Weak readiness for a sudden war is the main problem of the Russian army, revealed by the conflict
During the fighting against the Georgian Armed Forces, the Russian army lost 74 people killed, 171 - wounded, 19 military personnel were missing. The loss of four combat aircraft was recognized: three Su-25 attack aircraft and one long-range supersonic missile bomber Tu-22. These numbers are not yet final, and they can change, alas, only towards an increase. There are no official data on other losses, but the military department is not particularly hidden that in the first two days of battles, several dozen units of armored vehicles were lost, primarily armored personnel carriers and BMPs. The entire technique of peacekeepers deployed in Tskhinvali was shot point -blank in the very first hours of the Georgian attack. For such a brief operation against an unequal army, losses are not so scanty ...
The operation against Georgia revealed a lot of shortcomings and flaws in the preparation of troops and their management. The main one is the weak readiness of the domestic armed forces for the sudden start of the war. As well as the slow deployment of forces for the response: 12-14 hours is a lot for modern battle in conditions when fighting goes literally a stone's throw from the deployment of the main forces. There were no attempts to support - at least from the air - the Russian peacekeeping battalion, which was under the enemy destroying fire.
The command, like June 22, 1941, was waiting for an order for a response and opening fire from political leadership. But even if such an order were received in a timely manner, assault aircraft could not help their colleagues besieged in Tskhinvali, because they were not prepared for actions for ground targets at night in mountainous terrain. There are still no shock helicopters capable of acting in the dark and mountains. In addition, the peacekeepers had neither aircraft workers, nor means of communication with aviators, nor the identified goals for which aviation could work. And here, the reproach of the military intelligence service is everywhere addressed: in the presence of a system of intelligence equipment, primarily space, a sudden attack is nonsense ... Perhaps the explanation is contained in the replica of the deputy chief of the general staff of Colonel Anatoly Nogovitsyn: “We used the systems and means of electronic warfare, but we were used by us Soviet production”. By the way, successfully knocking down the enemy drones, Russian troops of similar devices were not used either for intelligence or to guidance on the target of high -precision means - the army does not really have them.
It turns out that the army of the 21st century entered the battle, but the Soviet-a model of the 60-80s of the last century. Therefore, instead of a contactless war, classic combined arms fights turned out.
Aviation losses do not indicate a strong air defense system of Georgia - it simply does not exist, but about the low level of training of the flight composition. According to Lieutenant General Yuri Netkachev (a former Russian troops casting commander in Transcaucasia), “there cannot be a military pilot who, instead of 200 hours, is only 40 hours a year in the air, to be a real ace. And they are knocked down by fake. ” The death of the Tu-22 is completely perplexed by all former military leaders: why was it to use a strategic bomber over the battlefield, if there were enough assault and front-line aviation? And as it turned out, to this day, the search engine service remained at the level, at best, the Afghan campaign.
It is most surprising that the wound of the commander of the 58th Army of General Anatoly Khrulev: what the commander did in the battle formations of the troops did and where did his combat guards do? The Georgians were barely decapitated by Russian troops in South Ossetia, and in this case, the consequences inevitable in this case could be unpredictable.
