Thread by @TrentTelenko

I cannot begin to overstate the battlefield shift in the logistical "correlation of forces" this tweet thread represents.⬇️

Ukraine is trading artillery shells 1-to-1 at Bakhmut & half of AFU shells are Western 155mm caliber.

Artillery Shell🧵
1/

https://twitter.com/CasualArtyFan/status/1625266849993695238

The highest single "Russian artillery shells in a day count" that Ukraine has provided in the current war for Russia is 65,000 shells in May 2022 as Siervodonesk & Lysychansk were over run.

AFU was only shooting about 1,000 shells a day at that time.

2/

AFU is currently shooting between 4,000 and 5,000 shells a day in all Ukraine.

The straight up change:

Russia is only shooting one shell a day in Bakhmut for every 13 it was firing in its May 2022 Siervodonesk & Lysychansk offensive.

At _BEST_.

3/

Furthermore, besides the Russian thermite incendiary rockets, we are not seeing anywhere near the scale of cluster munition use from the Russian Army that we saw in the May 2022 Siervodonesk & Lysychansk offensive.

4/

https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1610398590018387968

Industrial base observation:

A cluster munition artillery shell has less explosive filler - the expensive chemical part - than a unitary artillery shell.

Sixty odd fuzes, copper liners & submunition bodies displace over 1/2 the explosive by volume of a 155mm shell.

5/

Old US 155mm shells with 64 cluster munitions were three times more effective on a shell for shell basis than a new production unitary 155mm shell and used less than 1/2 the explosives.

Lots of little bangs are simply more cost & combat effective than a single big one.

6/

Russian rockets have about 1/9th the submunitions of an equivalent size Western one & 152mm shells 2/3 to 1/8th a 155mm, industrial Q.C. reasons.

So we should actually be seeing an increased percentage of Russian cluster shells.

We aren't.

7/
mil.in.ua/en/news/russia…

We ought to be seeing a bunch of Russian 152mm 3-O-13 or 3-O-23 cluster munition shells.

No one has reported any recently in Western social or corporate media.

8/
the-monitor.org/en-gb/reports/…

Filling empty 152mm cargo shell bodies with pre-made cluster munitions is a far safer and less skilled operation than pouring molten explosives.

Especially if you are using the older 3-O-13 type cluster munitions that fit eight to a 152mm shell.

We haven't seen this in...

8/

...a year of fighting. Instead Russia is buying old North Korean artillery munitions.

The Russian artillery manufacturing base is looking as or more 'supply constrained' as the Western one.

9/
theguardian.com/world/2022/sep…

Particularly when it comes to artillery shell cluster munitions.

Either Putin is saving a "Sunday punch" of cluster munitions...which unlikely.

Or we are looking at the protracted aftermath of a complete shut down of Russia's 152mm shell cluster munition manufacturing base.
10/

There are implications in this further Western intelligence miss regarding the Russian Artillery munitions industrial supply chain.

As in, what _ELSE_ is Western intelligence missing in Russian artillery logistics?

11/11 End