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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
476 subscribers
Dec 24 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
The defence-blog -dot- com website reported a very important observation on the production quality of current Russian Shahed production.

It's individual quality is declining, _Hard_.

1/
 Russian End Run Production 🧵 Image From the article:

“The Russians have adapted these drones to their needs, but due to a lack of components and efforts to reduce costs, their quality has declined,” Kulchytsky explained.

Earlier iterations of Shahed drones contained numerous foreign-made components,
2/
Dec 22 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Sadly, this F-18 shoot down isn't a surprise.

The US Navy, as an institution, had a really horrid record of "friendly fire" in WW2, to include shooting down a FM-2 Wildcat fighter coming of the catapult of the CVE USS Tulagi in Kerama Retto on 6 Apr 1945.

1/ I've done threads on X highlighting this historical US Navy friendly fire institutional dysfunction.

2/
Dec 21 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Congress being held accountable for stealth legislation & pork barrel spending _BEFORE THE VOTE IS CAST_ is my most unexpected and welcomed result of Artificial Intelligence large language models (LLM) in 2024.

AI vs Lobbyists🧵
1/ It would take eight speed reading lawyers with eidetic memories 16 to 24 man hours to parse a 1000 page piece of legislation.

Specialty lawyers charging hundred of dollars an hour working for K-Street lobbyists.

2/
Dec 17 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
I've been involved with three US Army FMTV reset programs.

So this newest report from Ukraine's Defense Express on the the repairability problems with Russian AFV's out of their reserves is so much fun to share with you all.

1/ Image Defense Express pulled an article from the No. 10 issue of the Russian magazine "Material and Technical Support" on how horrid the vehicles coming out of reserve are plus problems with battle damaged reserve vehicles.

2/
 en.defence-ua.com/analysis/repai…
Dec 16 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Ukraine’s claims to have produced 100 Peklo (Hell) cruise missiles over the past three months.

This works out to about 1.1 Peklo a day, but manufacturing production lines don't work like that.

Peklo Manufacturing 🧵

1/
 pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/… The infographic figure below is a typical commercial production line curve.

Ukraine's stated production and use of the Peklo (Hell) cruise missile marks it as being on the 'start of production to market entry' ramp up part of the curve below.

2/ Image
Dec 15 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is Russian exceptionalism in action again.

The Putin Regime took old riverine tankers - Volgoneft 212 and Volgoneft-239 - to sea:

1/
 unian.ua/world/richkovi… "According to Andriy Klymenko , head of the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies , both vessels are very old and have a "river" class, which implies certain limitations.

2/
Dec 15 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
This was a very interesting operation by Ukraine to destroy a 'partisan immobilized' fuel train with Switchblade 600's, to burn the fuel.

The burning fuel will require that the annealed rails under the cars to be replaced to prevent derailments.

RuAF rail vulnerability🧵
1/ This will require a Russian military railway service train to be deployed to this spot for possible future Ukrainian Switchblade 600 follow up strikes.

2/
Dec 8 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
I've been thinking on what is going on to reduce Russia VKS glide bomb attacks as shown

There are many possible reasons.

Fewer Russian glide bomb drops 🧵
1/ My first thought was to wonder if:

"Are we seeing Russian supply chain problems across its PGM production base due to foreign exchange shortages?"

Russia's Shaheed clones have new and inferior Chinese servo motors.⬇️
2/
Dec 7 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
In another round of very useful translation, @sambendett points out the Russians have learned that drones are how combat power is measured in the 21st century.

The Russians didn't share drone tech with the SAA at scale.

Ukraine did with the HTS starting in June 2024.
1/ So the Assad regime fell.

Had Russia sent it's 'troublesome' drone units to Syria, rather than in meat grinder infantry assaults. Things might have turned out differently.

Dmitry "Goodwin" Lysakovsky was a legendary Russian extremist who became a drone
2/
Dec 7 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The Russian use of FPV's to kill Ukrainian boat drones was well established six months ago.

1/ Ukraine gave the Russian navy some really big reasons to go there dating to that time.

Boat-Drones toting large heat seeking missiles to kill helicopters.

2/
Dec 7 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Mud season is over in Kursk.

Mobik frostbite & trench foot season is here, like has been blindingly obvious for the entire war.

Frostbite & Trench Foot 🧵

1/ The lack of Russian winter uniforms and waterproof winter boots in the "Professional" Russian Army was endemic in the winter of 2021-to-2022.

2/
Dec 5 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
While these bases in Syria are a top Russian logistical priority, per the 🧵below.

The issue is the Russian version of the West's expeditionary warfare model is failing in the age of drones.

1/ Ukraine's HUR has had a drone warfare presence in Syria since June 2024 per Business Insider.

HUR spent that time teaching Syrian opposition militia how to do AFU style drone warfare.

Short form - The Syrian opposition has organic drone airpower.

2/
Nov 30 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Pro-Russian/Pro-Syrian accounts on X seem to be a little behind on battlefield developments in Syria.

Assad SAA forces cannot be holding a defense line at Hama, if large columns of Syrian opposition forces have passed through Hama on the way to Homs.🙄

1/3 The reported mutiny of the 47th Brigade of the 11th SAA Division near Hama is playing a large role in this development.⬇️

Syrian opposition offensive is beginning to look a lot like the fall of the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975.

2/3
Nov 22 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
So, the Russians are using TMM-6 assault scissor bridges to cross gaps in partially destroyed bridges?

Nothing like a medium girder bridge?

This points not only to a major gap -ahem- in Russian bridging capability, but also one in the Russian state.

Logistics & the State🧵
1/ Image I've mentioned this gap in both Russian bridging capability and Western Military Intelligence assumptions about it back in June of 2023.

2/
Nov 22 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This line about AFU drone warheads:

>>It is especially well suited for attacking energy infrastructure.

Makes me wonder what is about to happen to the Russian power grid after Pres. Biden leaves office.🤔⬇️ Please recall DR. Celeste Wallander [ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS] extended rant about what the Biden Administration considered civilian versus military targets inside Russia for Ukrainian assault drones.

2/
Nov 21 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
This act of cost-ineffective public theater by Putin is his going away present to the Western escalation managers they so desperately need to justify their failed retread of appeasement policy jobs

The cost of an IRBM/ICBM is around 10-20 times the cost of an ALCM/GLCM/SLCM
1/ ...for about the same payload, with the several hundred meter CEP accuracy of a daylight of February 1945 B-17 raid.

The Putin regime put out propaganda yesterday about using the RS-26 Rubezh, a SS-20 SABER lookalike, to scare Western policy makers⬇️

2/
 Image
Nov 20 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Please note:

@elonmusk has stated two launches from now there will be an attempted 2nd stage catch at Boca Chica.

That is in the 1st quarter of 2025.

The SpaceX Starship catch will be the "HMS Dreadnought" moment of the Space age.
1/3 After that event, every non-reusable orbital class rocket launcher in the world designed and built before her will be obsolete the same way every battleship built and designed before the all big gun HMS Dreadnought was made so.

2/3 Image
Image
Nov 19 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
People haven't paid anywhere near enough attention to this development⬇️

Russian cruise missile production is now like their tank production.

Russia is living off of Cold War stockpiles that are thinner & thinner as time goes on, & harder to resuscitate.

Attrition🧵
1/ The spokesman of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Andriy Yusov has stated that Russia's military-industrial complex can produce 40-50 Kh-101 cruise missiles every month.

2/
 unian.ua/weapons/skilki…
Nov 18 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
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
Nov 16 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
They are a lot of accounts analyzing the Ukrainian War that are unable to relate lethality to accuracy to weapons effects.

The Rorschach test for this weakness is below⬇️

The idea that fragment density/velocity, overpressures & CEPs are highly non linear mean nothing to them
1/ The idea of a small warhead 6 inches from the vulnerable spot of a target has of no relevance to them.

Nor is the idea that the orientation of that small warhead makes all the difference for a nose mounted shaped charge used on a Lancet loitering munition, see X-ray below⬇️
2/ Image
Nov 11 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
The idea of Russia substituting artillery tubes with 122mm rockets fails on a couple of counts - accuracy and propellent mass.

These two things are related.

1/ The inaccuracy of the 122mm Grad rocket system is proverbial.

A full salvo of 40 rockets landing at 20 km range spreads over an area of up to 600 m x 600 m.

It is a wasteful weapon for tube artillery missions and is highly locatable when firing.

2/
 characterisationexplosiveweapons.org/studies/annex-…Image