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.
11/
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

May 31
This is not new.⬇️

Enemies of the West have been using cellphone networks against Western militaries since the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

The Houthi are currently targeting ships in the Red Sea using the cell network they control to ping smart phones of ship crews.
1/
I did a thread on the exploitation of cell networks for drone targeting on December 2023.

2/
David Axe was talking about an early version of the Russian Drone cell phone navigation Serhii "Flash" is discussing in 2023.

3/
Read 9 tweets
May 30
I have been beating up on the Field Artillery crowd on X for literally years over the rapid firepower growth curve of drones compared to tube artillery.

Drones do cluster munitions far more accurately than tube artillery.

1/
Drones have more bang than a 155mm shell for a couple of years.

2/
And the shortages of Ukrainian artillery shells through out the Russo-Ukrainian War has meant drone surveillance was the prerequisite for shooting any tube artillery at all, be it cluster munition or unitary.

3/
Read 5 tweets
May 23
We have seen an evolution from 7-inch to 10-inch and now to 15-inch propeller drone designs for FPV's since 2023 in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The question going forward is the choice of fiber optic guided or radio links.

Drone CRPA🧵
1/
The cost of putting serious radio link electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) on an FPV drone using a CRPA is way high.

Grok has an adequate estimate on what Chinese CRPA's cost.

2/
grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…Image
Even basic Russian Kometa 4-channel design CRPAs are hundreds of dollars apiece.

To beat intensive ECM/Jamming at the front lines with 8, 12, or 16 element CRPA will cost hundreds to thousands per drone.

Plus CRPA weight & power drain impacts the drone w/bigger batteries.

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Read 6 tweets
May 22
Guns rule in the age of drones, but the "muffin top" Burke class DDG's are so top heavy with the SLQ-32(V)7 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) installation that the idea of adding 76mm or 57mm autocannons is insane from the metacentric height POV.

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What to do?

You can proliferate light precision guided weapon mounts. Which can be the 21st century version of the 20mm oerlikon.

A Burke needs multiple Hydra and APKWS 70mm semi-active laser guided rocket mounts on the centerline and both broadsides.

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The US Navy is already slapping deck crew operated 25mm autocannons and .50 caliber HMG all over Burke class DDG's already.

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Read 5 tweets
May 21
I've been posting about the inertia of Russian civil infrastructure industrial disinvestment for some time regarding Russian railways and it's foreign bearings.

The key tell going forward is triage.

This western part problem also applies to Russian Coal fired power plants
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...and we are seeing triage there now that will apply to Russian railways later.

Non-Russian core populations areas of Russia have been cut off from modernization and restoration of thermal power plants due to a lack of Western parts.

2/Image
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There are grave implications in that for the electrified Trans-Siberian railway.

Russian railways are already seeing repair trains derail on the journey to go fix derailments.

3/
Read 6 tweets
May 21
While this @Tatarigami_UA 🧵concentrates on the modernization of pieces of the Russian military-industrial base as a cautionary tale.

It leaves a throw away line about economic collapse that leaves out the reality of Russian industrial/infrastructure disinvestment which will
1/
...continue for years even if the fighting stops tomorrow.

The rundown of Russian stocks of western railway bearing will continue for years because the specialty steel supply chain feeding western bearing manufacturers has shut down unused capacity after 3-years of war.

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It will take years to "turn on" the specialty steel pipeline to even begin to make new bearings for the Russian railways.

Compounding the matter is the extreme age of the Russian rolling stock fleet of 1.1 million freight cars/wagons at the beginning of the war.

3/ Image
Read 23 tweets

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