Trent Telenko Profile picture
Dec 24, 2023 20 tweets 11 min read Read on X
The Little Crappy Ship (LCS) is tragically incapable in the Houthi littoral combat environment of drones, anti-ship cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles.

And the USN brass knows it

No USN flag rank will risk losing his career by exposing an LCS in the Red Sea⬇️
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The failure of the LCS procurement is why Peter Zeihan's prediction that the USN will abandon protecting the world sea lanes in his book
"The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization"
is getting far too close to reality for my comfort.

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This Politico headline featuring three anonymous Pentagon officials talking about the US Navy losing the cost-attrition war shooting multi-million dollar missiles at $2000 Houthi drones underlines the anti-access area denial effect cheap drones cause.

3/
politico.com/news/2023/12/1…
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Those anonymous Pentagon officials are correct to be concerned because they are looking at the per round unit costs of American anti-drone munitions like the Block 2 Coyote at $100,000.

The jet powered Coyote Block II is nice for dealing with a TB-2.
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thedrive.com/the-war-zone/d…

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The Coyote Block II is marginal against an Orlan-10 costing $100K in Russia's corrupt procurement system.

The Coyote at $100K is pointless attritional loss versus a $6,000 Lancet loitering munition, let alone the $2000 Houthi drones the USN is fighting
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What we saw with Raytheon going from the much cheaper electric-propeller Block I Coyote to the micro-jet engine powered Bk II version is the typical Big/Expensive/Few crew increase the capability for higher unit cost spiral of every Pentagon procurement for the last 65 years.

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The Big/Expensive/Few crew in the Pentagon are as professionally obsolete as Horse Cavalry Generals in 1940 and Battleship Admirals on December 7th 1941.

Their military paradigm that they built careers upon has died, but they refuse to acknowledge it.

The picture I started this thread with is of the guided missile frigate USS Stark that 30 years ago ate an Iraqi Exocet missile that its Standard missiles, 76mm gun and Phalanx CIWS failed to intercept.

Objectively, the USS Stark had a better anti-aircraft fit than any LCS.

7/

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And USS Stark had Destroyer Tenders like USS Cape Cod to reload it's Standard missile while underway(left).

Burke Class Destroyers like USS Carney have to withdraw to a port to reload their vertical launch missile cells.

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Given the increasing range of Houthi land attack cruise missiles.

Burke class DDG's like USS Carney may have to fall back as far as Diego Garcia to reload.

Assuming the Houthi don't hide a few Quds-3 launchers in few ISO containers on a merchant ship & land a dozen there.

9/
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Which brings up an important point about US Navy analysts thinking inside a box, the VLS missile box.

That means they can't assess what adding conformal fuel tanks or bigger wings mean for cruise missile range, if you launch missiles like a V-1 off a ramp or from bombers.

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Because the Tomahawk cruise missile was scaled for a 21 inch torpedo tube, it's wings have a lift to drag ratio of about 2.425.

If you launch a Tomahawk like a V-1, we could improve the L/D ratio of a Tomahawk to somewhere around 10,which is Piper PA-28 Cherokee performance.
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Hypothetically a VLR Tomahawk would need to have a 194 ft^2 wing, which is essentially about 36~ feet wide; resulting in something like this & have a range on the order of about 4,900 nautical miles (9,074 km).

You couldn't launch it from a VLS cell, but you could from a CVN
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A 9K km VLR Tomahawk assembled by deck crews & fired from USN carriers would make hash of China's A2AD doctrine (figure below).

Because we have jet pilots in the USN airpower chain of command, the USN literally can't think that way, AKA VLR Tomahawk CVN deck strikes.

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In WW2, the US Army Cavalry missions of reconnaissance, offensive penetration of enemy screens & economy of force screening against the enemy continued after the horse flesh was removed.

The 21st century naval airpower mision will continue after the human flesh is removed.

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But there is going to be one heck of a fight to dump the US pilots unions.

At the end of WW2 these was an incredible three way turf fight over the US copy of the V-1 buzz bomb, the JB-2 loon.

The USAAF want to use JB-2's from bombers, the USN from LSTs, subs & CVE's while
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the US Army ground forces wanted to use JB-2's from ramp launchers because they could deliver medium bomber weight bomb tonnage from 24/7 ramp launchers for the same manpower hit as a B-26 Marauder group.

The fight was resolved by the end of WW2 and the pilots unions rise
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...to power inside the newly unified Defense Department via President Eisenhower's "Massive Nuclear Retaliation" doctrine.

This focused the DoD on manned aircraft as nuclear delivery platforms and killed cheap drones & conventional air breathing missiles for 30 years.
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Now 80 years from that JB-2 turf fight, the pilots are facing another reckoning they and the Big/Expensive/Few crew in the Pentagon that supports them can't win.

They are no longer "cost-effectiveness competitive" in the age of $2,000 drones.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Aug 28
Remember all the professionally incompetent yo-yo naval officers & hangers on claiming FPV drones were not a threat to naval warships in 2023 WHEN I TOLD THEM THEY WOULD BE?

Reality just kicked them one and all in the 'nads...

...HARD⬇️

1/2
I told these professionally incompetent US navalists accounts on X/Twitter in 2023 that both containerized drones and FPV drones were a deadly threat to every naval vessel on the water they were ignoring to their crew's peril.

2/
Those professionally incompetent yo-yo US navalists accounts didn't listen because of their Dunning-Kruger group think delusions.

They refused to accept the reality that surprise FPV attacks happen because the enemy always gets a vote...FIRST!

This is where I laugh at them⬇️
3/3
Read 4 tweets
Aug 23
We need to have a talk about Russian military corruption and its effects on the Russo-Ukrainian War.

It's kind of like these sun-rotted missile truck tires that make my reputation on Twitter.

Corruption happens slowly, then all at once.

Corruption🧵
1/ Image
The Russian Army issued a "live off the land" order in early March 2022 resulted in lots of Russian enlisted stealing outside the line of sight of Russian junior officers.

This hollowed out discipline the RuAF "Professional Volunteers" in early 2022.

2/
Given the visuals of the base level corruption of Russian society in terms of oil income disparity.

A lot of "Russia Strong" yo-yo's just shrug and say, "so what, Russia won wars when it was corrupt."

3/
Read 21 tweets
Aug 21
At a production rate of 100 FP-1 drones a day. Fire Point will make 13,200 FP-1 one way attack (OWA) drone by 1 Jan 2026.

By itself.

Every other Ukrainian OWA drone maker is in addition to that 13,200 number.

1/2
If the FP-1 really is 60% of Ukrainian OWA drone production. (Rather than just recent launches)

0.6 (x) = 13,200
x = 13,200/0.6
x = 22,000

Ukraine is on track to make 22,000 OWA drones in the last 132 days of 2025. 👀


2/
22,000 Ukrainian OWA drones in 132 days certainly is a strategic bombing threat of the first order.

Even if Russia downs 80% of them.

That is 4,400 Ukrainian OWA drone hits in Russia in the next 132 days or 33 and 1/3 precision guided drone hits on Russia per day to 2026.
3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 21
More information has come out on the FP-5 Flamingo which gives insights io both the systems and production engineering involved for low cost production.

I'm going to use the WW2 F6F Hellcat & M4 Sherman as examples of Ukrainian FP-5 design choices.

Engineering🧵
1/
The FP-5 GLCM production photos released today shows what looks like a combination of carbon fiber composite, molded thermoplastics, and sheet metal.

Cruciform tail controls are all moving.

Wings are attached before launch like a 1960s USAF MGM-1 Matador.
2/ Image
The FP-5 Transporter Erector Launch (TEL) trailer looks like a new custom build.

Iryna Terekh, head of production at Fire Point, stated to the AP that "Fire Point is producing roughly one Flamingo per day, and by October they hope to build capacity to make seven per day."

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Read 16 tweets
Aug 19
I've gotten a lot of comments on this thread here and via DM. I'm going to share one from a Cold War gray beard on the engine that powers the FP-5.

"FP-5 is around 4 x Tomahawk in mass.

FP-5 Engine🧵
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.

2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Aug 19
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden

This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.

1/
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...


2/rand.org/pubs/commentar…
...was Jake Sullivan's totem animal for surfacing ideas of "de-escalation" with Russia.

Former Estonian President Ilves and Prof Stephan Blank utterly shredded the Charap/Sullivan thought balloon.

Seeing Trump revive that Charap/Sullivan thought ballon now is sickening🤮

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets

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