You see a couple of dead ZIL trucks with this dead Russian Object 640 Black Eagle tank prototype in these Ukrainian battle damage assessment photos. 3/ reddit.com/r/TankPorn/com…
A 32-to-40 year old, 150 HP engined, Zil truck in a Russian military with no tradition of NCO preventive maintenance is a marginal "bookkeeping" asset at best.
4/
Every war or military conflict since trucks were invented has seen far more trucks go down to operational attrition than combat.
It is easy, one internet search away, real life facts like this that tell me those screaming for "Data" are trolls playing "denial games" w/history 5/
All a good preventive maintenance program with lots of spare parts can do in combat is slow this process down.
The 90 hp Studebaker, Dodge & Chevy trucks of the Red Ball Express had every spare part 1940's Detroit could make over 2-years sitting for them in England.
7/
The 150hp Zil & 300 hp KamAz Trucks in Ukraine simply don't.
The Zil's are just as overloaded as the Kamaz trucks with 1/2 the horsepower trying to keep up on bad Ukrainian roads.
They are redlined/overheated "Zombie Trucks driving." 8/
There is one other thing the Red Ball Express had that Russian trucks in ukraine do not...a supply of gravel to repair roads.
US Army Corps of Engineers dug gravel pits right off the Normandy beaches to provide the trucks of what became Red Ball Express road repair gravel 9/
... before it was needed.
It is the small details that a logistical staff officer, with a stubby pencil and ledger paper spent hours grinding out in the UK, that made the Red Ball Express' success happen.
And what the trucks of the Russian Army in Ukraine lack today.
10/end
Statement, not startment, darn it!!!
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I did an interview yesterday (Friday 8 Nov 2024) with @esherifftv on the lawfare going on between the Biden Administration and @elonmusk SpaceX over the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
1/
Being a old DoD Quality staffer, I brought powerpoint slides.🤣
This 1st slide shows how the ITAR law defines what a "US person" is, versus the Dept. of Justice discrimination lawsuit claims under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
2/
The second slide shows how "illegal exports" under ITAR includes 'foreign persons' - everyone not a 'US person' - seeing a ITAr controlled technical data package inside the USA counts as a 'export' to the nation an asylee or a refugee comes from.
Western media & political commentary are dominated by "doomers" predicting short & long term outcomes on the 'inexhaustibility' of Russia's personnel & equipment pools, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia is struggling badly.
Reality:
Russia is in a crisis of loss. 🧵 1/
The following are the things I've been tracking for some time:
1. The Russians are losing an infantry division every week to 10 days in terms of soldiers at a rate of between with a 1,100 to 1,700 and associated equipment.
2. The Russian artillery is getting shorter ranged over time from losing the ability to make barrels and liners for 152mm guns. We are seeing literal WW2 122mm artillery pieces, presumably from North Korean stocks, in the Donbas.
3/
...procurement programs and the MLRS artillery rocket system in the late 1970's-to-early 1980's.
The post 1973 Arab Israeli War US Army understood the idea of "the logistical costs of a stowed kill." 2/
The US Army kept the 105mm on the M1 in production so long because the depleted uranium (DU) 105mm "Long Rod" APFSDS could kill a early T-72 and you could carry 55 rounds versus 40 rounds for a 120mm gun firing a tungsten APDS or early DU APFSDS round.
What killed Imperial Japanese soldiers in WW2 "without a mark" inside bunkers was carbon monoxide poisoning, not a lack of O2.
Once you get enough CO in the lungs on the O2 chemical bonds.
No further O2 can get into the bloodstream and you suffocate.
2/
I ran across that fact in a trip report of a US Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) medical doctor sent to Leyte to take blood samples from IJA corpses that died from flame weapons.
It didn't work out and the CWS used goats in bunkers hit with flamethrower weapons to get the CO poisoning medical data.