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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
479 subscribers
Jul 2 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Injection molding requires an industrial scale, and above all, _reliable_, supply chain to be more efficient that 3D printing.

This is in a lot of 3D/AM industrial guru papers on the transition from low thousands a year production to the tens of thousands scale.

1/ Injection molding gets you a lot of one thing cheaply. Think lots of fiber optic guided FPV drones, which are immune to radio jamming.

3D/AM allows a lot of modifications to meet the changing requirements of war. Think rapidly evolving Ukrainian interceptor drone designs.

2/
Jul 1 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Ukrainian mass production of FPV interceptor drones has reduced the cost per shot from $7,200 to $5,800.

The US Coyte II drone interceptor runs to $100K a shot.

The cost difference was the Big/Expensive/Few platform & missile cult was in charge of developing the Coyote II.
1/2 Image
Image
Image The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.

2/ Image
Jun 27 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
The F-35 Big/Expensive/Few Platform & Missile cult is in deep denial of this battlefield reality.

Air superiority below 2,000 feet/600 meters has been lost by crewed aircraft.

F-35's are irrelevant for the Mavic drone threat, save as a budget threat to the C-UAS procurement.
1/ The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
2/
Jun 27 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.

Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!

1/ This means things as the Russians make these FPV's from Chinese commercial drone components in six figure and soon 7 figure (millions!) numbers.

This has huge implications for the impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

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Jun 24 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It isn't just a matter of pre-2023 sniper tactics being obsolete.

Every patrolling tactic taught by the US Army Infantry and Ranger schools are obsolete when you can "just send a drone. "

1/3 Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.

Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.

And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮

2/3
Jun 23 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Please note that Iran _ISN'T_ shooting down IDF drones over Tehran⬇️

There are technological reasons for that.

1/2 The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.

2/2 Image
Jun 22 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The following photo captures from WW2 bomb damage analysis documents are to calibrate people's eyes as to what to expect from the Fordow strike.

The MOP crater is going to be something called a "Camouflet" because the MOP will dig so deep before exploding.

1/6 Image The problem with this US strike is the rock density in the Fordow area may be too much for the GBU-57/B MOP (See Grok below)

Unless there is really good intelligence showing a weakness in Fordow or...

2/6
 grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…
Jun 22 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Well, it wasn't a TACO moment.

This US strike on the Iranian nuclear program was paddy cake.

The Iranian smart move here is screaming a lot, doing little and waiting for a Democratic US President to build nukes.

1/2 Image The dumbest of dumb moves by the Iranians would be laying sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

That was what set off Operation Praying Mantis in the late 1980's which sank 1/2 of Iran's navy in a day.

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Jun 19 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Ukrainian SF/intel teams are ripping up Russian rear areas, and possibly now RuAF strategic nuclear ICBM's, with armed small drones.⬇️

China will do the same to the USA with it's fighting age male "undocumented migrant" population, when it kicks off the invasion of Taiwan.

1/3 Small drones fitted with flux compression generator (FCG) non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) would be capable of zorching the electronics of a Cold War era ICBM physics packages, RV and midcourse bus inside a silo by landing on the missile hatch and going bang.

2/3 Image
Jun 18 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Iran has been at war with the USA since 1979.

Every time the USA has fought back, like Operation Praying Mantis or killing IRGC chief Qasem Soleimani, it has won.

The Iranians last killed American servicemen on January 28, 2024.

1/3 Image
Image They were
- Sgt. William Jerome Rivers,
- Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sander and
- Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett
of the 718th Eng. Co., 926th Eng. Bat.

2/3 Image
Jun 17 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A lot of Western military officers at all levels have been vociferously denying the systematic Russian use of Chemical weapons since the siege of Mariupol in 2022.

I expect this Western military delusion to continue.

1/3 This is because acknowledging it was happening would require

1. Pronouncing the Chemical weapons convention is as dead as the London Naval treaty, and

2/3
May 31 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
This is not new.⬇️

Enemies of the West have been using cellphone networks against Western militaries since the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

The Houthi are currently targeting ships in the Red Sea using the cell network they control to ping smart phones of ship crews.
1/ I did a thread on the exploitation of cell networks for drone targeting on December 2023.

2/
May 30 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I have been beating up on the Field Artillery crowd on X for literally years over the rapid firepower growth curve of drones compared to tube artillery.

Drones do cluster munitions far more accurately than tube artillery.

1/ Drones have more bang than a 155mm shell for a couple of years.

2/
May 23 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
We have seen an evolution from 7-inch to 10-inch and now to 15-inch propeller drone designs for FPV's since 2023 in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The question going forward is the choice of fiber optic guided or radio links.

Drone CRPA🧵
1/ The cost of putting serious radio link electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) on an FPV drone using a CRPA is way high.

Grok has an adequate estimate on what Chinese CRPA's cost.

2/
 grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…Image
May 22 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
Guns rule in the age of drones, but the "muffin top" Burke class DDG's are so top heavy with the SLQ-32(V)7 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) installation that the idea of adding 76mm or 57mm autocannons is insane from the metacentric height POV.

1/ Image
Image
Image What to do?

You can proliferate light precision guided weapon mounts. Which can be the 21st century version of the 20mm oerlikon.

A Burke needs multiple Hydra and APKWS 70mm semi-active laser guided rocket mounts on the centerline and both broadsides.

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May 21 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
I've been posting about the inertia of Russian civil infrastructure industrial disinvestment for some time regarding Russian railways and it's foreign bearings.

The key tell going forward is triage.

This western part problem also applies to Russian Coal fired power plants
1/ Image ...and we are seeing triage there now that will apply to Russian railways later.

Non-Russian core populations areas of Russia have been cut off from modernization and restoration of thermal power plants due to a lack of Western parts.

2/Image
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May 21 • 23 tweets • 7 min read
While this @Tatarigami_UA 🧵concentrates on the modernization of pieces of the Russian military-industrial base as a cautionary tale.

It leaves a throw away line about economic collapse that leaves out the reality of Russian industrial/infrastructure disinvestment which will
1/ ...continue for years even if the fighting stops tomorrow.

The rundown of Russian stocks of western railway bearing will continue for years because the specialty steel supply chain feeding western bearing manufacturers has shut down unused capacity after 3-years of war.

2/ Image
May 19 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
We need to place this highly innovative Chinese artillery shell to drone precision guidance kit in its military-technical perspective.

China has taken the late 1960's US idea of a laser bomb now kit and the late 1980's Australian Kerkanya glide wing and tail kit and
put...
1/ Image
Image
Image ...them on 152/155mm artillery shells as a drone munitions.

Boeing took the Australian Kerkanya DSTO GTV technology demonstrator and later made the JDAM-ER.

China took the Paveway & JDAM-ER kit ideas and mashed them together for a much cheaper
2/ Image
May 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Brian Iselin on medium -dot- com has a very nice final article in a series of three on how the loss of oil income is killing Russian shell production.

This is a figure from that article:

1/3 Image This opening paragraph is killer:

"Russia’s military machine doesn’t run on patriotism. It runs on petrodollars. Look at this chart and understand what you’re seeing: the death spiral of an empire, measured in dollars per barrel.

2/3
May 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This @GrandpaRoy2 translation 🧵by a Russian blogger transmits his lament that RuAF flag ranks and big contractors keep seeing FPV drones as a temporary fad awaiting a technological magic bullet that will restore mobility to the battlefield.
1/ Yet the real issue is the civilian electronic of FPV drones are so cheap and effective that salvaged RPG grenades turn them into swarms of weapons as deadly as ATGM's, but far more maneuverable.

Swarms of FPV's are 21st century machine guns for 20th century tanks & SP guns.
2/
May 17 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
The following text 🧵 is from Strategypage -=dot- com:

"Procurement: Economic Industrial Decline For Russia
May 8, 2025: The Ukraine war disrupted Russian manufacturing activity as production shifted to military needs. The large number of Russian men mobilized for the war...
1/ ...caused labor shortages. Then there were over a million Russian men lost, killed, disabled, deserted or fled the country to avoid military service.

The labor shortage is made worse by the lack of high school and university graduates with technical training.

2/