Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 2, 2022 11 tweets 5 min read Read on X
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.🧵

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For the sin of being the new guy, I was the DCMA quality auditor in charge of the US Army's FMTV "vehicle exercise program" at the contractor manufacturing them from the Mid-1990's to the mid-2000's Then we got more new guys.

Short form: Military trucks need to be...

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...turned over and moved once a month for preventative maintenance reasons.

In particular you want to exercise the central tire air inflation system (CTIS) to see if lines have leaks or had insect/vermin nests blocking the system.

CTIS Controller & CTIS diagram👇👇

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One of the biggest reasons for the repositioning, per TACOM logistic Representatives, was that direct sunlight ages truck tires.

The repositioning of Trucks in close parking prevents a lot of this sun rotting and cycling the CTIS keeps the tire sidewalls supple.

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When you leave military truck tires in one place for months on end. The side walls get rotted/brittle such that using low tire pressure setting for any appreciable distance will cause the tires to fail catastrophically via rips.

See early video:

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Now look at the same Pantsir-S1 tire sidewalls after the Ukrainians tried to tow or drive it out of the mud.

The right rear tire fell apart because the rips in it were too big for the CTIS to keep aired up.

No one exercised that vehicle for 1 year

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There is a huge operational level implication in this. If the Russian Army was too corrupt to exercise a Pantsir-S1. They were too corrupt to exercise the trucks & wheeled AFV's now in Ukraine.

The Russians simply cannot risk them off road during the Rasputitsa/Mud season
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And there is photographic evidence of this.

There are 60(+) Russian army trucks crowded & parked on this raised road bed to avoid the fate of the mud-bogged Pantsir-S1.

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Given the demonstrated levels of corruption in truck maintenance. There is no way in h--l that there are enough tires in the Russian army logistical system.

So their wheeled AFV/truck park is as road bound as Russian Army columns were in the 1st Russo-Finnish War.
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What that means is that as long as and where ever the Spring Rasputitsa is happening. The Russian Army attack front is three wheeled AFV's wide.

When the Ukrainians can block the road with ATGM destroyed vehicles. They can move down either side of the road like Fins in 1939
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...destroying Russian truck columns.

The Crimea is a desert and the South Ukrainian coastal areas are dryer. So we are not seeing this there.

But elsewhere the Russians have a huge problem for the next 4-to-6 weeks.
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More from @TrentTelenko

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Read 23 tweets
May 19
We need to place this highly innovative Chinese artillery shell to drone precision guidance kit in its military-technical perspective.

China has taken the late 1960's US idea of a laser bomb now kit and the late 1980's Australian Kerkanya glide wing and tail kit and
put...
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...them on 152/155mm artillery shells as a drone munitions.

Boeing took the Australian Kerkanya DSTO GTV technology demonstrator and later made the JDAM-ER.

China took the Paveway & JDAM-ER kit ideas and mashed them together for a much cheaper
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...precision guided munition than anything that can survive a 40,000 Gee force ballistic tube launch.

A M1156 precision guidance fuze costs $13,500 as compared with Excalibur’s $113,000 per round because of the mil-spec electronics.

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Read 8 tweets

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