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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
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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Mar 29 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
War is a question of interests, not legality. Iran with, it's support of the October 7th attack, kicked off an existential war with Israel for the latter to prevent Iran from getting the A-bomb.

Israel won't survive as a nation after three Hiroshima class nukes...

Iran War🧵
1/ - riding ballistic warheads in a saturation missile attack - slam into its major cities.

The Trump Administration agreed with Israel on Iranian nukes both in the 12-day war and with the current war.

2/
Mar 27 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
How the mighty RAND has fallen.

Anyone claiming Iran will survive long term without explaining how Iran recovers from currency hyperinflation IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR marks themselves as incompetent yo-yo's.

1/3
bylinesupplement.com/p/why-the-iran… Hand waving, "They will use ForEx from oil and barter instead of the rial" is ignoring what happened during January 2026.

I dare anyone to do a word search at that link for the text strings "hyperinflation," "Rial" or "foreign exchange."

None are present.

2/
Mar 26 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
The Mullah Regime of Iran is in very deep trouble. Any critical thinker can see that.

What I find remarkable is how many people who should know better are so blinded by their hostility to Netanyahu and Trump that they ignore the military context and the domestic context inside Iran.

1/Image The outcome of this war was decided before it began. The January 2026 uprisings occurred because the Iranian currency had collapsed and the economy was collapsing.

This was due to a massive increase in American economic warfare starting right at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Inflation was over 100% a year in January 2026.
2/
Mar 21 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Nothing says hyperinflation like a ten million currency unit banknote.

The US and Western nations need to be three weeks into planning for relief and stability operations to prevent mass starvation in Iran after the Mullah Regime goes down.

After the Mullah's🧵
1/ The horrid impending humanitarian disaster reality for Iran is the current regime is a dead man walking because of hyperinflation.

Iran lacks the administrative ability to replace the current hyperinflated currency in the traditional manner...

2/
Mar 17 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The US-Israeli air campaign against Iran is following Warden's "Five Rings" system strategy.

Mullahs & IRGC leaders are inthe dead center of the 5-rings.

The Basij are usually considered "fielded forces" by analysts who don't understand the role of Regime Security Forces in a totalitarian regime.

1/Image Regime Security Forces live in the "System Essentials" ring of a totalitarian government as they control the communications and information in a totalitarian society as a part of their anti-coup mission.

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Mar 17 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
People really don't understand how shutting down the internet has flatlined the Iranian economy.

There are no credit card transactions
No electronic bank transfers
No ATM transactions

1/ All the usual electronic traffic between residential & supermarket banks branches to main branches has to be done by paper, if it is done at all.

You cannot do "Just-in-time" inventory management without the internet.

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