Trent Telenko Profile picture
Oct 17, 2021 24 tweets 12 min read Read on X
This is a thread addressing Chinese military technology innovation today, it's parallels with Imperial Japan in the Mid-1930's to early 1940's period, & the "Great Supply Chain Collapse."

They are related.
1/
thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4…
The Chinese took two existing technologies, the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) and the Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) & kit bashed them together into a 1st strike nuclear weapon that evades US ICBM trajectory early warning radar coverage.
2/
One can argue about the usefulness of this kit bash.

The one thing you cannot ignore is that it's a highly innovative weapon system design aimed like a laser at a decades old weakness.

A weakness the Chinese have been aware of for its entire existence, via @TheDEWLine
3/
A PLARF Long March 2C expendable launcher was used to launch the 3-4 ton FOBS payload with a HGV for reentry vehicle(RV). The DF-ZF from the DF-17 system is the likely candidate RV.
4/
The Long March 2C is a proven legacy design from the 1980s, like the LGM-25C Titan II and Soviet R-36.

It is fueled with hypergolic N2O4 / UDMH propellants & capable of lifting almost 4 tons to LEO. It benefitted from the 1998 Loral missile scandal
5/
jonathanpollard.org/1998/040798b.h…
One of the benefits, if you can call it that, of being a retired tail end Boomer/early Gen X'er military procurement official means I know where the bodies are buried...because I helped to bury them.

Living Loral's "ITAR Gift" to DoD is a case in point
6/
federalregister.gov/documents/2020…
Like most men of my generation, I have the WW2 history bug. Unlike most, I was interested in how the War & Navy Dept. bought weapons in lieu of war gear "Top Trumps," because day job.

Doing this while training other in the admin. of ITAR w/in DoD gave me unique perspectives.
7/
I also looked at how other WW2 major powers, particularly the Japanese, developed their weapons.

I laid out Imperial Japan's national technological style in a July 2021 @WW2TV stream on MacArthur's Secret Radar Hunters, Section 22. See Photo & link
8/
The Japanese had a "challenger technological style" I've seen echoed in Soviet/Russian & now Chinese military development.

US, by contrast, always invested more thought into both usability and maintainability of its weapons, vice UK or Germany tech.

9/
There are usually two prices for the "US Style of Design."

1. It takes longer to get out there.
2. It costs more & competitors quickly copy it with cheap knock off's.

10/
If you have a smart US management. You can win using that style via better service & by continually improving design -- See IPad & early IPhone

That smartness has been lacking the last couple of decades as marketing hype displaced good engineering via MBA "Off-shoring."
11/
This is a highly dangerous place for the USA to be in as China has made in the late 20-teens the kind of innovative leap the Imperial Japanese 1935(+) did via a class of truly innovative world class engineers.

Yamato, A6M Zero & I-400 sub-carriers are historical examples.
12/
While the PLARF FOBS with HGV RV is the current events example of China "Post-Challenger/Peer Competitor" national technological style, arriving.

13/
wirewag.com/china-successf…
I've talked about this recent Chinese engineering leap recently on Twitter regards NORINCO's comprehensive family of unmanned ground vehicles.

14/

I've also mentioned a few months ago "why" the US Defense industrial base lacks the ability to systems engineer their way out of a paper bag, let alone a ship design, namely the death by corruption of Mil-STD-499.

14/
See:
If you search Twitter with the term "Mil-STD-499" you'll find my previous rant threads.

This blog post is where you see why & how "Systems Engineering" by DoD contractors died.

The 737 MAX and the Death of MIL-STD-499A SYSTEM ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
chicagoboyz.net/archives/59466…

15/
Unlike 1941-1945, the now 'Innovative Peer Level' Chinese military industrial base is facing off against a decayed Western Military Industrial base that has had its system engineering hollowed out by political corruption and "Off-shoring."
16/
This isn't to say Systems Engineering has completely disappeared from the West.

The Israeli Iron Dome anti-rocket system has some of the best systems engineering on the planet.

/17

Systems engineering that is so elegant that it includes considerations of digital selectivity and the economic cost avoidance for Israeli policy makers in its architecture.

It beats Islamist suicide terrorism with superior economic cost accounting.

18/
The reason that Israel has such a high level of systems engineering is their decades long industrial policy of "On-shoring" it defense industrial base to meet local existential threats, AKA the 2006 Lebanon War & 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead rocket attacks.
19/
Space X is another example of high levels of systems engineering via both "in-sourcing" & "On-shoring."

Roughly 70% of every Space X rocket or capsule is mfg by Space X internally.

20/
Short, internal, supply chains with 3D/AM make systems engineering with swift, iterative, innovation much easier.

It also avoids the worst effects of the "Great Supply Chain Collapse" now washing over the "off-shore supplier" world economy.

21/
The 21st Century Chinses challenge for US economic, national security & foreign policy calls for on-shoring, in-sourcing, & shortening supply chains with 3D/AM.

That is, returning to the traditional US technological style.
22/
Making this reality will the politics of the post "Great Supply Chain Collapse" western world.

/End

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More from @TrentTelenko

Nov 5
Western media & political commentary are dominated by "doomers" predicting short & long term outcomes on the 'inexhaustibility' of Russia's personnel & equipment pools, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia is struggling badly.

Reality:
Russia is in a crisis of loss. 🧵
1/ See: https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/confirmed-russian-battlefield-equipment-losses-1730799222.html
The following are the things I've been tracking for some time:

1. The Russians are losing an infantry division every week to 10 days in terms of soldiers at a rate of between with a 1,100 to 1,700 and associated equipment.

2/ Image
2. The Russian artillery is getting shorter ranged over time from losing the ability to make barrels and liners for 152mm guns. We are seeing literal WW2 122mm artillery pieces, presumably from North Korean stocks, in the Donbas.

3/
Read 15 tweets
Nov 3
This Warzone article is an example of one of the things that has been driving me bug house nuts watching the US Military deal with drones.

Recognizing the utter collapse of analytical rigor compared to the "Big Five"
1/
...procurement programs and the MLRS artillery rocket system in the late 1970's-to-early 1980's.

The post 1973 Arab Israeli War US Army understood the idea of "the logistical costs of a stowed kill."
2/ Image
The US Army kept the 105mm on the M1 in production so long because the depleted uranium (DU) 105mm "Long Rod" APFSDS could kill a early T-72 and you could carry 55 rounds versus 40 rounds for a 120mm gun firing a tungsten APDS or early DU APFSDS round.

3/ Image
Image
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Read 47 tweets
Oct 4
Thermite drones inside a bunker are all sorts of evil beyond burns.

My WW2 flame weapon research found that CO, carbon monoxide, fills the chemical bonds that O2 does in the lungs of air breathing fauna.

That means once CO hits those bonds in your lungs, you suffocate.

1/
What killed Imperial Japanese soldiers in WW2 "without a mark" inside bunkers was carbon monoxide poisoning, not a lack of O2.

Once you get enough CO in the lungs on the O2 chemical bonds.

No further O2 can get into the bloodstream and you suffocate.

2/ Image
I ran across that fact in a trip report of a US Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) medical doctor sent to Leyte to take blood samples from IJA corpses that died from flame weapons.

It didn't work out and the CWS used goats in bunkers hit with flamethrower weapons to get the CO poisoning medical data.

3/3Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 4
You all realize that this Ukrainian thermite drone innovation just made every field fortification design by every army in the world obsolete?

1/
Any trench w/o overhead cover and any passage or firing slit that is big enough to shoot a crew served heavy weapon or vehicle out of is also big enough for a FPV drone spewing thermite to fly into.

2/ Image
Every field fortification manual ever written by every military in the world is obsolete and will have to be re-written with an eye to placing curtains, nets or wire screens across firing slits and doors to keep out small drones.

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 1
These appear to be long range heavy MLRS of 240 mm to 400 mm diameter rather than "ballistic missiles."

1/
Heavy MLRS like the Chinese PLA, 350 km range, PCL191 erases the distinction between short range ballistic missiles & guided MLRS.

It is unclear exactly what the real ranges range of Iranian Heavy MLRS are given Chinese technology transfers.
2/

The "missile" impacts have the classic artillery rocket impact ellipse with strikes being on the line of flight axis having more dispersal (long/short) that left or right of it.

3/
Image
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Read 7 tweets
Oct 1
Just...no. That's bad analysis.

One of the spaces @secretsqrl123 had with @RyanO_ChosenCoy present. He made clear Ukrainian FPV drones based on Hollywood camera multi-copters have a 50 km one way range.

The other issue is the disintermediation of drones from platforms.
1/
Image
"Disintermediation" means any shipping container or flat space on a vessel/vehicle works as a launcher.

A ISO container with 126 drones can be stacked on a 24 X 24 top level of a Chinese MGX-24 container ship and lob 72,576 drones in a simultaneous wave 50 km or more.

2/ Image
Another thing that works are simple racks in cargo aircraft, helicopters or boats.

The Russians are using simple racks in the Mi-8 to hold FPV drones in large numbers to engage Ukrainian boat drones or special forces craft with MANPADS or FPV's.

3/
Read 18 tweets

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