Trent Telenko Profile picture
Aug 5, 2024 14 tweets 5 min read Read on X
It looks like the Russian railway's western cassette roller bearing wear out & capability collapse I've said was coming for a couple of years...

...is now arriving.

Assuming this report is true⬇️

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In simple terms, we are in August 2024 after this bearing wear out prediction for February 2024.⬇️

This is something I've been expecting to see since September 2022.⬇️

The life of installed 5 million km Western roller bearings are ending for more and more Russian locomotives and rolling stock.

The Russian pattern of the most neglected...

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...track meeting the most neglected engines & rolling stock will cause more & more derailments starting in the arctic, then the Far East.

Then derailments in the Caucuses, moving towards Moscow/St Petersburg.

Finally, we would see derailments of the repair trains.

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In Oct 2022 Russia had 10,000 freight cars out of service, with 200,000 more railway freight cars at risk of bearing wear out after a few of years of Western sanctions

4/
Every January the Russian government owned railway monopoly cycles a large fraction of the engines offline for periodic maintenance and it takes 2-to-3 months to recover full capacity.

Look what happened for the 2024 bottom red trend line.⬇️ (H/T @Prune602)

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The count down to Russian railway collapse from a lack of replacement Western railway cassette bearings in railway car trucks was straight forward math, unless you believe in "Russia Strong ™️" or "Escalation Management™️" ideological delusions.🙄

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If you believe in either delusion, then no amount of empirical evidence has any meaning.

The rejection of the empirical is the antecedent condition for either delusion.

If you accept empirical evidence, you cannot become invested in either

7/
..."Russia Strong™️" or "Escalation Management™️".

The empirical view is rooted in ground truths, like sun rotted tires, & the delusional is rooted in wishful thinking.

And these twin delusions mean the West is failing to plan for a Russian railway collapse.


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Western governments failing to plan for Russian transportation collapse & defeat, so as to manage the transition to a stable post-war world, will put post-Putin Russia on the slippery slope to the hell

9/
...of becoming a continent spanning Lebanese Civil War with loose bugs, loose nukes & novachuk gas equipped sprayer drones.

It may not be possible to avoid this Russian meltdown collapse, but failing to plan for the possibility, is planning to fail when it arrives.

10/
The economic repercussions of Russian energy & food suddenly just falling out the world economy from this pending "railway transportation collapse apocalypse" beggars the imagination.

Even @PeterZeihan pales at the thought.

11/
Western national security and economic policy makers ought to be putting together crisis teams to evaluate the implications for both the world economy and for obtaining an armistice.

Using access to railway cassette bearings as a leaver...

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...to obtain the two most important concessions -- Pre-2014 Ukrainian borders & getting back Ukraine's kidnapped populations -- that will make a lasting cessation of hostilities possible.

But they won't.

They believe in "Russia Strong™️" or "Escalation Management™️".

13/13 End

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jan 18
This is one of the 3 major strategic mistakes of the Zelenskyy Government.⬇️

Putin has shown better, more consistent, and more effective leadership in the strategic bombing of Ukrainian electrical infrastructure than Zelinskyy has in striking Russia's railways.

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Russia remains uniquely vulnerable to a focused drone strike campaign on it's electrical railway traction step down transformers.

Zelenskyy's leadership not only ignored hitting that unique Russian vulnerability since Feb. 2022.

See the figure below⬇️

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To give you an idea of the abject political-military failure of the Zelenskyy government in this regard one has to look at the industrial supply chain for those traction substations.

The Soviet Union had two major transformer factories: Tolyatti and Zaporozhye.

3/
Read 8 tweets
Jan 16
This is a useful survey as far as it goes...but it is missing the key factor in the Iranian Revolution.

That is, _Food_Insecurity_.

Food insecurity is as much a cause of the Iranian Revolution as Regime hatred.

Iranian Revolution Food Insecurity🧵
1/
The predominant effect of a 1.4 million rial to the dollar hyperinflation combined with Regime Security Force public lockdown is the Iranian lower class has been set up to starve.

The lower class cannot go to work to get money to buy food.


2/
Nor can Iran's lower class budget the money it has to plan what food it can buy week to week because of inflation.

Iran's hyperinflation has gone on long enough that the Iranian lower class has traded everything it can barter, already, for food.



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Read 5 tweets
Jan 14
We really need to talk about the huge opportunity that Mullah financial corruption has given the Trump Administration to crash Iran's financial system with E-bombs, AKA non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse.

Wiping the financial records of failing Mullah banks in a revolution...

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...makes them very difficult to restore.

And surfacing those back up records makes them vulnerable to follow up E-bomb strikes.

Plus, how are the IRGC & Basij going to get paid?

2/
No one in their right mind thinks the IRGC & Basij will work for free, fighting a revolution without pay.

Mullah controlled bank electronics are needed to meet payroll.

The old USAF ALCM cruise missile was outfitted with the "CHAMP" E-Bomb for zorching enemy electronics.

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Read 10 tweets
Jan 12
If you haven't read the substack article linked below, do so immediately and consider this:

When you stack secure & uninterrupted digital text communications to Mullah Regime corruption and currency hyperinflation...

...the Mullah Regime is doomed. It's a matter of when, not if.

1/
What jumped out for me about @shanaka86 substack article was the implications of secure digital text communications for the Maoist model of Revolutionary warfare.

See the @grok summary of Mao's 4-level revolutionary model below. ⬇️

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Maoist Level 1 & 2 warfare has never had the secure digital text communications Starlink provides.

This means a whole heck of a lot and shoots decades of counter-insurgency doctrine about controlling/blocking guerilla communications in the head.

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Read 14 tweets
Jan 10
Okay folks, we have to say at this point what is driving the uprising in Iran isn't the strength of the protests.

It is the WEAKNESS OF THE IRANIAN STATE. Basij commander Shoushtari's killing is the neon sign of Mullah-ocracy weakness. It had to be an inside job, reasons.

This means we need to talk about Russia's LAST PLANE OUT OF TEHRAN. 🧵
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Just as US military evacuations of Saigon and Kabul required securing the embassy & airport for evacuation.

Perhaps as soon as 48 hours from now, the Russian VDV will have to secure the Tehran airport to evacuate not only Iranian Mullah gold, but lots of Russian intel & technical experts.
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The Fall of Kabul made clear you not only need marines for ground security.

You also needed a USAF operation/maintenance squadron (-) for loading, refueling and operating air traffic control as you can't count on the locals to run the airport as the security situation collapses.
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Read 9 tweets
Jan 10
This:

>>Casualties are high on both sides

...argues that we are looking at a Regime Security Forces corruption-based THUG SHORTAGE.

In 2022 the IRGC & Basij had fire superiority & numbers to control situations when lethal force was used.

Now they are taking significant casualties.

1/
Where are the IRGC heavy weapons?

Where are the IRGC technicals with heavy machine guns to mow down crowds of protestors?

We should be seeing thousands of protestors shot, given the mobs seen on Tehran streets.

We are hearing numbers like ~217 in six Tehran hospitals.

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Just look how dense that protestor crowd is.

Just imagine the horror that one 12.7mm or 14.5 mm heavy machine gun technical could do to this crowd, given a willing IRGC crew.

3/
Read 12 tweets

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