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.

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.]

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Image
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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

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.

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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."


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
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More from @TrentTelenko

Dec 17
I've been involved with three US Army FMTV reset programs.

So this newest report from Ukraine's Defense Express on the the repairability problems with Russian AFV's out of their reserves is so much fun to share with you all.

1/ Image
Defense Express pulled an article from the No. 10 issue of the Russian magazine "Material and Technical Support" on how horrid the vehicles coming out of reserve are plus problems with battle damaged reserve vehicles.

2/
en.defence-ua.com/analysis/repai…
The 2nd paragraph starts with this:

"The central takeaway from this publication is that the actual repairability of Russian tanks is 3-5 times lower than what is claimed in official manuals. This discrepancy has extended repair times for equipment by at least 15-20%."

3/
Read 12 tweets
Dec 16
Ukraine’s claims to have produced 100 Peklo (Hell) cruise missiles over the past three months.

This works out to about 1.1 Peklo a day, but manufacturing production lines don't work like that.

Peklo Manufacturing 🧵

1/
pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/…
The infographic figure below is a typical commercial production line curve.

Ukraine's stated production and use of the Peklo (Hell) cruise missile marks it as being on the 'start of production to market entry' ramp up part of the curve below.

2/ Image
Over two dozen Peklo were shown in this public unveiling by Ukraine, which is over 1/4 of the stated production to date.

How many were pre-production prototypes or low rate initial pilot production models isn't knowable.
3/
Read 12 tweets
Dec 15
This is Russian exceptionalism in action again.

The Putin Regime took old riverine tankers - Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft-239 - to sea:

1/
unian.ua/world/richkovi…
"According to Andriy Klymenko , head of the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies , both vessels are very old and have a "river" class, which implies certain limitations.

2/
He published and commented on the relevant map, which indicates the approximate location of the tanker disaster.

"It is about 8 miles from the seaport of Taman (a transshipment port south of the Kerch Strait).

3/
Read 5 tweets
Dec 15
This was a very interesting operation by Ukraine to destroy a 'partisan immobilized' fuel train with Switchblade 600's, to burn the fuel.

The burning fuel will require that the annealed rails under the cars to be replaced to prevent derailments.

RuAF rail vulnerability🧵
1/
This will require a Russian military railway service train to be deployed to this spot for possible future Ukrainian Switchblade 600 follow up strikes.

2/
I've mentioned the vulnerability of Russian trains to Switchblade 600 back in April 2022.

A Switchblade 600 with a Javelin warhead is powerful enough to destroy the control section of a rail engine...
3/
Read 8 tweets
Dec 8
I've been thinking on what is going on to reduce Russia VKS glide bomb attacks as shown

There are many possible reasons.

Fewer Russian glide bomb drops 🧵
1/
My first thought was to wonder if:

"Are we seeing Russian supply chain problems across its PGM production base due to foreign exchange shortages?"

Russia's Shaheed clones have new and inferior Chinese servo motors.⬇️
2/
I asked around and I was pointed to Ukrainian GNSS (AKA global positioning satellite signals) Spoofing as a more likely cause of the Shaheed-136 clone failures.

Also, that would have nothing with reduced glide bomb drops.

3/
Read 8 tweets
Dec 7
In another round of very useful translation, @sambendett points out the Russians have learned that drones are how combat power is measured in the 21st century.

The Russians didn't share drone tech with the SAA at scale.

Ukraine did with the HTS starting in June 2024.
1/
So the Assad regime fell.

Had Russia sent it's 'troublesome' drone units to Syria, rather than in meat grinder infantry assaults. Things might have turned out differently.

Dmitry "Goodwin" Lysakovsky was a legendary Russian extremist who became a drone
2/
...operator in the DPR army and stayed when it became Russian. 

"Goodwin" ran cross ways of his regimental commander for calling him out for dealing drugs to his own troops on social media.
3/
Read 5 tweets

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