Trent Telenko Profile picture
May 11, 2022 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
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.

1/
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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More from @TrentTelenko

Feb 17
Drones are both a compliment and supplement all existing ground force combined arms weapons systems and do so at a lower cost.

For the last year to 18 months - and sources vary - three out of every four Ukrainian and Russian casualties are from drones.

Paradigm Shift 🧵

1/5
Artillery plus EVERY_OTHER_ weapons system on the Ukrainian battlefield does 1/4 of 2025-2026 drone casualties.

Such is the BLUF of the drone battlefield paradigm shift in terms of human blood.

2/5
This means the world has changed so radically that any US Army officer higher than Captain is negative value added on a drone battlefield because their professional military education is as obsolete 1930's US Horse cavalrymen Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures were in 1944.

3/5 Image
Read 6 tweets
Feb 17
The problem for an independent EU nuclear deterrence force is sheer numbers, the EU lack of them.

What the Putinists have proven is that Western deterrence assumptions about "acceptable losses" were naive mirrored thinking, attributing Western values to Russia.

1/
The assumption of credible "deterrent effect" has to be shifted into the loss band of annihilation of threat forces - anything less than that, as the Ukraine war proves, is an acceptable loss for the Putinists.

We are at over a million Russian casualties to date.

2/theguardian.com/world/2026/jan…
That means a 200 kiloton nuke in either St. Petersburg or Moscow, or dozens of tactical nukes into airfields & missile fields across Western Russia as an EU nuclear response to a Russian first strike are acceptable at a minimum.

3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Feb 15
It looks like my 4th Gen nukes posts here on X shook out data from US three letter agencies. Who belatedly realized that classifying physics was both self-defeating & stupid.

The bad news is the FYEO web site is now reporting a _NINTH_ 4th Gen. nuclear tech approach by China with metal nitrogen/nitrogen anion salt.

1/3Image
Specifically, this new Chinese approach to 4th generation nukes that create fusion device without a HEU/PU fission trigger can be packaged as small as 100 to 200 grams and can fit into a group two size class drone.

This is worse than my worst-case expectations.

2/3
My worst-case 4th Generation nuclear scenario was based on explosively pumped flux compression generator fusion primaries with U-238 jackets in something sized to fit into an ATACMS warhead.

China's approach is 1/25th that mass/volume. 😱

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jan 24
I'm sorry, but this statistic:

>>Violent crime is falling, with homicides down ~21%. The largest annual drop on record.

...has been heavily polluted by improvements in trauma care, particularly hemostatic (blood clotting) bandages.

US Trauma care & FBI statistics🧵

1/ Image
The statistical comparison in the FBI data from pre-1961 is invalid as the underlying medical systems have so changed as to utterly pollute the "murders per 100,000" data.

Violent crime data pre-1961 and post 1961 are apples to oranges comparisons.

2/
-Trauma care centers (1961),

-Standardized trauma procedures (1978),

-Adoption of military Korea/Vietnam medical emergency treatment & air transport procedures,

-Improved triage (1986)

-And (since 2011) widespread adoption and use of blood clotting bandages...

3/
Read 8 tweets
Jan 24
Chairman Xi suffers from the traditional dictator's trap of believing his own sh*t because he has made it too dangerous for his cronies and underlings to tell him the truth.

He has failed the "Dictator on the Wall Test."

1/
Thanks to that, Chairman Xi's Regime has pretty much no resilience in adversity because it's so kleptocratic and it's all about what the guy in charge can do for his next set of corrupt cronies today.

2/
This 1970's comment about the Shah of Iran is so historically on point in 2026 because it shows how Xi's regime is failing "The dictator on the wall test."

3/ Image
Read 8 tweets
Jan 22
Greenland is badly needed by the USA to engage nuclear armed hypersonic glide vehicles and FOBS from China and Russia aimed at the continental USA.

So-called experts saying Greenland is "unnecessary" are "Cold War thinkers" focused on traditional ICBM threat geometries.
1/ Image
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They are not thinking in terms of the detection geometries required for lofted or depressed trajectory ICBM's, HGV, and/or FOBS.

For those threats, the further forward you can deploy radars and interceptors, the better for detection and intercept.

2/3 Image
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When geometrically minded experts in Australia looked at PLARF depressed trajectory ICBM's, HGV, and FOBS threat set.

They ended up placing a TPY-2 radars on the Cocos Island & Christmas Island ("Greenland for Oz") to generate tracks for SM-3 & THAAD interceptors.
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Read 4 tweets

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