Thread by @TrentTelenko

This 🧵is a Telenko family history of the development of the M-1 Abrams tank with my observations of the horses--t being thrown against the wall implying Ukraine cannot operate the Abrams.

The man below is the late Col. George Telenko, West Point Class of 1962.
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Dad was the armor officer the US Army chose to turn the Lima Army Modification Center into the Lima Army Tank Plant in the late 1970's.

As I was going to high school at Lima Shawnee, Dad was turning a repurposed steam train manufacturing facility into a state of the art

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...tank manufacturing plant. Today it is known as the "Joint Manufacturing Center - Lima."

When this tank rolled out to the media in 1980.

I was there as a reporter for the Lima Shawnee student newspaper. Nepotism has its privileges'...

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tacom.army.mil/jsmc-lima

...as well as it's responsibilities. Dad told not to say anything at the press conference.

My fellow reporter Steve Click wasn't bound by this and asked some questions none of the media reporters bothered to ask.

"What about the older tanks the Abrams is going to replace?
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...What is going to happen to them?"

The Associated Press picked up the US Army's flag rank commander of TACOM's answer to that and it made the front pages nationwide.

The AP didn't credit Steve Click or the Lima Shawnee student paper for some reason.🙄

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Like most officers of his West point class, Dad did a couple of tours in Vietnam, the 1st as an advisor & the 2nd in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

After Vietnam Dad got into US Army procurement, the "Big Five" was the future.

He commanded an element at Ft Ord & then
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...Camp Hunter Liggett that used then cutting edge laser scoring technology to develop AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunship TOW missile tactics.

This technology was so successful it was later used to create
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home.army.mil/liggett/index.…

...the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin in SoCal.

Dad then got his masters in mechanical engineering at Michigan State University.

Afterwards he was in TACOM in Warren Michigan, 1st in the XM2/3 Bradley program office

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home.army.mil/irwin/index.php

...and then later in the XM-1 Abrams program office.

As far as I can tell, Dad coined/popularized the word "Facilitization" in late 1970's US government speak to describe the conversion of the Lima Modification Center to a tank plant to the post Watergate US Congress.

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The XM-1 Abrams had a very specific cost cap target of $507,000 in 1972 dollars to deliver.

The US Army took this very seriously - See post-Watergate Congress - and it is the main reason why the M-1 arrived at 55 tons with a 105mm gun & w/o an APU.

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Dad retired from the Army in 1987 after getting a tank battalion & a brigade level procurement command at DCASR Cleveland.

When Kelly Orr published the book "King Of Killing Zone" in 1989/1990.

I gave my Dad a copy, which he critiqued to me which Generals were blowing

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...smoke up Kelly Orr's lower anatomy and which were not.

Sadly, Dad was never interviewed by US Army oral historians.

I plan on organizing Dad's army papers for the historians at Carlisle Barracks PA to preserve for future researchers.

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The stories I do have on the Abrams include the fact my Dad wrote the Cold War mobilization plan for the Abrams.

As I recall, it would take a year to get to 1,500 M-1's a year and another two years to get to 3,000 a year.

This was due to the decay of the US steel industry.
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The casting facilities for the M60A3 tank were a huge bottle neck in increasing tank production after Vietnam.

Rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) steel plate requires special foundries, but there was more capability with rolled plates than castings.

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The contractors on the XM-1 chose cut and welded steel on the Abrams design not just for chobham armor, but because cast steel facilities of the required quality no longer existed in the USA.

When Dad did the mobilization plan that turned the Lima Army tank plant into

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...a 24/7 facility, then carefully cloned itself into the Detroit Tank Arsenal.

He ran into the fact RHA steel plates of the required thickness & quality needed new American steel foundries.🤷‍♂️

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This is why I am in a position to can call horses--t on a number lies getting repeated about the Abrams.

Lie #1 - the Abrams only works on JP-8 jet fuel.

Fact #1 - The XM-1 was designed with the AGT1500 turbine by Chrysler Defense in May 1973.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams
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Fact #2 - JP-8 was introduced in NATO bases in 1978. This is five years after the Chrysler XM-1 design was frozen.

For goodness sake, both of these facts are easily available on wikipedia.

And no one bothered to look them up?😭

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-8

Lie #2 - The Abrams is too complicated for Ukraine to maintain.

Fact #1 - Chrysler Defense designed the AGT-1500 to be easily removed by common soldiers in an hour.

One of the time lapse films made for Congress showed a trained Chrysler Defense team do so in 15 minutes.

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I saw that film on an early video tape machine in my Dad's Lima office in 1980.

Fact #2 - Wikipedia shows Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco and Saudi Arabia as operators of the Abrams. Ukraine produced ICBM's as a part of the Soviet Union, operates turbine powered T-80 and has

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...its own Kharkiv tank factory.

Fact #3 - The M-1 Abrams AGT-1500 engine has something called the Digital Electronic Control Unit. It is a built in control & test equipment module that monitors the engine and warns the crew of any engine problems.

army-guide.com/eng/product.ph…

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It was added to upgrade the M1A1 & later Abrams variants from 4-level maintenance to the "Plug & Play, Then Throw The Module Away" standard of 2-level maintenance.

DECU results in 30% less AGT-1500 maintenance time and 20% lower idle fuel consumption.
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Giving AFU's most combat experienced tank crews in the world a tank with built in Western "Plug & Play, Then Throw Away" maintenance will be 'easy peasy lemon squeezy.'

Remember all of this the next time those two brain dead lies about the M-1 Abrams tank surface.

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