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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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
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/
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.
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.
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!
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
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.