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Trent Telenko Profile picture
Trent Telenko
@TrentTelenko
Married father of four great kids, Retired US DoD Civil Servant, Section 22 Special Interest Group list admin, Chicagoboyz-dot-net history blogger
477 subscribers
Oct 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I've made a point about the Russian killed to wounded ratios a lot.

This is off scale:

"The AFU 7th Rapid Reaction Corps of Ukraine's Air Assault Forces published some stats. In August, Russia suffered 928 KIA and 528 WIA, i.e. 1.76:1,

1/3 and in September, 1,202 KIA and 649 WIA, i.e. 1.85:1.

These numbers strongly exceed any previous campaigns dating back to the Crimean War, and do not include non-combat deaths due to disease or exposure."

2/3
Oct 2 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Gosh, remember all those 2023 US Navalist accounts that denied - DENIED, I tell you - that drones from containerships would ever, ever, be a threat and that I personally was delusional for saying so publicly.

Who looks delusional now 😱⬇️

1/ One in every five US Naval vessels are defenseless to Chinese drones, surprise launched from Chinese merchant & fishing vessels, because the
every CNO since 1989 didn't want USN logistical officers to get a captaincy and compete for flag ranks.

2/
Oct 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Phalanx was replaced by the SeaRAM, AKA RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, on almost all new US combatants for the last ~15 years.

The SeaRAM Wiki states:

"The U.S. Navy plans to purchase a total of about 1,600 RAMs and 115 launchers to equip 74 ships.

1/3 The missile is currently active aboard Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, America-class amphibious assault ships, San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships,
2/3
Oct 1 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
There are good reasons Russia is now looking to purchase gasoline from abroad to replace what they can no longer produce and deliver internally.

Russia is in the middle of a refinery damage & overuse failure cascade🧵

1/ Let us start with basics.

This was the pre-Russo-Ukrainian War Russian pipeline infrastructure Russian refineries were attached too.

2/
Oct 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"Western Experts" on X who claim drones are a "Ukraine War unique fad" are complete fools⬇️

"Among the sensitive targets of September 2025:
• 1,895 ‼️ enemy wings of the Orlan, Zala, SuperCam, Lancet types, Molniya kamikaze wing, Shahed, Gerbera.

1/3 • 455 enemy pilot launch points and 738 crew antenna units.
• 150 mobile EW systems and 9 self-propelled EW systems.
• 2,124 self-propelled vehicles (armor, logistics, rocket artillery, auto-moto vehicles, MLRS).

2/3
Sep 28 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The Russian Legioner armored vehicle is an interesting reinvention of the 1940's Red Army BTR-152 or US M3 Scout car.

It says a great deal about the defense industrial infrastructure limitations of the Russian Federation.

1/ Image The three 6x6 BTR-152 photos and drawings and one 4x4 M3 scout car photo will give you an idea of what is available to the 2025 Russian defense industrial base.

2/2 Image
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Sep 28 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is a lesson for the US Navy which will be soundly ignored. ⬇⬇️

The US has generation of counter insurgency or "COIN-centric" Flag officers who have zero experience and training in peer competitor warfare.

1/2 The US Flag rank's "COIN-centric" mindset is why their minds are too inflexible to deal with the rapid technological change represented by drones.

They are 1930's UK "Empire officers" who knew how to "wog bash" and got their heads handed to them by the Germans and Japanese.

2/2
Sep 23 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
The Ukrainian language version of this article has a great deal more on the design philosophy behind the FP-5 Flamingo.

A philosophy is utterly alien to the Big/Expensive/Few Western Flag Ranks & Defense contractors.

Production & Systems engineering🧵
1/ "According to Terekh, the design process for the Flamingo was the same as for other products: the rocket went through filters — can we mass-produce it? Will it be cost-effective? Will it be effective on the battlefield?

2/
Sep 23 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Ukraine just confirmed my analysis of their FP-5 engine supplies:

"Before the start of mass production, Fire Point bought a large stock of old aircraft engines with a residual life of up to 10 hours.

1/4 They can no longer be used on aircraft, but their operating time is sufficient for the necessary tests after repair and the real flight phase – 3.5 hours.

The purchased engines are being repaired and modified:

2/4
Sep 19 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
What most people miss about the Ukrainian oil campaign is that each Russian refinery was built to support certain local & international markets with certain types of crude oil.

This makes the entire Russian energy market "logistically brittle."

Russian Oil Market Logistics🧵
1/ Russia's oil refinery's locations and local/international markets were built by the Soviet Union.

They each were fed specific grades of crude oil, and the Soviet/Russian state railways fuel tank car fleets were scaled for just-in-time deliveries to & from those refineries.

2/
Aug 28 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Remember all the professionally incompetent yo-yo naval officers & hangers on claiming FPV drones were not a threat to naval warships in 2023 WHEN I TOLD THEM THEY WOULD BE?

Reality just kicked them one and all in the 'nads...

...HARD⬇️

1/2 I told these professionally incompetent US navalists accounts on X/Twitter in 2023 that both containerized drones and FPV drones were a deadly threat to every naval vessel on the water they were ignoring to their crew's peril.

2/
Aug 23 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
We need to have a talk about Russian military corruption and its effects on the Russo-Ukrainian War.

It's kind of like these sun-rotted missile truck tires that make my reputation on Twitter.

Corruption happens slowly, then all at once.

Corruption🧵
1/ Image The Russian Army issued a "live off the land" order in early March 2022 resulted in lots of Russian enlisted stealing outside the line of sight of Russian junior officers.

This hollowed out discipline the RuAF "Professional Volunteers" in early 2022.

2/
Aug 21 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
At a production rate of 100 FP-1 drones a day. Fire Point will make 13,200 FP-1 one way attack (OWA) drone by 1 Jan 2026.

By itself.

Every other Ukrainian OWA drone maker is in addition to that 13,200 number.

1/2 If the FP-1 really is 60% of Ukrainian OWA drone production. (Rather than just recent launches)

0.6 (x) = 13,200
x = 13,200/0.6
x = 22,000

Ukraine is on track to make 22,000 OWA drones in the last 132 days of 2025. 👀


2/
Aug 21 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
More information has come out on the FP-5 Flamingo which gives insights io both the systems and production engineering involved for low cost production.

I'm going to use the WW2 F6F Hellcat & M4 Sherman as examples of Ukrainian FP-5 design choices.

Engineering🧵
1/ The FP-5 GLCM production photos released today shows what looks like a combination of carbon fiber composite, molded thermoplastics, and sheet metal.

Cruciform tail controls are all moving.

Wings are attached before launch like a 1960s USAF MGM-1 Matador.
2/ Image
Aug 19 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I've gotten a lot of comments on this thread here and via DM. I'm going to share one from a Cold War gray beard on the engine that powers the FP-5.

"FP-5 is around 4 x Tomahawk in mass.

FP-5 Engine🧵 ...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.

2/
Aug 19 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden

This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.

1/ That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...


2/rand.org/pubs/commentar…
Aug 18 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The issue for Russia with the FP-5 is that its range makes Russian national air defense practically impossible.

Ukraine can reach facilities on the other side of the Urals and north to Murmansk with the FP-5.

Once Ukrainian drones overwhelm a border SAM battery sector.

1/ Image FP-5's sent through the drone peak saturation area can 'squirt through into a great empty' low at high subsonic speeds.

Only an AWACS with late production SU-30 with look down/shoot down PESA radars can deal with them.

H/T @DrnBmbr
2/ Image
Aug 12 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Pres Zelenskyy of Ukraine just made an interesting statement:

"Let me give an example from yesterday, roughly like this: the Russians suffer about a thousand losses per day — that’s 500 killed and 500 wounded.

1/ I’m not even counting the 10 prisoners and so on. More precisely, 968 losses for Russia: 531 killed, 428 wounded, and 9 captured.

We had 340 losses in one day: 18 killed, 243 wounded, and 79 missing in action," he said."

2/
Aug 12 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
Actually, the Soviet Union in the "Great Patriotic War" did suffer worse casualties and win.

It is that fact which powers the "Russian WW2 exceptionalism" myth that Putin used to zombify Russians over 20 years to make suicidal assaults over and over again.

1/ I said something like what Chuck just said about Russian casualties in July 2024.

Chuck now, like I did then, underestimates how powerful cultural conditioning is in making armies able to take horrific losses and continue.

2/
Aug 11 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The map below underlines a real innumeracy issue with lots of Western analysts of Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign.

BLUF: 40,000/52 weeks is ~769 Ukrainian OWA drones launched a week on average for the whole year.

Ukrainian OWA Drone🧵
1/ Historic war mobilization production curves are heavily back loaded.

That is, the production rates of B-17's and B-24's bombers in the 3rd quarter of 1943 versus the 3rd quarter of 1944 showed a much higher production rate in late 1944.

2/ Image
Image
Jul 31 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"Russian exceptionalism"⬇️

The Russians see themselves as immune to the consequences of their own actions.

The previous case studies in this were the Nazis and Imperial Japanese in WW2.

1/ Both polities had monumental hubris, the conviction that all was permitted, and that they were invincible.

The committed Nazis still believed they were winning in March-April 1945.

Japanese 'Yamato-damashii' beliefs took nukes to break.

2/ Image
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