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

Jan 17
The fire and forget millimeter wave (MMW) radar guidance AGM-114L "Hellfire Longbow" being referred in the War Zone post as "a new anti-drone armament" for the LCS actually ceased production in 2005 and reaches end of life in 2025.

1/
One of the reasons the AGM-114L was dropped from the US Army M-Shorad is the US Army didn't want to pay money to recertify the AGM-114L inventory...

2/
...with the AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) equipped with dual-mode Semi-Active Laser (SAL) and millimeter wave (MMW) radar seeker just entering production.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Jan 16
It is a bad week to be Russia.

Qatar, one of the biggest LNG exporter, just announced it's new six MTPA (million tonnes per annum) nitrogen fertilizer plant.

The chemical process involved is natural gas->ammonia -> urea for a
1/
dohanews.co/qatar-set-to-b…
...vertically integrated facility.

This new Qatar facility means Middle Eastern fertilizer industrial plants have now displaced Russia on the world fertilizer market.

2/
This makes Russia falling out of the world Ag-sector fertilizer supply chain a non-event going forward.

The Qatari sheiks made a good move here to capture value up the supply chain from energy.

Plus, Urea and Ammonia store far better than liquified natural gas.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jan 15
I disagree with the thoughts in this post for multiple reasons.⬇️

1st, Ukraine made a systematic effort in Oct 2024 to take out multiple Russian alcohol distilleries.

So distilleries are on the AFU strategic bombing list.

1/
2nd, there are a lot of things that alcohol is a chemical feedstock for that Russia desperately needs to make.

I've talked about synthetic rubber for tires in another thread.


2/
A short list of Russian industrial alcohol uses include:

o It's used as an industrial solvent.
o It's used as a precursor for numerous plastics.
o It's used as a precursor for some explosives.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Jan 15
Ukraine struck another Russian alcohol plant?

I'm beginning to think the Russians have been using alcohol to make butadiene based synthetic rubber.

My WW2 US mobilization resources say grain produced alcohol was the primary chemical feedstock for the synthetic rubber

1/
...in US tires until August 1944.

The process was invented by a Russian, Via wikipedia:

"The Russian chemist Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev was the first to polymerize butadiene in 1910....

2/
...In 1926 he invented a process for manufacturing butadiene from ethanol, and in 1928, developed a method for producing polybutadiene using sodium as a catalyst.

The government of the Soviet Union strove to use polybutadiene as an alternative to natural rubber ...

3/
Read 6 tweets
Jan 13
If you are going to talk about the US Army's WW2 "Revolution in logistical affairs."

You start at TM 55-310, Stevedoring⬇️

It lead to another Civil Rights revolution 25 years later.

Stevedoring & Civil Rights🧵🧵
1/ Image
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That War Department technical manual codified how the US Army would apply mechanized logistics - pallets, forklifts and warehousing using same - world wide.

2/
Searching on TM 55-310, Stevedoring leads history manuscript of how the US Army moved cargo in WW2.

The implementation of TM 55-310, Stevedoring lead to the hesitant 1st steps to racial integration...

3/
Read 5 tweets
Jan 11
Russian Shaheds have been using early 1990's style digital scene mapping and correlation (DSMAC) guidance.

Depending on how much memory is on the Shahed, it could be avoiding the use of GNSS (Think GPS) radio navigation entirely.

1/ Image
But as the figure I used above noted, Ukraine is mostly flat and that is bad for DSMAC accuracy.

An analysis of the data bases of downed Shaheds will yield the landmarks these drones are using.

That data, plus an AI analysis of past Shahed trajectories in GNSS jammed...

2/ Image
...areas, plus maps of Ukrainian cell phone tower networks that Shahed SIM cards access, should allow operational analysis predictions of future Shahed landmark checkpoints to set up quick reaction Ukrainian TDF mobile AA gun "flak traps."

3/3 End Image
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Read 4 tweets

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