Trent Telenko Profile picture
Apr 23, 2022 35 tweets 17 min read Read on X
This is going to be a long thread 🧵on artillery logistics in the Ukraine war. It will explain what we should be seeing, but are not.

To get there, I need to start with calling myself out with being wrong and why I think that was.

I was wrong on Russian artillery ammo👇👇
1/
It turned out the Russians refusal to use artillery on Ukrainian counter-attacks at Izyum had to do with a large set piece artillery barrage the Russians had planned to open their Donbas offensive across the entire front.


2/
The logic chain of that thread fell apart on that point.

It also helped I had been tipped off about coming a coming article saying there was a Russian shortage in 160mm & 240mm mortar ammo because of the heavy use of those calibers in Syrian cities.

The article's...
3/
... publication was put off by the start of the Russian Donbas offensive.

You can now file this under "Trent Telenko can be wrong."

There were additional factors besides those two points that gave me a context to reach that conclusion.
4/
Back in late 2014 I joined a Ukrainian diaspora email list covering the Donbas war. At the time I was studying the 1945 artillery battle at Okinawa.

Weirdness popped out immediately looking at the artillery rocket impact pattern in Kramatorsk

5/
web.archive.org/web/2017022219…
The key to the map
o Green UXO duds,
o Red KIA/WIA
o Blue exploded, no casualties

Most of the rockets overshot the airfield.

Seven out of 41 rockets UXO is an 18% dud rate.
6/ Image
This dud rate is better than the oldest Ex-Soviet stuff seen in Afghanistan (~30%), but not the less than 5% rate of duds seen in older Western ammo.

Acronyms:
UXO - unexploded ordnance
KIA - Killed in action
WIA - Wounded in action.

7/ ImageImageImage
A shell fuze is an explosive train from smaller to largest of a primer, a detonator and a booster charge meant to set off the main bursting charge of a shell

The photo clip to the right is from a youtube WW2 US Army training film

Note: Fuze =/= Fuse

8/
ImageImage
Generally, as artillery fuzes age, they get less reliable. This is because the chemicals in the Fuze's primer are the most unstable & subject to degrading over time.

Artillery ammunition of all sorts has a life span.

Highly energetic solid explosives & propellants degrade
9/
...over time as hot/cold cycles, humidity & trace contamination causes crystallization.

An 18% dud rate on Smerch rockets is a symptom of the aging of the primer in the rocket fuze, AKA a time expired munition.

10/ Image
There were other indications of "time-ex" Russian artillery rocket munitions from the 2015 122mm Grad rocketing of Mariupol.

As rocket propellent ages, it generates marginally & unpredictably less thrust.

Mariupol's 'short' rocketing in the figure right below suggests that

11/ ImageImage
...happened in 2015.

US military practice is to treat solid rocket motors as a 10 year storage item requiring inspect/replace in a missile/rocket midlife depot level refresh

Demilitarizing artillery rockets & shells is an utter pain as it requires EPA regulatory permissions
12/
...for burning the explosives & propellants.

DCMA administers these 'demil' contracts, which is where much of the information I've related on 'time-ex' ammo came from.

Russia's wars in Chechnya & Syria and the 1980's Iraqi purchases of Soviet shells saw large amounts of
13/ Image
Soviet Union's strategic reserve of artillery ammunition used up.

When the US Military overran Iraq in 2003. It found more artillery ammunition, mostly ex-Soviet, than in it's own war reserves.

These Iraqi munitions were destroyed in the US anti-IED campaign of 2004-2007.

14/ ImageImageImage
Now we get to the 1945 artillery fight at Okinawa.

The radar proximity "VT-Fuze" debuted for the first time in Pacific ground combat at Okinawa.

(I've posted a great deal about Okinawa, see below photos.)
15/
ImageImageImageImage
The impact marks of high speed fragments thrown from an airburst shell look different than ground & delay fuzed shell bursts.

The German building in the lower right is from Ralph Belknap Baldwin's The Deadly Fuze: The Secret Weapon of World War II

16/
ImageImageImageImage
These are the fragment impact marks are from bombing raids of Iwo Jima, left, and a Japanese airfield on Kyushu right.

Please note, there are no craters. There are only wide u-shaped fragment patterns.
17/ ImageImage
Airburst shells are infinitely superior to ground or delay bursts because they will kill infantry in trenches without overhead cover.

They are also much better at killing trucks as this US Navy 5-inch gunfire test shows.


18/ ImageImageImage
Now that you know all that. Recall that night vision video of Russian MLRS bombardment up thread & compare to this Baldwin photo.

And now look at the wood lined Ukrainian trench and tell me what you do not see from the photo retweet.

Neither have
19/
Image
...airbursts clouds or high speed fragmentation impact marks.

Now look at this aerial video of buildings in the aftermath of the Battle for the Village of Moschun, near Kyiv.

There is not a single airburst fragmentation pattern to be seen.
20/
Now look at this Russian drone directed shelling of a Ukrainian position.

All we are seeing is artillery ground bursts versus a trench line.

There are no airbursts.

22/
This UK Daily Mail tweet also shows Ukrainian trench positions without evidence of airburst fragmentation.

23/


23/
Finally, this video shows a near miss of a Ukrainian trench line by a Russian impact fuzed shell.

If it had been a time or proximity fuzed shell, the fragments would have killed the soldier taking the video.



24/
So what is this lack of Russian & Ukrainian airburst fuzing mean?

Good fuzing is expensive, requires high end manufacturing capability & quality control.
Russian artillery simply doesn't have either available.

See this time mortar fuze from Taiwan.
25/
ImageImageImageImage
The replacement of chemical percussion, mechanical, and electromechanical fuzing with pure electric-electronic fuzing for superior shell performance is a 21st Century trend Russia is ill prepared to follow.

Taiwan is just one example of this.
26/ ImageImage
This is a Romanian 120mm Mortar with PF-120 proximity fuze ARM shells.

Please carefully note the huge beaten ground caused by the shell fragments in the photo clips & video.
27/
ImageImageImage
The lack of Russian airburst shelling in Donbas utterly stands out when you look at the lay of the land after repeated shelling over time.


27/
This isn't to say airbursts are completely missing from both sides.

This Blue_Sauron video tweet shows a Ukrainian one destroying a Russian vehicle.
28/
But the best way to upgrade Ukrainian artillery is going to be with NATO & other artillery fuzes to give Ukraine more airburst and other options versus Russia.

And the fuze that will help Ukraine the most is the ATK precision guidance kit fuzes for its incoming NATO 155mm

29/ Image
The PGK turns ordinary 155mm shells into precision guided artillery projectiles (PGAP) at the cost of 10% of maximum range.

You can airlift 40 PGK for the weight of a single Excalibur guided artillery shell.
30/ ImageImage
The PGK requires minimal additional training to properly use and it will vastly reduce the required artillery shell tonnage for the same battlefield impact.

The only reason it cannot be used on current Ukrainian shells is they have the Russian 36mm fuze threads compared
31/ ImageImageImage
...to the 45mm used on NATO artillery shells.

So the UA would have to take 152mm and 203mm casings and machine out the threads to fit the PGK NATO fuse thread.

Ukraine has a plant in Sumy that manufactures 122mm, 152mm ammo, so this is not an unusual challenge for them.

32/
It is the little things in war that make all the difference.

Things like shell fuzes.

Why we have not seen the Western intelligence notice or Defense Departments & Defense Ministries to go there with upgrading Ukrainian artillery and mortar fuzes is a mystery...

33/
...I will leave to others.

The time to fix this situation is now.

34/End
@threadreaderapp unroll please

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Trent Telenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TrentTelenko

Apr 22
The Ukrainian "refresh rate" on it's drone EW systems has been about two weeks since late 2023

What the Russians said right here is that it took a month to set up this attack⬇️

Ukraine & QRCP🧵
1/3
In the late 1960's to 1973 Arab-Israeli War US EW contractors could meet a two week cycle time with "quick reaction capability program" to bypass normal procurement procedures and speed urgently needed electronic systems to the battlefield.

2/3
Given the the triple handicaps of Silicon Valley practice of outsourcing of engineering talent, counting foreigners as 'diversity hires,' and ITAR restrictions for defense work.

The USA lacks the electronic engineering talent it did in the Apollo/Vietnam era to do 'QRCP.'

3/3
Read 5 tweets
Apr 20
The mass production of China's "Corvus Mulberry" tank landing barges proceeds apace in a shipyard also building freighters for a Taiwanese shipping firm.

Taiwanese capitalists are literally paying the Chinese shipyard that is building the means CCP will use to invade Taiwan!
1/
The US Navy doesn't have the tankers, salvage ships, tugs, fire boats & destroyer tenders to attempt running China's drone & anti-ship missile gauntlet when the CCP invades Taiwan.

China collapsing from a 3-4 year US naval blockade will disgorge Taiwan from the CCP's grip.
2/ Image
Image
Will someone please explain to me why the US Navy should impale it's carrier battle groups on Chinese anti-ship hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles to rescue Taiwan from this foolishness?

Distant naval blockade will collapse China's economy for for far fewer US lives.

3/3 Image
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 20
The mass production of China's "Corvu Mulberry" tank landing barges proceeds apace in a shipyard also building freighters for a Taiwanese shipping firm.

Taiwanese capitalists are literally paying the Chinese shipyard that are building the means CCP will use to invade them.

1/
Will someone please explain to me why the US Navy should impale it's carrier battle groups on Chinese anti-ship hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles to rescue Taiwan from this foolishness?

Distant naval blockade will collapse China's economy for far fewer US lives.
2/ Image
Image
Image
The US Navy doesn't have the tankers, salvage ships, tugs, fire boats & destroyer tenders to attempt running China's drone & anti-ship missile gauntlet when the CCP invades Taiwan.

China collapsing from a 3-4 year US naval blockade will disgorge Taiwan from the CCP's grip.

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 19
It turns out that, in addition to "TAF-10" USMC SCR-270 radars, the USMC 90mm Heavy AA Battalion SCR-584 radars saw quite a few of the Japanese Balloon Radar Decoys at Okinawa in/near Hagushi Beach, Yonton & Kadena air fields.

WW2 Radar Decoy🧵
1/ Image
Image
Image
Image
The Marine AA troops didn't know what they were, but their descriptions match known aerodynamic templates for them.  

The balloon decoy tended to fall through different levels of wind direction & updrafts.  So the decoy often went in different directions than the ground wind.
2/ Image
The 1st Marine Provisional Anti-Aircraft Group Hqtrs saw the radar decoy balloons most often when the Japanese engaged in a night time tactic they referred to as "Ice-Tong attacks."

Pairs of Japanese planes established themselves in orbits just outside effective 90mm gun

3/ Image
Read 14 tweets
Apr 19
There was a lot more electromagnetic deception in WW2 than is in US Military histories.

The silence on such matters is jarring.

This text report (left) is from USS Pennsylvania in June 1944 during the Mariannes campaign describing the decoys drawn by Section 22 (right).

1/ Image
Image
The one of the previous drawing is of a captured decoy from Roi island in March 1944. 

Roi was subject to several IJN air raids using this decoy, as USS New Mexico reported its effects 14 Feb 1944, later reported in a Section 22 Current Statement dated 3 April 1944.
2/ Image
Somehow the report in General Douglas MacArthur's Section 22 radar hunters current statement was scrubbed from all the Feb-March 1944 period after action reports and war diaries of USS New Mexico I've checked.

3/ Image
Read 12 tweets
Apr 18
There is an tragi-comic story behind this Russian foreign ministry claim.

The Russian use the term "direct participation" because of a lie by Chancellor Scholz a year ago when he claimed the computer system used to program the Taurus missiles...
1/
...was a huge supercomputer in Germany that could not be replicated for Ukraine.

But German computer scientists found an article that described the 20 year old computer system used by Taurus.

2/ Image
BLUF: Today that Taurus mission planning software could be operated on a MacBookPro.

But the lie was never retracted by Scholz and the Russians still use it for propaganda.

So Russians can not exploit Scholz's lie to scare Germans, because they know it's a lie.🤡

3/3 Image
Image
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(