Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jan 18, 2022 15 tweets 6 min read Read on X
The RAF airlift of AT-weapons to Ukraine is now 5 x C-17 sorties.

Rough order, you can fit around 400 FGM-148 or NLAW on 463L pallets on a single C-17.
1/
NLAW's inertial guidance is accurate versus moving targets to 400 meters and stationary at twice that. It uses a 15 cm Bill style slant down tandem HEAT warhead and will beat the front slope of any Russian tank.

You can't jam it.
2/
Only active defenses can stop and NLAW. And a tank hunter team can simultaneously fire several at the same tank to saturate an active defense.

Plus NLAW can be fired indoors.

Sub-tweet thread on NLAW 👇👇👇👇
3/
So, what does 2,000 transferred NLAW in the hands of the Ukrainian Army mean?

It answers the primary need of the Ukrainians, namely, a lot of ATGM with sure kill given a fair hit on a later Generation T-72/T-80/T-90 tank.

See Phil Karber here:
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defence-ua.com/minds_and_idea…
And also see Phil Karber here regards providing USMC surplus Humvee TOW missile launchers and US Army surplus Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine:
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defence-ua.com/army_and_war/v…
The Trump and Biden Administrations have sent 120 Javelin Missile launchers and several thousand (that number is not public where I've looked) Javelin missiles since 2017.

Given there are 40 active Ukrainian battalion battle groups with another 16 in
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defence-blog.com/ukraine-to-rec…
...reserves. That works out to three Javelin launchers and maybe 30 (speculative guess) missiles in the BTG.

This is why Phillip Karber was calling out the need for more.

While the Javelin in small numbers has won engagements like The Battle of Debecka, IRAQ, 2003
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There is simply no comparison between the Russian Army of 2021 and the Iraqi Army facing the Kurdish Peshmerga Army during invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/06/12/the…
The best a Ukrainian BTG can hope for with three Javelin launchers and 30 missiles versus a Russian regimental scale attack is 18 tank & AFV kills with a 100% loss of all three launchers & crew while being over run.
10/
Two thousand NLAW change this calculations by a lot.

Forty Ukrainian BTG now have another 50 NLAW on top of the three Javelin launchers & each NLAW missile is in a disposable launcher

An attacking Russian regiment can face a peak of 53 simultaneous sure kill if hit ATGMs.
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What the US Army Ft. Irwin National Training Center has shown time after time is that massed & simultaneous ATGM salvos from multiple ranges break large scale tank attacks.

The RAF airlift of 2,000 NLAW to Ukraine has given the Ukrainian Army that capability.

12/
The addition of NLAW to Javelins & existing older Ukrainian anti-tank weapons means the three Javelin launchers per BTG will survive several engagements.

BLUF: The Russian Army trying to take Eastern Ukraine now will lose 500 more tanks than before the RAF NLAW airlift.

/End
Correction: The Ukrainian Army has 26, not 16 reserve BTG.
There are now _SIX_ RAF NLAW supply flights to Ukraine.

The RAF anti-tank missile transfer flights to Ukraine proceed apace.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jul 2
Injection molding requires an industrial scale, and above all, _reliable_, supply chain to be more efficient that 3D printing.

This is in a lot of 3D/AM industrial guru papers on the transition from low thousands a year production to the tens of thousands scale.

1/
Injection molding gets you a lot of one thing cheaply. Think lots of fiber optic guided FPV drones, which are immune to radio jamming.

3D/AM allows a lot of modifications to meet the changing requirements of war. Think rapidly evolving Ukrainian interceptor drone designs.

2/
The issue for Ukraine versus Russia is Ukraine has to more widely disperse its industrial base because Russia has a bigger cruise and 500 km(+) ballistic missile production base.

Ukraine's need to disperse production and evolve drones means 3D/AM is a better industrial fit.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jul 1
Ukrainian mass production of FPV interceptor drones has reduced the cost per shot from $7,200 to $5,800.

The US Coyte II drone interceptor runs to $100K a shot.

The cost difference was the Big/Expensive/Few platform & missile cult was in charge of developing the Coyote II.
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The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.

2/ Image
So the US military abandoned kinetic solutions the lower end drone threat.

And it has to pretend that high power microwave weapons and jamming will be the answer to fiber optic guided FPV's at weed height and grenade dropping drones behind tree lines.

3/3 Image
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Read 4 tweets
Jun 27
The F-35 Big/Expensive/Few Platform & Missile cult is in deep denial of this battlefield reality.

Air superiority below 2,000 feet/600 meters has been lost by crewed aircraft.

F-35's are irrelevant for the Mavic drone threat, save as a budget threat to the C-UAS procurement.
1/
The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
2/
The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.

It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.

3/ Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 27
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.

Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!

1/
This means things as the Russians make these FPV's from Chinese commercial drone components in six figure and soon 7 figure (millions!) numbers.

This has huge implications for the impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

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When China invades Taiwan, the 1st move will be occupying the small islands around Formosa (left) and making them drone, GMLRS & HQ9 SAM bases.

50 km circles around all those small islands cover almost all the invasion beaches (map right) with PLA 50km fiber optic FPV's.

3/ Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 24
It isn't just a matter of pre-2023 sniper tactics being obsolete.

Every patrolling tactic taught by the US Army Infantry and Ranger schools are obsolete when you can "just send a drone. "

1/3
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.

Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.

And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮

2/3
"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 23
Please note that Iran _ISN'T_ shooting down IDF drones over Tehran⬇️

There are technological reasons for that.

1/2
The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.

2/2 Image
P.S.

This is the wiki on Gorgon Stare technology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_St…Image
Read 4 tweets

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