We are seeing a lot of posts and articles on X about Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign against Russian refineries .
People, including Jake Sullivan over at the Biden Adm. NSC think this is about AFU cutting off Russian oil.
They're wrong. It's about explosives. 1/
The Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries are less about POL than reduction of nitrogen,ammonia and methanol feed stocks for Russian explosives and propellants for it's artillery and missile production.
Ukrainian OWA drones are engaged in strategic counter battery fire against the Russian artillery supply chain providing the explosive fillings & propellent for shells, rockets and missiles.
[This also has knock on effects for Russian fertilizer production.]
3/
Nitrogen, ammonia and methanol are the bell book and candle of chemical feedstocks that Russian refineries supply to it's war machine.
Fixing nitrogen is especially key in making high explosives.
4/
When the US EPA talks about crude oil refining, it mentions nitrogen thusly:
"Undesirable elements such as sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen are removed by hydrodesulfurization, hydrotreating, chemical sweetening, and acid gas removal."
When you look at modern explosives and artillery shell/rocket propellent on Wikipedia, a lot falls out that shows what Ukraine is up to with it's campaign against Russian refineries.
1. RDX and HMX are made from Formaldehyde that is made from Methanol and ammonia (both of
8/
1. Con't ...which are oil refinery products) via Hexamethylenetetramine.
2. TNT is made from Toluene, which is a refinery by product of gasoline.
3. Nitroglycerine is a made from Nitrogen, is a biodiesel by product, and is used to make #2 TNT.
9/
4. Ammonium perchlorate for rocket fuel comes from ammonia, for which see #1.
So, we have a lot of evidence here that Ukraine's anti-refinery campaign is more about removing oil refinery made chemical feedstocks for Russia's artillery supply chain than cutting off oil money
10/
...or fuel to the Russian Army. Yet, before I posted this, no one seems to have noticed any of that.
And everyone, especially the Jake Sullivan lead Biden Adm. National Security Council is screaming oil.
First, Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) is exactly right as to how Russian Reflexive Control Information Warfare has captured Jake Sullivan's crowd at the Biden Administration National Security Council.
...and mirror imaging pallets & forklifts on the Soviets without ever giving any collection priority to the problem or actually looking at chemical feedstocks.
The 80 year feedstock & forklift miss points to the intelligence validation step as a threat to career promotion
14/
...inside intelligence agencies.
It won't let senior intelligence analysts feed to senior politicians what they want to hear.
Their poor 1980's Iran-Iraq War intelligence product reflected this careertist patron-client defect.
When the Lockheed Martin WARSIM software development team went to US Army TMs/FMs, the OPFOR World Equipment Guide and AMSAA for Russian log-data, it was INA (Item not Available) because "mirror imaging was good enough."
What we are seeing with the combination of 80(+) years of intelligence dysfunction & the JD degree spin doctor run NSC is the ultimate American Government expression of the Dunning - Kruger Effect.
We have people running the US Russo-Ukrainian War security policy at the NSC that have absolute confidence in bad intelligence product, while knowing absolutely nothing.
And who are too lazy to do a flipping internet search on Russian refineries chemical feedstocks.
18/18 End
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Grok focused on Ukrainian drone capabilities to the exclusion of actual fielded Chinese drone capability and literally eight decades old aviation technology like conformal fuel tanks which have also been applied to cruise missiles in the Chinese technological base for 20 years 2/
The Chinese Sunflower-200 is it's clone of the Iranian Shahed-136. It appeared at Russia's Armiya-2023 show and in 2025 combat in Sudan.
The China Defense website says it has a 3.2-meter length, 2.5-meter wingspan, a flight speed of 160-220 km per hour with a maximum take-off weight of 175 kilograms, a combat payload of 40 kilograms and can fly up to 2000 kilometers. x.com/clashreport/st…
3/
The M109A6 Paladin 155mm/L39 caliber self-propelled gun is the T-62MV obr. 2022 of the artillery world.
The gun is inferior to every other major power's fielded SPG world wide.
2/
The computerized fire direction system of the US Army Artillery is a overly centralized, decades old Star/mini-computer architecture, which has an electromagnetic signature so bright that it can be detected bouncing off the surface of the moon
I cannot begin to tell you all how fishy this passage from that article is:
"In addition to the F-35 production line at Ft. Worth, Texas, the commingling of the two types of bolts was also discovered at the Italian F-35
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... Final Assembly and Check-Out (FACO) facility, but not the one in Japan, the DCMA reported."
Spot checking of aircraft production and depot level maintenance facilities fastener bins is a standard operating procedure for DCMA everywhere it has quality personnel.
Why the West, and particularly the US Army, is in deep denial over that reality is rooted in the US Army's denial that the FPV anti-tank drone is replacing the ATGM for cost/performance reasons.
The Ukrainian missile crews salvaging brand new $20K Stugna ATGM to make more FPV drones underlines the battlefield kinematic superiority of multi-copter drones to boost-glide ATGM.