@man_integrated As far as truck drivers go, the graduate degree & Silicon Valley tech head crowds have less than zero understanding of the work load.
It isn't just getting a commercial license for driving & driving.
Loads require different trailers & load plans the driver has to execute 1/
@man_integrated ...per thick federal, state, and company rule books.
Often the driver also has to be an all terrain fork lift operator as well in support of delivering to construction sites.
2/
@man_integrated Truckers carrying HAZMAT loads require additional training for signage, documentation, reporting and routing.
This is all long attention span theater through eye wateringly small text.
3/
@man_integrated Then there are the requirements to haul oversized loads.
Again, lots of eye wateringly small DoT text, signage, documentation, reporting, routing, and warning drivers ahead and behind the load. 4/
@man_integrated Then there is the risk. Truckers get in accidents, guaranteed.
It is a function of the amount of time they are diving and the road conditions.
A very small risk times a large enough number of times equals a certainty in a trucking career. 5/
@man_integrated Add to that long hours, truck stop food and no exercise, and you are going to get a stressed and morbidly obese individual in less than a decade.
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.
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/
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.
Both polities had monumental hubris, the conviction that all was permitted, and that they were invincible.
The committed Nazis still believed they were winning in March-April 1945.
Japanese 'Yamato-damashii' beliefs took nukes to break.
2/
This Russian exceptionalist belief in the immunity to the consequences of their own actions is also why the Russians continue their insane suicidal assaults.
What is interesting for me is that the pre-2022 Western intelligence assessments of the Russian Army credited it with lots of tactical pipelines to move fuel.
Those would be far more useful in moving water than trucks...yet...where are they?
These pipelines seem to have fallen into that same logistical 'assume they exist but don't' black hole as Russian truck D-rings & pallets, tactical truck trailers, and Russia's "superior" tooth to tail ratio that acts more like 1863 Union Army where...
2/
..."every soldier is a logistical manual laborer when not in combat".
Water is heavy. Pipelines are more efficient that trucks. Yet all we are seeing is Russian water trucks?
Who stole the Russian Army tactical pipelines? Or were they nothing but disinformation?
3/3
While we are getting Western intelligence assessments that continue to point out Russia's vast increases in production of military materiel, especially tanks, IFVs and APCs (from the same people who claimed Russia would over run Ukraine in 3-to-5 days)
2/
...claiming Russia is "obviously winning."
We are at the same time seeing economic signs of Russian "End Run Production."
The Russian wartime economy is functioning hand to mouth with oil sales revenues because all of the foreign exchange reserves are spent or frozen.
3/