Russia’s Fighting Machine Showing Its Age
Related Article, Published Days Before War: Despite Boasts, Russia’s Weaponry Shows Its Age
Times Of London:
Pictures of triumphant Russian soldiers sitting on armoured personnel carriers as they were driven through towns in Georgia will be among the lasting images of the seven-day war. But the victory did not tell the whole story, analysts said yesterday.
The ageing vehicles were so lightly armed and so uncomfortable and hot to sit in that the Russian soldiers felt safer perched on top. “At least they could then react quickly if there was an attack,” Colonel Christopher Langton, an expert on Russian armed forces at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.
For an invading force from what used to be a military superpower, Russia’s 58th Army did not look like a modern fighting unit. Victory came as a result of overwhelming numerical superiority and a textbook Soviet-style strategy based on detailed planning that leaves little room for flexibility. It was shock and awe by force of numbers, rather than by precision-guided weapons.
The Russians have learnt lessons from American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and from their own experiences in the Balkans, but the Georgia operation was old-style fighting with Cold War-era equipment.
The Russians arrived in Georgia not only with inadequately protected troop carriers but also lacking in airborne surveillance platforms to pinpoint targets for their gunners and bombers. They lost four aircraft, shot down by Russian-built Georgian anti-aircraft weapons. One of the aircraft was a Tupolev supersonic bomber (Tu22) known by Nato as a Blinder.
Colonel Langton said the Georgians had highly mobile anti-aircraft systems and were able to move them around to attack the Russian jets. Without the range of sophisticated unmanned aerial platforms that the Americans always deploy to watch over the battlefield, the Russians were flying blind into the war zone.
General Anatoly Kornukov, the former head of the Russian Air Force, told the Moscow-based Independent Military Review that the failure to destroy Georgian anti-aircraft capabilities before the Tu22 arrived in the region meant the crew of the bomber were sent to their deaths.
Losing aircraft at the hands of such a tiny opponent was unfortunate. Losing their overall commander, who suffered shrapnel wounds as he travelled in an armoured convoy in South Ossetia, the breakaway Georgian region, looked like carelessness. General Anatoli Khrulyov, the head of the 58th Army, was in a convoy that appeared to lack air cover.
Perhaps, most embarrassingly, the Russians discovered that some of the Georgian equipment was more advanced than their own. Georgia’s T72 tanks and Su25 jet fighters were upgraded with night-vision equipment, something the Russians appeared to lack. “The Russian forces had to operate in an environment of technical inferiority,” Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Russian Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, told The Moscow Times.
The brief Georgia war, however, showed a Russian army that had improved significantly from the 1990s, when corruption, lack of leadership and poor funding hampered the once-mighty Red Army severely as it became bogged down in Chechnya, where largely conscript troops were deployed. In Georgia, the majority were professional soldiers, although the defence ministry in Moscow admitted there were some conscripts.
“The Russian army has shown that it is far more deployable than in the 90s, able to get frontline troops in and out in a short space of time,” Matthew Clements, from Jane’s Information Group, said.
Russia has said that one of it priorities is to rebuild its army, and much of its new-found oil wealth has gone into weapons. The defence budget went up 22 per cent last year and Moscow plans to spend £100 billion in the next ten years on new hardware.
Russia formally informed Nato yesterday that it was halting military co-operation with the alliance until further notice. Nato foreign ministers had already announced after an emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday that no meeting of the Nato/Russia Council could be held until all Russian troops were withdrawn from Georgia.
Failings
— Ageing armoured personnel carriers lacked proper bolt-on armour to protect against anti-tank weapons
— No airborne unmanned surveillance platforms to spot Georgian anti-air defence systems
— No precision-guided missiles/bombs
— No night-vision or satellite-linked navigation equipment
— No protection for Tu22 bomber destroyed during reconnaissance
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Guess the bears Hibernation is over
August 21st, 2008 at 10:38 pmBut hey … they got all those new uniforms n`nat
https://pat-dollard.com/2008/04/dressed-for-excess/
Besides … they keep that new shiny shit for parades … Not too much of it so they don’t want scratches and dents
https://pat-dollard.com/2008/05/russias-grandstanding-red-lipstick-on-an-old-sow/
August 21st, 2008 at 10:55 pmThe Times of London are surely trying the help the Russians improve their abilities to attack young democracies. Idiots!
August 21st, 2008 at 10:58 pmSo far all of the equipment that I’ve seen is 70’s era stuff. So they are keeping, as Drill stated, the “Shiny Shit” out of the action for now, at least for land based stuff. There naval force is more modern and it will be very interesting to see what happens when our ships arrive on seen.
Our first battle with them may just happen on the water instead of on land.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:34 pmYou look at their tanks, and you see a shitload of ERA tiles on the frontal arc. The chobham armor we have is far better. They were able to subjugate Georgia most of all because of their sheer numbers.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:52 pmSounds like it will be easy, so…
Can we bomb them, now?
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:06 amI saw the age of their equipment too. Plus our stuff is more advanced and battle tested.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:08 amThis whole thing was just a marketing junket to try and impress Chavez, Assad, Iran, etc…..
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:14 amI hope they all spend BIG $$$.
So, they are building their military back up and China is out-spending us on their military by far and yet Obamma wants to stop research on the missile defense system, not pursue space weapons and slow all new future defense systems……yeah, real bright.
But hey, he makes the libtards FEEL good.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 am“Chavez, Assad, Iran, etc…..
I hope they all spend BIG $$$.”
Hehehehehe!
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:41 amas an Intel guy I noticed in the first day of the Russkie invasion that ONE US Army Stryker Brigade could take those dudes apart..
their men have no body armor, they sit on the top of exposed and under-armored BMPs. a few Javelins and there would be entire companies of Russians blown to bits and scattered over the roads.. half of them seemed drunk and were using equipment from the mid-1980s…
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:21 amDeployable? What a joke. That’s like us deploying to Mexico.Oh, you got combat experience in Chechnya did ya?Yaaaaawwwwwwn.Try doing it without killing every civilian in site.Yeah, I thought some of the Russian soldiers looked drunk too. The article forgot to mention that half the Russian Army has down syndrome. Crap BMPs and T92s look old.I would’ve liked to see them roll into Anbar in 06 with that junk.Poor dumb bastards. Punk-ass retarded bullies.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 amDeployable? What a joke. That’s like us deploying to Mexico.Oh, you got combat experience in Chechnya did ya?Yaaaaawwwwwwn.Try doing it without killing every civilian in site.Yeah, I thought some of the Russian soldiers looked drunk too. The article forgot to mention that half the Russian Army has down syndrome. Crap BMPs and T92s look old.I would’ve liked to see them roll into Anbar in 06 with that junk.Poor dumb bastards. Punk-ass retarded bullies.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 amJust spoted this over on Civil.ge Russia Plans to Keep Grip on Poti, Senaki
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 amA-10 playground
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:08 pm