Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 16, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Alright, let's do a Ukraine War truck maintenance and design choices🧵

Look closely at the destroyed Russian trucks in this @RALee85 video.

Look at the wood debris on the road & the lack of truck beds on the burned out trucks. There is a reason for what you are seeing.
1/
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/ Image
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/ Image
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/ ImageImage
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/ Image
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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More from @TrentTelenko

Dec 17
I've been involved with three US Army FMTV reset programs.

So this newest report from Ukraine's Defense Express on the the repairability problems with Russian AFV's out of their reserves is so much fun to share with you all.

1/ Image
Defense Express pulled an article from the No. 10 issue of the Russian magazine "Material and Technical Support" on how horrid the vehicles coming out of reserve are plus problems with battle damaged reserve vehicles.

2/
en.defence-ua.com/analysis/repai…
The 2nd paragraph starts with this:

"The central takeaway from this publication is that the actual repairability of Russian tanks is 3-5 times lower than what is claimed in official manuals. This discrepancy has extended repair times for equipment by at least 15-20%."

3/
Read 12 tweets
Dec 16
Ukraine’s claims to have produced 100 Peklo (Hell) cruise missiles over the past three months.

This works out to about 1.1 Peklo a day, but manufacturing production lines don't work like that.

Peklo Manufacturing 🧵

1/
pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/…
The infographic figure below is a typical commercial production line curve.

Ukraine's stated production and use of the Peklo (Hell) cruise missile marks it as being on the 'start of production to market entry' ramp up part of the curve below.

2/ Image
Over two dozen Peklo were shown in this public unveiling by Ukraine, which is over 1/4 of the stated production to date.

How many were pre-production prototypes or low rate initial pilot production models isn't knowable.
3/
Read 12 tweets
Dec 15
This is Russian exceptionalism in action again.

The Putin Regime took old riverine tankers - Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft-239 - to sea:

1/
unian.ua/world/richkovi…
"According to Andriy Klymenko , head of the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies , both vessels are very old and have a "river" class, which implies certain limitations.

2/
He published and commented on the relevant map, which indicates the approximate location of the tanker disaster.

"It is about 8 miles from the seaport of Taman (a transshipment port south of the Kerch Strait).

3/
Read 5 tweets
Dec 15
This was a very interesting operation by Ukraine to destroy a 'partisan immobilized' fuel train with Switchblade 600's, to burn the fuel.

The burning fuel will require that the annealed rails under the cars to be replaced to prevent derailments.

RuAF rail vulnerability🧵
1/
This will require a Russian military railway service train to be deployed to this spot for possible future Ukrainian Switchblade 600 follow up strikes.

2/
I've mentioned the vulnerability of Russian trains to Switchblade 600 back in April 2022.

A Switchblade 600 with a Javelin warhead is powerful enough to destroy the control section of a rail engine...
3/
Read 8 tweets
Dec 8
I've been thinking on what is going on to reduce Russia VKS glide bomb attacks as shown

There are many possible reasons.

Fewer Russian glide bomb drops 🧵
1/
My first thought was to wonder if:

"Are we seeing Russian supply chain problems across its PGM production base due to foreign exchange shortages?"

Russia's Shaheed clones have new and inferior Chinese servo motors.⬇️
2/
I asked around and I was pointed to Ukrainian GNSS (AKA global positioning satellite signals) Spoofing as a more likely cause of the Shaheed-136 clone failures.

Also, that would have nothing with reduced glide bomb drops.

3/
Read 8 tweets
Dec 7
In another round of very useful translation, @sambendett points out the Russians have learned that drones are how combat power is measured in the 21st century.

The Russians didn't share drone tech with the SAA at scale.

Ukraine did with the HTS starting in June 2024.
1/
So the Assad regime fell.

Had Russia sent it's 'troublesome' drone units to Syria, rather than in meat grinder infantry assaults. Things might have turned out differently.

Dmitry "Goodwin" Lysakovsky was a legendary Russian extremist who became a drone
2/
...operator in the DPR army and stayed when it became Russian. 

"Goodwin" ran cross ways of his regimental commander for calling him out for dealing drugs to his own troops on social media.
3/
Read 5 tweets

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