Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 24, 2022 22 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Alright folks, this is a logistical 🧵on pallets, cranes, ISO containers, and what we are _NOT_ seeing on Russian Trucks in Ukraine

Below is really good background tweet 🧵on the importance of pallets as a logistical productivity tool, since we are not seeing them in Ukraine
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and we should be seeing a whole lot of them.

Instead, we are seeing the Russian Army use two man carry break bulk boxes of mortar & artillery ammunition like this.

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Pallets are fundamental to the mechanized movement of goods in a modern economy or military.

See:
"According to an article in a 1931 railway trade magazine, three days were required to unload a boxcar containing 13,000 cases of unpalletized canned goods. When the same
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...amount of goods was loaded into the boxcar on pallets or skids, the identical task took only four hours."

Point blank, the Russian Army trucks seem to be Soviet Union in the early 1930's in terms of pallet logistical efficiency.

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poorboypallet.com/fun-facts/f/di…
Look at this Russian operational truck loss from @UAWeapons It is clear the Russians 'get' palletizing artillery rockets.

But what is missing in these photos?

Hint: mechanized logistical infrastructure has a "look" you don't see here.

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There are no D-rings to tie down that huge rocket pallet.

That is why the TOS thermobaric rocket pallet shifted off that truck & destroyed the wooden truck bed in the process.

There is something else missing on this & every other Russian truck.

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Where are the material handling cranes on Russian trucks?

Rocket launchers can pick up palletized rocket pods with their launcher (See US Army HIMARS example below) off the ground.

Not so much from a tall tactical truck bed.

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The biggest peculiarity is there are no cranes in Ukraine, and I mean that literally.

I've yet to see a single KAMAZ, URAL or ZIL cargo truck with a built in material handling crane. The US Army has 10%-15% of its 5-ton trucks fitted with cranes to help move

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...ammunition or other heavy objects.

The M1084 5-ton std & M1086 5-ton long wheelbase FMTV trucks have cranes to speed the unloading of MLRS rocket pods and artillery ammunition pallets for shells & propellent at ammunition supply points.

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Which brings up the missing Russian all terrain fork lifts.

I wrote a long tweet thread in Nov 2021 on the poisonous WW2 interservice politics in the Pacific over the logistical supply chain there involving forklifts.
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The gist of that thread was a War Dept. logistics troubleshooter showed up in the Pacific to unsnarl War Dept. supply chains and had the trouble both snarled & shot back at him.

That being Adm Nimitz & his staff disallowing the Army its concrete in it's supply ship manifests
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...to build forklift capable warehouses in the age before all terrain forklifts were invented.

Then as now senior US Navy leaders are plug ignorant & proud of it when it comes to the realities of building & operating maritime infrastructure to support naval operations.

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This 1940's era 'type A' USN micromanagement of Army concrete contributed to the artillery shell shortage that slowed the Okinawa campaign, resulting in a great deal of avoidable kamikaze damage.

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Fanbois of Nimitz can rest easy because Putin & his generals in ukraine have far exceeded anything the WW2 Central Pacific command clique ever did by way of screwing up the transportation military supplies by corruption.

Whatever monies that were supposed to go for Russian
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...Army truck cranes went to line someone's Flag rank pockets.

The reason the US Army adds cranes to its trucks is to make the entire truck fleet more productive in moving cargo with fewer vehicles. Cranes reduce the loading time per truck so more of a vehicle's work day

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...is spent on the road than standing still.

Rough order, at the 90 mile/145 km distance Russian trucks can make three round trips. US Army trucks will be able to make four, because of their crane reduced load/unload times.

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Or, the pre-war truck efficiency assumptions on how long Russian trucks load and unload are very wrong because of built-in Western assumptions on levels of Russian mechanized logistics.

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US Army has had its Palletized Load System (PLS) trucks since 1993, having produced over 8,000 to date, and half of them were bought with cranes. There is nothing like it in the Russian truck fleet in Ukraine These PLS trucks are the US Army's primary MLRS rocket transports.
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The ports of St Petersburg and Vladivostok are heavily containerized as are the Russian railroads since they transship Chinese containers to Europe.

One of my maritime shipping contacts sent this to me when I asked him about the penetration of ISO containers in the Russian
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economy:

"Containers are used almost exclusively for commercial offload in the ports. They are rarely transported into the interior. Maersk just ran a story about heading back into Russia to grab 50k containers. That is mainly those in and around the ports."
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There are huge economic multiplier effects that come to economies from full intermodal transportation.

Russians don't have them.

That means Russia's non-oil economy is much smaller than Western economists give it credit for.

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I wonder how big a Ponzi game Putin's Russian economy is playing with German banks?

22/End

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jun 11
Russia faces a logistical dilemma in occupied Ukraine for which it has no good solutions.

Crimea is a de facto island fed by road and rail bridges Ukraine can now destroy at will, and Russia cannot stop.

And Ukraine is destroying those bridges.

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Russia's air defense has suffered a nearly complete "Lanchester Square Collapse" proximate with the Ukrainian mass deployment of both 150 km range AI truck hunting drones and bridge busting FP-2 OWA drones.

Map H/T United24media
2/3 Image
Any route Russian trucks take to Crimea will result in parking lots near replacement pontoon bridging for both those kinds of drones to exploit.

"Trucks that mass together...die together.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 10
Saving Space Access From Kessler Syndrome

Elon Musk’s plan for XAI satellite data centers, and all use of space for any purpose, faces inevitable collapse until a solution emerges for the problem of Kessler Syndrome (see Wikipedia). 🧵

1/
This will occur when enough collisions of small orbital debris pieces from old dead satellites hits the steadily increasing number of new satellites until the whole thing spirals into mass collisions.

Kessler Syndrome computes that this will destroy all existing

2/ Image
Image
...communications, navigation, observation and research satellites in low/medium orbit, and prevent all further satellites launched, for 40+ years, until enough pieces fall out of orbit into the Earth’s atmosphere.

3/
Read 13 tweets
Jun 9
Do you remember all the 2023 US Navalist accounts o X that screamed at @johnkonrad and I about pointing out the containerized anti-ship OWA drone threat to the US fleet.

Welcome to 2026 Ukrainian anti-ship OWA drone threat, you US Navalist yo-yo's. ⬇️

1/2
"Operation Spiderweb with Chinese characteristics" is coming for you all, and we have the receipts.

We need a whole lot of air defense guns everywhere to stop drones that you guys still refuse to fund.

2/ Image
For fun and reference of guns versus missile air defense, this YouTube test scenario pits 100 Shahed-136 one-way attack drones against the historic US Navy Task Force 38.1 from 1944.


3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 3
Just...no. The 8th AF fudged its accuracy numbers.

It excluded "gross error" bombing runs beyond 3,000 feet from the target. Which were above 10% of all 1944 bombing runs.

Below, the inner circle is what a 1944 1,000 foot (304m) CEP in WW2 looked like when dropped from 400(+) four engine heavy bombers.
1/Image
Using this document:

THE UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY
Bombing Accuracy, USAAF Heavy and Medium Bombers in the ETO
MILITARY ANALYSIS DIVISION
First Edition 3 November 1945
Second Edition January 1947

You find both mission failures & gross errors were "excluded data"
2/ Image
And that both increased altitude and the number of combat boxes involved made CEP worse.

3/ Image
Read 12 tweets
Jun 3
There are sound photographic reasons I'm talking about Russia's domestic fuel tanker supply distribution chain breaking down.

Dead tanker trucks can't move fuel.

Plus additional tanker trucks diverted & moving from 🇷🇺 to 🇺🇦 can't deliver fuel domestically either.

Fuel🧵
1/
For additional photographic proof of 🇷🇺 tanker truck supply distribution breaking down, see here in Belgorod:


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And see here elsewhere in Crimea:



3/
Read 8 tweets
Jun 2
This manpower sweep problem is actually a lot worse for the Russians than Western military intelligence is capable of giving credit.

It takes a Russian labor gang about 3 hours to load 16 tons of wooden boxes w/o a convenient box car to truck line up. (below upper right)

🧵
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Image
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Because the Russian Army doesn't use pallets, forklifts, telehandlers nor D-rings anywhere in their supply chain to strap down pallet loads.

You need massive numbers of conscripts to load and unload from train cars to trucks & vice versa.

See⬇️
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This has a whole lot of knock on effects in how the non-mechanized Russian supply system works in the age of GMLRS & drones.

You see here a commercial to tactical truck swap of wooden boxes in the Russian Army operational/strategic depths.

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Read 8 tweets

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