Thread by @TrentTelenko

Alright boys and girls, we are going for another wild ride in modern logistics & intelligence🧵

I want you to pay attention to the Russian artillery ammo & it's wood box packaging because I'm going to visually explain why it shows pre-mechanized logistics of the early 1930's
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https://twitter.com/UkrWarReport/status/1513121638841208835

The twitter denizen @thinkdefence has a wonderful blog site that explains lots of things logistical, combat engineering & UK military procurement.

One of his efforts is a multi-part post on modern mechanized logistics with many photos.
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thinkdefence.co.uk/2014/11/boxes-…

To quote him:

"...it is preferred to handle stores as ‘unit loads’ in the most appropriate box or container on a sliding scale, for example;

Ammunition box >> Multiple ammunition boxes on a pallet >> Multiple ammunition boxes on multiple pallets inside an ISO container"

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That passage & that scale & variance photo essay are the visible "look" of mechanized logistics

Each box or pallet is fully marked as to what is contained inside them plus other relevant shipping information for the unit load

This info is in electronic as well as paper form
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Again, from @thinkdefence text:

"Bigger boxes are more efficient.

One person can drive a container handler"

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"Or one person can drive a telehandler"

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"Or one person can handle a box

So it makes perfect sense to use mechanical handling equipment and bigger boxes wherever and whenever it is practical to do so.

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"What actually makes it practical to do so is two of the simplest but most influential inventions of the modern age, the pallet and the container."

I've talked about pallets is earlier threads like here:
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https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1507056022791364610

But @thinkdefence does a much better job here complete with a lot of forklift photo p--n.

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thinkdefence.co.uk/2014/11/milita…

And he takes it up a level with international standard containers and truck flat racks.
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thinkdefence.co.uk/2014/11/milita…

The definitive history text on ISO containers is Mark Levinson's "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger"

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amazon.com/Box-Shipping-C…

You really have to count yourself ignorant of the economic realities of the 21st century world if you do not own & have not read this book.

The history there is central to the rise of both "Big Box" retail & the economic rise of China.

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So, returning to the theme of Russian Artillery logistics & the twin shocks I had looking at it.

The 1st shock was for what amount to cultural reasons, the Russian Army treats trucks as a replacement for a horse drawn cart.

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https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1507056018135597056

Trucks aren't treated by the Russian Army as a piece of capital equipment that needs to be used to be effective.

And that it's most effective & productive use is with mechanized material handling equipment that speeds loading & unloading time.

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https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1507056048217202691

The other, even bigger shock was that Western intelligence agencies missed this fact central to the combat power of Russian Artillery for _80 YEARS_.

_80 YEARS_.

The revealed level of university educated class snobbery against manual labor built into Western Intelligence
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...is an utter wonder to behold.

US legislators really need to sic both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) & Congressional Budget Officer (CBO) on America's various military & civilian intelligence agencies to see how many bad assumptions were built into
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...Soviet/Russian Army intelligence estimates these past eight decades.

The Western intelligence agencies OTOH, need to be thinking in terms of hiring & training up as analysts a bunch of logistics NCO's from their armed forces to get non-University career tract POV's.
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Turning those new hire logistics NCO's loose on those old Russian Army intelligence reports and having them tear apart the assumptions there will teach them how to write modern intelligence reports while educating their supervisors on their university-limited world views.

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In the USA, this will not only answer the incoming GAO & CBO mail. It will also let you achieve a more diverse workforce as logistical unit NCO's are disproportionately non-Caucasian and have more women than combat units.

Working class, disciplined minds who don't
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...look down on people who their hands dirty are exactly the diversity Western, & particularly US intelligence has been missing out on these last 80 years.

20/End