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

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
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
Jun 23
Please note that Iran _ISN'T_ shooting down IDF drones over Tehran⬇️

There are technological reasons for that.

1/2
The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.

2/2 Image
P.S.

This is the wiki on Gorgon Stare technology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_St…Image
Read 4 tweets

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