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.
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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."

5/
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.

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.

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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...

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.

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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

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."

3/ Image
Image
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
Aug 18
The issue for Russia with the FP-5 is that its range makes Russian national air defense practically impossible.

Ukraine can reach facilities on the other side of the Urals and north to Murmansk with the FP-5.

Once Ukrainian drones overwhelm a border SAM battery sector.

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FP-5's sent through the drone peak saturation area can 'squirt through into a great empty' low at high subsonic speeds.

Only an AWACS with late production SU-30 with look down/shoot down PESA radars can deal with them.

H/T @DrnBmbr
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Furthermore, FP-5's are going to have electronic counter measures (ECM) and counter-countermeasures (ECCM) installed as standard.

The FP-5 will have at least a 24 element CRPA element layout to beat GPS jamming...

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Pres Zelenskyy of Ukraine just made an interesting statement:

"Let me give an example from yesterday, roughly like this: the Russians suffer about a thousand losses per day — that’s 500 killed and 500 wounded.

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I’m not even counting the 10 prisoners and so on. More precisely, 968 losses for Russia: 531 killed, 428 wounded, and 9 captured.

We had 340 losses in one day: 18 killed, 243 wounded, and 79 missing in action," he said."

2/
500 Russian KIA versus 18 Ukrainian KIA is a 29.5 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

Total Russian casualties of 1,000 versus 340 Ukrainian is a 2.9 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

3/
Read 5 tweets

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