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
4/ Image
...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

5/ Image
...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.

12/ Image
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.
12/ Image
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

Apr 1
This fact:

"Oil revenue collapsed to roughly 5% of the national budget, down from 32% the prior year. Taxes increased over 60%. Food prices climbed at least 50%. ATMs across major cities are running out of cash."

Underlines a major point of mine. 🧵

1/
Since Clausewitz, the West recognized "war as an extension of politics."

The corollary of that is "politics is an extension of money."

Iran doesn't have any money, thanks to hyper-inflation and now an 84% reduction in oil revenue.

2/ Image
The failed January 2026 Iranian uprising kicked off because hyperinflation caused massive food insecurity that required the mass murder of 30,000 (+) Iranian protestors to suppress.

The 12-day war and the current one have made Iranian hyper-inflation far worse.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Mar 31
Not for US aircraft. ⬇⬇️

Hardened aircraft shelters are against the secular budget religion of US flying service flag ranks.

Not that other Western air forces are any better.

1/
The Chief of Air Staff RAAF 12 months ago gave a lecture trashing HAS as a bad idea and how "dispersal is better."

Dispersal didn't help USAF E-3G's in Saudi Arabia because they had nowhere to disperse too.

Places like Italy are politically off limits.
2/ Image
The RAAF CoS appeared to believe that every HAS was like the cheapest Iraqi HAS that we could crack with a single BLU-109/B, not the serious HAS needing multiple BLU-109/B down the same hole.

All of China's HAS built since 1991 are of the 2nd variety or are 'super-hardened' deep tunnels.

3/3Image
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
Mar 29
War is a question of interests, not legality. Iran with, it's support of the October 7th attack, kicked off an existential war with Israel for the latter to prevent Iran from getting the A-bomb.

Israel won't survive as a nation after three Hiroshima class nukes...

Iran War🧵
1/
- riding ballistic warheads in a saturation missile attack - slam into its major cities.

The Trump Administration agreed with Israel on Iranian nukes both in the 12-day war and with the current war.

2/
The Iranian use of a space launcher as an ICBM against Diego Garcia made the current Iran war an existential one for the USA, given the EMP threat Iran represents to the unhardened American power grid.

Imagine the population of the American west - especially Las Vegas! -
3/
Read 9 tweets
Mar 27
How the mighty RAND has fallen.

Anyone claiming Iran will survive long term without explaining how Iran recovers from currency hyperinflation IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR marks themselves as incompetent yo-yo's.

1/3

bylinesupplement.com/p/why-the-iran…
Hand waving, "They will use ForEx from oil and barter instead of the rial" is ignoring what happened during January 2026.

I dare anyone to do a word search at that link for the text strings "hyperinflation," "Rial" or "foreign exchange."

None are present.

2/
The Iran questions at hand are as follows:
1. Will the Regime fall via a controlled air campaign driven collapse, or
2. After a protracted Syria style civil war with 6 or 7 figure #'s murdered by IRGC thugs, &
3. Will Iran destroy the Gulf's power & H2O supply while dying?

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Mar 26
The Mullah Regime of Iran is in very deep trouble. Any critical thinker can see that.

What I find remarkable is how many people who should know better are so blinded by their hostility to Netanyahu and Trump that they ignore the military context and the domestic context inside Iran.

1/Image
The outcome of this war was decided before it began. The January 2026 uprisings occurred because the Iranian currency had collapsed and the economy was collapsing.

This was due to a massive increase in American economic warfare starting right at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Inflation was over 100% a year in January 2026.
2/
The war has made this much worse. Hyper-inflation has now set in and that has only one ending. IMO Iran’s economy and mullah regime will totally collapse in 4-5 months, even if the war ends immediately.

Even if oil exports last until then, hyperinflation means the oil industry workers will go out on strike and the regime protection forces must seek other jobs to feed their families. The latter has already started to happen.
3/Image
Read 15 tweets
Mar 21
Nothing says hyperinflation like a ten million currency unit banknote.

The US and Western nations need to be three weeks into planning for relief and stability operations to prevent mass starvation in Iran after the Mullah Regime goes down.

After the Mullah's🧵
1/
The horrid impending humanitarian disaster reality for Iran is the current regime is a dead man walking because of hyperinflation.

Iran lacks the administrative ability to replace the current hyperinflated currency in the traditional manner...

2/
...of a three day closing of the banks and handing out new note for old.

In addition, the close down of the internet for security reasons combined with the striking of Iranian bank data centers means there are no operable credit or debit cards.

3/
Read 12 tweets

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