Lieutenants normally act as commanders of three vehicle platoons of Tanks, BMP's or BTR's.
That is, one commander for 3 vehicles and 8-to-19 men.
So, three lieutenants would command all the Mechanized Platoons of a Motor Rifle Company. 3/
Putting three lieutenants as the crew of a single BMP is a lot more than a desperation move.
It is a hard core signal that Russia has so run out of both trained and reliable manpower that it it putting the command staff of a Motor Rifle Company into a single armored
4/
...fighting vehicle. Consider the implications of that as you read the ISW thread.
My view is the Russians lack the trained manpower to pocket Ukrainians in the Donbas.
At best the Russians can push the Donbas line back 20-25 km, the logistical limits to their reduced truck
5/
...park from their existing rail heads.
The problem for the Russians is the arrival of the Switchblade 600 in the low hundreds, given the low Russian force density in the areas they have over run, means they will have to use railheads in Russia for republicworld.com/world-news/rus…
6/
...Donbas.
Media reports have it that the Russians are currently disembarking troops, vehicles & ammo 55km behind the Russian border.
The Switchblade 600 has a maximum one way flight range of 50 miles/80km carrying a Javelin warhead.
7/
If the Russians cannot stop a pair of Ukrainian Hind Helicopter gunships from rocketing Belograd, Russia fuel tanks.
They won't be able to stop a Switchblade 600 loitering munition (AKA a propeller driven mini-cruise missile) from killing Russian train engines in places 8/
...most likely to cause a Russian "logistical heart attack" in terms of delivering the thousands of tons of artillery ammunition needed for the defense of the territory it currently has, let alone take more.
9/
That the Ukrainians have not started immediately pushing back to take advantage of this development, to try pushing out of Kherson and relieve Mariupol also tells us something.
Ukrainian logistics have been pushed past their own breaking point.
The damage Russia has
10/
...inflicted on the Ukrainian Military & infrastructure means they do not have some combination of the logistics, usable equipment or trained manpower for large scale mobile mechanized operations to free Mariupol out of Kherson.
11/
Ukraine's military has pulled the Russian Army's major offensive fangs.
What we are seeing in Donbas are Russian spoiling attacks from it's 'least attrited' BTG meant to inflict material attrition on the Ukrainian Army to extend the Ukrainian logistical pause needed for
12/
...major mobile operations.
The longer that pause, the more existing Russian troops can dig in to hold on to captured territory and the closer those June 2022 reinforcements will be for a major counter stroke against exhausted Ukrainian mobile forces.
13/
IOW, the Russians are playing for time to get a longer attritional phase to delay/reduce the scope of future Ukrainian mobile operations with Switchblade 600 support.
We shall soon see if this will be successful.
14/end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The defence-blog -dot- com website reported a very important observation on the production quality of current Russian Shahed production.
It's individual quality is declining, _Hard_.
1/ Russian End Run Production 🧵
From the article:
“The Russians have adapted these drones to their needs, but due to a lack of components and efforts to reduce costs, their quality has declined,” Kulchytsky explained.
Earlier iterations of Shahed drones contained numerous foreign-made components,
2/
...including Japanese-manufactured bearings and precision-built servo drive rods.
However, recent versions have shown a transition to simplified bearings and direct rod assemblies, indicating a shortage of high-quality components."
3/
The US Navy, as an institution, had a really horrid record of "friendly fire" in WW2, to include shooting down a FM-2 Wildcat fighter coming of the catapult of the CVE USS Tulagi in Kerama Retto on 6 Apr 1945.
Another FM-2 Wildcat, damaged in the same Kerama Retto engagement resulting in the USS Tulagi's FM-2 getting shot down, was in turn blown out of the sky by panicked USN gunners over Kadena airfield causing massive damage to fighter fuel logistics & strafing Army troops ashore. 3/
Congress being held accountable for stealth legislation & pork barrel spending _BEFORE THE VOTE IS CAST_ is my most unexpected and welcomed result of Artificial Intelligence large language models (LLM) in 2024.
It would take eight speed reading lawyers with eidetic memories 16 to 24 man hours to parse a 1000 page piece of legislation.
Specialty lawyers charging hundred of dollars an hour working for K-Street lobbyists.
2/
Now any competent person can feed huge pieces of legislation to Grok, or other LLM, for nearly no cost and generate a similar work product in minutes to post to social media.
K-Street lobbyists in DC, & Congressmen/Senators sucking up their cash, just had their world burn.
3/3
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.
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.
"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/
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/
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/
"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/