@danieljleahy & @ww2tv had a crackerjack stream on Australian Stuart tanks at Sanananda New Guinea this morning. Someone in the chat asked how they go there.
This thread will address that question. 1/
So, lets talk about the Australian Operation Lilliput that ran freighter convoys from Milne Bay to Oro bay in 1942.
John Sheridan Fahnestock and Adam Bruce Fahnestock, friends with Pres. Roosevelt, originated the idea of a unit of small sailing ships to deliver supplies to Bataan, called “Mission X.”
These small boats were the key distribution mode for the SWPA. They moved supplies at night from advanced bases outside the bombing range of the Japanese Army and Naval Air Forces. Like the PT-Boat, their biggest enemy in 1942-43 was the small Japanese float planes... 3/
...that flew day & night plus were both low and slow enough to spot them. Then either these sea planes attacked, or worse, orbited and reported by radio to awaiting Japanese fighter patrols. 4/
The RAAN vessel HMAS Paluma (a 45 ton former examination vessel, see photo) did the actual surveys with the USASS luggers & fishing smacks the to find a reliable approach for larger vessels from Milne Bay to supply troops landed by air near Cape Nelson. 5/ ozatwar.com/sigint/paluma.…
The 1st Lilliput convoy "Operation Karsi" was in Dec 1941, it took "...the former train ferry Karsik was pressed into service as an emergency tank landing ship, carrying four M-3 Stuart tanks of the Australian 2/6th Armoured Regiment to Oro Bay." 6/ awm.gov.au/visit/exhibiti…
The Japanese took great exception to these convoys.
And given the geography of the Owen Stanley mountain range. The IJN had air superiority a few hours every day.
Photo left is of survivors of the s’Jacob, sunk on 8 March 1943, await rescue by HMAS Bendigo near Oro Bay 7/
The Allies in their turn took greater exception to these IJN attacks and deployed airfields radar & fighter control sensor network to gain air superiority & shield these sealanes.
This effort began before the Stuarts were delivered & went on after Sanananda was won.
Texas has seven unique advantages in terms of infrastructure, political culture, and resource geography that make it uniquely suited to be the next industrial heartland of the USA.
The seven industrial development advantages of Texas 🧵 1/
1. About 94% of land in Texas is privately held. This vastly limits what the Federal, State and local governments can do to in terms of regulations and NIMBY games.
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2. Texas is mostly flat. Texas hill country is small beer compared to the Appalachian and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. This compounds with #1 for industrial development.
3. Texas has a lot of water compared to the US west & sea access.
This is one of the most logistically incompetent hot takes by any German journalist in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
95% getting through is a 5% loss rate per trip
95%(x) for 10 to 20 kills means x = 200 to 400 trucks on this route
10 trips means 40% total fleet loss - 80 to 160 trucks
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You can follow the 5% loss curve in this 500 unit fleet at 10 exposures in the graphic below.
A 40% fleet loss in 10 days from a 5% drone loss rate is logistical collapse for the Russian Army in occupied Ukraine.
Only some trying to get AfD eyeballs would say different.
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This leaves out the fact that the Russian Army doesn't use *ANY* mechanized logistical enabler like pallets, Truck D-rings, forklifts, or telehandlers.
Russian trucks are in the drone kill zones 3 times as long as a Western truck due to loading times.
"The DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, with a range of approximately 4,000 to 5,000 kilometers, was specifically designed and publicly nicknamed by Chinese military analysts as the "Guam Killer.""
As laid out by warquants -dot- com, China is buying one million OWA drones to destroy all US/Taiwan/Taiwan allied military logistics from Guam to the China coast.
A quantity of one million "Shaheed plus" class OWA drones has quality all its own.
Homicide statistics since the early 1960s are not comparable to earlier periods because medical advances have turned many fatal injuries into survivable ones.