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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The following is evaluation is based on a number of professional discussions:
This CRPA found in a shot down jet Shaheed is reported to be Russian built. This is highly doubtful as the design and construction style looks far too professional for Russian industry.
Bluntly - Russians tend towards cheapskate up-front capital manufacturing solutions.
The upshot is injection molded and die cast components are not a common feature in Russian designs as tooling for manufacturing designs is expensive up front,
2/
...even if the mass production unit costs are lower.
In addition, Western style SMA RF connectors are not a feature of the Soviet technology base.
" Please summarize the pre-World War 1 to 1942 career of merchant armed raiders and compare that data to Ukraine's recent drone attack in the Mediterranean with a drone armed commercial vessel."
2/
This is @grok's final summary:
"In essence, Ukraine's approach modernizes the raider concept—swapping guns for drones and merchant disguises for stealthy launches— but lacks the historical volume due to the conflict's constraints.
3/
In Donetsk, reconnaissance operators face constant drone surveillance, electromagnetic degradation, and hyper-local combat conditions that invalidate long-held assumptions about stealth and standoff intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).
2/3
This article contends that NATO must, with urgency, reform its reconnaissance doctrine, training, and force structure to survive and efficiently operate in a drone-saturated battlefield."
Every competent USN surface officer knows in their gut an anti-aircraft cruiser should not be operating with downed identification friend or foe (IFF) and Link-16 data link with no E-2 Hawkeye AEW support.
That sound drama isn't World War One or any "medium intensity" conflict since 1918.
It is the sound of how 21st century Peer-to-Peer conflict is fought.
A conflict Western ground militaries are obsolescent in equipment to face.
2/3
That Russo-Ukraine War video is a soundscape US Army National Training Centers are too obsolete/incapable of replicating, because US Army flag ranks are allergic to training with high densities of small/cheap/many FPV drones.
SHORAN was a WW2 blind bombing system using two radio stations and an electromechanical computer.
In 1938 an RCA engineer named Stuart William Seeley, while attempting to remove "ghost" signals from an experimental television system, discovered he could measure distances 2/
...by time differences in radio reception.
Instead of building a radar unit with this discovery, he proposed using this technique for precision ground-based radio beacon navigation bombing aid.