Trent Telenko Profile picture
Divorced father of four great kids, Retired US DoD Civil Servant, Section 22 Special Interest Group list admin, Chicagoboyz-dot-net history blogger
479 subscribers
Feb 28 6 tweets 1 min read
I don't doubt that Ukraine cyber hacked in Russian digital terrain elevation maps that the Russians compiled for themselves. Up to date digital terrain elevation maps are a good thing to have.

Plus NASA also had a huge archive of digital terrain elevation data.

1/ But the art of planning munition trajectories to use them is a separate and uniquely military skills set.

Ukraine has had four years of combat experience doing the task of planning munition trajectories.

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Feb 28 10 tweets 3 min read
War with Iran has kicked off and both the Trump Adm. and Israel have gone for Iranian Regime change with oil export, leadership decapitation, air defense & Iranian missile site strikes.

Mullah Regime Change 🧵
1/
Reportedly:

"The U.S. strikes are focused on Iran’s missile program and missile launchers. The Israeli strikes are focused on eliminating senior Iranian officials and on the missile program"

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Feb 27 4 tweets 2 min read
I was calling this out in 2023⬇️

"Preliminary reports suggest the UAV was likely launched from an Iranian naval vessel — a move that would significantly extend its operational range and time over target."

1/3 The threat of Iranian ISO container, or sea vessel, launched drones was plain three years ago

I got publicly hooted at by US Navy leadership aligned accounts on X for pointing out this "politically incorrect" reality.

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Feb 17 6 tweets 2 min read
Drones are both a compliment and supplement all existing ground force combined arms weapons systems and do so at a lower cost.

For the last year to 18 months - and sources vary - three out of every four Ukrainian and Russian casualties are from drones.

Paradigm Shift 🧵

1/5 Artillery plus EVERY_OTHER_ weapons system on the Ukrainian battlefield does 1/4 of 2025-2026 drone casualties.

Such is the BLUF of the drone battlefield paradigm shift in terms of human blood.

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Feb 17 7 tweets 2 min read
The problem for an independent EU nuclear deterrence force is sheer numbers, the EU lack of them.

What the Putinists have proven is that Western deterrence assumptions about "acceptable losses" were naive mirrored thinking, attributing Western values to Russia.

1/ The assumption of credible "deterrent effect" has to be shifted into the loss band of annihilation of threat forces - anything less than that, as the Ukraine war proves, is an acceptable loss for the Putinists.

We are at over a million Russian casualties to date.

2/theguardian.com/world/2026/jan…
Feb 15 4 tweets 2 min read
It looks like my 4th Gen nukes posts here on X shook out data from US three letter agencies. Who belatedly realized that classifying physics was both self-defeating & stupid.

The bad news is the FYEO web site is now reporting a _NINTH_ 4th Gen. nuclear tech approach by China with metal nitrogen/nitrogen anion salt.

1/3Image Specifically, this new Chinese approach to 4th generation nukes that create fusion device without a HEU/PU fission trigger can be packaged as small as 100 to 200 grams and can fit into a group two size class drone.

This is worse than my worst-case expectations.

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Jan 24 8 tweets 2 min read
I'm sorry, but this statistic:

>>Violent crime is falling, with homicides down ~21%. The largest annual drop on record.

...has been heavily polluted by improvements in trauma care, particularly hemostatic (blood clotting) bandages.

US Trauma care & FBI statistics🧵

1/ Image The statistical comparison in the FBI data from pre-1961 is invalid as the underlying medical systems have so changed as to utterly pollute the "murders per 100,000" data.

Violent crime data pre-1961 and post 1961 are apples to oranges comparisons.

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Jan 24 8 tweets 2 min read
Chairman Xi suffers from the traditional dictator's trap of believing his own sh*t because he has made it too dangerous for his cronies and underlings to tell him the truth.

He has failed the "Dictator on the Wall Test."

1/ Thanks to that, Chairman Xi's Regime has pretty much no resilience in adversity because it's so kleptocratic and it's all about what the guy in charge can do for his next set of corrupt cronies today.

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Jan 22 4 tweets 3 min read
Greenland is badly needed by the USA to engage nuclear armed hypersonic glide vehicles and FOBS from China and Russia aimed at the continental USA.

So-called experts saying Greenland is "unnecessary" are "Cold War thinkers" focused on traditional ICBM threat geometries.
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They are not thinking in terms of the detection geometries required for lofted or depressed trajectory ICBM's, HGV, and/or FOBS.

For those threats, the further forward you can deploy radars and interceptors, the better for detection and intercept.

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Jan 20 6 tweets 2 min read
This map of 124 Russian railway electric traction stations and the 40K OWA drone fired in 2025 demonstrates the political-military leadership failure of the Zelinskyy government.

Like Stalin's failed winter 1941-1942 counter offensives against Nazi Army Group Center,

🚅🧵
1/ ...Ukraine is penny packing OWA drones everywhere to no great effect based on which military "Union" faction was last in the room with President Zelenskyy before a decision

Even Ukraine's vaunted oil offensive is a bare plurality of total drone strikes
2/
Jan 19 8 tweets 3 min read
Untrue⬇️

If the target of a US "rapid strike" was either the Kharg Island oil export facility or Iran's banking/financial system with a combination of explosives and non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse munitions, the Mullahs will fall.

COA🧵 Image This post is typical of analytical thinking regarding strikes on Iran.

Note the complete lack of either Kharg island or the Iranian financial system on the list.

Regime Security Force as a distinct target set that needs a payroll is missing.

2/
Jan 18 8 tweets 2 min read
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.

1/ 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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Jan 16 5 tweets 2 min read
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.


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Jan 14 10 tweets 4 min read
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?

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Jan 12 14 tweets 4 min read
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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Jan 10 9 tweets 4 min read
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. 🧵
1/Image 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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Jan 10 12 tweets 5 min read
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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Jan 8 7 tweets 4 min read
A lot of people have been spouting off that the failure of Air Defense in Venezuela means Chinese air defense is 💩.

Just...no. S-300's arrived in the Fall of 2025.

That isn't enough time to train competent operators, be they Cuban, Venezuelan, Russian or Chinese.
1/ Job training for a PATRIOT fire control enhanced operator requires 10 weeks of Basic Combat Training and 20 weeks of Advanced Individual Training with on-the-job instruction.

Russian S-300 are far worse than Patriot in terms of human interface & "plug and play" maintenance.
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Jan 6 4 tweets 2 min read
P.M. Frederiksen of Denmark has a selective memory.

I remember Greece and Turkey fighting over Cyprus not destroying NATO.

Like Cyprus, non-Danish NATO members w/o nukes simply won't go to war with the USA over Greenland...

...nor will nuclear armed NATO states.

1/3 This @vtchakarova suggestion would be the best possible outcome for Denmark. **

** This assumes Denmark's political elites have the wit to go there.



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Jan 5 11 tweets 5 min read
We need to talk about this report by General Davila of non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse or high-powered microwave weapons being used on Venezuelan air defenses.

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x.com/GeneralDavila/… x.com/TrentTelenko/s…Image Air Power Australia has a very good article titled:

The Electromagnetic Bomb
- a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction

...on these "E-Bombs" with some US bomb form factor figures (below).

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Jan 3 10 tweets 3 min read
Pres. Trump Buys Venezuela from Maduro's friends from under the noses of China, Iran, Russia and the MSM.

Cuba, Canada, and Congressional war powers most affected.

1/ See this for Canada's broken geo-political position.



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