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.
5/
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
6/
...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...
7/
...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.
8/
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
9/
...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
10/
...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,
12/
... 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.
13/
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...
14/
...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.
15/
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.
16/
We are left in the position of being spectators praying for the best & expecting the worse.
17/17 End
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We need to have a talk about Russian military corruption and its effects on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
It's kind of like these sun-rotted missile truck tires that make my reputation on Twitter.
Corruption happens slowly, then all at once.
Corruption🧵 1/
The Russian Army issued a "live off the land" order in early March 2022 resulted in lots of Russian enlisted stealing outside the line of sight of Russian junior officers.
This hollowed out discipline the RuAF "Professional Volunteers" in early 2022.
More information has come out on the FP-5 Flamingo which gives insights io both the systems and production engineering involved for low cost production.
I'm going to use the WW2 F6F Hellcat & M4 Sherman as examples of Ukrainian FP-5 design choices.
The FP-5 GLCM production photos released today shows what looks like a combination of carbon fiber composite, molded thermoplastics, and sheet metal.
Cruciform tail controls are all moving.
Wings are attached before launch like a 1960s USAF MGM-1 Matador. 2/
The FP-5 Transporter Erector Launch (TEL) trailer looks like a new custom build.
Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point, stated to the AP that "Fire Point is producing roughly one Flamingo per day, and by October they hope to build capacity to make seven per day."
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.
2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.
3/
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden
This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...