Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 10, 2022 21 tweets 8 min read Read on X
This is a quick thread on Russian plans, maps, and trucks.🧵

We are going to start with Ukraine & explain.
1/
Most people have no clue as to how truely large Ukraine is. So, to cure that, I have gone to the thetruesize.com appin order to educate people.

In this case by laying the US state of Texas over Ukraine. The Texas-Louisiana border to El Paso is roughly the distance
2/
between Ukraine's Russian & Polish borders.

The distance of Kyiv from the Belarus border to be about that of the Oklahoma border to Dallas, Texas.

The tip of Crimea to the Ukraine-Belarus border is roughly from Brownsville Tx to the Red River border w/Oklahoma.
3/
Driving from Texarkana on the N.E. tip of Texas to El Paso at the western tip is 814 miles & 12 hours 13 min. non-stop on US interstates with a 75 mph speed limit

There was no way the Russian trucks like this were going to make it from Belarus to Kyiv
4/
...let alone cross Ukraine North-to-South or East -to-West. What was the Russian General Staff thinking?

Well, we know because the Ukrainians captured the plans from a Russian Naval Infantry Colonel.

See:
5/
Putin's generals thought it would take 3 days to overthrow the Ukraine government and 12 more days for the 190,000 troops to occupy the entire country of 43 million people, twice that of Texas.

That is one Russian conscript per 266 Ukrainians & 3.1 sq. km
6/
This plan assumed the Ukrainian military would put up a token resistance and the newly installed Puppet government would arrange the surrender of Ukraine's army of 250,000 men and 45,000 man territorial defense force without any weapons or soldiers going insurgent.
7/
Nor do those armed Ukrainian numbers include the six annual conscript classes that filled up that 250,000 man army in the eight years of fighting in the Donbas.

Assuming 1/2 of 250,000 x six, that is 730,000 combat veterans who would take great exception to Russia's puppet
8/
Assuming only a perfect plan for the Ukrainian Army, territorials plus Russians faced only 150,000 of those conscript classes. Russian & puppet forces would only outnumber them 3.2 to one in a popular insurgency.

That isn't enough to win.

9/
See these #'s

"However, when facing broadly popular insurgencies, counterinsurgents lost every time they possessed a force ratio advantage of 5-1 or less, failed half the time with odds between 6-1 and 10-1,

10/
smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/manpo…
...but succeeded three-quarters of the time when outnumbering the insurgents by 10-1 or more."

Short form:

Putin lost the moment he decided to invade Ukraine.

Russia has no political or military options to achieve successful war termination.
11/
The only agents in this war with the power to achieve war termination in Ukraine is the Ukrainian people.

Not the Ukrainian government

The people.

Ukraine is engaged in a national people's war against a Kleptocratic potentate.
12/
The Ukrainian people's terms are "We want the Russians gone, all our lands back and even then we will still keep fighting Russia while Putin is in power."

No Ukrainian government can force them to settle for anything less.
13/
Since Putin's 15-day plan has failed & Ukraine's military is fighting. Lets turn to another map that represents the reality on the Ground in Ukraine.

Ukraine is big.

So big that we have a lot of space between conventional armed formations like the WW2 N. African campaign.
14/
There are more armed Ukrainians than Russians in Ukraine.

While the Russians are fighting conventional Ukrainian Army unit for cities and choke points.

The Ukrainian territorials are fulfilling a role much like the colonial militia of the American revolution.

They are

15/
...filling the the space between armed units and destroying Russian Army truck convoys in the 21st century like the Colonial militia destroyed British army foraging parties around Philadelphia in the 18th century & impelled then to retreat or starve.

16/
Now we are going to address the mechanized battle of attrition between Ukraine & Russia.

Long road marches of 300 AFV's see as many as 100 fall out for mechanical defects.

When these are Russian, the fallen out AFV are destroyed, or worse, stolen.
17/
Over and over again.

All Russian operational losses and the repairable half of combat AFV losses are either permanent losses or they become Ukrainian Army GAINS.

/18

President Zelensky claimed on Mar 9, 2022 that more Russian equipment has been captured than Ukrainian equipment lost in the campaign to date, and thus all Ukrainian losses have been covered in operational units by Russian AFV trophies, especially MBTs.

/19
Contrafactual Short form:

Ukraine is winning the vehicular firepower war of attrition with Russia because it has trained & combat experienced reserves from its previous conscript classes to fill those tractor captured Russian AFV's.

Long conventional war favors Ukraine.
20/End
PS.

Yes, the thread turned out to be long, not short.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Apr 29
This passage:

"Lebanese security forces reportedly seized 1 truck last June carrying 5,000 explosive drones..."

...is the heart of why I say that the US Army & USMC ground troops will bleed heavily in their first real drone war.

Drone War🧵
Each of those 5,000 Hezbollah drones is individually far more lethal than a dumb 155mm shell, and a 5-ton truck can carry only 176 of them.

Each of those 5,000 drone can kill a truck carrying those 176 shells.

2/ Image
You simply can't hide from drones like you can from a shell.

It will follow you inside hard cover with a thermobaric warhead.

There is no safe space on the battlefield unless you build one with fishing nets and drone jammers.
3/ Image
Read 6 tweets
Apr 29
I'm tempted to say the difference between military flag ranks who are competent at 2026 peer to peer warfare, and those who are not, is the understanding and application of attritional loss curves to combat loss rates, electronic warfare and logistics.

Professional military education (PME)🧵
1/Image
The set of curves I had an AI produce for me above have been used for air warfare many times starting at the end of WW2, in the USSBS after WW2 and by many classic RAND airpower studies from the 1950's to 1980's.

2/ Image
All post 9/11/2001 Western flag ranks are counter-insurgency (COIN) trained & experienced.

They have no gut feel at all to statistical attrition models at all.

These "COIN-head" flags may prove to be highly resistant to changing this. Which is required to deal with drones.
2/Image
Read 14 tweets
Apr 27
The effectiveness of drones is directly affected by the electronic warfare competence of the drone users.

The fact that the US Army defenestrated every EW practitioner in the 2000's and has compete "EW virgins" as flag rank leadership means it will fail with mass casualties in its first major drone war combat.
1/3
A US Army serious about drone warfare would:

- Rebuild the full EW enterprise with organic division-level EW battalions and real exercises.

- Embed EW jamming into all combat branches (not MI-only).

- Shift to gun/autocannon dominant combined-arms counter-drone doctrine.

2/3
- Require FAA drone pilot + Ham radio licenses for flag ranks to build drone domain literacy.

None of these four reforms will happen until after US Army soldiers are deep in both defeat and buckets of blood.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Apr 26
It is extremely unlikely that this shooter acted alone given the following:

1. Reports are the guns were cached disassembled in a black bag, in a room outside the secured Secret Service perimeter.

2. The room the guns were cached in didn't have television surveillance.

🧵
1/
3. The shooter arrived at the hotel the day before the event.😯

4. TSA rules require firearms to be transported in checked baggage, unloaded, and locked in a hard-sided container, declared to the airline at check-in.

2/
5. Local DC law requires firearms in vehicles to be inaccessible from the passenger compartment and unloaded.

6. Washington DC is not a "safe passage" jurisdiction for non-residents without a license. The shooter lacked this license.

3/
Read 10 tweets
Apr 14
USN flag ranks & their staffers have been fighting the idea of distant economic blockade of China tooth an nail as a response to China invading Taiwan for 30 years.

They really don't want a recent precedent of a successful blockade...

1/3
...to prevent their Carrier fleet Pickett's charge into the South China Sea.

Specifically distant blockade as a strategy against China makes having/regaining 100 Cold War era

2/3 Image
Image
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...frigates and destroyer tenders supporting them on distant blockade stations outside the 2nd Island chain, "budget relevant" for a military strategy of conducting three years of blockade enforcement.

3/3 Image
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Read 4 tweets
Apr 14
The high death rate of Russian troops due to a lack of casualty evacuation was highly visible in March-September 2022.

I've documented this consistently, repeatedly and at great technical depth.

Russia Strong "slopaganda" has buried it over and over.

1/
I was calling out two dead for every three Russian wounded in Sept 2022 as the more realistic Russian casualty ratio in Ukraine because it was taking more than 24 hours to get to the equivalent of a battalion aid station.

2/3
I asked @grok to summarize my receipts on Russian casualty ratios since February 2022, which are clipped below:

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets

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