Trent Telenko Profile picture
May 12, 2021 10 tweets 10 min read Read on X
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation Radar proximity fuzes were a UK concept & engineering development that it took American industrial capacity to make real. (photo)

Time fuzes came in 2 flavors.

Flavor 1 was mechanical like an old Swiss watch. Flavor 2 was a burning pyrotechnic fuze.

Flavor 1 kept better time
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation Flavor 2 was far lighter and MUCH cheaper.

This meant barrages and director controlled pointer fire using mechanical fuzes were much more consistent in altitude.

But the pyrotechnic fuzes could reach higher flying USAAF bombers in 1944 that mechanical could not.
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation This article (link) is a good one for explaining German AA gun defenses as a system.

The key pacing item for German flak defenses were the directors, mechanical-analog fire control computers. (photos)

nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/ge…
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation The Luftwaffe could get guns and ammo faster than it could build & maintain directors.

This meant bigger "grand batteries" where 12, 16, or 24 guns were controlled by one director vs the pre-war 4 guns.

As the Luftwaffe replaced able bodied men with women, children and slaves
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation ...Flak got less accurate.

This was compensated for by firing "box barrages" ahead of American bomber formations which were ungainly clots of A/C that could not turn quickly.
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation The problem that most people have -- including on Adolph Hitler! -- is understanding the mission of AA defenses is not to shoot down planes, but to prevent planes from destroying their assigned target.

The attached table is from an 8th AF report on the accuracy of USAAF bombers
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation ...at the end of WW2 after the fall of France.

The Luftwaffe had to give up Box barrages due to ammo shortages, plus more and more flak guns were diverted to ground defenses.

yet German flak was still accomplishing most of it's mission of causing Allied bombs to miss.
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation Key fact -- 80% of all the bombs that fell on Germany in WW2 fell between June 6th 1944 and May 1945.

It was the fall of the occupied French territory used as a early warning & fighter base glacis that tubed German AA killing %.

RAF Bomber Command WW2 loss rates attached.
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation It was not until the Allied strategic bombers went after all the German Reich Bahn railway marshaling yards _Simultaneously_, starting with Operation Clarion in Mid-Feb 1945, that German AA gun defenses collapsed from a lack of ammo.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Aug 19
I've gotten a lot of comments on this thread here and via DM. I'm going to share one from a Cold War gray beard on the engine that powers the FP-5.

"FP-5 is around 4 x Tomahawk in mass.

FP-5 Engine🧵
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.

2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Aug 19
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden

This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.

1/
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...


2/rand.org/pubs/commentar…
...was Jake Sullivan's totem animal for surfacing ideas of "de-escalation" with Russia.

Former Estonian President Ilves and Prof Stephan Blank utterly shredded the Charap/Sullivan thought balloon.

Seeing Trump revive that Charap/Sullivan thought ballon now is sickening🤮

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 18
The issue for Russia with the FP-5 is that its range makes Russian national air defense practically impossible.

Ukraine can reach facilities on the other side of the Urals and north to Murmansk with the FP-5.

Once Ukrainian drones overwhelm a border SAM battery sector.

1/ Image
FP-5's sent through the drone peak saturation area can 'squirt through into a great empty' low at high subsonic speeds.

Only an AWACS with late production SU-30 with look down/shoot down PESA radars can deal with them.

H/T @DrnBmbr
2/ Image
Furthermore, FP-5's are going to have electronic counter measures (ECM) and counter-countermeasures (ECCM) installed as standard.

The FP-5 will have at least a 24 element CRPA element layout to beat GPS jamming...

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Pres Zelenskyy of Ukraine just made an interesting statement:

"Let me give an example from yesterday, roughly like this: the Russians suffer about a thousand losses per day — that’s 500 killed and 500 wounded.

1/
I’m not even counting the 10 prisoners and so on. More precisely, 968 losses for Russia: 531 killed, 428 wounded, and 9 captured.

We had 340 losses in one day: 18 killed, 243 wounded, and 79 missing in action," he said."

2/
500 Russian KIA versus 18 Ukrainian KIA is a 29.5 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

Total Russian casualties of 1,000 versus 340 Ukrainian is a 2.9 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Actually, the Soviet Union in the "Great Patriotic War" did suffer worse casualties and win.

It is that fact which powers the "Russian WW2 exceptionalism" myth that Putin used to zombify Russians over 20 years to make suicidal assaults over and over again.

1/
I said something like what Chuck just said about Russian casualties in July 2024.

Chuck now, like I did then, underestimates how powerful cultural conditioning is in making armies able to take horrific losses and continue.

2/
As long a Putin's propaganda keeps Russians believing they are winning by taking miniscule slivers of Ukrainian land.

The Russians will keep coming.

It doesn't mean Russia will win. It means Russia is paying a disproportionate blood debt which will have to be paid.

3/
Read 17 tweets
Aug 11
The map below underlines a real innumeracy issue with lots of Western analysts of Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign.

BLUF: 40,000/52 weeks is ~769 Ukrainian OWA drones launched a week on average for the whole year.

Ukrainian OWA Drone🧵
1/
Historic war mobilization production curves are heavily back loaded.

That is, the production rates of B-17's and B-24's bombers in the 3rd quarter of 1943 versus the 3rd quarter of 1944 showed a much higher production rate in late 1944.

2/ Image
Image
We are mid-way through the 3rd quarter of the 2025 where Ukraine's OWA drone annual production goal was 40,000.

Ukraine should be around 850-950 OWA drones a week in August 2025 and will be close to 1,200 a week in the 4th qtr. of the 2025.

3/
Read 5 tweets

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