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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We need to have a talk about Russian military corruption and its effects on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
It's kind of like these sun-rotted missile truck tires that make my reputation on Twitter.
Corruption happens slowly, then all at once.
Corruptionđź§µ 1/
The Russian Army issued a "live off the land" order in early March 2022 resulted in lots of Russian enlisted stealing outside the line of sight of Russian junior officers.
This hollowed out discipline the RuAF "Professional Volunteers" in early 2022.
More information has come out on the FP-5 Flamingo which gives insights io both the systems and production engineering involved for low cost production.
I'm going to use the WW2 F6F Hellcat & M4 Sherman as examples of Ukrainian FP-5 design choices.
The FP-5 GLCM production photos released today shows what looks like a combination of carbon fiber composite, molded thermoplastics, and sheet metal.
Cruciform tail controls are all moving.
Wings are attached before launch like a 1960s USAF MGM-1 Matador. 2/
The FP-5 Transporter Erector Launch (TEL) trailer looks like a new custom build.
Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point, stated to the AP that "Fire Point is producing roughly one Flamingo per day, and by October they hope to build capacity to make seven per day."
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.
2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.
3/
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden
This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...