The 2nd comment below pointing to the Russian Federation suffering from 40% of their railway rolling stock being sidelined by bearing shortages come Feb 2022 represents a transportation calamity.
There is a reason I've hammered on the destruction of the Russian Army tactical truck fleet followed by the impressment and loss of Russian civilian trucks in Ukraine.
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Global and national just-in-time supply chains fail catastrophically when transportation capability is mildly disrupted.
While the fall of Russian imports from Western sanctions have reduced the need for Russian railway rolling stock.
The mass rail movement for the Feb 2022
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...Ukrainian invasion massively used up much of Russia's railway bearing reserves to get the huge mechanized forces in place.
Furthermore, the Russian mobilization is now making use of that Western import railway capability to...
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...move and support 'Mobiks' deep in Ukraine by rail.
These transportation trends are pointing to Russia suffering a Venezuela style failed state economic collapse as early as the winter of 2022-2023 due to a lack of rail rolling stock & trucks to distribute goods.
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The economic repercussions of Russian energy & food suddenly just falling out the world economy from this pending "transportation apocalypse" beggars the imagination.
Western national security and economic policy makers need to be putting together crisis teams to evaluate
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...the implications for both the world economy and for obtaining an armistice using access to railway cassette bearings as a leaver to obtain to two most important concessions -- Pre-2014 Ukrainian borders & getting back Ukraine's kidnapped populations -- that will make a
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...lasting cessation of hostilities possible.
The Russians have already started eating themselves inside Ukraine.
Defeat there will see exactly this sort of collapse in Russia.
The various Russian Oligarchs raising private military organizations right now looks a whole lot like Lebanon in the political-military run up right before it fell to Civil War.
Western governments failing to plan for Russian defeat/transportation collapse, so as to manage the transition to a stable post-war world, will put post-Putin Russia on the slippery slope to the hell of becoming a continent spanning Lebanese Civil War with loose bugs,
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... loose nukes & novachuk gas equipped sprayer drones.
It may not be possible to avoid this Russian meltdown collapse, but failing to plan for the possibility is planning to fail.
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If the USA had a real foreign human intelligence capability.
Now would be the time to be making openings to all of those Russian oligarchs to cushion the Russian transition with minimal bloodshed & economic disruption.
Unfortunately the 1970's Church Committee hearings...
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...destroyed that US capability without replacement.
This means the West & the USA in particular using either Ukrainian or Israeli human intelligence assets in Russia to make those approaches.
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Given the De-escalation Faction in the Biden Administration's irrational fixations of not escalating the Russo-Ukrainian War by denying ATACMS, F-16's & M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine & restarting the Iran Nuclear deal blocking the use of Israeli agents doing these approaches.
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We are left in the position of being spectators praying for the best & expecting the worse.
17/17 End
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One the DCMA quality inspectors on my team worked at an EMALS contractor in Texas.
I can't say more than the Chinese tested their EMALS at subsystem level (unlike the USN) with the knowledge the four catapults needed to be independent of each other for operations,
...based on how the USN f--ked up their EMALS design.
That is, when any single EMALS catapult on the Ford class goes down for any reason. They all can't be used.
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As strategypage dot com put it in 2019:
"EMALS proved less reliable than the older steam catapult, more labor intensive to operate, put more stress on launched aircraft than expected and due to a basic design flaw if one EMALS catapult becomes inoperable,
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While much has been said about US targeting support for these past Ukrainian oil strikes, and future Tomahawk strikes, much of this appears to be "role inflation" and grandstanding by Deep State parties briefing US media.
The inability of Western elites to understand how Putin regime reflexive control propaganda locks everyone there into "WW2 Russian exceptionalism" just boggles the mind.
The Putin Regime lives in a George Orwell 1984-like present, with no past or future.
and in September, 1,202 KIA and 649 WIA, i.e. 1.85:1.
These numbers strongly exceed any previous campaigns dating back to the Crimean War, and do not include non-combat deaths due to disease or exposure."
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Late 20th Century combat saw one dead for every four wounded.
Russia is suffering between one and 3/4 to one to something like one and 4/5ths to one killed to wounded at Povrovsk.
Gosh, remember all those 2023 US Navalist accounts that denied - DENIED, I tell you - that drones from containerships would ever, ever, be a threat and that I personally was delusional for saying so publicly.
One in every five US Naval vessels are defenseless to Chinese drones, surprise launched from Chinese merchant & fishing vessels, because the
every CNO since 1989 didn't want USN logistical officers to get a captaincy and compete for flag ranks.
Instead of dealing with reality, the USN flags send out minions on X to say "de-lu-lu" things like this⬇️
Because the USN Flags from the Aviation, Surface and Sub communities don't want to have logistical officers get flag ranks and spotlight their professional delusions🤮🤮 3/3
The missile is currently active aboard Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, America-class amphibious assault ships, San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships,
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Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ships, and littoral combat ships (LCS).[6]"
This was a US Navy procurement disaster in the age of drones.
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