Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 23, 2024 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.
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.

2/
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/
Image
Image
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/ Image
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."

5/
epa.gov/sites/default/…
Image
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

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.

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.

12/
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...

13/
...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.

15/
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."


16/
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
@threadreaderapp unroll please

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Trent Telenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TrentTelenko

Jan 17
The fire and forget millimeter wave (MMW) radar guidance AGM-114L "Hellfire Longbow" being referred in the War Zone post as "a new anti-drone armament" for the LCS actually ceased production in 2005 and reaches end of life in 2025.

1/
One of the reasons the AGM-114L was dropped from the US Army M-Shorad is the US Army didn't want to pay money to recertify the AGM-114L inventory...

2/
...with the AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) equipped with dual-mode Semi-Active Laser (SAL) and millimeter wave (MMW) radar seeker just entering production.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Jan 16
It is a bad week to be Russia.

Qatar, one of the biggest LNG exporter, just announced it's new six MTPA (million tonnes per annum) nitrogen fertilizer plant.

The chemical process involved is natural gas->ammonia -> urea for a
1/
dohanews.co/qatar-set-to-b…
...vertically integrated facility.

This new Qatar facility means Middle Eastern fertilizer industrial plants have now displaced Russia on the world fertilizer market.

2/
This makes Russia falling out of the world Ag-sector fertilizer supply chain a non-event going forward.

The Qatari sheiks made a good move here to capture value up the supply chain from energy.

Plus, Urea and Ammonia store far better than liquified natural gas.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Jan 15
I disagree with the thoughts in this post for multiple reasons.⬇️

1st, Ukraine made a systematic effort in Oct 2024 to take out multiple Russian alcohol distilleries.

So distilleries are on the AFU strategic bombing list.

1/
2nd, there are a lot of things that alcohol is a chemical feedstock for that Russia desperately needs to make.

I've talked about synthetic rubber for tires in another thread.


2/
A short list of Russian industrial alcohol uses include:

o It's used as an industrial solvent.
o It's used as a precursor for numerous plastics.
o It's used as a precursor for some explosives.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Jan 15
Ukraine struck another Russian alcohol plant?

I'm beginning to think the Russians have been using alcohol to make butadiene based synthetic rubber.

My WW2 US mobilization resources say grain produced alcohol was the primary chemical feedstock for the synthetic rubber

1/
...in US tires until August 1944.

The process was invented by a Russian, Via wikipedia:

"The Russian chemist Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev was the first to polymerize butadiene in 1910....

2/
...In 1926 he invented a process for manufacturing butadiene from ethanol, and in 1928, developed a method for producing polybutadiene using sodium as a catalyst.

The government of the Soviet Union strove to use polybutadiene as an alternative to natural rubber ...

3/
Read 6 tweets
Jan 13
If you are going to talk about the US Army's WW2 "Revolution in logistical affairs."

You start at TM 55-310, Stevedoring⬇️

It lead to another Civil Rights revolution 25 years later.

Stevedoring & Civil Rights🧵🧵
1/ Image
Image
Image
Image
That War Department technical manual codified how the US Army would apply mechanized logistics - pallets, forklifts and warehousing using same - world wide.

2/
Searching on TM 55-310, Stevedoring leads history manuscript of how the US Army moved cargo in WW2.

The implementation of TM 55-310, Stevedoring lead to the hesitant 1st steps to racial integration...

3/
Read 5 tweets
Jan 11
Russian Shaheds have been using early 1990's style digital scene mapping and correlation (DSMAC) guidance.

Depending on how much memory is on the Shahed, it could be avoiding the use of GNSS (Think GPS) radio navigation entirely.

1/ Image
But as the figure I used above noted, Ukraine is mostly flat and that is bad for DSMAC accuracy.

An analysis of the data bases of downed Shaheds will yield the landmarks these drones are using.

That data, plus an AI analysis of past Shahed trajectories in GNSS jammed...

2/ Image
...areas, plus maps of Ukrainian cell phone tower networks that Shahed SIM cards access, should allow operational analysis predictions of future Shahed landmark checkpoints to set up quick reaction Ukrainian TDF mobile AA gun "flak traps."

3/3 End Image
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(