I did indeed notice the ground kit being quite second line, even by Russian standards.

The BMP-1’s I have seen in multiple videos of Russian troops advancing are 70’s vintage, when significant quantities newer BMP-2’s and BMP-3’s are in Russian Army service. T-72’s instead of T-80’s or T-90’s also speaks to the fact that the operations currently underway might not have been planned. The Russians might be using their best aircraft and crews but the ground troops do not look like the varsity team, not by a long shot. In my opinion if the Russians were planning for this eventuality they definitely would have brought in more modern front line kit than what has been apparent to date.

Well the simple fact is Russia is huge, and you surely know this, and the sheer amount of various units in the Russian army means they are rather spread out. The T-72B uses a Kontakt 5 ERA which is quite advanced, and the BM model is rumored to have one that is twice as effective.

I am wondering how much difference the 2000 experienced troops returning from Iraq will make. (And how they got there if the Russians are controlling the air as some claim.) Wish we still had the land forces section. 🙁

Considering the US transported the 1000 (currently) soldiers to Georgia on US planes, why would Russia blow US planes out of the sky over Tbilisi?

They have air superiority over the North (closer to S.O) where their troops are.

Very opportune for the Abkhazians this whole Ossetia thing taken at face value. Might be interesting to find out which warships the Russians have deployed to lay off Poti and precisely when they sortied!.

This has long been known.

Moskva, Smetlivy, 3 large landing vessels and support ships.

As you may have heard, they have sunk a Georgian missile boat when it got too close and ignored warning shots.

Russia advanced into Georgia beyond the disputed regions:

http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSLB237808

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7554507.stm

This isn’t news, why would they just leave Georgian military facilities intact?

Just as why would you have expected NATO to leave certain stuff standing in Kosovo?

Same situation.

Well..they should start to thinking on small cheap cruiser missiles, that was the key of the success on all the western main campaigns, on the case of russian conlicts an missile half or 1/3 the size of the normal cruiser subsonic type would suit very good

But then we should understand that the russian campaign was a fast local response, something quite different from other conflicts (in which in betwen the “diplomatic” babbling was a military movilization and study)

And then , most probably , most of their targets were movable on a difficult geography, so you should need planes..

What it seems is that su-25’s were heavely used , instead of a heavy artillery aplication

The Su-24M aircraft are capable of using the Kh-59M, they just aren’t using it, although it’s impossible for us to know.

Edit: Although thinking about it, the terrain in Georgia is pretty densely covered with trees, and the Georgians aren’t just parading around on the roads I don’t think. Most of the stuff, except bases of course, like artillery/SAMs/etc are probably camouflaged, so what good would a guided missile / bomb be, unless you know the exact location of the enemy?

yes i see your point from Iraq and just about any other conflict that had CAS invovment but the numbers involved here, the terrain and the density of the combat zone are vastly different, its never an easy task but this number of losses already does not bode to well for the Russian airforce does it if we are to be honest with ourselves. Will they be forced to go up to medium alititude precision only strikes or instead choose to rely on artillary?

The density I would argue is actually greater in Georgia, just look at the size of the country. It’s quite clear where the Russians are coming from, in Iraq, the USAF did have significantly more freedom to dictate attacks, at least from first glance. Do not forget, Russia did not saturate Georgia with cruise missiles – they went straight in.

Also, consider that only 18 Russian soldiers have been confirmed KIA, with 15 on the first night that the Georgians decided to essentially sneak attack – bombard their barracks. No Russian tanks are reported destroyed yet. Hard to tell though, I’m no tank expert visually, but both sides are using the T-72 “B” upgraded variant, the Russians perhaps with the “BM” further upgraded version.

http://lenta.ru/news/2008/08/11/planes/

Nogovitsyn has confirmed the loss of 3 Su-25s and one Tu-22(M) over the entire conflict.

I’m not sure they nuetralised anything yet to be honest, a backfire and frogfoot were lost, how much georgian Air defense gear is destroyed we just do not know, for all you or i know the georgian air defence systems might be ninty percent operational and are waiting in hiding/ relocating and getting ready to hit another few Russian jets. Perhaps tonight they will shootdown a few more Russian jets from positions previously unknown to the Russians, this conflict could drag on for months and and take many many more aircraft down with it.

As to the cost reason thats a bit of a cheap excuse isnt it, excuse the pun, any and every measure should be put into minimizing collateral and civilian damage from strikes for obvious humanitarian reasons yet sticks of unguided bombs and volleys of dumb rockets are the complete wrong way of going about it plus you have the obvious fact that a stick of say four dumb bombs is nowhere near as effective as one single LGB on most targets as we saw from the apartment block bombing and pipeline attack and many others that bombs are falling short/missing therefore a great deal of potentially usefull ordinance is simply wasted.

As someone mentioned, all this precision-guided munition non-sense is really over-rated in many cases – just looking at US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Backfire that was lost was possibly an ELINT version, which is designed to gather air defense network information. Its quite likely the majority of Georgian AD has been destroyed, as they have been targetting military facilities for over 48 hours now.