Thread by @TrentTelenko

This is the single most important piece of data in this @wartranslated 🧵

The Russian objective in the attacks on Kyiv isn't terror. It is just a "side benefit."

The RFAF objective is suppression of air defenses (SEAD) by running AFU out of surface to air missiles!

SEAD🧵
1/

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1582163794608152576

The Shaheed-136 are being fired at targets Ukraine has to defend and which forces the Ukrainian integrated air defense (IADS) to engage.

Power stations and power grid components in dense urban areas are on the top of that 'must defend' list.

2/

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1582307450773860352

Ukraine has one of the densest IADS in the world outside of Moscow Oblast

Nobody has the necessary density of AAA defenses for a $20,000 loitering munition with a 40kg warhead against all the vulnerable fixed targets they can engage within a 1,200km range.

3/

There are so many things like step down transformers, grid interconnects and long haul electric lines from major power plants a little GPS guided drone can take out that are completely unguarded.

The loss of 30% of Ukraine's grid power generation reflects this fact.

4/

Some on Twitter are calling Russia attacking the Ukrainian power grid as a part of its SEAD campaign "terrorism."

WW2 called it strategic bombing.

WW2 was correct about that.

5/

https://twitter.com/DrJamesRogers/status/1582028937726922752

The Russians have purchased over 2,000 Shahed-136 at $20,000 each.

Cheap, small, low, slow and GPS accurate is the way to beat modern IADS because their missiles are to darn expensive & they lack enough guns.

6/
bbc.com/news/uk-632805…

Consider this:

37 of 43 Shahed-136 drones shot down is 86%.

This is with a Ukrainian shortage of fighters, SAMs and AAA.

7/
ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/359…

The 43 Shaheds cost Russia $860,000 to fire.

They ran Ukraine out at least five times and maybe as many as 100 times that $860,000 cost figure in terms of defending air to air and surface to air missiles to get those 37 kills just on the missiles alone.
8/

A new Stinger MANPADS class missile from Raytheon using stockpiled out of date components is ~$120000.

We don't have cost numbers for Ukrainian missiles for its fighters or its Igla, Osa, Buk, & S-300 SAM's. But we do have these cost numbers.
9/
thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3…

The per missile cost information comes from the previous & the WasPost link below.

AIM-9X - $472,000
AIM-120 - $1.095 million
MMW Hellfire - $213,143
Patriot PAC3 - ~$3 million

10/
washingtonpost.com/news/morning-m…

Now, lets convert the previous missile cost numbers into how many Shahed-136 they could buy:

Stinger - 6
AIM-9X - 23.6
AIM-120 - 54.75
MMW Hellfire - 10.6
Patriot PAC3 - 150
11/

The previous cost trade off is why Russian Shahed-136 attacks on Ukraine are SEAD and not terrorist strikes.

Russia can trade the cost of US Stingers for Iranian Shahed-136 and win economically.

And Russian Orlan-10 drones being downed by Buk missiles are achieving the same
12/

...economic results.

The SEAD numbers are even worse when you look at manned PSU jet fighters.

The AFU lost a Mig-29 to a Shahed-136 when it closed to gun range for its 5th kill and ate debris from the last Shahed-136.

13/

https://twitter.com/Blue_Sauron/status/1580269249670819840

The result was a smoking hole in the ground where a ~$30 million Mig-29 & $5 million in missiles wound up.

The cost of replacing that Mig-29 & its weapons was equal to the cost 1,750 Shahed-136.

This is the WW2 V-1 intercept problem.

14/

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1580552532061196289

Please note that the issue is that Cold War manned aircraft are 1000 times more costly than WW2 fighters & lawn mower engine prop drones they are 100 times cheaper than a Nazi V-1 in today's dollars.

Cheap, small, low and slow is the way to beat modern air defenses.
15/

Shahed-136 munitions are so cheap compared to AA-missiles they have priced them out of the war.

This is a cost based rate of attrition a SEAD attacker will always win.

And this problem is only going to get worse. 1st, Shahed-136 are not top end loitering munitions.
16/

Next, they had the Russian Potato level intel/surveillance/Recce (ISR) backing them up with Iranian IRGC instructors doing the targeting.

And they were fired into the densest IADS Ukraine had in Kyiv.
17/

This threat will get orders of magnitude worse with compound helicopter loitering munitions using digital maps and nulling GPS antennas for navigation updates.

One of the SEAD guys on my email list said it was "low signature and low altitude" that made Shahed-136 & their ilk
18/

... so dangerous. I disagreed.

It is less 'low signature" than the best stealth is having a terrain feature between you and an enemy radar.

It weighs nothing, costs nothing and works for every frequency other than OTH-B radars, for which they are to small to pick up.

19/

To get that top end 'terrain stealth,' you have to fly at 100-180 kts indicated air speed with satellite radio navigation updates.

Shaheds do that and their problem will get worse as time goes on as cheaper IT lets digital maps with IADS information get programmed

20/

...into them. And eventually, live updates are transmitted as they heading for their targets.

At $20K a pop, you can afford to fire 50 so 8 get through, while the other 42 eat AA-missiles in the SEAD role.

21/

And these things are turning into compound helicopters so they can fly below tree lines when they get close to the target.

The nature of what constitutes airpower has radically changed.

IADS need to match this change by looking to its WW2 past.

22/

https://twitter.com/OmiljeniDaidza/status/1536396257740087296

What 21st century air defenses need are the WW2 levels of gun based "Daka" similar to at Antwerp versus the V-1 buzz bomb to deal with Shahed-136.

IOW, you need dirt cheap weapons like guns because only bullets and shells are cheap enough to win at a price you can afford
23/

...versus GPS guidance equipped propeller kamikaze drones.

The document images in this and the previous tweet popped up from a internet search using "The Defense of Antwerp against the V-1 Missile" as a search term.

They teach about gun based air defense w/o fighters
24/

...because the defense of London with crewed fighters and guns showed that the problems of deconflicting gun air defenses from fighters simply was not worth what the fighters provided in terms of V-1 kills.

25/

The other lesson learned about the defense of London was it was a really stupid idea to put your gun based defenses inside a dense urban area to shoot at the V-1, because shooting it down dropped a V-1 warhead on London.

26/

This is another WW2 mistake Ukraine made in Kyiv along with losing a Mig-29 to a Shahed-136 blast.

27/

https://twitter.com/LogKa11/status/1581989168481468416

And the reason I believe that is a Ukrainian mistake & not Russian terrorism is the Shahed-136 have proven to be deadly accurate and have hit what it is they are aimed at 17/20 times in Saudi Arabia.

28/

https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1582407890887143425

And in Ukraine, as this strike on the Ukrainian power grid control center makes abundantly clear.

What is needed for Ukraine are belts of gun defenses between Shahed-136 launch points and its protected areas, AKA urban areas, and point defenses for

https://twitter.com/miladvisor/status/1581982738386518019

29/

...the Ukrainian power grid. Accepting that there will be collateral damage from downed drones and AA fire landing in the city.

The defense of Antwerp in 1944-1945 exemplified these tactics.

30/
iwm.org.uk/collections/it…

Deep belts of first ground observers with radar guided search lights, then heavy guns with radar proximity fuzes, then autocannons with their own observers were placed on the approach axis of various Nazi V-1 launch sites.

31/

As the Nazi's altered or added V-1 launch sites.

The Antwerp X air defenses altered the gun belts to address them.

32/

Unlike an Iranian Shahed-136 drone over Ukraine, the V-1 proved to be impervious to .50 caliber machine gun fire & single hits from 40mm shells lacked the explosive power for "one-shot stops."

Only 3.7 inch and 90mm shells with proximity fuzes consistently killed V-1's.

33/

The fact that Shahed-136 are vulnerable to 5.56mm small arms over Kyiv & Odessa means Ukraine can cobble together AA gun lines with ZSU-23-2 23mm autocannon plus 14.5mm, .50 caliber & 7.62mm in multiple machine gun mounts and give them the same air warning app that let a...

34/

...a Ukrainian Army MANPADS team hit a cruise missile from a highrise in Kharkiv during the first month of the war.

This air warning app plus MANPADS kill of a jet powered cruise missile trick has been repeatedly demonstrated since then.
35/
mil.in.ua/en/news/soldie…

To reduce Shahed-136 collateral damage over Ukrainian urban areas will require roof top MANPADS point defenses behind these gun lines.

If only because a MANPADS missile hit will set off the warhead upon AA-missile impact.

36/

Depending on how effective the gun lines are, using MANPADS in this way will reduce but not eliminate the SEAD effect of Shahed-136, but it will save Ukrainian lives from AA collateral damage.

MANPADS have failed in this role w/o sufficient warning.

37/

https://twitter.com/miladvisor/status/1581999208181080064

For the future, networked air defenses with an eff-ton of A.I. aided acoustic sensors to 'hear the buzz' of those fixed propellers & rotors at low altitude is only one aspect of where IADS are going.

Modern Drone IADS need numbers and those numbers have to be cheap and
38/

...they need to be both mobile & persistent mobile in order to mass against swarm attacks.

This means anti-drone drones with high power Traveling Wave Tube or MASER to zorch cheap loitering munition swarms, because a drone can't be small, cheap, low mass and well
39/

...shielded from high power microwave/non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack for reasons I will get into in a future thread.

https://twitter.com/MIL_STD/status/1418563295951327245

40/40 End

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