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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Both polities had monumental hubris, the conviction that all was permitted, and that they were invincible.
The committed Nazis still believed they were winning in March-April 1945.
Japanese 'Yamato-damashii' beliefs took nukes to break.
2/
This Russian exceptionalist belief in the immunity to the consequences of their own actions is also why the Russians continue their insane suicidal assaults.
What is interesting for me is that the pre-2022 Western intelligence assessments of the Russian Army credited it with lots of tactical pipelines to move fuel.
Those would be far more useful in moving water than trucks...yet...where are they?
These pipelines seem to have fallen into that same logistical 'assume they exist but don't' black hole as Russian truck D-rings & pallets, tactical truck trailers, and Russia's "superior" tooth to tail ratio that acts more like 1863 Union Army where...
2/
..."every soldier is a logistical manual laborer when not in combat".
Water is heavy. Pipelines are more efficient that trucks. Yet all we are seeing is Russian water trucks?
Who stole the Russian Army tactical pipelines? Or were they nothing but disinformation?
3/3
While we are getting Western intelligence assessments that continue to point out Russia's vast increases in production of military materiel, especially tanks, IFVs and APCs (from the same people who claimed Russia would over run Ukraine in 3-to-5 days)
2/
...claiming Russia is "obviously winning."
We are at the same time seeing economic signs of Russian "End Run Production."
The Russian wartime economy is functioning hand to mouth with oil sales revenues because all of the foreign exchange reserves are spent or frozen.
3/
Given what happened to DoD procurement after the 2nd Clinton Adm. annihilation of military specifications, which killed the configuration mgt, systems engineering & production engineering disciplines in defense contractors.
I've written about this issue for seven years starting on the Chicagoboyz weblog with a post titled:
"The 737 MAX and the Death of MIL-STD-499A SYSTEM ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
March 24th, 2019"
2/
In 2020 I was talking how the decay of systems engineering skills are affecting US Navy nuclear sub safe programs due to the lack of good systems engineering talent in Defense contractors.
The snail like pace of Western military procurement versus the Ukrainian fielding of an all-aspect stealth shaped OWA drone in less than a couple of years is very noticeable.
On the morning of 20 July 2025, a AFGSC airman at Minot AFB took his M18, still inside it's issued holster; and placed it on a desk.
It then went off, struck him in chest, and killed him
AFGSC issued a halt order on 21 July 2025 for use of M17/18 Modular Handgun System.
1/
As an ex-DoD procurement official, that letter is a procurement killing hammer.
This is going to hit SIG Sauer like a moderate sized asteroid in terms of DCMA corrective actions requests or "CAR."
2/
This AFGSC halt use order letter will be grounds for a level three corrective action request (CAR).
A DCMA level III CAR is defined as follows:
"A Level III Corrective Action Request (CAR) issued by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is a serious action taken when there are significant contractual nonconformities.
It is directed to the supplier's top management and is just one step below the possibility of contract suspension or termination.
This type of CAR serves as a management tool to address critical issues that need immediate attention."