Trent Telenko Profile picture
Nov 22, 2022 15 tweets 7 min read Read on X
On Nov 19th I did a thread on the Przewdow missile strike making the case it wasn't a Ukrainian missile and I mentioned a radar & electronic warfare angle I didn't address.

This 🧵will do just that.
1/
The thing about being one of the few people who have researched General MacArthur's Section 22 radar hunters is you learn all the old tricks with mechanically rotating antenna radars like that on the 1977 vintage E-3 Sentry AWACS APY-1.

2/
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A radar design fielded in 1977 is a lot closer to 1945 than 2022.

Both phased arrays and mechanically scanned antennas were 36 (+) years old when the APY-1 was fielded 45 years ago.

3/ ImageImage
The primary weakness of a mechanically rotated radar antenna is dwell time. The radar beam is only looking the right way a fraction of every revolution.

This fact can be exploited for both gain intelligence on radar, like the USMC did at Okinawa in 1945, or to spoof direction
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...finding on a radar with active decoys by imitating the detection beam of a rotating radar antenna (see photo).

The Westinghouse APY-1 was designed & implemented in the early 1970's during the shift from discrete transistor devices to integrated circuit chips that enabled

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...the use programmable software for consistent pulse doppler detection.

It was also given a radar beam shape with very small 'side lobes' to defeat 1960's jamming.

See:
428-MN-9705 Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (1962)
NARA I.D. #75132

6/ Image
The pulse doppler effect the APY-1 exploits is an artifact of the reflection of energy waves from an object to calculate speed. An approaching object compresses sound or radio waves. A departing object stretches them.

7/ ImageImage
And an object going perpendicular to a radar beam is undetectable by pulse doppler techniques.

The APY-1 radar on the E-3 Sentry had to be programed with a relatively high pulse doppler floor because of how fast Germans drove their cars on autobahns.
8/
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The Soviet and now Russian military has known all of what I've laid out for the APY-1 radar for 40 odd years.

You can't classify radar physics, rotating antennas or German autobahn car speeds.

9/
All of the previous tweets were a build up to this map of a possible 5V55K missile shot trajectory from Belarus.

Simply flying parallel to the border is going to reduce the doppler shift an APY-1 or APY-2 (same radar w/sea search) on an E-3 Sentry.
10/
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The dogleg you see at the end is plotted over a Ukrainian SAM base using the 5N63 FLAP LID to direct it.

That velocity bleeding turn would have generated a large doppler return from the 5V55V nose seeker antenna for the APY-1 to track & also resulted in a smaller crater.

11/ ImageImage
The S-300 can launch the 5V55K missile in the 4.5 seconds of every six when the APY-1 isn't looking and then command it to fly s-curve trajectories when the E-3 radar beam is looking to reduce the detectable doppler shift.

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The Track Via Missile command uplink of the Patriot connected to a late Cold War era electronic warfare system could pull this off versus an AWACS type plane with a rotating antenna.

US Military just never thought of it because it had plenty laser and now GPS guided bombs.
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The Russians in the 21st Century with their TVM missile uplinks -- and empty guided bomb and tactical ballistic missile inventories in the middle of this war -- certainly can.

Different militaries having the same technology can and do use that technology very differently.

13/
This was one of the biggest lessons of watching Imperial Japanese radar development in WW2 through Section 22's reports.

It was an important lesson suppressed by the Joint Chiefs after WW2 and not relearned in the 80 odd years since then.


14/14 End.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jan 8
A lot of people have been spouting off that the failure of Air Defense in Venezuela means Chinese air defense is 💩.

Just...no. S-300's arrived in the Fall of 2025.

That isn't enough time to train competent operators, be they Cuban, Venezuelan, Russian or Chinese.
1/
Job training for a PATRIOT fire control enhanced operator requires 10 weeks of Basic Combat Training and 20 weeks of Advanced Individual Training with on-the-job instruction.

Russian S-300 are far worse than Patriot in terms of human interface & "plug and play" maintenance.
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They were literally designed to be operated by drafted Ukrainian university educated STEM students.

The Maduro regime didn't trust anyone from the Venezuelan middle class to operate the oil industry, let alone Russian and Chinese air defense equipment.

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Read 7 tweets
Jan 6
P.M. Frederiksen of Denmark has a selective memory.

I remember Greece and Turkey fighting over Cyprus not destroying NATO.

Like Cyprus, non-Danish NATO members w/o nukes simply won't go to war with the USA over Greenland...

...nor will nuclear armed NATO states.

1/3
This @vtchakarova suggestion would be the best possible outcome for Denmark. **

** This assumes Denmark's political elites have the wit to go there.



2/3
If P.M. Frederiksen of Denmark thinks NATO will save Greenland for Denmark.

Then Greenland as the USA's "Northern Cyprus issue" with Denmark inside of NATO is the most likely Thucydides-Esque power politics outcome.

3/3 Image
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Read 4 tweets
Jan 5
We need to talk about this report by General Davila of non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse or high-powered microwave weapons being used on Venezuelan air defenses.

1/
x.com/GeneralDavila/… x.com/TrentTelenko/s…Image
Air Power Australia has a very good article titled:

The Electromagnetic Bomb
- a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction

...on these "E-Bombs" with some US bomb form factor figures (below).

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E-bombs are built around a technology called "Explosively Pumped Flux Compression Generators" (FCG) which explosively crush electrically charged coils to generate huge pulses of electromagnetic energy rivaling nuclear EMP at close ranges.

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Read 11 tweets
Jan 3
Pres. Trump Buys Venezuela from Maduro's friends from under the noses of China, Iran, Russia and the MSM.

Cuba, Canada, and Congressional war powers most affected.

1/
See this for Canada's broken geo-political position.



2/
Read 10 tweets
Jan 3
Watching the Trump haters and Maga isolationists heads collectively explode like the final scene from the Kingsman has been a hoot.

Short form:

Trump bought the Maduro snatch with a traditional 19th century US imperialist "Gold or lead" offer.

1/
IOW, "Take the US bribe or die."

The Trump "bribe a regime change" plan has been going on for months.

The lack of leaks for the plan happened in part because the Pentagon put in place the non-disclosure rules...

2/
pbs.org/newshour/polit…
...that cause the Pentagon reporter walk out in October 2025.

The other reason for no leaks for this operation is Pres. Trump didn't tell either on the Armed Services or Intelligence committees about the mass bribery until after the snatch was in progress.

3/
Read 9 tweets
Dec 21, 2025
The following is evaluation is based on a number of professional discussions:

This CRPA found in a shot down jet Shaheed is reported to be Russian built. This is highly doubtful as the design and construction style looks far too professional for Russian industry.

1/
Bluntly - Russians tend towards cheapskate up-front capital manufacturing solutions.

The upshot is injection molded and die cast components are not a common feature in Russian designs as tooling for manufacturing designs is expensive up front,

2/
...even if the mass production unit costs are lower.

In addition, Western style SMA RF connectors are not a feature of the Soviet technology base.

Nor is the RF coax with a transparent jacket.

3/
Read 5 tweets

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