Russia captures fifth of Georgian tanks

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2008/08/16/take/

The main points:

– Russian forces have seized 20% of Georgian Tanks. 65 tanks in total have been taken away. But around 20 of them were damaged or defective and were later destroyed. So, out of about 230 – 240 Tanks that Georgia had, 44 are in Russia’s inventory.

– The equipment was seized/removed from various Georgian bases including Gori and Senaki.

– Equipment captured includes:

65 tanks (20 of them were later destroyed)
15 BMP-2 armoured vehicles
5 Osa (SA-8) Surface to Air antiaircraft systems
D-30 howitzers
DANA Czech made self-propelled howitzers
American armoured vehicles
764 M-16 American made rifles
28 M-40 American made machine guns
754 AK Russian made machine guns

Looks like the Russians captured more tanks that they lost.
The American made armoured vehicles must be a case of mistaken identification. They are probably reffering to Turkish made wheeled APCs that were indeed captured.

As the saying goes:
Thewinner takes it all
To the victor go the spoils

Edit: Here is a video of the captured equipment/war trophies.
http://news.ntv.ru/138258

“Watch war trophies” is the title.

The Russian airforce lost a total of 4 aircraft. Hard to make an analysis or judgement on how bad (or good) that is because:

– we don’t know how many total combat missions they flew.
– we don’t know how many SAMs were fired against them.

The only thing we can judge is the results they produced. Even that is not very well known. They definitly had many successes. The Russian victory on the ground is at least partly due to their air force’s straffing atatcks. There are many photos of destroyed Georgian equipment from air attacks.

However, very little is known about the RuAF’s air attacks on Georgian bases, command centers, radars, airfields etc. They may even have done SEAD missions…unfortunately very little info has been provided thus far.

3 Su-25s lost during low level/low speed straffing attacks is to be expected. No surprises there.

The lone Tu-22 Backfire lost (allegedly to a SA-11 BUK) is the puzzle. Was it poor planning or execution by the Russians? Was it due to clever use of the SAM by the Georgians? Did they just get lucky?

Surprisingly the Russians did not loose a single Mi-24. Is it due to new tactics and/or better ways of using them? Did they just get lucky?

Hopefully, we will get a clearer picture when more information becomes available.

I believe these ships were set on fire byu Russian troops who entered the city of Poti. The burning missile boat is the Tbilissi.

It is still not knwn which ship was sunk at sea the other day. Possibly, one of the ex-Greece COMBATANTE missile boats???

One of the Georgian UAVs shot down today.

Georgian Navy burning

Georgian Navy warships burning in the port city of Poti.

This is the missile boat “TBILISSI”

Some photos of the results of Russian Su-25 and Mi-24 straffing attacks are showing up.

Georgian engineering vehicle

Georgian BMP on fire on the road to Tbilissi

Abandonned Czech made DANA self propelled artillery near Gori

Destroyed Georgian BMP near Gori

Abandonned Georgian DANA near Kori

Abandonned Georgian artillery piece with its MTLB tractor.

BULLSEYE 🙂

Russian SS-21 destroys Georgian government owned Lada Niva.

One problem: The missile is worth a lot more than the car 😀

On a more serious note: It is being reported that the SS-21 missiles fired were used to deliver sub-munitions and that it is the rear part of the missile that destroyed the Georgian car. So, a secondary target was also destroyed.

In any case, it is more than interesting that Russia did / could not achieve full air superiority against Georgia. Air-land coordination and use of PGM + night attack capabilities also seemed highly poor.

Unlike previous US/NATO campains which started with air-defense suppression raids, the Russians seemed to be more interested in straffing the Georgian army. That is understandable as they had to evict the Georgian troops out of S. Ossetia ASAP ansd did not have the luxury of time as events were imposed on them.

Later on during the conflict they have attacked key radars (there is at least one video clip showing that). They also bombed airbases, naval ports etc. They may have also attacked SAM sites etc. Some of these attacks were done by night.

With time, we will get more info about the war and obtain a clearer picture.