Following a resounding beating by the Russian armed forces, the military of Georgia subsequently faced the indignity of the Georgian parliament officially declaring that the military was entirely at fault. Now, in what is probably a more even-handed and neutral report, the Georgian military again faces an indignity, learning that it probably wasn't even as effective as it thought it was.
Specifically, a report from the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies suggests that the Russians accounted for exactly half of their own air unit losses.
Notably, this is not the first report CAST has released that is highly critical of Russian air power in the Ossetian conflict. Consider this earlier report that focuses on the operational success of Russian air power in the Ossetian war, without regard for the cause of its air casualties.
In this situation, the Russian Air Force — with its quick reaction times and powerful strike capability — was to provide immediate support to the surrounded peacekeepers and the weak South Os-setian armed groups. Ideally. Russian aviation should have suppressed the Georgian artillery and multiple-launch rocket system positions before the end of August 8. .Another urgent task was to deliver air strikes on the Georgian 4th Infantry Brigade, which was storming Tskhinvali.
Russian aviation attempted to accomplish these objectives, but immediately lost three Sukhoi Su-25 ground-attack aircraft to Georgian anti-air fire. After that, according to eyewitness accounts, there were no Russian aircraft over Tskhinvali on August 8 or the following day — that is. during the most critical period of the conflict. In effect, the Russian military command was forced to bring motor-rifle units into battle from the march, without first gaining superiority in numbers and firepower.
Incidentally, this older report suggests the Russians lost up to ten aircraft as mission kills (meaning they could no longer operate), although three or four of these at least managed to make it back to Russian air bases.
Naturally, a spokesman for the Russian military denies any friendly fire happened. That said, if Russian ground forces really did shoot down three of their own aircraft (and if they'd been going without air cover the majority of the time, who could blame them?), how much more often did Russian ground forces take fire from their own air units?