Thread by @TrentTelenko

Alright folks, with the Railway bridges into and out of Crimea currently cut, it's time to look at Russian truck and and sea lines of communication in Southern Ukraine for ~200K RuAF combat & support troops.

Russian truck, port clearance & barge logistical 🧵

1/ https://t.co/N0iogXwWLc

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1686013124971823104

Russian truck logistical facts of life:

At 300 miles/480 km, tactical truck's only payload is fuel for a return trip

A 90 km radius from a supply point allows three trips a day with refueling & mechanized logistics to load & unload a truck.

RuAF doesn't have mech. logistics
2/

The use of manual labor to fill/unload tactical trucks means RuAF trucks do one trip a day to 150 km and maybe two a day to 75 km with the drivers getting a little sleep.

This is what that 150 km truck radius of action look like on a map of Southern Crimea from Chongar.

3/

More realistically, we are looking at RuAF truck logistics from Crimea having to stage from a military truck stop at Dzhankoy to points north.

There will have to be additional RuAF truck stops/depots at places 85-100 km back from the current frontlines for MLRS reload points.
4/

Professional military supply chains are usually built with some amount of redundancy and slack in case of crisis.

How much the Russians have with the Chongar and Kerch rail bridges now simultaneously closed is a pure guess, but both the ports of occupied Berdyansk...

5/

...and Mariupol have ISO container cranes for foreign export that can take container ship traffic from Novorossiysk for military supplies.

Russian or captured Ukrainian semi-tractor trailer rigs could move ISO containers full of supplies to 85-100km back MLRS reload points.

6/

...but it's more likely KamAz or Ural trucks are loading from dispersed container yards outside the port facilities proper.

The pressing RuAF logistically issue is moving fuel for its vehicles.

Fuel is heavy and outmasses ammo for mechanized units.

7/

Any non-command vehicle in the RuAF lacks auxiliary power units and have to run their engines to recharge batteries.

Since the radios, night vision and most of the firepower in the Russian Army is in its vehicles.

No fuel by rail is disastrous.

8/

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1635468995087179776

RuAF won't have fuel to move its fuel to the front lines by truck without rails, by most estimates.

We have seen indications in AFU strikes they are watching the rail & road bridges as well as the major ports.

But is Ukraine paying enough attention to RuAF barge traffic?

9/

Rostov-on-the-Don is too far away to be a good truck supply point into Mariupol Ukraine, (Taganrog is)

It is, in addition to being the primary railway marshalling yard supporting RuAF operation into Ukraine, the primary export point for Russia's river traffic to the sea.

10/

You can move a lot of grain from the interior of Russia with a barge.

Ukraine figured the same applies with grain barges for them up the Danube in Nov 2022, but the Black Sea grain deal put it on the very back burner.

11/

https://t.co/6nTG73Ctgzopen4business.com.ua/en/ukrainian-d…

My question is:

Has Russia been using barge traffic out of Rostov-on-the-Don to move large quantities of fuel & supplies into southern Ukraine to avoid GUR/SSB/partisan port, road and rail watchers?

12/

There are plenty of small coastal towns on the sea of Azov a shallow draft Russian fuel barge can put into. It wouldn't be the 1st time this was missed.

The biggest intelligence failure of the 1944 Normandy transportation plan was not including river barge traffic...
13/

...as a target set for Allied airpower.

MacArthur's air bases in the Southwest Pacific made extensive use of barges for the bulk supply of fuel.

There are a lot of good reasons to think the RuAF might be doing this right now in concert with its tactical pipeline units...

14/

...to fuel RuAF trucks in low profile refueling points near barge-navigable Ukrainian rivers and the Sea of Azov coast.

I have no clue as to what AFU/SSB/GUR looks for in terms of RuAF logistics, but I'm sure no one in the OSINT community has bothered to look...

15/

...because no one has asked that question publicly about the Russo-Ukrainian War until now.

Why spend money for historical satellites views of Rostov-on-the-Don barge traffic, if no one thought to ask?🤷‍♂️

16/16 End

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