Trent Telenko Profile picture
Aug 11, 2024 20 tweets 8 min read Read on X
These complaints about RuAF casualties being utterly horrible and beyond anything this Russian medical worker has seen tracks with the latest column from James Dunnigan's Strategypage dot com

Patterns of Drone War Casualties🧵
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Dunnigan's report is not surprising. 

There is a whole lot going on accounting for the increased lethality of small AFU drones.

The Russians have a trifecta of institutional collapse that makes their troops lamost defenseless versus small drones. 

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strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/a…
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First, the RuAF have no thorax ballistic body armor for about 95% of their troops and certainly no class IV ceramic plates to spread out impact shock.

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Second, ~95% of Russians lack a modern Kevlar or better helmet. 

Of that 95%, maybe half are given Soviet steel pots with many having bolts through them reducing ballistic resistance. 

The rest seem to being given paintball sports plastic & nylon "armor."

@secretsqrl123 has posted many examples.

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Third, Russian medical logistics have utterly collapsed.  Ukrainian FPV drones have created a 10 km "death zone" for all motor transport and Russian motor transport for medical supplies weren't good to start with. 

The upshot is most Russians wounded by drones are dying from blood loss when they are not killed outright due to a lack of blood clotting bandages and Casevac.

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The problem going forward is less about grenade munition dropping drones than FPV drones having warheads that utterly outclass any Western body armor.

By my count there are at least four or five overlapping revolutions in military affairs that are...


6/
...downstream from the reality of FPV drones...maybe more. The following that may qualify as "revolutions" off the top of my head:

1. Kinetic effectiveness
2. Logistical effectiveness
3. Cost effectiveness
4. Lowered barriers to entry
5. The triumph of mass/cheap over the few/expensive.

7/
For the kinetic piece, thermobaric warheads for FPV drones in the anti-personnel role are superior to HE/fragmentation in both likelihood of inflicting a casualty and the severity of the casualties inflicted, allowing for equal mass of their warheads.

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The thermobaric warhead is not limited to line of sight from the point of detonation to the target because its "point of detonation" is the surface area of a sphere containing the unburned fuel, i.e., it can go around corners as the sphere expands.

9/
That means a thermobaric warhead detonating a short distance from an infantry crouching in a deep foxhole or under an AFV will send some of its fuel over the foxhole/under AFV's & down into it.

Plus the fuel sphere can go around corners in a trench.

10/
That increases the likelihood of inflicting casualties.

Thermobaric weapons also inflict burns and more collapsed lungs as well as fragmentation casualties.

11/
The fact is that FPV drones can and have repeatedly chased infantry into hardcover with thermobaric grenades that no amount of Class IV body armor can save you from.


12/
I've seen several video clips of a Russian infantry squad hiding in a burnt out BTR or a bunker to avoid an FPV drone strike.  

And the f—king FPV flies into their cover and detonates its thermobaric grenade.

13/
And we know it was a thermobaric FPV grenade in the case of the burnt out BTR because the only things that could actually burn were the clothes, kit and bodies of the now KIA Russian infantry squad.

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Western militaries are going to need HALO Master Chief, Star Wars Stormtrooper or Warhammer 40K Space Marine hard carapace blast & heat-resistant body armor suits to have even a chance of surviving a FPV's small thermobaric munitions'.

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And I guarantee you that every FPV or drone dropped grenade aimed at US infantry is going to have a thermobaric warhead of some kind because of how much the US military invests in the individual effectiveness of its infantrymen.


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This makes the Western military power's investment in Class IV body armor obsolescent overnight.  

Obsolete with an elephantine procurement system where "good enough right now" isn't enough because the system wants one single solution that is "NASA perfect."

Which makes things too costly and too few to make a difference, assuming it isn't obsolete before deployment.
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Drones require a huge ecosystem of solutions which means a large number of small vendors pursuing many different technological approaches that the US DoD procurement organizations are simply not staffed either in terms of numbers or the technical skills

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...to write cost effective requirements for low unit cost, mass production based, peer to peer attritional warfare.

Small FPV with thermobaric warheads could easily produce a true military revolution by itself.

Only it isn't by itself.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Jun 27
The F-35 Big/Expensive/Few Platform & Missile cult is in deep denial of this battlefield reality.

Air superiority below 2,000 feet/600 meters has been lost by crewed aircraft.

F-35's are irrelevant for the Mavic drone threat, save as a budget threat to the C-UAS procurement.
1/
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.

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Read 9 tweets
Jun 27
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!

1/
This means things as the Russians make these FPV's from Chinese commercial drone components in six figure and soon 7 figure (millions!) numbers.

This has huge implications for the impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

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When China invades Taiwan, the 1st move will be occupying the small islands around Formosa (left) and making them drone, GMLRS & HQ9 SAM bases.

50 km circles around all those small islands cover almost all the invasion beaches (map right) with PLA 50km fiber optic FPV's.

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Read 5 tweets
Jun 24
It isn't just a matter of pre-2023 sniper tactics being obsolete.

Every patrolling tactic taught by the US Army Infantry and Ranger schools are obsolete when you can "just send a drone. "

1/3
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
Read 4 tweets
Jun 23
Please note that Iran _ISN'T_ shooting down IDF drones over Tehran⬇️

There are technological reasons for that.

1/2
The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.

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P.S.

This is the wiki on Gorgon Stare technology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_St…Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 22
The following photo captures from WW2 bomb damage analysis documents are to calibrate people's eyes as to what to expect from the Fordow strike.

The MOP crater is going to be something called a "Camouflet" because the MOP will dig so deep before exploding.

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The problem with this US strike is the rock density in the Fordow area may be too much for the GBU-57/B MOP (See Grok below)

Unless there is really good intelligence showing a weakness in Fordow or...

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grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…
...this MOP strike had several bombs with the same aim point and a timer setting for simultaneous detonation. Good results will be difficult.

WW2 testing showed hard crystallized limestone was a pain for semi-armor piercing bombs dropped from 16,000 feet to penetrate.

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Read 7 tweets
Jun 22
Well, it wasn't a TACO moment.

This US strike on the Iranian nuclear program was paddy cake.

The Iranian smart move here is screaming a lot, doing little and waiting for a Democratic US President to build nukes.

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The dumbest of dumb moves by the Iranians would be laying sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

That was what set off Operation Praying Mantis in the late 1980's which sank 1/2 of Iran's navy in a day.

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If the Iranians choose doing something dumb...

...US has positioned aerial assets in the Mid-East that are sufficient for a modestly large aerial bombardment effort for ~100+ tactical fighters⬇️

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Read 4 tweets

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