The Soviet Red Army anticipated NATO would down a lot of railway bridges, plus a HET were also useful for moving lots of artillery ammo tonnage as well as vehicles.
Henry Schlottman' Nov 2022 substack lays out a 300 km road march sees 60% to 70% of
...Russian tanks & AFV's fall out for maintenance casualties.
The Russians like to use trains to 100km from the front and HET's are used from there to just outside artillery range of the front lines.
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A major issue for the RuAF is that units like the 7th Guards Air Assault Division is moving from Kherson all the way to Kursk _BY_TRUCK_.
It is about 900 km by road, moving outside GMLRS range, to the Northern border of occupied Luhansk.
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From there to Kursk Oblast to the Northern border of Luhansk OBlast is - my guess - ~700 km.
That is a 1,600 km road march for between 1,500 and 2,000 vehicles.
The tracked vehicles would all be going by HET because of that 60%-to-70% break down ever 300 km travel...
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...that they experience.
The problem for the RuAF is their wheeled AFV's (BTR/MRAP/BRDM), tactical trucks & HETS simply aren't up to a sustained 1,600 km road march mostly on ill-maintained occupied Ukrainian roads.
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7th Guards Air Assault Division contract RuAF soldiers with three months experience driving manual stick shift transmission tactical trucks, HETS and wheeled AFV's are not going to be driven well.
There will have to be a major maintenance evolution arriving and shaking out... 8/
...before they can be ready to attack.
Think a minimum of 7 days before the logistical tail can fully recover and is ready to support artillery heavy combat operations.
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The problem is Putin has not allowed that level of professional logistics since RuAF withdrew across the Dnipro from Western Kherson.
Only the 7th Guards HET carried AFV's that were operational when they were loaded will be capable of attacking upon arrival.
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Putin will order those 7th Guards AFV's to attack immediately without logistical support.
The dodgy state of RuAF preventive maintenance on AFV in combat means 20%-to-30% will fail to cover 100km from the HET drop off point.
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Putin will demand attacks from the 7th Guards with whatever is immediately available, AKA speed not mass, and RuAF generals will obey.
So penny packet groups of 7th Guards AFV's will trickle into AFU positions with no logistical and inadequate fire support.😈
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It's almost as if the AFU General Staff had planned the Kursk Operation to cause RuAF to use up all its fuel in occupied Ukraine, destroy fuel depots en route, run down RuAF entire truck fleet enmass, & pull ground units as far as possible from Kherson
Social media accounts talking about the continuing strength of Russian ground based air defense are persisting in their delusions since this is about their faith in ideology, not evidence and facts.
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This post is what anti-Ukrainian propaganda on X looks like.⬇️
So-called 'Ukrainian Orthodox Church' (UOC) referred to here is not Ukrainian.
It is a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Ukraine. Most priests of Muscovian Patriarchate in Ukraine are agents of the FSB.
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When the Istanbul-based Orthodox patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople signed the formal decree confirming canonically the ‘Tomas of Autocephalous’ of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2019 from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).
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He unleashed and separated Ukrainian religious identity and expression from that of the Russians.
There are sound, Russian military animal labor logistical reasons, for the crisis level freezing up of Russian railway cargo clearance @Prune602 outlines.⬇️
Russian Animal Labor Logistics in Crisis, railway edition🧵 1/
See this is the translated Russian headline & 1st Paragraph:
""Space infantry" sent to defend Kursk region
Due to a shortage of personnel, the motorized rifles have written off military personnel from the Aerospace Forces units, including nuclear strike warning stations and heavy bomber regiments." 2/ istories.media/news/2024/08/1…
This is an Ukrainian article covering the same subject in english:
"The publication, citing sources, notes that a motorized rifle regiment composed of personnel from the Russian Aerospace Forces was formed in May-June for border protection. The so-called "space brigade" arrived in the border areas a few weeks before the Ukrainian breakthrough, in mid-July.
The unit included soldiers from security companies, engineers, mechanics, and a few officers from the flight crews. They were transferred to infantry from airfields in Ukrainka in Altai Krai, Belaya in Irkutsk region, and Engels in Saratov region."
At the beginning of the AFU Kursk offensive there was a argument between @WarintheFuture and @sambendett over how transparent Ukrainian battlefields were given the strategic-operational surprise AFU achieved in Kursk Oblast.
History supports @WarintheFuture.
AFU Deception🧵 1/
The military art is called and "art" for a reason. The art is understanding human perceptions and exploiting them to achieve battlefield victories and win wars.
It is very clear that Ukraine faked not only Russian, but also Western intelligence and OSINT aggregators completely out of their collective jockstraps.
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This isn't to say @sambendett doesn't have some very good points about the behind Western state of the art sensor capabilities of the RuAF.
The VKS simply lacks ISR capabilities that the USAF & USN had 35 years ago.
It's time for a Truck logistic thread on the Russian E105 N-S road traced on the map below.
Given the RuAF rail traffic seizure into and out of Kursk Oblast.
This road is the logistical "schwerpunkt," or center of gravity, for the Kursk offensive.
Schwerpunkt Blindness🧵 1/
Once the AFU get on the E105, the Belgorod garrison and everything South of it is toast for good logistical reasons.
This is a Kesselschlacht - kettle battle - on an operational scale.
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For reasons I went into in an earlier thread, the partially mechanized AFU truck logistics is lifting twice what Russian trucks can because AFU is using all terrain forklifts and pallets to load trucks.