What is Intel Mapper
Intel Mapper is a live open-source-intelligence (OSINT) war map. It follows two theatres around the clock: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the wider Middle East, from the Israel–Lebanon front and Syria to Yemen, the Red Sea and the Gulf. Every marker on the map is a single, dated event: a strike, a shoot-down, a ground assault, a naval incident, a capture, or a significant political statement, placed at the most precise location the sources support.
Events are gathered from monitored Telegram channels, X accounts, official military statements (for example the Ukrainian General Staff) and mapping projects such as DeepState and the Wikipedia conflict maps. Each report is read by a language model that extracts what happened, who did it, where and when, and then passed through a chain of deterministic checks: duplicate detection across channels, geocoding against our own settlement gazetteer and OpenStreetMap, country and region consistency guards, and frontline snapping for close-combat reports.
Every event carries a confidence score and a source count. One channel claiming a strike is not the same as three independent channels plus satellite-derived thermal detections, and the map shows that difference. Uncertain locations are drawn with an orange ring instead of a hard pin. Our methodology page explains the scoring in detail.
How to use the map
Switch theatres with the buttons at the top. The layer panel lets you toggle borders and control zones, event markers, the heat-map of activity, live military flights and US bases, and the Recent changes layers that hatch every area which changed hands in the last seven days (DeepState for Ukraine, Wikipedia-derived control maps for the Middle East). Click any marker for the full report, media and sources; click a control zone for its statistics. The time slider at the bottom replays borders and the previous 24 hours of events for any day since February 2026. A daily brief for each theatre is published every evening.
Coverage areas
Ukraine. The full contact line from Kharkiv to Kherson, deep-strike campaigns on Russian refineries, air bases and logistics, and Russian drone and missile waves against Ukrainian cities, with control changes taken from DeepState.
Middle East. The Israel–Lebanon front, Syria after Assad, the West Bank and Gaza, Iraq, and Iranian activity, including strikes on shipping and Gulf infrastructure.
Yemen and the Red Sea. The Houthi–Government war, Houthi attacks on shipping, coalition strikes, and control of the Bab al-Mandab approaches, using the Wikipedia control map and verified capture reports.
Today's brief — 2026-09-18
Israel advances in Lebanon; Russia sustains massive drone campaign as North Korean forces engage in Kursk
Russian forces sustained intensive offensive operations across Ukraine on 17 September, executing 230 combat engagements, 95 airstrikes with 295 guided munitions, 9,614 kamikaze drone sorties, and 2,770 artillery strikes including 44 multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) fires. The scale of drone employment reflects continued Russian reliance on attrition-based tactics utilizing expendable unmanned systems, while guided munitions indicate sustained precision strike capability. Overnight air defense engagement on 17-18 September saw Ukrainian forces report defeating or suppressing 72 of 93 inbound attack drones (Shahed, Geran variants, decoys, and Banderol/Dan-T systems), though 13 impacts were registered across multiple fronts, indicating partial penetration of Ukrainian air defenses despite high interception rates.
Israeli forces expanded territorial control by approximately 8 square kilometers in the Nabatîyé area of southern Lebanon on 18 September, continuing incremental advances in the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Concurrently, Hezbollah forces registered a larger territorial gain of roughly 17 square kilometers in Liban-Sud, indicating contested and fluid frontlines characteristic of the broader regional escalation that has intensified since early 2024. The pattern of reciprocal territorial adjustments reflects the grinding nature of current operations, with neither side achieving decisive breakthrough but both maintaining offensive pressure across southern Lebanese territory.
Read the full Ukraine brief · Middle East brief · Archive
Latest reports
- One Explosion, Five Channels: How Conflict Mappers Handle Duplicate Reports
- How Russian Overnight Strikes Work: The Drone-Then-Missile Sequence
- Tracking Houthi Strikes in the Red Sea: How Analysts Monitor Maritime Attacks
- The Israel–Lebanon Front: Geography, Actors and Understanding Strike Reports
- How Modern Air Defence Systems Work: Patriot, IRIS-T and NASAMS Explained
- Reading Confidence Scores: Making Sense of Intel Mapper's Reliability Ratings
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