Trent Telenko Profile picture
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
Apr 22 5 tweets 1 min read
The Ukrainian "refresh rate" on it's drone EW systems has been about two weeks since late 2023

What the Russians said right here is that it took a month to set up this attack⬇️

Ukraine & QRCP🧵
1/3 In the late 1960's to 1973 Arab-Israeli War US EW contractors could meet a two week cycle time with "quick reaction capability program" to bypass normal procurement procedures and speed urgently needed electronic systems to the battlefield.

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Apr 20 4 tweets 2 min read
The mass production of China's "Corvus Mulberry" tank landing barges proceeds apace in a shipyard also building freighters for a Taiwanese shipping firm.

Taiwanese capitalists are literally paying the Chinese shipyard that is building the means CCP will use to invade Taiwan!
1/ The US Navy doesn't have the tankers, salvage ships, tugs, fire boats & destroyer tenders to attempt running China's drone & anti-ship missile gauntlet when the CCP invades Taiwan.

China collapsing from a 3-4 year US naval blockade will disgorge Taiwan from the CCP's grip.
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Apr 20 4 tweets 2 min read
The mass production of China's "Corvu Mulberry" tank landing barges proceeds apace in a shipyard also building freighters for a Taiwanese shipping firm.

Taiwanese capitalists are literally paying the Chinese shipyard that are building the means CCP will use to invade them.

1/ Will someone please explain to me why the US Navy should impale it's carrier battle groups on Chinese anti-ship hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles to rescue Taiwan from this foolishness?

Distant naval blockade will collapse China's economy for far fewer US lives.
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Apr 19 14 tweets 7 min read
It turns out that, in addition to "TAF-10" USMC SCR-270 radars, the USMC 90mm Heavy AA Battalion SCR-584 radars saw quite a few of the Japanese Balloon Radar Decoys at Okinawa in/near Hagushi Beach, Yonton & Kadena air fields.

WW2 Radar Decoy🧵
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The Marine AA troops didn't know what they were, but their descriptions match known aerodynamic templates for them.  

The balloon decoy tended to fall through different levels of wind direction & updrafts.  So the decoy often went in different directions than the ground wind.
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Apr 19 12 tweets 5 min read
There was a lot more electromagnetic deception in WW2 than is in US Military histories.

The silence on such matters is jarring.

This text report (left) is from USS Pennsylvania in June 1944 during the Mariannes campaign describing the decoys drawn by Section 22 (right).

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The one of the previous drawing is of a captured decoy from Roi island in March 1944. 

Roi was subject to several IJN air raids using this decoy, as USS New Mexico reported its effects 14 Feb 1944, later reported in a Section 22 Current Statement dated 3 April 1944.
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Apr 18 4 tweets 2 min read
There is an tragi-comic story behind this Russian foreign ministry claim.

The Russian use the term "direct participation" because of a lie by Chancellor Scholz a year ago when he claimed the computer system used to program the Taurus missiles...
1/ ...was a huge supercomputer in Germany that could not be replicated for Ukraine.

But German computer scientists found an article that described the 20 year old computer system used by Taurus.

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Apr 17 18 tweets 7 min read
The CO of the top scoring Buk [Nato designation SA-11 Gadfly] battery in the PSU did an interview ~2 years ago (early 2023).

He said they used their own Mavic drones to check that their camouflage and

Zoltan Dani & A2/AD doctrine🧵
1/ Image ...that their battery concealment was good enough to fool Russian drones.

So, the PSU does a drone quality assurance check on its camo during the "hide" phase of the hide-shoot-scoot cycle, AKA you have to survive in order to have the opportunity to shoot enough to become the highest scoring SAM battery.


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Apr 16 15 tweets 7 min read
In 2005, the Strategypage -dot- com web site had the following on the downing of an F-117 over Serbia.

These tactic are the heart of Ukrainian IADS doctrine.
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How to Take Down an F-117

November 21, 2005: The Serbian battery commander, whose missiles downed an American F-16, and, most impressively, an F-117, in 1999, has retired, as a colonel, and revealed many of the techniques he used to achieve all this. Colonel Dani Zoltan, in 1999, commanded the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade. He had search and control radars, as well as a TV tracking unit.

1/Image The battery had four quad launchers for the 21 foot long, 880 pound SA-3 missiles. The SA-3 entered service in 1961 and, while it had undergone some upgrades, was considered a minor threat to NATO aircraft. Zoltan was an example of how an imaginative and energetic leader can make a big difference. While Zoltan’s peers and superiors were pretty demoralized with the electronic countermeasures NATO (especially American) aircraft used to support their bombing missions, he believed he could still turn his ancient missiles into lethal weapons

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Apr 15 11 tweets 5 min read
Lots of US military officers like to believe Ukraine is identical in most ways to Saddam's Iraq & some are foolish enough to say so publicly.

It'd just not true in terms of Ukrainian IADS leadership, equipment, organization, training and doctrine.

1/ The #2 of PSU in Feb 2022 had been imbedded in Serbian air defense in 1999 during Operation Allied Force.

Where Col Zoltan Dani SA-3 Goa unit not only defeated USAF SEAD doctrine from 24 Mar to 10 June 1999 with good training & tactics.

Zoltan also bagged an F-117.

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Apr 14 6 tweets 3 min read
The problem for this USN-Taiwan "hellscape strategy" is it's obsolete given that the Chinese have access to Russia's newest generation of FPV interceptor drones to counter it, via using China's "5 times bigger than the rest of the world combined" drone industry & sea militia.

1/ Image US Flag ranks and their senior staffs' refuse to acknowledge the disintermediation of drones mil-tech.

All you need is a game controller/radio or a smartphone controller & a waiter tray stand.

Then you are launching a FPV drone with 70% the lethality of a Javelin ATGM
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Apr 13 18 tweets 7 min read
One of the 'benefits' of being a 33 year 3 month vet of the US military procurement enterprise is you are around when the bodies are buried, directly or through people you know.

Such was the case with US Army anti-drone procurement.

Portrait of US Army procurement failure🧵
1/ This is an email correspondent of mine talking about US Army anti-drone kit testing, prior to 2010, about a competition between two anti-drone contractors --

"The toughest part of detecting drones is figuring out if they're drones or birds.
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Apr 13 4 tweets 2 min read
This is a failure of US Army leadership of the same class as the withdrawal from Kabul.

And it's not two year failure. It is an eight year failure. The information was available.

If money is interest, US Army Flag ranks were not interested.

1/ ISIS was using small drones on the 82nd Airborne in Mosul Iraq in 2017.

Pablo Chovil wrote an article for War on the Rocks about his combat experience under ISIS small drone attacks.

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Apr 12 10 tweets 4 min read
Gosh, the level of prevarication regarding the Constellation frigate that is broadcast via NavSea and its supporters rivals the F-35.

For instance, let's examine the claim that Aegis BL 10 software, like on Burke class DDG, means FFG-62 has 2025 Aegis capability.

Just...No.
1/ Image A Flight III Burke has the SPY-6(V)1 radar with four active electronically steered antennas (AESA) with 37 RMA radiating elements per face, or 147 RMA elements covering 360 degrees of azimuth.

It has over 6-times the radiated power of the previous generation Aegis radar.

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Apr 10 5 tweets 2 min read
Since the Russian NWF has run out of stored Western hard currency.

This means that any hard currency Russia uses for its war effort, such as on Chinese high tech electronics for missiles, has to come from their sales of oil and natural gas.

This has deadly implications.
1/ Image These implications are issues about sharing with the gangster oligarchs forming Putin's regime, as Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary revolt underlined.

Russia's gangster oligarchs use violence to settle..."sharing disputes."

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Apr 9 6 tweets 3 min read
Drones are truly the "King of Battle" in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The reality of drones as bona fide persistent overhead PGMs has not sunken in yet for Senior Western military ground force leaders.

1/ In the skies over Afghanistan, air power migrated to persistent killbox interdiction model with B-1 and B-52 as orbiting platforms to get engagement cycle times under 5 minutes for laser & GPS guided bombs.

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Apr 9 11 tweets 3 min read
This harsh 'over leveraged reality' is reflected in the US defense industrial base consolidation in the contractor & gov't sectors.

The reality of the simultaneous transition from four level to two level maintenance was the systematic deskilling of US military maintainers...

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...and logisticians required to operate a global supply chain of military equipment.

This shift was a geographic and technological artifact of the Post-Cold War world where DHL/FedEx/UPS operated wide body cargo jets...

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Apr 9 4 tweets 1 min read
The Russian state budget (per @Prune602 Blue Sky posts) was built around crude oil prices at $70 a barrel.

Today's crude oil trading price is $55 a barrel.

Russia is getting 78.6% of the foreign exchange it budgeted for and the NWF is tapped out of Western foreign currency.

1/ Russian NWF as of April 2025:

"The liquid portion of the Russian National Welfare Fund holds:

👉 164.3876 Billion Yuan (+0.1017  billion)
👉 168.2714 tons of gold (-6.3553 tons)
👉 1.6716 Billion Rubles (+0.422 billion)

And that’s it."

(Totals for March via @Prune602 )

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Apr 8 6 tweets 2 min read
No⬇️

>>are we advancing fast enough?

US Army would have to shut down and merge part or all of the Field Artillery, Air Defense, Aviation, Military Intelligence and Signals branches into a new drone branch to organizationally adapt to drones.

1/ Any role a small drone can do, a drone will do, because it is cheaper with a large commercial industry supporting it.

Artillery and missiles are military only technology requiring a large and ongoing investment that only wars and mobilization for wars can fund.

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Apr 6 12 tweets 6 min read
Russian railway repair trains derailing was one of the major phase change events I've been looking for in the story of the collapse via the capital rundown of the Russian railways engines & rolling stock.

Russian Rail system collapse🧵
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H/T @Prune602
kommersant.ru/doc/7637861Image
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In particular, the downstream from the cut off of Western cassette rail bearings that last ~2 million km % (5.25 years of normal service) in April 2022 from Russian engines and rolling stock should be showing up in increased derailments.

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Apr 5 9 tweets 2 min read
Ukraine has fielded a new counter to Russian radio jamming proof fiber optic guided (FOG) drones.

After a Russian FOG FPV drone impacts, the Ukrainians are attaching a device to light up the fiber optic thread
1/ ...to provide a lighted 'bread crumb' trail to the Russian drone operators.

Ukrainian drones then back track the lit-up thread to kill the operators.

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Apr 1 12 tweets 4 min read
I cannot underline enough how drones have changed warfare from WW2 based on this 🧵 numbers:

75% of all RuAF Casualties are from drones
20% are from Artillery
4% are from small arms

RuAF WIA time to medical treatment past AFU drones: 14.5 hours (3 x normal CASEVAC)

Drone🧵
1/ Image In WW2 according to US Army Medical department statistics, the US Army ground forces in NW Europe and the Mediterranean took 65% of their casualties from Artillery.

In 2025, Russia is taking 75% from drones.

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