The intention of the collective West to supply the armed forces of Ukraine with armor-piercing shells with cores (penetrators) made of depleted uranium (DU), is changing the situation in the zone of special military operation (SVO). A new damaging factor is introduced into combat operations – uranium-238 (238U), one of the longest-lived natural radioactive isotopes of uranium.

   The purpose of the review is to identify the signs and consequences of the use of armor-piercing projectiles based on depleted uranium.

   Materials and research methods. The sources available through the PubMed, Google Scholar and Russian Electronic Library databases were analyzed.

   Research results. NATO uses DU in 20-, 25-, 30-, 105-, 120- and 140-mm caliber projectiles. The cores are made from recycled DU, which is a waste from the production of nuclear weapons. Due to man-made isotopes, it is more radioactive than DU from natural uranium. When such a projectile hits an armored object, a large amount of respirable radioactive and toxic dust of black uranium oxides, small fragments and fragments of the penetrator, remaining in the armored vehicles and around it, is formed. One 120 mm projectile produces approximately 950 g of black dust. Almost 99 % of the internal dose received by the military will come from alpha particles, the most dangerous to health. Projectiles that miss their targets sink deep into the soil, their penetrators corrode for decades, releasing soluble uranium compounds into underground water sources. In areas where DU shells were used, mass diseases of «unexplained etiology» are observed among military personnel and civilians, reducing their life expectancy and fertility.

   Discussion of results and conclusions. The first signs of the use of shells with DU, which can be installed on the battlefield: round holes in the armor of tanks and the presence of solid black dust around them and in the tank itself. In case of fires in the warehouses of such shells, due to other oxidation conditions, crumbling yellow dust is formed. When examining it, it is necessary to pay attention to the presence of elevated concentrations of 236U. The fact that a soldier was hit by DU can be confirmed by the presence of uranium in his urine. The use of DU shells on the territory of the Russian Federation, in terms of its consequences for people and nature, is the use of radiological weapons, a disguised form of nuclear warfare. And it must be treated accordingly.

   Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) is an acute illness caused by exposure to a high dose of ionizing radiation. ARS is the deterministic effect of radiation exposure of the whole body or a significant body volume (partial body irradiation) above a threshold dose of about 1 Gy (gray). Radiation accidents, such as those in Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), or the possible use of nuclear weapons during the hostilities or terrorist attacks, can lead to the massive development of ARS in humans.

   The aim of the work is to introduce a new method of post-radiation treatment – the use of allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs).

   Materials and methods. The information contained in specialized scientific journals that are freely available and accessible through the global Internet was studied.

   Discussion of the results. In the scenario of mass exposure of the population, when from several tens (hundreds) to millions of people can be irradiated, the transfusion of hematopoietic stem cells traditionally used in such cases would be impossible. MSCs can possibly differentiate into specialized cells, that is, turn into cells of various organs and tissues or induce such kind of regeneration. For practical use, there are two main sources of their isolation and reproduction ex vivo – bone marrow and adipose tissue. To date, it has been shown that MSCs derived from adipose tissue can be effective in mitigating the effects of acute radiation illness. Intravenously applied MSCs are migrating mainly to the bone marrow and are partially restoring its function. Deep anatomical structures are also involved in local radiation injuries: bone, muscles, nerves, blood and lymphatic vessels and skin. There is a strong body of evidence suggesting the «repair effect» of MSCs when used to treat such lesions. This is because MSCs can induce the repair and regeneration of the anatomical structures which they are locally applied, possibly by the paracrine effect. The main advantage of allogeneic MSCs over autologous ones is their logistical accessibility. They can be produced in advance in quantities and stored frozen. After thawing, the cells must be cultured for at least 48 hours in humidified incubators with the addition of 5 % CO₂.

   Findings. Treatment of MSCs should be started as soon as possible after radiation exposure. Rescue of damaged hematopoiesis in the bone marrow can be achieved by multiple intravenous administration of up to 1 million (106) freshly prepared allogeneic MSCs/kg body weight. Locally (around and in the irradiation area), the dose of MSCs may be lower – 20 million cells. Repeated topical application should be carried out at intervals of two to four weeks. Subsequent surgical reconstruction should be performed by an experienced surgeon and in a specialized center with concomitant topical
application of MSCs.

   Modern terrorism is a complex system that consists of a complex of complementary processes – ideological, criminal, military, political, religious and nationalistic. Chemical terrorism is one of the elements of hybrid warfare – a new technology in the fight for the reorganization of the world at the present stage.

   The purpose of this article is to consider one of the elements of hybrid wars – chemical terrorism.

   Sources and informational basis of the research, methodology. In this work, the sources published by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were used. The publications available through the databases PubMed, Google Scholar, eLibrary, etc. were also studied. Research method – system analysis. The probability of the use of chemical warfare agents and toxic chemicals by terrorists of various ideological orientations as part of a hybrid war strategy has been studied.

   The discussion of the results. Hybrid military conflicts of a non-classical nature involve the participation of international terrorist organizations in hostilities. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (CWC) does not explicitly prohibit non-state actors from obtaining and using chemical weapons. This situation is very convenient for the states that have signed the CWC and use terrorist organizations as part of the strategy of indirect action. In such cases the information and psychological operations are aimed at the collapse and fragmentation of countries, undermining their ability to resist, discrediting their leaders, and causing a split in the ranks of the allies. This was most clearly shown in the incidents with the use of toxic chemicals in Syria.

   Conclusion. Working groups under the auspices of the UN and the OPCW, sent to Syria to investigate incidents with the use of sarin, proved unable to conduct objective investigations. They usually ended up on the side of the sponsors of chemical terrorist attacks, despite the evidence of falsification. This, in turn, can lead to serious military conflicts, for which the role of casus belli will be played by false news from the global media. The only mechanism that made it possible to stop such provocations in Syria was a public warning from the Russian side about the place and time of the planned false flag attack. At the same time, such a selective position of the UN and the OPCW can at any moment lead to the loss of the control over chemical weapons in certain regions of the world.

   With the existing method for evaluating the effectiveness of masking objects with aerosols, two parameters are used: the length and width of an invisible smoke screen with a probability of at least 50 %. Both parameters were obtained during the practical tests of aerosol masking means. However, they are insufficient for assessing the masking ability of an aerosol cloud as a spatial formation.

   The purpose of this work is to reveal the analytical dependence of the probability of objects masking on the density and dispersion of the aerosol.

   Мaterials and methods. An extended approach was used to estimate the probability of masking at any theoretical value of the flux density (integral concentration, g/m²) of aerosol along the line of sight, taking into account its dispersion, by calculating the formation of a probability field from 5 to 95 % over the entire spatial structure of the aerosol cloud. The method used is the simulation on a PC of the dependence of the share of space occlusion for the observer (the eyepiece of an optical device) by aerosol particles of a given dispersion and flux density, which we took as the probability of masking.

   Discussion. It is shown in the article, that the resulting analytical expression as a result of processing the accumulated simulation results on a PC fully corresponds to the Bouguer-Lambert-Beer law, which is a generalization of many years of practical field and laboratory experiments with aerosols in the air and dispersed particles in solutions. The obtained probability values allow us to obtain a generalized efficiency criterion in the form of a new concept - the reduced masking zone. This term is mathematically analogous to the reduced impact zone, which is used to assess damage caused by munitions.

   Conclusion. For a full assessment of the effectiveness of aerosol countermeasures, the reduced masking zone must be calculated for all possible lines of sight (observation of an object): horizontally, vertically, and along inclined paths. This condition reflects the method of using modern weapons such as Javelin anti-tank systems, which are aimed at the target mainly horizontally, and the final trajectory before the impact is a «hill». The theoretical difference between the values of vertical and horizontal masking screens, obtained by the authors using a new method for calculating the parameters of an aerosol cloud, is presented in the illustrations to the article.

   The lecture is intended for the improvement of the professional skills and knowledge of the students and graduates of military schools in the field of foreign flamethrower-incendiary armament. Two problems are considered in the lecture: 1) the principal trends of the development of incendiary ammunition of foreign countries; 2) the principal trends of the development of flamethrower-incendiary systems of foreign countries.

   The growth of inventive activity in the NBC Protection Troops is accompanied by an increase in requests for examination, leading to a delay in the process of considering patent applications at the Federal Institute of Industrial Property of Rospatent.

   The aim of this work is to summarize the common mistakes in the claim and the Specifications of the inventions in the NBC Protection Troops.

   Materials and research methods. Examination requests for applications for inventions were analyzed, for which positive decisions were eventually received, i. e. the delay in their consideration was not due to the lack of a technical solution. In the application materials, the most typical mistakes were identified and summarized with the references to regulatory documents. The provisions of these documents were explained in the text of the article and supported by references to the work of patent law specialists.

   The results of the study. The main mistakes detected at the stage of formal examination are made in the application, description of drawings and in the claims. At the stage of substantive examination, the experts pay attention to the applicants' misunderstanding of the rules for drawing up the claims and sections of the description that substantiate the claims. The «Background of the Invention» section is usually presented in the form of a review, in which the closest analogue is not analyzed; the technical result is not indicated; examples revealing the implementation of the claimed invention are not complete.

   Discussion of results and conclusions. Any mistakes detected at the stage of formal expertise can be easily corrected with careful attention to the preparation of application documents. The mistakes identified at the stage of substantive examination are of a systemic nature. They are based on the stereotypes of a specialist, who can not see patentable technical solutions and cannot plan them. It is possible to correct this situation by training young specialists in the field of legal protection and protection of inventions, utility models, industrial designs and methods of their use, even before they start their main activities. It is possible also to accompany such trainings with the study of the fundamentals of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. Patenting itself must be carried out within the framework of the organization's patent policy.

   In the domestic literature, the industrial production of penicillin and streptomycin is commonly attributed to the representatives of civil institutions and enterprises. However, the key role of military scientists in solving this problem remains in the background.

   The purpose of this article is to summarize the available facts about the role of Soviet military scientists in creating a technology for obtaining the first antibiotics in the USSR.

   At the beginning of 1942, all the works, related to the penicillin in the Soviet Union, was headed by academician of AMS USSR Z. V. Ermolyeva. At the first stage of the research, the technology for obtaining penicillin was applied, based on the use of a surface method of growing cultures of the antibiotic-producing fungus in mattresses. But this method could not meet the country's needs for the drug. In early 1944, the Soviet government tasked the Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene of the Red Army (NIIEG) in Kirov (now a branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution «48^th Central Research Institute» of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation) to solve the case of mass production of penicillin and streptomycin. In 1944–1945 for the first time in the USSR military specialists from NIIEG developed a technology for the industrial production of penicillin by the deep method with aeration. The deep cultivation was carried out in cultivator devices designed by engineer-Lieutenant Colonel A. V. Krutyakov. During the research, a fungus strain (Penicillium chrysogenum 23248) was selected from a large number of studied strains, the use of which provided the highest yields of penicillin, and the most effective cultivation conditions were selected. The experience, obtained by the Soviet military specialists during the development of the technology for the deep production of penicillin, served in 1946-1947 as the basis for the creation of the method for obtaining domestic streptomycin from the domestic Streptomyces griseus. In 1947, for the first time in the world an employee of the NIIEG Lieutenant Colonel of medical service N. I. Nikolaev and civil doctors D. D. Fedorinov and V. I. Gorokhov used the NIIEG streptomycin successfully for the treatment of patients with pneumonic plague during the plague epidemic in Manchuria. In the late 1940^s the technologies for the production of penicillin and streptomycin, as well as the relevant documentation, were transferred to civil healthcare institutions for the industrial development.