Trent Telenko Profile picture
Apr 18, 2024 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
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⬇️

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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.

2/

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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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The first low signature armored cabs build and fielded with the 82nd Airborne Division in Mosul (pictured) were accepted on New Year's Eve 2004-2005 by me, my DCMA supervisor and my office's commanding Colonel.

Bush Administration policy was the military went to the war and everyone else went to the mall.

I was single then & volunteered.

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The three of us started at 8:30am and worked until 10:45 pm getting the first batch of cabs inspected, properly packaged & onto trucks for highway shipment to an airport for direct cargo flights to Iraq.

The three troopers in this LSAC cab all lived with minor injuries.⬇️
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I didn't go to a New Year's Eve West Coast Swing Dance that I had planned for weeks to attend that night at the Melody Club to chase skirts...

...I knew I was too tired to kick up my heals and then drive back safely.

But it was time meaningfully well spent.

6/6
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More from @TrentTelenko

May 5
The reduction in murder deaths -IS NOT- due to law enforcement, or reductions in underlying rates of violence.

It is due to the fact that medical care has improved such that the same gunshot wound inflicted in 2015 is 1/3 as lethal as 1960.

Murder rate🧵
1/
Homicide statistics since the early 1960s are not comparable to earlier periods because medical advances have turned many fatal injuries into survivable ones.

See the CDC report below⬇️


2/
There are four major medical trauma care changes since 1960 reducing murder rates:

1. Trauma centers established ~1961.

2. Standardized trauma procedures ~1978.

3. Adoption of military (Korea/Vietnam) emergency treatment, air transport, and improved triage ~1986.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Apr 29
This passage:

"Lebanese security forces reportedly seized 1 truck last June carrying 5,000 explosive drones..."

...is the heart of why I say that the US Army & USMC ground troops will bleed heavily in their first real drone war.

Drone War🧵
Each of those 5,000 Hezbollah drones is individually far more lethal than a dumb 155mm shell, and a 5-ton truck can carry only 176 of them.

Each of those 5,000 drone can kill a truck carrying those 176 shells.

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You simply can't hide from drones like you can from a shell.

It will follow you inside hard cover with a thermobaric warhead.

There is no safe space on the battlefield unless you build one with fishing nets and drone jammers.
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Read 6 tweets
Apr 29
I'm tempted to say the difference between military flag ranks who are competent at 2026 peer to peer warfare, and those who are not, is the understanding and application of attritional loss curves to combat loss rates, electronic warfare and logistics.

Professional military education (PME)🧵
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The set of curves I had an AI produce for me above have been used for air warfare many times starting at the end of WW2, in the USSBS after WW2 and by many classic RAND airpower studies from the 1950's to 1980's.

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All post 9/11/2001 Western flag ranks are counter-insurgency (COIN) trained & experienced.

They have no gut feel at all to statistical attrition models at all.

These "COIN-head" flags may prove to be highly resistant to changing this. Which is required to deal with drones.
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Read 14 tweets
Apr 27
The effectiveness of drones is directly affected by the electronic warfare competence of the drone users.

The fact that the US Army defenestrated every EW practitioner in the 2000's and has compete "EW virgins" as flag rank leadership means it will fail with mass casualties in its first major drone war combat.
1/3
A US Army serious about drone warfare would:

- Rebuild the full EW enterprise with organic division-level EW battalions and real exercises.

- Embed EW jamming into all combat branches (not MI-only).

- Shift to gun/autocannon dominant combined-arms counter-drone doctrine.

2/3
- Require FAA drone pilot + Ham radio licenses for flag ranks to build drone domain literacy.

None of these four reforms will happen until after US Army soldiers are deep in both defeat and buckets of blood.

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Apr 26
It is extremely unlikely that this shooter acted alone given the following:

1. Reports are the guns were cached disassembled in a black bag, in a room outside the secured Secret Service perimeter.

2. The room the guns were cached in didn't have television surveillance.

🧵
1/
3. The shooter arrived at the hotel the day before the event.😯

4. TSA rules require firearms to be transported in checked baggage, unloaded, and locked in a hard-sided container, declared to the airline at check-in.

2/
5. Local DC law requires firearms in vehicles to be inaccessible from the passenger compartment and unloaded.

6. Washington DC is not a "safe passage" jurisdiction for non-residents without a license. The shooter lacked this license.

3/
Read 10 tweets
Apr 14
USN flag ranks & their staffers have been fighting the idea of distant economic blockade of China tooth an nail as a response to China invading Taiwan for 30 years.

They really don't want a recent precedent of a successful blockade...

1/3
...to prevent their Carrier fleet Pickett's charge into the South China Sea.

Specifically distant blockade as a strategy against China makes having/regaining 100 Cold War era

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...frigates and destroyer tenders supporting them on distant blockade stations outside the 2nd Island chain, "budget relevant" for a military strategy of conducting three years of blockade enforcement.

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Read 4 tweets

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