Georgia can boast of its army, but no more
The Georgian Armed Forces, like many other post-Soviet armies, were built from a state of complete chaos, becoming a synthesis of the remnants of the Soviet army and the local people's militia. In the Georgian case, a local specificity was added: in the early 90s, the country was going through a triple civil war - for power in Tbilisi, for keeping Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The first of these wars was largely responsible for the loss of the other two. After that, for 10 years the Georgian army remained essentially a legal bandit formation, extremely underfunded and absolutely incapacitated.
Saakashvili, who came to power at the end of 2003, achieved a radical change in the situation in the country and in the army in particular.
And created and ditched
Thanks to the improvement of the economic situation and the curbing of “grassroots” corruption, the financing of the Armed Forces has increased not even several times, but by orders of magnitude. Western military aid appeared, the scale of which, however, we have greatly exaggerated (in reality, it amounted to several percent of the country's defense budget). Georgia began to massively purchase weapons abroad, primarily in the Czech Republic and Ukraine, among other suppliers were Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, and the United States. Almost exclusively the former Soviet or the East European created on its basis were acquired, which was modernized using Western technologies. Although military conscription was formally preserved in Georgia, the combat units were manned by contract soldiers, that is, in fact, they were a professional army.
In general, the Georgian Armed Forces have gone very far from the state of Shevardnadze's times in 4, 5 years. Nevertheless, their potential was not enough to establish effective control over Abkhazia, South Ossetia and for a war with the RF Armed Forces. But the decisive role in the further development of events was played by the subjective factor.
Saakashvili was very dizzy with successes (which he really had in politics and economics), while he was distinguished by obvious psychological instability, complete incompetence in military matters (which, of course, he absolutely did not understand) and a devout faith in the West. He quite seriously believed that he had created a modern professional network-centric army, which would not only instantly defeat the Armed Forces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but, if necessary, would easily win against the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. And in the event of some extremely unlikely contingency, NATO will certainly come to the rescue immediately. By the way, there is nothing particularly funny in this, because in our country, too, a significant part of the population is absolutely confident in the superiority of a professional army, in the gigantic combat power of NATO and its aggressive nature. Another thing is that the president of the country should not be guided by philistine ideas, but must see reality. But the Georgians were not lucky with the president, although at that moment they still did not think so.
On the night of August 7-8, 2008, almost all of the military-political leadership of South Ossetia fled from Tskhinvali to Java. Nonetheless, Georgian troops are bogged down in street fighting with practically uncontrollable Ossetian militias. And then the RF Armed Forces entered the battle.
Contrary to popular belief, the Russian troops did not have any numerical superiority on the ground. There were very big problems in the air as well. Nevertheless, the war ended with a crushing defeat of the "modern professional" army of Georgia, which on the third day of the war essentially simply disintegrated, ceasing all resistance and abandoning a huge amount of weapons, ammunition and fully serviceable equipment. Which, by the way, confirmed a well-known fact: all other things being equal, a conscript army will always win a mercenary (professional) army, at least due to a much higher motivation of personnel.
And NATO, of course, did not lift a finger for Georgia. This could easily have been guessed if we were guided not by propaganda, but by reality. Moreover, at the end of the war, the alliance imposed an unspoken but tough moratorium on the supply of arms to the country. So the sometimes sounding statements that Georgia has restored its combat power by now are completely absurd.
Box with soldiers
After the 2008 war, ground forces are the only type of the Georgian Armed Forces. They include 13 brigades - 5 infantry (1st - Kojori, 2nd - Senaki, 3rd - Kutaisi, 4th - Vaziani, 5th - Gori), 2 artillery (1st - Vaziani, 2 -ya - Khoni), SSO, air defense, engineering (all - Tbilisi), aviation (Marneuli), 2 reserves (10th - Senaki, 20th - Telavi).
The tank fleet includes 124 T-72s (some of them have been modernized with Israel's help) and 19 outdated T-55AMs in storage. This is about half of what Georgia had as of August 7, 2008. There are up to 78 BRM (11 BRM-1K, 17 BRDM-2, up to 50 domestic "Didgori-2"), 121 BMP (71 BMP-1, 43 BMP-2, 7 own "Lasik"), up to 300 armored personnel carriers (11 MTLB, 4 BTR-60, 49 BTR-70, 18 BTR-80, 92 Turkish "Cobra" and 70 "Eddder", up to 60 own "Didgori-1/3"). The artillery includes 48 self-propelled guns (12 2S1, 13 2S3, 1 2S19, 21 Czech "Dana", 1 2S7), 109 towed guns (84 D-30, 3 2A36, 10 2A65, 12 D-20), 181 mortars (145 37M, 6 2S12, 30 M-43 and Czech M-75), 43 MLRS (21 BM-21, 18 Czech RM-70, 4 Israeli LRAR-160). There are about 320 ATGMs ("Baby", "Fagot", "Competition") and 80 ATGMs (up to 40 MT-12, 40 D-48).
The military air defense has 12 Strela-10 air defense systems, 40 Strela-2 MANPADS, 15 Shilka air defense systems, 45 anti-aircraft guns (15 S-60, 30 ZU-23).
The Air Force as a type of the Armed Forces has been abolished. In the air brigade as part of the ground forces, the only combat aircraft are 12 Su-25 (including 7 modernized Su-25KM, 2 combat training Su-25UB). 10 similar attack aircraft were purchased in Bulgaria in a non-flying state as a source of spare parts. There are 4 transport aircraft (3 An-2, 1 Tu-134) and 11 training aircraft (8 L-39C, 3 Yak-52, up to 9 extremely outdated L-29, possibly in storage), 5 combat helicopters Mi-24 and 1 Mi-35, up to 6 rescue Mi-14, 26 multipurpose and transport (15 Mi-8, 9 American UH-1H, 2 French AS332L). The aviation of the border troops has 2 An-28 patrol aircraft, 4 Mi-2 and 3 Mi-8 helicopters.
Air defense includes 1 or 2 divisions (6 launchers and 3 ROMs in each) Buk-M1 air defense systems and a maximum of 7 divisions (up to 28 launchers) C-125 air defense systems, 13 Osa air defense systems, 5 Israeli Spyder air defense systems, 80 MANPADS (50 "Igla", 30 Polish "Thunder").
After the loss of most of the combat boats in August 2008, the Georgian Navy was abolished as a type of the Armed Forces, the remaining ships were transferred to the coast guard. Now it includes 19 patrol (2 Greek type "Dilos", 1 Turkish AB-30 "Turk" and 2 MRTP-33, 1 former German minesweeper of the "Lindau" type, 1 Soviet project 205P and 8 project 1400M, 2 American type " Point "and 2" Dontless ") and 4 landing boats (2 projects 106K, 2 projects 1176).
Almost all of this technique is Soviet in origin and production time. It is impossible to build a modern network-centric army on its basis, which Saakashvili did not understand. Our own defense industry will definitely not fix the matter. Although the country inherited the Tbilisi aircraft plant, where the Su-25s were assembled in Soviet times, Georgia, naturally, failed to establish their production without Russian components. In recent years, the Tbilisi Tank Repair Plant has created its own BMP "Lazika" and armored personnel carrier "Didgori" of several modifications, but neither in quantity nor in quality they can seriously strengthen the military potential of the country.
Death in someone else's war
Of course, Georgia's admission to NATO is out of the question, if only for purely formal reasons - its territorial problems have not been settled. The real reason is that neither the United States, let alone Europe, is not going not only to fight, but to get at least a theoretical risk of a conflict with Russia over some Georgia. And even more so, there can be no question that she herself would return Abkhazia and South Ossetia by military means (talk, popular in some media that Tbilisi is preparing for revenge, should not be taken into account). The country does not have the resources to create capable armed forces, and NATO is not going to provide any assistance. The current leaders in Tbilisi are no less anti-Russian and pro-Western than Saakashvili, but for them this is still a political course, not a mental diagnosis. Accordingly, they do not plan any war, realizing its complete hopelessness.
However, a completely new situation will develop in the event of an armed conflict between Russia and Turkey due to fundamental contradictions in Syria (of course, it is by no means inevitable, but it is not excluded either). Geographically, Georgia will find itself between two adversaries, at the same time blocking communications for Russia with its 102nd military base in Armenia. This fact alone will automatically be on the side of Turkey, so Tbilisi may be tempted to ask Ankara for help in returning its former autonomies. True, in this case Georgia exposes itself to a full-scale blow. And this time, unlike in August 2008, the Kremlin will not make a political decision to stop the troops 40 kilometers from Tbilisi. On the contrary, they will decide to pierce Georgia through and through, thereby establishing a direct connection with Armenia.
It is difficult to say whether the Georgian statehood will end there or the country will lose some territories (for example, Adjara, Javakhetia, populated by Armenians). But the economic damage will be gigantic anyway. The Armed Forces of Georgia will also finally cease to exist. And even more so, we will have to forget about the return of autonomies.
