Over the course of his long career with the Department of Defense, Trent Telenko spent 10 years as an Army vehicle auditor.
This from westernjournal.com.
Based in Sealy, Texas, he received and inspected the steady stream of military vehicles damaged in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This experience has given Telenko an eye for details that others could easily miss as well as a unique perspective on Russia’s progress in Ukraine.
In early March, Telenko saw on social media a photograph of a Russian Pantsir-S1 missile system located near the Ukrainian city of Kherson. His eyes went immediately to the system’s tires.
Rather than using high-quality, more expensive tires that could support the tremendous weight of the Pantsir-S1, the Russian army had opted for cheaper, low-quality, Chinese-made tires. He also noticed they were in terrible shape because they had not been properly maintained.
In the clip below, Telenko explained to ABC anchors how the Russian military’s inattention to critical safety measures is bogging its forces down and undermining its progress in the war. He noted that he “could tell at a glance” what was wrong with the tires on Russian trucks: Neglected maintenance that would destroy the usefulness of the army’s vehicles.
Check out the whole interview. It’s worth watching.
“That is, just by operating vehicles, you lose some of them because they break,” he wrote. “This gets a lot worse in combat. Each mile traveled by a military truck in war is between 10 and 20 miles wear. This is simple. Truck drivers abuse trucks because they don’t want to die.”
My good friend at Sealy, Gilbert Duran, wrote an article about the 1st phase of the effort called:
Resetting the FMTV: the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command Reset Program refurbishes FMTV trucks returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
Telenko participated in three U.S. Army “Reset” programs from 2003 to 2008. The goal was to repair damaged FMTV trucks (family of medium tactical vehicles). And he was tasked with performing “induction inspections of IED blast damaged trucks.”
“This was in an Army that has professional NCO’s that lived, breathed and ate preventive maintenance as a religious catechism. And the US Army enforced rest periods for its truck drivers because it cared enough about having men & equipment future operations,” he explained.
The Russian Army doesn’t do any of these things, he wrote. And for the past 10 years, they were barely maintained. Now, these same trucks are being overloaded with artillery and ammunition and sent into the war zone.
None of that is true for the Russian Army.
Most of the time between 2012 and 2022 the Russian Army did not maintain their trucks.
The Russians don't have a professional NCO Corps so they ARE NOT DOING IT NOW.
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
Every truck is being sent out in whatever condition, overloaded with ammunition.
The engines are running white hot and no one has checked the oil or other fluid levels, let alone does an oil change, in these last three weeks.https://t.co/nLbvJWAJMn
11/
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
Here’s what can and has gone wrong for the Russians.
This Russian officer "Meet the Plan now" over everything else has real world consequences with tired drivers.
It's not just convoy chain reaction accidents.
Driver fall asleep at the wheel and do things like fall off bridges.
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
And running overloaded by artillery ammunition trucks through previously destroyed convoys like this are going to shred even good tires and catch road debris in CTIS and pneumatic brake hoses.
Plus driving through/around this takes more time.
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
And then there is the "conscript factor." Who do you think were towing the helicopters in this video? Russian conscripts, that's who.
What does that mean in a panicked evacuation?
They pulled those choppers as fast as they could get 15km of so
14/https://t.co/WDZaeaq0EJ— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
…out of artillery range. The choppers were trash at that point.
However, after that, those guys slowed the <bleep> down & took their time dragging those choppers to their drop off point so they had as much "safe time" as they could before the next artillery ammo run.
15/— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 20, 2022
Telenko concludes that the lack of professional maintenance and wear, unprofessional use by undertrained troops and soldier exhaustion has already and will continue to cause high levels of “operational attrition” in their truck fleets. The “details” that are being ignored will lead to massive issues.
He predicts in six to eight weeks, the entire Russian Army military truck fleet will be “deadlined.”
“Between the end of April and Mid-May 2022, the Ukrainian Army will be able to counter-attack EVERYWHERE. Because there will be NOWHERE more than 20 miles/30 km inside Ukraine where Russian troops won’t be out of food and low on ammunition.”
In February, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told lawmakers a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could take Kyiv in 72 hours.
Now, four weeks later—the Russian invasion began Feb. 24—the Russian military has managed to reduce some cities to rubble and resorted to indiscriminate bombing and brutal tactics, yet the Ukrainian people are still standing.
The formidable Russian Army which greatly outnumbers the Ukrainian military in men, artillery and equipment isn’t quite as mighty as the world had thought.
Although the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin had unlimited time to prepare for this invasion, the appearance is that Putin underestimated his opponent.
His military commanders might have failed to plan the logistics of a protracted war, without which, even the strongest army will falter.
It was Robert Burns, a Scottish poet, who lived much of the second half of the 18th century, who first said: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
But even that may be an overstatement for the Russians, who as it seems did not lay down the best of plans of men or mice. To be foiled by cheap tires and poorly maintained vehicles is un-American.
Final thought, two ominous questions: How much further will the Russians allow themselves to get bogged down before they go nuclear? And how will the Ukrainians respond with their nuclear stockpile?
Note: This article was originally published by The Western Journal, a rather reliable conservative news outlet, and the source, Trent Telenko, is a long-term U.S. Defense expert, however, ABC News compiled the information and built the story, which brings some question of validity into the mix—the ever-spreading reach of the tentacles of mass propaganda media must be avoided except in rare occasion.
Def-Con News readers, you please be the judge of the validity of the above reportage.
