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Trent Telenko Profile picture
Trent Telenko
@TrentTelenko
Divorced father of four great kids, Retired US DoD Civil Servant, Section 22 Special Interest Group list admin, Chicagoboyz-dot-net history blogger
Jun 3 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
Just...no. The 8th AF fudged its accuracy numbers.

It excluded "gross error" bombing runs beyond 3,000 feet from the target. Which were above 10% of all 1944 bombing runs.

Below, the inner circle is what a 1944 1,000 foot (304m) CEP in WW2 looked like when dropped from 400(+) four engine heavy bombers.
1/Image Using this document:

THE UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY
Bombing Accuracy, USAAF Heavy and Medium Bombers in the ETO
MILITARY ANALYSIS DIVISION
First Edition 3 November 1945
Second Edition January 1947

You find both mission failures & gross errors were "excluded data"
2/ Image
Jun 3 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
There are sound photographic reasons I'm talking about Russia's domestic fuel tanker supply distribution chain breaking down.

Dead tanker trucks can't move fuel.

Plus additional tanker trucks diverted & moving from 🇷🇺 to 🇺🇦 can't deliver fuel domestically either.

Fuel🧵
1/ For additional photographic proof of 🇷🇺 tanker truck supply distribution breaking down, see here in Belgorod:


2/
Jun 2 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
This manpower sweep problem is actually a lot worse for the Russians than Western military intelligence is capable of giving credit.

It takes a Russian labor gang about 3 hours to load 16 tons of wooden boxes w/o a convenient box car to truck line up. (below upper right)

🧵
1/ Image
Image
Image Because the Russian Army doesn't use pallets, forklifts, telehandlers nor D-rings anywhere in their supply chain to strap down pallet loads.

You need massive numbers of conscripts to load and unload from train cars to trucks & vice versa.

See⬇️
2/
Jun 2 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This:

>>This is essentially a complete tactical bomber cell in a box, sized for a small mobile drone team operating at brigade level or below. It is not a strategic deep-strike weapon, and it is not pretending to be one.

...is "Federalized airpower." Here are two key concepts for you --

1. Federalized Airpower - local ground unit as opposed to theater air commander asset

2. Kill Chains.

#1 has to do with every ground unit from platoon up owning a bit of airpower (a small UAV) outside central air command.
2/
Jun 2 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
I've spent the last few hours reposting my 2022 to date take down's of Alex Vershinin's "Truck beer math" (from the Nov. 2021 War on the Rocks article "Feeding the Bear") which I used to review this Tochnyi article⬇️

TLDR: Tochnyi screwed up & used Vershinin's disproven work.
1/ Image Specifically this bit stating Russian trucks did three trips a day because they spent one hour loading and one hour unloading trucks.

That is, like Alex Vershinin, they assumed mechanized logistics loading times with pallets & forklifts⬇️

2/ Image
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/
 Image
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

2/ Image
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."

2/Image
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.
2/ Image
Image
Image
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**

2/ Image
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.

2/ Image
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.

2/ Image
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.

2/ Image
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.

2/ Image
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