Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 23 19 tweets 6 min read Read on X
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.
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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.

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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.]

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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.

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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."

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epa.gov/sites/default/…
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When you look up Russian Methanol production on Statistica, it reflects Russia's huge petrochemical refinery infrastructure.


6/statista.com/statistics/126…
The International Energy Agency's "Ammonia Technology Roadmap" says Russia is about 8% of the world Ammonia production capability.


7/iea.org/reports/ammoni…
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

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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.

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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

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...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.

What's going on?

11/ft.com/content/98f15b…
Two things are happening here.

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.

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The second thing is US intelligence on Russia's artillery logistics and associated economic supply chain has sucked rocks for more than 80 years.

The CIA based all of it's Soviet artillery logistics projections on pilfered Warsaw Pact documents...

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...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

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...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.

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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."


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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.


17/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E…
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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More from @TrentTelenko

Apr 25
Please compare this Mig-29 100m^2 front facing radar cross section fail...

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...To this front end view of the Russian Su-57.

Those radar blocking covers reduce Su-57 engine performance when the Russians most need it for non-afterburner supercruise performance.

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US stealth airframes and the Chinese J-20 use s-shaped air intakes covered with radar absorbing materials to hide the front of their jet engines.

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 23
This is a Ukrainian balloon bombing thread is interesting on a number of levels.

Both the UK and the Imperial Japanese engaged in strategic balloon bombing in WW2.

Balloon bombing🧵
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The first was the UK's Operation Outward. It was noticed after a windstorm during 1940's Battle of Britain that barrage balloons dragging severed cables under them caused shorts on power lines, damaging the power grid in occupied Europe.

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The British launched waves of these balloons in the winters of 1941-1943 whenever their bombers could not fly.

The arrival of H2S radar saw Operation Outward be discontinued.

3/
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Read 7 tweets
Apr 21
The extra $300 million for the F-22 buys superior "bow tie" stealth capability, more reliable engines, and a much better radar system.⬇️

The Su-57 is a "Pac man" style stealth system like the F-35.

Cost effective stealth🧵
1/
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Russia's Su-57 uses a drop down blocking engine device rather than a full S-shaped engine inlet like the Chinese J-20 (below right) or the F-22.

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The tail engine exhaust of the Su-57 is non-stealthy, just like that of the F-35, the J-20 plus newer ROK & Turkish jets.

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Read 7 tweets
Apr 19
The longer range 5V28 missile of the S-200/SA-5 Gammon have a reported range of 345 km against a Mach 3(+) SR-71 class target.

A Kh-22 missile carried by the Tu-22M bomber, NATO code named"Backfire" has only a 290 km stand off range.

S-200/SA-5🧵
1/
This would be the 2nd reported downing of a Tu-22M by an S-200. The earlier Tu-22M being in December 2023.

It looks like these Tu-22M are still using Soviet era EW suites which were not geared against the S-200 C-Band, 100 KW, 5N62 Square Pair FMCW tracker/illuminator.
2/
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For technical background on the S-200/SA-5, see this old post of mine.

3/
Read 10 tweets
Apr 18
Between ~1996 and 2005, most FMTV trucks accepted by DCMA for the US Army had my signature on the truck property forms along with my DSN phone number.

I got three or four calls in Sealy Texas from NCO's in Iraq trying to score ballistic composite glass armor because they stopped these EFP attacks⬇️

1/
DCMA Sealy was getting photos from contractor relatives of bombed FMTV's with sheet metal armor and receiving IED damaged trucks to get rebuilt.

You could tell the blast damage from how the windows were missing and the roofs were bowed at the top.

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When you pulled out the stowage boxes in the cabs there were usually spent 5.56mm or 7.62mm brass casings...

...and occasionally a lot of dried blood.

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Read 7 tweets
Apr 18
Iran's campaign to suppress Israel's ballistic missile defenses is underway.

Air Defense is a combined arms form of warfare. Western militaries have forgotten this since 1989, see⬇️

Every Patriot or Iron Dome radar needs its own dedicated gun based point defense in the age of drones and indirect fire ATGMs.

1/
Locating Patriot/Iron Dome/S-400 class radars is easy peasy lemon squeezy.

You can use commercial synthetic aperture radar satellites and on-line radar interference tracking tools.

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Or SAM hunters can use a weather balloons with a set of commercial off the shelf ELINT and thermal imaging sensors - connected via a smartphone - hanging underneath to listen for radars and look for SAM missile launches 24/7.

The world has changed.

(I wonder if the Houthi are doing this balloon surveillance trick to the Western merchantmen?🤔)

3/3

Read 4 tweets

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