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Trent Telenko Profile picture
@TrentTelenko
Jan 15, 2024 • 9 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
Ukrainian media is reporting the shoot down of a VKS A-50 AEW&C and a Il-22 Coot ELINT plane over the Sea of Azov.

Russian signals intelligence warnings shut down the Kerch Bridge earlier in the day, thinking the PSU sorties were a Su-24 strike.
🧵
1/
 rbc.ua/rus/news/zsu-p…
Image
I think it likely the PSU gave off the signals of a Su-24 Storm Shadow strike and actually sent out Su-27's hunting, tricked out with 100(+) km range AIM-120C's.

Think of the WW2 "Operation Vengeance" P-38 raid that killed Adm. Yamamoto.

2/
Image
NASAM's launchers use AIM-120C-5/7.

If HARM missiles can be fitted to Mig-29 & Su-27's. So can an AMRAAM.

You would need an external radar sensor and a a Link 16 compatible digital radio on the Su-27 to pull it off.

3/
VKS A-50 or Il-22's orbiting at 9,000 meters over the Sea of Azov can be tracked by a ground based radar at just under 500 km.

If the PSU "strike package" volleyed a lot of ADM-160 MALD at the Kerch Bridge to get VKS fighters protecting the A-50 to

4/
...commit to protecting the bridge.

It would give a single Ukrainian PSU Su-27 a chance to break within 100 km and blarf a volley of lock on after launch AMRAAM against these converted cargo & airliner planes.

5/ Image
The US fighter pilots don't like 'pitbulling' the AMRAAM when they "Fox 3."

That is, firing a AIM-120 seeker in the lock on after launch (LOAL) with missile seeker doing autonomous homing at range.

This is because there tends to be more US fighters than enemy fighters.

6/ Image
To use ~2008 fighter pilot slang:

"Shake a pitbull up in a sack and when you let out. It's goes for the first thing it sees.
In which case, you have a 'mad dog' event."

A PSU Su-27 fighting one on many doesn't have this issue.

7/
Ukraine could only pull this AMRAAM Ambush once.

They decided to make a high operational risk/high operational pay off poker bet and won the pot.

8/8 End
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More from @TrentTelenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture
Feb 28
I don't doubt that Ukraine cyber hacked in Russian digital terrain elevation maps that the Russians compiled for themselves. Up to date digital terrain elevation maps are a good thing to have.

Plus NASA also had a huge archive of digital terrain elevation data.

1/
But the art of planning munition trajectories to use them is a separate and uniquely military skills set.

Ukraine has had four years of combat experience doing the task of planning munition trajectories.

2/
Which is why I called them out as replicating SMAC's capabilities.

Combat experience is 10 times the best simulations.

The Flamingo flies lower and much faster than most of the other deep strike assets the Ukrainians use, but it is also larger.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Feb 28
War with Iran has kicked off and both the Trump Adm. and Israel have gone for Iranian Regime change with oil export, leadership decapitation, air defense & Iranian missile site strikes.

Mullah Regime Change 🧵
1/
Reportedly:

"The U.S. strikes are focused on Iran’s missile program and missile launchers. The Israeli strikes are focused on eliminating senior Iranian officials and on the missile program"

2/
Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al-Salem Base in Kuwait, Al-Dhafra Air Base in the Emirates, and the US Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain were all reportedly hit by IRGC Ballistic missiles.

3/
Read 10 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Feb 27
I was calling this out in 2023⬇️

"Preliminary reports suggest the UAV was likely launched from an Iranian naval vessel — a move that would significantly extend its operational range and time over target."

1/3
The threat of Iranian ISO container, or sea vessel, launched drones was plain three years ago

I got publicly hooted at by US Navy leadership aligned accounts on X for pointing out this "politically incorrect" reality.

2/3 Image
Image
Iran will be the gust front of the drone threat the US Navy faces.

China will empty the South China Sea of US naval vessels with drones in the first week of a war over Taiwan.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Feb 17
Drones are both a compliment and supplement all existing ground force combined arms weapons systems and do so at a lower cost.

For the last year to 18 months - and sources vary - three out of every four Ukrainian and Russian casualties are from drones.

Paradigm Shift 🧵

1/5
Artillery plus EVERY_OTHER_ weapons system on the Ukrainian battlefield does 1/4 of 2025-2026 drone casualties.

Such is the BLUF of the drone battlefield paradigm shift in terms of human blood.

2/5
This means the world has changed so radically that any US Army officer higher than Captain is negative value added on a drone battlefield because their professional military education is as obsolete 1930's US Horse cavalrymen Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures were in 1944.

3/5 Image
Read 6 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Feb 17
The problem for an independent EU nuclear deterrence force is sheer numbers, the EU lack of them.

What the Putinists have proven is that Western deterrence assumptions about "acceptable losses" were naive mirrored thinking, attributing Western values to Russia.

1/
The assumption of credible "deterrent effect" has to be shifted into the loss band of annihilation of threat forces - anything less than that, as the Ukraine war proves, is an acceptable loss for the Putinists.

We are at over a million Russian casualties to date.

2/theguardian.com/world/2026/jan…
That means a 200 kiloton nuke in either St. Petersburg or Moscow, or dozens of tactical nukes into airfields & missile fields across Western Russia as an EU nuclear response to a Russian first strike are acceptable at a minimum.

3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Feb 15
It looks like my 4th Gen nukes posts here on X shook out data from US three letter agencies. Who belatedly realized that classifying physics was both self-defeating & stupid.

The bad news is the FYEO web site is now reporting a _NINTH_ 4th Gen. nuclear tech approach by China with metal nitrogen/nitrogen anion salt.

1/3Image
Specifically, this new Chinese approach to 4th generation nukes that create fusion device without a HEU/PU fission trigger can be packaged as small as 100 to 200 grams and can fit into a group two size class drone.

This is worse than my worst-case expectations.

2/3
My worst-case 4th Generation nuclear scenario was based on explosively pumped flux compression generator fusion primaries with U-238 jackets in something sized to fit into an ATACMS warhead.

China's approach is 1/25th that mass/volume. 😱

3/3
Read 4 tweets

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