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
May 29 5 tweets 2 min read
Oh My!

The electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of these jammer mountings has got to suck.

How many "nulls" this jammer throws (AKA where no jamming energy transmits) will be substantial.

1/ I did a thread on this in 2024 when the first turtle tank jammers appeared.

2/
May 29 5 tweets 3 min read
This is a development I have been expecting, once the AI truck hunting drones started hitting the main roads in occupied Ukraine.

Mining roads by air & rocket was late Cold War NATO doctrine after all.

1/ Deploying lots of anti-tank and anti-personnel land mines with Gator cluster munitions dispensers was one of the major themes of the 1980's Follow On Forces Attack (FOFA) doctrine.

The doctrine was highly effective, hence Ukraine using it in 2026.

2/
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May 29 7 tweets 3 min read
Regarding this:

>>The intensification of strikes against Russian 🇷🇺 logistics (150 vehicles, 30 trains, 400 warehouses) is a real game-changer in the war.

The 30 trains represent far more logistical tonnage than the trucks.

1/
Carrying capability 🧵 A Russian train with 30 box cars/wagons carries 1,800 to 2040 metric tons of cargo.

Per @grok Truck Equivalents for ~2,040 tons of cargo:

3-axle Kamaz tactical truck only (at ~13 t each): ~157 trucks (2,040 ÷ 13 ≈ 157). Range: 136–204 trucks depending on 10–15 t

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May 28 10 tweets 4 min read
I called out the Chinese invasion requirements for Taiwan in May 2023 complete with a prediction they would have to be building satellite detectable 1944 invasion of Normandy Mulberry style infrastructure.

Chinese JLOTS req'ts link⬇️
x.com/TrentTelenko/s…

1/ x.com/johnkonrad/sta… And this is the link to my prediction of what later became their "Corvis Mulberry" shore connectors.

The prototypes for which were under construction when I made my May 2023 prediction.

2/
May 26 10 tweets 4 min read
Ummm...no. @grok said 10K Truck Movements, not trucks.

A truck making two movements a day within 150 km of the Russian border for 30 days is 60 truck movements out of the 10K, or 0.6%.

@grok's estimate was based on mirror imaging Western Mechanized logistics.
Truck Intel🧵
1/ I did two further @grok analytical passes which reduced the truck movements, first to 3K to 8K truck movements:

"Revised estimate: Likely 3,000–8,000+ effective military/logistics truck movements per month on key southern routes (e.g., M-14 segments, Mariupol–Taganrog/T-0509, Berdiansk/Melitopol spurs), potentially higher in gross passages but far lower in productive throughput than Western equivalents due to systemic non-mechanized constraints."

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May 25 5 tweets 2 min read
This⬇️

>>In total, I have more than 100 mapped hits on russian logistical means.

...means a lot in terms of truck attrition.

100 killed out of a truck fleet of projected 2,500 on this route is 4% of the total.
1/ Ukrainian military intelligence estimated Kamaz made 15,000 trucks from Feb 2022 to early 2026.

Call that period 49 months, and that's a Truck production rate of 300 a month.

100 trucks killed in a couple of months is "normal wastage."


2/
May 23 5 tweets 2 min read
This is another reminder that Peer-to-Peer drone warfare is all about attrition loss curves.

Ukraine's drones has made the roads of occupied southern Ukraine into an "anti-access area denial" (A2AD) kill zones for Russian trucks.
1/ Image Ukraine has achieved "Drone air superiority" over those roads rivaling WW2's Summer 1944 Allied air superiority over German occupied Normandy.

As a result, the Russian truck fleet is taking unsustainable attrition, particularly of its fuel tanker fleet.
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May 22 19 tweets 8 min read
If true, it looks like Russian truck fuel logistics has completely fallen part on the Rostov-Dzhankoy highway.

This has a lot of strategic geo-political implications.

A2AD & Truck Logistics 🧵

1/ Given few/no trains, these are the Russian truck logistical facts of life:

1. At ~300 miles/480 km, tactical truck's only payload is fuel for a return trip**

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May 21 7 tweets 4 min read
Texas has seven unique advantages in terms of infrastructure, political culture, and resource geography that make it uniquely suited to be the next industrial heartland of the USA.

The seven industrial development advantages of Texas 🧵
1/ They are as follows:

1. About 94% of land in Texas is privately held. This vastly limits what the Federal, State and local governments can do to in terms of regulations and NIMBY games.

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May 20 5 tweets 2 min read
I am still trying to see the military relevance of the MV-75 Cheyenne II.

Especially when 3rd rate powers like Iran have Qaem-118” (Ghaem-118) / “Misagh-358” jet engine powered, loitering, surface to air munitions.

1/4 The MV-75 Cheyenne II can't outrun a jet powered munition.

These things. ⬇️

2/4

May 12 4 tweets 2 min read
This is one of the most logistically incompetent hot takes by any German journalist in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

95% getting through is a 5% loss rate per trip
95%(x) for 10 to 20 kills means x = 200 to 400 trucks on this route
10 trips means 40% total fleet loss - 80 to 160 trucks
1/Image You can follow the 5% loss curve in this 500 unit fleet at 10 exposures in the graphic below.

A 40% fleet loss in 10 days from a 5% drone loss rate is logistical collapse for the Russian Army in occupied Ukraine.

Only some trying to get AfD eyeballs would say different.

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May 10 7 tweets 3 min read
Regarding this:

"The DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, with a range of approximately 4,000 to 5,000 kilometers, was specifically designed and publicly nicknamed by Chinese military analysts as the "Guam Killer.""

I disagree with those analysts.
1/ The Chinese PD-2900 drone (2,500 km range, 12-hour endurance, 250 km/h speed, stealthy Su-57-like design) is far more a "Guam Killer" than the DF-26.

It is a matter of numbers.

2/
May 5 5 tweets 2 min read
The reduction in murder deaths -IS NOT- due to law enforcement, or reductions in underlying rates of violence.

It is due to the fact that medical care has improved such that the same gunshot wound inflicted in 2015 is 1/3 as lethal as 1960.

Murder rate🧵
1/ Homicide statistics since the early 1960s are not comparable to earlier periods because medical advances have turned many fatal injuries into survivable ones.

See the CDC report below⬇️


2/
Apr 29 6 tweets 3 min read
This passage:

"Lebanese security forces reportedly seized 1 truck last June carrying 5,000 explosive drones..."

...is the heart of why I say that the US Army & USMC ground troops will bleed heavily in their first real drone war.

Drone War🧵 Each of those 5,000 Hezbollah drones is individually far more lethal than a dumb 155mm shell, and a 5-ton truck can carry only 176 of them.

Each of those 5,000 drone can kill a truck carrying those 176 shells.

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Apr 29 14 tweets 6 min read
I'm tempted to say the difference between military flag ranks who are competent at 2026 peer to peer warfare, and those who are not, is the understanding and application of attritional loss curves to combat loss rates, electronic warfare and logistics.

Professional military education (PME)🧵
1/Image The set of curves I had an AI produce for me above have been used for air warfare many times starting at the end of WW2, in the USSBS after WW2 and by many classic RAND airpower studies from the 1950's to 1980's.

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Apr 27 4 tweets 1 min read
The effectiveness of drones is directly affected by the electronic warfare competence of the drone users.

The fact that the US Army defenestrated every EW practitioner in the 2000's and has compete "EW virgins" as flag rank leadership means it will fail with mass casualties in its first major drone war combat.
1/3 A US Army serious about drone warfare would:

- Rebuild the full EW enterprise with organic division-level EW battalions and real exercises.

- Embed EW jamming into all combat branches (not MI-only).

- Shift to gun/autocannon dominant combined-arms counter-drone doctrine.

2/3
Apr 26 10 tweets 3 min read
It is extremely unlikely that this shooter acted alone given the following:

1. Reports are the guns were cached disassembled in a black bag, in a room outside the secured Secret Service perimeter.

2. The room the guns were cached in didn't have television surveillance.

🧵
1/ 3. The shooter arrived at the hotel the day before the event.😯

4. TSA rules require firearms to be transported in checked baggage, unloaded, and locked in a hard-sided container, declared to the airline at check-in.

2/
Apr 14 4 tweets 2 min read
USN flag ranks & their staffers have been fighting the idea of distant economic blockade of China tooth an nail as a response to China invading Taiwan for 30 years.

They really don't want a recent precedent of a successful blockade...

1/3 ...to prevent their Carrier fleet Pickett's charge into the South China Sea.

Specifically distant blockade as a strategy against China makes having/regaining 100 Cold War era

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Apr 14 4 tweets 1 min read
The high death rate of Russian troops due to a lack of casualty evacuation was highly visible in March-September 2022.

I've documented this consistently, repeatedly and at great technical depth.

Russia Strong "slopaganda" has buried it over and over.

1/ I was calling out two dead for every three Russian wounded in Sept 2022 as the more realistic Russian casualty ratio in Ukraine because it was taking more than 24 hours to get to the equivalent of a battalion aid station.

2/3
Apr 1 6 tweets 2 min read
This fact:

"Oil revenue collapsed to roughly 5% of the national budget, down from 32% the prior year. Taxes increased over 60%. Food prices climbed at least 50%. ATMs across major cities are running out of cash."

Underlines a major point of mine. 🧵

1/ Since Clausewitz, the West recognized "war as an extension of politics."

The corollary of that is "politics is an extension of money."

Iran doesn't have any money, thanks to hyper-inflation and now an 84% reduction in oil revenue.

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Mar 31 4 tweets 2 min read
Not for US aircraft. ⬇⬇️

Hardened aircraft shelters are against the secular budget religion of US flying service flag ranks.

Not that other Western air forces are any better.

1/ The Chief of Air Staff RAAF 12 months ago gave a lecture trashing HAS as a bad idea and how "dispersal is better."

Dispersal didn't help USAF E-3G's in Saudi Arabia because they had nowhere to disperse too.

Places like Italy are politically off limits.
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