Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 4, 2022 17 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Lady's and Gentlemen, boys & girls, it is time saddle up for another installment of the "Mud and Truck Maintenance in Ukraine" feed.

And this one will be a doozy, because we are talking about Russian truck refueling in the 64km column north of Kyiv. 🧵

1/
I am going to expand on this earlier tweet on the satellite photo montage.

The Rasputitsa, bad tire maintenance, vehicle overcrowding, and lack of fuel have isolated most of this Russian Army column from its rear.

2/
No matter what kind of fuel conservation techniques they engaged in. The 1st 17km or so of that 64 km Russian Army column is out of fuel.

They planned a 3-day operation which is in its 8th day.

And given the temperatures and radio use, those vehicles have dead batteries.
3/
This is why that Russian 41st CAA general was killed.

He showed up at the head of the column to unscrew the logistical mess, screaming at people and waving his arms in the air in visual range of a Ukrainian Army Sniper.
4/
As for why the Ukrainians haven't rolled up those Russian troops in a 'motti' yet. They were busy.

The Russian Hostomel airbase occupation force had to be annihilated to keep fuel from being airlifted in by helicopter.
5/
The head of this 64km column ain't going anywhere. With or without fuel. The Russians can get neither fuel trucks nor wreckers there.

And this "drop dead effect" is proceeding along the column from south to north. The ONLY way that column will move at all is backwards first
6/
This is assuming it moves at all before the Ukrainians destroy it.

The front and middle of the column showed up with food, fuel & ammo for 3-days, & we are 8-days into the war.

The column is packed so tight that you can only refuel about 100-200 meters of column at a time
7/
via a--holes & elbow by jerry cans. Then carefully back out those refueled trucks in order to get to the next 100 meters with the refueling truck and jerry cans.

It would take a week a month from now, when the ground dries, to unf--k this mess.
8/
The Russian Army will not be able to move trucks off road before then.

9/
Nor in a lot of cases will the Russian Army tanks in that column be able to move off road.


10/
The Russians have formed the world's longest POW camp. And the Ukrainians don't have to feed it.

There simply hasn't been anything like this in warfare since the Anglo-American Anzio beachhead in 1944.

11/
The Russian troops in the 40-50 km of the traffic jam closest to Kyiv will run out of food before the jam can be cleared to them.

They'll have to abandon their vehicles and walk north just to get food.

12/
The reason the Russian column got to be so long was due to Russian Army officers “fulfilling the plan”.

They might be shot by the chain of command for disobeying orders to advance into the traffic jam, but won’t be if they obey orders to fulfill the plan.

13/
I'm not saying Ukraine will win or even that Ukraine can prevent Kyiv from being encircled.

I am saying the Russian Army troops in the first 50 kilometers of that 64 km column will have nothing to do with it.

14/End
PS.

The Ukrainians really do want to motti that column.

PPS

And the Ukrainians do have the means to hit the fuel trucks at the North end of the Kyiv column to prevent its unwinding before the mud season is over.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jul 10
This Ukrainian fiber optic FPV drone attack underlines that 20th century style tactical truck based logistics are obsolete in the age of mass, cheap, 50 km FPV drones.

Drones costing less than $2,000 are killing trucks costing over $150,000.

US military versus Drones🧵
1/
The issue of Western truck production versus drone production is stark

Ukraine in 2025 is making ~12,000 FPV and grenade dropping class small drones a month.

The peak annual US Army FMTV production was in 2005 for a total of 8,168 trucks.

Those trucks are 20 years old.

2/ Image
21st Century truck logistics in the age of 50 km unjammable fiber optic guided FPV drones requires systematic combat service support engineering to build vehicle "net tunnels" to protect from powered and persistent drones.

3/

Read 6 tweets
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.
1/2 Image
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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
Image
Image
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.

2/ Image
Image
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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

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