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Trent Telenko Profile picture
@TrentTelenko
Nov 18, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Russia seems headed towards a February 1917 moment.

1. A kilogram of potatoes in Nov 2024 is 73% more expensive than in Jan 2024.
2. Interest rates reached 21% in Oct 2024
3. Mortgage rates have risen to 28%

1/
 express.co.uk/news/world/197…
The Russian railway system is now falling apart.

It's not one thing, it is everything.

The Western ball bearing were the excuse for the Russian railway system to fire its entire maintenance department in 2013.

2/
 moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/15/rzh…Image
~40% of Russian railway rolling stock is Soviet era vintage.

Russia went to 100% utilization of the Trans-Siberian railway in the late summer of 2021 and has stayed there ever since.

Those rail cars were not well maintained to start with, less Western bearings.

3/
Finnish firms were also hired out to do some of the Russian engine maintenance before Feb 2022.

All of the above ended in April 2022.

This isn't the first time I've mentioned this subject.

4/
Modern railway roller bearings last 2 million kilometers with good rails and reliable preventive maintenance cycles.

That is 108 round trips from Moscow to Vladivostok and back in about 63 months on an 80% usage rate.

5/
The war has lasted 2 years ~9 months with 100% usage since 3rd qtr 2021

Things have gotten so clogged on the east-west pats of the Russian railway system that Russian companies are _Trucking_ railway rolling stock just to have the ability to move
6/
...product by train on other parts of the system.

Half of Russian engines and rolling stock may have burned out their Western bearings by now.

The bill for delayed/deferred maintenance has come due.

Plus, the Chinese rail bearing have far less


7/
...life & require lubrication that Western bearings do not.

The Moscow Times article makes clear that lubricated Chinese bearings are not a real option for Russia as there is also a huge labor shortage for locomotive crews as well as for rolling stock.

Clip H/T @Prune602
8/ Image
The Russian rail system collapse sequence is as follows:

1st trains on remote Russian rail lines derail.

2nd more Russian trains on lines closer to Moscow derail.

3rd the Russian repair trains derail on the way to open derailments.

9/
4th we see triage as the Russian rail system starts collapsing on a LARGE SCALE.

5th, Russian rail transport apocalypse

The Moscow Times article points to Russia closing in on #4.

Clip H/T @Prune602
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More from @TrentTelenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jul 18
This:

"Russian aircraft manufacturers have failed to create analogues of foreign bearings and electronic components for aircraft, said Anatoly Gaydansky, CEO of Aerocomposite."

Also applies to railway cassette bearings for Russian wagons and locomotives.

Russian Railway🧵
1/ Image
Low friction roller bearings are a major technological strength of the West. 

They are the difference between Rolls Royce jet engines lasting thousands of hours and Russian or Chinese jet engines lasting half as long.

Rail roller bearings are different in their application

2/
...but the computer control software for SKF & Amsted co-production machine tooling that Russia used is proprietary. That software left Russia in April/May 2022.

Russian rail system has been doing the whole 'just in time' inventory game

3/
Read 13 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jul 16
The following is a serialized post from Strategypage -dot- com on the disastrously bad US Navy leadership decisions on fleet maintenance & where they have left US National Security.

"Surface Forces: USN Maintenance Mess

1/
July 11, 2025: The U.S. Navy is no longer able to maintain or repair its ships. In an earlier economy move, all the navy ship repair and maintenance facilities were sold off. The worst aspect of this was the loss of skilled shipyard workers. ...

2/
... The older ones were retiring and the navy did little to recruit and train replacements. Now, as the United States strives to expand its navy and repair and upgrade current ships, it finds that the resources are lacking. There are no easy solutions.

3/
Read 14 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jul 16
Well now, the reality of Russian casualty ratios from drones and 💩casualty evacuation in the Russo-Ukrainian War begins to emerge.

'Some people' 🙄 have been talking about this for literally years and how it has gotten worse over time.

1/
This is what I said in April 2022 when the "professional" Russian Army was around and FPV drones weren't.

2/
This is what I was posting in December 2023.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jul 10
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.

US military versus Drones🧵
1/
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/ Image
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.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jul 2
Injection molding requires an industrial scale, and above all, _reliable_, supply chain to be more efficient that 3D printing.

This is in a lot of 3D/AM industrial guru papers on the transition from low thousands a year production to the tens of thousands scale.

1/
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
Read 4 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Jul 1
Ukrainian mass production of FPV interceptor drones has reduced the cost per shot from $7,200 to $5,800.

The US Coyte II drone interceptor runs to $100K a shot.

The cost difference was the Big/Expensive/Few platform & missile cult was in charge of developing the Coyote II.
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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/ Image
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.

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Read 4 tweets

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