Trent Telenko Profile picture
Nov 20, 2022 23 tweets 10 min read Read on X
The missile attack on Przewodow has become a Rorschach test for how strong the West’s de-escalation faction’s "directed cognition" is in dealing with Reality in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

The “It was a Ukrainian missile” narrative doesn't match reality. This🧵will explain

1/
...why.

**Directed cognition, in rough layman terms, means making a quick & incorrect analysis from limited data and only picking more data to support that analysis.

The way to cure a directed cognition conclusion is to audit all the available data.

2/
To do this I’m going to walk you through 5V55K missile design, fuzing, weapon effects, and some Ukrainian evidence. I'm going to leave radar & electronic warfare for another thread.

Below are infographics of the 5V55K & a data table.
3/
The 5V55K is a command link guided missile with a peak velocity of Mach 6.7 and a ~300lb warhead similar to the Buk warhead that downed the MH-17.

The 5V55K can be steered in any direction you want with the radio uplink from the 5N63 FLAP LID.
ausairpower.net/APA-Grumble-Ga…
3/
The Ukrainian MoD video in this tweet & photo below shows a night time engagement and proper functioning of a S-300 missile proximity fuze and fragmentation warhead.

The spherical explosion/fragmentation was designed into the missile warhead for

4/
..hyper-to-supersonic close passes.

Most current Western surface to air missiles have three fuze functions.

o Proximity
o Super quick impact
o Time

The proximity function is to set off a large fragmentation warhead so the fragments can destroy the target. The impact fuze
5/
... is for backup/secondary ground attack.

The time function is so the missile detonates when it misses as a safety measure.

Mid-to-late Cold War Era Soviet designed SAM's generally did not include this time feature, reasons.

6/
Below you see what fragments from a Buk warhead did to a MH-17 wing over Donbass and one of the "hour glass" shaped fragments looked after impact.

The wide dispersal between impacts was due to the missile/airliner closing velocities interacting w/the warhead fragment burst.

7/
These two photo clips show the 5V55K's "5Zh93" warhead in situ with a wartime shoot down on the left and a pre-war post launch accident Ukrainian police investigation.

The fuzes in both situations failed.

The shot down missile broke apart without the impact fuze being
8/
...initiated and in the pre-war photo it was never activated.

When you are firing the 5V55K in the ground to ground mode the proximity fuze function is deactivated, if only to prevent it being jammed & detonating before target impact.

9/
All of that previous data was to give you background to understand what you are going to see below, a July 2022 Russian land attack S-300 missile strike in Mykolaivska.

No 300lb fragmentation warhead built by mankind can dig a hole like that.

10/
t.me/mykolaivskaODA…
Almaz data and videos of the 5V55K show the 5V55K burn duration is around 8-10 seconds to reach Mach 6.7, roughly 2.1 kilometer per second

What you are seeing with the S-300 crater is mach 5(+) missiles dig deep holes and move a lot of dirt at near peak F = M*(V^2) impact.
11/
To calibrate your eyes to the "effective explosive power" of that impact, see this WW2 weapon effects diagrams.

Go back and look at the man in the Tweet 10/ photo clip versus what you see in the diagrams below.

The 5V55K doesn't carry 4K of explosives, just velocity.

12/
The "Przewodow Narrative" claims that it was an errant Ukrainian S-300 launcher fired a 5V55K missile from a nearby SAM base (see maps) that landed in a Przewodow Poland field.

Nearby 5V55K launches would be hypersonic into Poland.

13/
mil.in.ua/uk/articles/sy…
Let us test that narrative with the previous data and photographic evidence of the 5V55K missile impact site.

A 5V55K missile that missed its target would have air burst over the ground from its proximity fuze.

There is no evidence of top down fragment strikes in this photo
14/
This @wartranslated video shows the effects of top down GMLRS fragmentation from a 200 lb M31A1 AW warhead on a Kamaz truck.

Nothing like that damage is on the tractor and cart.

15/
Now for Ukrainian evidence.

The photo in this tweet shows another view of the 5V55K impact crater. Again, no evidence of airburst fragmentation.

Also, If a "5Zh93" warhead popped in the crater, you would see the 4-wheel cart tires being shredded.

16/
The cart tires are directly over the crater.

The 5V55K's warhead was steel, not tungsten like the M31A1 AW, but massed 100-lbs more.

Even the decayed supersonic, very long range impact that caused that crater would have initiated the impact fuze train function.

17/
So that photo all but rules out the "nearby Ukrainian 5V55K missile launch" narrative.

The crater is too small and there is no fragmentation damage on the tractor and cart consistent with a "5Zh93" warhead in airburst or impact modes.

18/
Even the idea of a partial functioning solid rocket motor from a nearby Ukrainian 5V55K missile launcher is a nonstarter based on this thedrive -dot- com article.

There would have been burning defective solid rocket fuel all over the Przewodow crater.
19/
thedrive.com/the-war-zone/r…
Now some more Ukrainian Evidence via this Oleksii Hetman Facebook post that both details S-300 missile self-destruct & how the Russians modify 5V55K warheads for land attack use of same.

20/
facebook.com/alexeyhetman/p…
Everything about the Przewodow missile strike weapon effects is consistent with a 150km(+) flight Russian land attack modified 5V55K aimed at Ukraine's power interconnect with Poland fired from Belarus.

21/
Polish NSC says it was a Ukrainian missile. They claimed earlier to have NATO E-3 tracking data.

I call Bulls--t.

The idea that a 1977 vintage rotating radar antenna looking the wrong way 4.5 of every 6 seconds can track a mach 6.7, low RCS, crossing target is risible.
22/End

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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.
3/3 Image
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Read 4 tweets

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