Pay close attention to the Rail line at the upper right on this map.🧵
Ukraine cutting it by occupation, or by artillery fire will, cause a huge "Stalingrad side-step" in terms of the Russian Army having to use more eastern rail lines to supply the Donbas offensive.
The Ukrainians are big believers in "Shaping Operations," that is, small military operations that open up options of further military operations later.
For example, the destruction of Moskva and it's S-300F long range surface to air missiles by a Neptun cruise missile strike
2/
...was a gambit to opened up Snake Island to Bayraktar TB2 drone raids.
With the Moskva gone, Ukrainian TB2's proceeded to destroy Russian SAM's on Snake Island.
The Russians reinforced with more SAM's & men on landing craft, which TB2's destroyed during the landing.
3/
Then Ukrainian Air Force Su-24 light bombers made a low-level run on Snake Island which destroyed all the fixed structures the Russians occupied on the island and knocked out radio communications.
Then, finally, the Russians sent a Wagner group mercenary search &
4/
...rescue detachment in a Mi-8 helicopter at night to find out what happened. It was swiftly destroyed by a TB2 drone with Russia finally abandoning Snake island.
The local offensive North-East of Kharkiv looks like a Ukrainian "Shaping Operation" to me.
5/
The knock on effect of the Russian Army having to do all the administrative changes necessary for that side-step will cause a logistical pause.
This pause will utterly disrupt the Russian Donbas offensive in terms of immediately available artillery ammunition tonnage.
6/
Russian Artillery munitions having to move by more easterly rail lines will cause a supply chain disruption simply because the just-in-time deliveries take longer.
And more artillery tonnage, on more railcar rolling stock, will have to be committed on the rails to fill
7/
...the supply chain to the Donbas just to maintain planned Russian offensive usage rates.
Given the low administrative skills of the corrupt & centralized Russian state. This opens an opportunity for a Ukrainian operational level counter-stroke
8/
...somewhere in Ukraine.
Given the Russian build up in Belgorod, I expect any such counterstroke to be in the south near Kherson.
Whether Ukraine has sufficient truck based logistics to execute a major counter-stroke remains to be seen.
9/
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Systematic targeting of these electrical facilities powering the railways within 200 km of Ukraine's 1991 border with Russia will logistically isolate the RuAF frontline units in Ukraine from 70% of rail supply.
This is a symptom of the Russians lacking the industrial capability to make enough 152 mm barrel liners and the lack of 152 mm barrel life in reserve artillery stocks.⬇️
This was passed on to be by a Cold War graybeard in the Summer of 2022:
"A colleague who has worked in the area told me years ago that a lot of the cited strategic reserve is mythological as they burned out barrel liners
2/
...on tens of thousands of tank guns and artillery pieces during the Chechen wars and ended up with massive yards full of derelict armor and guns needing deep overhauls. Gun barrels only part of this, lots of burned out engines, transmissions and wrecked suspensions.
3/
I did a direct message interview with Forbes Magazine journalist David Axe the first week of November 2023 about the state of the “Wizard War,” that is electronic warfare, between Ukraine and Russia.
"The Russian problem with using electronic warfare is sociological. A centralized authoritarian who picks for political loyalty for 20 years also picks for corruption and incompetence for just as long. Putin’s military has extreme levels of incompetence at every level, from top to bottom, as a result. In a centrally controlled system like Russia, the stupidity of the commander flows downhill."
3/
The "Canary in the Coal Mine" importance of the MT-LBVM(K) is that the MT-LB hull was built in Ukraine & all the MT-LBVM(K) were current Russian specific rebuilds.
It fact checks the quality Western intelligence on what the actual AFV stocks & loss rates of the RuAF are. 2/
It's pretty clear none of these Western intelligence outfits have never read any of Lanchester's formulas, because they completely missed the negative force generation meanings of that @verekerrichard1 MT-LBVM(K) post & thread🤦♂️