"We want to understand where raw and finished goods are at any moment, from when we issue a purchase order to when it arrives at a factory," he says.</p><p>Patagonia uses its analytics and reporting capabilities to enable different groups of people touching its supply chain and manufacturing process to access and create reports. These teams include specialists, such as buyers or auditors, who can monitor shipments and flag problems, says Freeman.</p><p>"We tend to see problems much earlier than in other companies I've worked for," he adds.</p><p>Patagonia has established, in effect, a "glass pipeline," says Freeman. It's a collaborative business model built upon a consistent set of metrics that are transparent throughout the organization.</p><p>"Anyone can open a report and see where things stand - it's an open book," he says.</p><p>Supply-chain collaboration is entering a new phase. It's more than the rise of the Internet of Things, in which devices autonomously provide data from input sensors at every touch point in the supply chain. GPS chips are driving geospatial technology, and vastly improved reporting and analytics capabilities produce real-time data that can be shared with supply-chain partners, and ultimately to improve customer service. For example, some pallets feature GPS chips, which can help save them from being delivered to the wrong location.</p><p>For years, companies have relied on their own ad hoc data and homegrown systems to inform their supply-chain management decisions. Now, better-shared databases, built with reliable, real-time data from a variety of sources, mean that businesses can make better decisions, often through partnering with others. Tools have also become far more sophisticated and can inform and guide users anywhere, anytime, and on a variety of devices.</p><h2>Another form of collaboration</h2><p>One of the biggest issues that companies face in managing their supply chain is accurately forecasting demand. Analytics - and ultimately knowledge sharing - can help build a "consistent level of sales," says Udayan Bose, founder and CEO of NetElixir, a search-marketing company with offices in India, Great Britain, and the US.</p><p>NetElixir, a UPS technology partner, offers UPS retail customers a solution called Elixir Retail that enables companies to use analytics to model search-engine-marketing campaigns.</p><p>"The value we bring to the table is a huge insights database," says Bose. "We analyze terabytes of data to understand in what positions, and at what time the [search engine] ads should be visible."</p><p>For instance, knowing when their customers are most likely to be shopping online provides retailers with a competitive advantage.</p><p>The insights generated by Elixir Retail can be surfaced to different players in the supply chain.</p><p>In essence, the company is using "analytics to help drive higher customer engagement," says Bose, and that leads to more supply-chain demand.</p><p>Key analytics will vary by industry, and some industries use highly customized software, but there are certain things that all supply chains have in common. Whatever your line of business, understanding how analytics can create a collaborative business model and improve customer service starts with the foundation of a strong plan and great analytics systems.</p><p><strong>To learn more, go back to the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/unlocking-logistics" target="_blank">Unlocking Logistics Hub</a>.</strong></p><p><em>This post is sponsored by UPS. To read more from <a href="http://bs.serving-sys.com/serving/adServer.bs?cn=trd&amp;mc=click&amp;pli=18905342&amp;PluID=0&amp;ord=%5Btimestamp%5D" target="_blank">UPS, click here</a>.</em></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div></p></body></html><p class="tagline">Find out <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sponsor-posts">more about Sponsor Content</a>.</p>

Better customer service starts and ends with a smarter supply chain

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Sometimes all it takes is a little perspective to see how our actions are affecting the planet.<p>And what better perspective than from space?</p><p>Climate change <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-responsible-for-climate-change-2015-7">due to human activity</a> is causing visible shifts on&#xa0;our&#xa0;planet, and NASA is uniquely positioned to observe these effects.</p><p><span>"If we continue on our current course, it's going to be <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-is-causing-food-shortages-2015-8">hard to feed this planet</a> because it's so hot," Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist, told Business Insider.</span></p><p><span>In fact, </span>p<span>hotosynthesis - the process all plants use to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates - declines rapidly&#xa0;at temperatures </span><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC396144/">above about 95 degrees Fahrenheit</a>, Stofan explained&#xa0;<span>during</span>&#xa0;a talk on&#xa0;Monday at a conference on the future of food sponsored by the James Beard Foundation.</p><p>And the evidence suggests we could reach too-high temperatures all too soon.</p><h2><strong>An alarming trend</strong></h2><p>Stofan has spent most of her career studying Venus, a planet with a major greenhouse effect - a fancy term for&#xa0;a&#xa0;planet's atmosphere trapping&#xa0;the sun's heat&#xa0;and warming&#xa0;its surface.</p><p>Here on Earth, NASA satellites are&#xa0;seeing&#xa0;a similar&#xa0;trend, and it's veering toward dangerous levels. This&#xa0;warming trend is bad news for our ability to grow food.&#xa0;</p><p>Here's an&#xa0;animation of global surface temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2013. Higher-than-normal temperatures are in red and lower-than-normal temps are in blue:</p><p><div></div></p><p>As you can see, the number of hotter-than-average patches has drastically increased in the last few decades.</p><p>These are actual&#xa0;data - "this is not a model," Stofan said.</p><p>This wouldn't be the first time human-caused climate change&#xa0;has affected our&#xa0;ability to grow food, Stofan pointed out. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which had a devastating effect on agriculture in the US and Canada, can be traced to poor farming practices and severe dro<span style="background-color: #ffffff;">ught brought on by climate change.</span></p><p class="embed-spacer">The difference today is that NASA has the tools to help farmers on Earth cope with climate change and become more resilient.</p><p class="embed-spacer">NASA and the US Agency for International Development jointly run a program called <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/servir/">SERVIR</a>&#xa0;that uses satellite monitoring, geospatial maps, and predictive models to help developing countries in eastern and southern Africa, the Hindu-Kush region of the Himalayas, and the lower Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia make better environmental decisions.</p><p class="embed-spacer"><span>Using&#xa0;these high-tech tools, NASA is helping countries&#xa0;deal with&#xa0;everything from floods&#xa0;to superstorms. They're also helping them become more resilient to the long-term effects of&#xa0;climate change.</span></p><p class="embed-spacer">When it comes to the future of Earth, Stofan says she's&#xa0;an optimist. "People are becoming more aware of climate change," she said. "If we start giving them actionable information, changing how we grow food, and looking at how bad it's going to get, I think we will adapt."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cargo-ship-vanishes-during-hurricane-joaquin-2015-10">A cargo ship that vanished in the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin is still missing</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="F5NTMyeDp0mWRV42z1oJ7S-2QZvMSqLa" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

NASA satellites reveal something startling about the future of food on Earth

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>As world leaders convene in Paris this week at the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/paris-attacks-host-cop21-climate-talks-2015-11">United Nations Climate Summit</a> (COP21) to discuss solutions to the growing threat of climate change, we could all use a little perspective.<p>And what better perspective than from space?</p><p>Climate change <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-responsible-for-climate-change-2015-7">due to human activity</a> is causing visible shifts on our planet, and NASA is uniquely positioned to observe these effects.</p><p>"If we continue on our current course, it's going to be <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-is-causing-food-shortages-2015-8">hard to feed this planet</a> because it's so hot," Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist, told Business Insider.</p><p>In fact, photosynthesis - the process all plants use to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates - declines rapidly at temperatures <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC396144/">above about 95 degrees Fahrenheit</a>, Stofan explained during a talk October 16&#xa0;at The James Beard Foundation Food Conference, a meeting to discuss the future of food.</p><p>And the evidence suggests that we could reach too-high temperatures too soon.</p><h2><strong>An alarming trend</strong></h2><p>Stofan has spent most of her career studying Venus, a planet with a major greenhouse effect - a fancy term for a planet's atmosphere trapping the sun's heat and warming its surface.</p><p>Here on Earth, NASA satellites are seeing a similar trend, and it's veering toward dangerous levels. This warming trend is bad news for our ability to grow food.</p><p>Here's an animation of global surface temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2013. Higher-than-normal temperatures are in red and lower-than-normal temps are in blue:</p><p><div></div></p><p>As you can see, the number of hotter-than-average patches has drastically increased in the last few decades.</p><p>This is actual data - "this is not a model," Stofan said.</p><p>This wouldn't be the first time human-caused climate change has affected our ability to grow food, Stofan pointed out. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which had a devastating effect on agriculture in the US and Canada, can be traced to poor farming practices and severe drought brought on by climate change.</p><p class="embed-spacer">The difference today is that NASA has the tools to help farmers on Earth cope with climate change and become more resilient.</p><p class="embed-spacer"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>NASA and the US Agency for International Development jointly run a program called <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/servir/">SERVIR</a> that uses satellite monitoring, geospatial maps, and predictive models to help developing countries in eastern and southern Africa, the Hindu-Kush region of the Himalayas, and the lower Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia make better environmental decisions.<p class="embed-spacer">Using these high-tech tools, NASA is helping countries deal with everything from floods to superstorms. They're also helping them become more resilient to the long-term effects of climate change.</p><p class="embed-spacer">When it comes to the future of Earth, Stofan says she's an optimist.</p><p class="embed-spacer">"People are becoming more aware of climate change," she said. "If we start giving them actionable information, changing how we grow food, and looking at how bad it's going to get, I think we will adapt."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cern-large-hadron-collider-explained-physics-2015-10">How scientists uncovered a completely new world inside the tunnels of the most powerful physics machine on Earth</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="t3aW5rdTq-jFCHUh9x0g5L9BhJT24FCY" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The <keyword id="774829" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Big-Data">Big Data</keyword> narrative in the recent years has been predominantly confined to commercial applications. In fact, the who’s who of tech companies are using advanced software tools to understand their users better and thus generate bigger profits.<br />
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It is, therefore, a welcome change to note that organisations such as the World Bank are calling upon the experts of the Big Data community and enlisting their help in solving real-world issues related to poverty, development and corruption.<br />
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<strong>A guiding light</strong><br />
Between March 15 and 17 (this year), around 150 volunteer Big Data experts gathered in Washington DC to discuss in depth a range of social projects requiring their domain knowledge. One of the most innovative projects was the prediction of poverty levels in Bangladesh – not done through questionnaires or accessing bank records, but by tracking the degree of night time illumination in different parts of the country.<br />
<br /> By accessing remote sensing <keyword id="6358065" type="PERSON" weightage="40" keywordseo="Satellite">satellite</keyword> data on night time illumination, the team working on the project was able to overlay information gathered separately from census data and figure out if a strong correlation existed between poverty levels and night time illumination.<br />
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The results threw up some interesting findings. While the datasets for 2001 indicated a strong correlation, the same trend could not be established for 2005. However, the statistical and geospatial models, built as a result of this pilot effort, could go a long way in becoming a template for studies in other poverty-hit regions across the globe.<br />
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<strong>Volunteer vision</strong><br />
While organisations like the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are backing such data dives, the real impetus for using Big Data for global good is coming from groups like DataKind, which describes itself as a community of pioneering data scientists, visionary change-makers, community builders and social innovators.<br />
<br />
When the non-profit organisation Grameen Foundation came up with the innovative idea to equip Ugandan volunteers with mobile phones through which critical information relating to farming could be disseminated to farmers on-field, it didn’t just stop there. The organisation recorded every information search made via mobile phones, the date and the time of the search, as well as the search location.<br />
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Through a rigorous analysis of the terabytes of data accumulated, Grameen Foundation found a way to monitor and measure the interactions between the volunteers and the farmers, and determine what was working and what was not.<br />
<br />
Under the aegis of DataKind, projects ranging from tracking funding to politicians in the US to collecting accurate pricing data for food items in Africa are being fast-tracked – so that the communities impacted by these data points can improve even further.<br />
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<strong>Mobilising big resources</strong><br />
This does raise a pertinent question, though. Are these Big Data projects dependent on a big collaborative push from large global entities or can smaller communities across the globe embark on similar initiatives? Seeking help while others are thousands of miles away in Washington DC or Vienna is beyond the resources of most folks working in the social sector.<br />
<br />
By definition, most Big Data projects revolve around scale, even when the benefits accrue at the individual level. Take, for instance, the case of Aadhaar – India’s most ambitions unique identification (UID) project. Billed as the world’s largest biometric programme, the project is to provide unique identification numbers or Aadhaar numbers to 1.2 billion people.<br />
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The scale gets more impressive when one considers that there are three primary modes of identification built into a single Aadhaar card that is provided to each and every person. These include a photograph, a fingerprint and an iris scan. That means a total of 3.6 billion data objects, if you go by a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation.<br />
<br /> It’s no wonder then that the Indian government had to set up a specialised agency, the Unique Identification Authority of India (<keyword id="6355252" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="UIDAI">UIDAI</keyword>), for this purpose. The government also appointed a former head of a leading Indian IT company to head the project and spent billions of dollars to get things implemented.<br />
<br /> The Aadhaar card is expected to be used for every critical function – right from opening bank accounts to receiving government subsidies related to food, fuel and education. Such a <keyword id="61221" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="40" keywordseo="big-bang">Big Bang</keyword> approach can only be justified on the basis of its multiple uses. However, there are only a handful of organisations in developing countries that can deploy such massive resources. So what happens to the rest?<br />
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<strong>Big challenge ahead</strong><br /> Ravi Prakash, who wears the twin hats of an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an <keyword id="192013" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="IDEO">IDEO</keyword> (innovation consultancy firm) fellow, is trying to make a big difference to India’s rural healthcare scenario with the help of Big Data. He is helping the healthcare non-profit World Health Partners’ design systems that can capture each and every health-related interaction in a bid to improve forecasting healthcare issues, enhance healthcare quality and increase operational efficiency. As the IDEO team discovered during its study phase, it requires a whole level of different experts to operate in rural India. And all data point to a difficult but interesting journey ahead.<br />
<br />
Image: Thinkstock<br />

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The Abrams tank built to fight the Soviets appears to be at war on Russian soil

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NASA satellites reveal something startling about the future of food on Earth

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NASA satellites reveal something startling about the future of food on Earth

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