That reason is more visible with this still from an earlier video @RALee85 posted.
The majority of the Russian truck's cargo bed is made of wood planks.
This truck was hit by a small mortar shell that blew apart the wood. twisted down & severed the steel frame holding them. 2/
The choice of a wooden truck bed was one made for cost reasons.
Wood is cheaper than steel.
Plus if your industrial quality tolerances are bad, it is easier to cut a wood plank to match than make another steel frame with the right fit. 3/
The US Army builds it trucks and trailers with sheet steel beds for durability, world wide deployability and long, usable, life-cycle reasons.
The US Army uses its trucks a lot in lieu of the Railways.
So it puts them to really hard use over a 20 year service life. 4/
This emphasis on durability at a higher costs per truck means things in combat, good things for the crew & US Army.
Wood shatters and becomes high velocity fragments when subjected to blast effects.
Steel doesn't. It bends. 5/
The trucks Russian uses generally operate at colder northern latitudes where wood is a good cost-design trade off.
America covers more north-south latitudes than Russia & the US Army has no clue where a President will send them next. So metal truck beds are the design choice 6/
Vehicle design is always a trade off of performance features for unit cost.
Vehicles appropriate for one nation's military won't be for another.
The problem for Russian conscripts in Ukraine is the cheaper Russian truck bed design choice is helping to kill them.
7/end
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Both polities had monumental hubris, the conviction that all was permitted, and that they were invincible.
The committed Nazis still believed they were winning in March-April 1945.
Japanese 'Yamato-damashii' beliefs took nukes to break.
2/
This Russian exceptionalist belief in the immunity to the consequences of their own actions is also why the Russians continue their insane suicidal assaults.
What is interesting for me is that the pre-2022 Western intelligence assessments of the Russian Army credited it with lots of tactical pipelines to move fuel.
Those would be far more useful in moving water than trucks...yet...where are they?
These pipelines seem to have fallen into that same logistical 'assume they exist but don't' black hole as Russian truck D-rings & pallets, tactical truck trailers, and Russia's "superior" tooth to tail ratio that acts more like 1863 Union Army where...
2/
..."every soldier is a logistical manual laborer when not in combat".
Water is heavy. Pipelines are more efficient that trucks. Yet all we are seeing is Russian water trucks?
Who stole the Russian Army tactical pipelines? Or were they nothing but disinformation?
3/3
While we are getting Western intelligence assessments that continue to point out Russia's vast increases in production of military materiel, especially tanks, IFVs and APCs (from the same people who claimed Russia would over run Ukraine in 3-to-5 days)
2/
...claiming Russia is "obviously winning."
We are at the same time seeing economic signs of Russian "End Run Production."
The Russian wartime economy is functioning hand to mouth with oil sales revenues because all of the foreign exchange reserves are spent or frozen.
3/
Given what happened to DoD procurement after the 2nd Clinton Adm. annihilation of military specifications, which killed the configuration mgt, systems engineering & production engineering disciplines in defense contractors.
I've written about this issue for seven years starting on the Chicagoboyz weblog with a post titled:
"The 737 MAX and the Death of MIL-STD-499A SYSTEM ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
March 24th, 2019"
2/
In 2020 I was talking how the decay of systems engineering skills are affecting US Navy nuclear sub safe programs due to the lack of good systems engineering talent in Defense contractors.
The snail like pace of Western military procurement versus the Ukrainian fielding of an all-aspect stealth shaped OWA drone in less than a couple of years is very noticeable.
On the morning of 20 July 2025, a AFGSC airman at Minot AFB took his M18, still inside it's issued holster; and placed it on a desk.
It then went off, struck him in chest, and killed him
AFGSC issued a halt order on 21 July 2025 for use of M17/18 Modular Handgun System.
1/
As an ex-DoD procurement official, that letter is a procurement killing hammer.
This is going to hit SIG Sauer like a moderate sized asteroid in terms of DCMA corrective actions requests or "CAR."
2/
This AFGSC halt use order letter will be grounds for a level three corrective action request (CAR).
A DCMA level III CAR is defined as follows:
"A Level III Corrective Action Request (CAR) issued by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is a serious action taken when there are significant contractual nonconformities.
It is directed to the supplier's top management and is just one step below the possibility of contract suspension or termination.
This type of CAR serves as a management tool to address critical issues that need immediate attention."