Hundreds of American HARM anti-radiation and GMLRS missiles have been fired by Ukraine at Russian Buk, S-300 & S-400 batteries in occupied territories for over two years.
Russia has systematically stripped Syria and it's national air defenses to feed into the high tech meat grinder that is occupied Ukraine because of it's below replacement rate air defense missile system production.
Russia has been borrowing from its national air defense "Peter" to pay the occupied territories logistical "Paul" to replace the losses from the 18(+) months long Ukrainian PSU suppression of air defense (SEAD) campaign.
While Ukraine has been adapting to Shahed-136 assault drone attacks with it's mobile anti-aircraft gun and shoulder fired missile territorial defense groups, jamming and 5,000 plus smartphone sonic sensor network.
9/
Ukraine has also been analyzing Russian Shahed attacks and feeding them to an element inside the Ukrainian military like the Standoff Munitions Activity Center (SMAC) at Barksdale AFB.
SMAC does evasive radar routing for integrated cross-service standoff munition attack profiles for all the US Military services when facing high end "Anti-Access Area Defense (A2AD) threats.
I did a 🧵on them in March 2022 on Pres Trump's 2018 Syrian missile strikes.
The combination of low Russian improved road network density and AFU drone mission planning software means Ukrainian propeller cruise missiles/assault drone streams can be routed away from improved roads.
The next Russian mud season will be...interesting...for Russia.👿
15/
I did an open source 🧵almost 4 years ago in Oct 2020 on X/Twitter explaining much of this.
In 2024, we are two complete drone-computer technology generations from the Azeri-Armenian War.
Ukraine's propelled cruise missile/assault drone strategic bombing campaign is now in the process of teaching the world what those two generations of advancement means on Russia's industrial and logistical infrastructure.
"Escalation Management" be damned.
17/17 End
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This Ukrainian fiber optic FPV drone attack underlines that 20th century style tactical truck based logistics are obsolete in the age of mass, cheap, 50 km FPV drones.
Drones costing less than $2,000 are killing trucks costing over $150,000.
The issue of Western truck production versus drone production is stark
Ukraine in 2025 is making ~12,000 FPV and grenade dropping class small drones a month.
The peak annual US Army FMTV production was in 2005 for a total of 8,168 trucks.
Those trucks are 20 years old.
2/
21st Century truck logistics in the age of 50 km unjammable fiber optic guided FPV drones requires systematic combat service support engineering to build vehicle "net tunnels" to protect from powered and persistent drones.
Injection molding gets you a lot of one thing cheaply. Think lots of fiber optic guided FPV drones, which are immune to radio jamming.
3D/AM allows a lot of modifications to meet the changing requirements of war. Think rapidly evolving Ukrainian interceptor drone designs.
2/
The issue for Ukraine versus Russia is Ukraine has to more widely disperse its industrial base because Russia has a bigger cruise and 500 km(+) ballistic missile production base.
Ukraine's need to disperse production and evolve drones means 3D/AM is a better industrial fit.
3/3
The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.
2/
So the US military abandoned kinetic solutions the lower end drone threat.
And it has to pretend that high power microwave weapons and jamming will be the answer to fiber optic guided FPV's at weed height and grenade dropping drones behind tree lines.
The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
2/
The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.
It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.
Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.
Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.
And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮
2/3
"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.
3/3