Many observers were quick to note the very real failings of the Russian military in Georgia in August 2008 when it went to war in support of the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia. Indeed, there were significant deficiencies in the conduct of the short war that revealed the limitations of Russian military capability. In our view there were three flaws that were emblematic of the campaign's many failings and shortcomings: Click map to enlarge Indeed, Russia's military "failings" must be understood in context. The United States and NATO developed technological capabilities and an economy-of-force specialty because of their quantitative Cold War disadvantage on the North European Plain. A new generation of precision-strike weapons and methods of command and control and ISR were just coming online when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and would soon be put to the test in Desert Storm in 1991. In the years since, these technologies have been refined in a variety of military operations, and the result has been a continual process of doctrinal integration, operational experience and tactical evolution. Russia, on the other hand, has had little opportunity to integrate late-Soviet technology into military operations and doctrine since the collapse of the union, and flaws in its Georgian campaign should have come as no surprise. Indeed, Georgia was the first warfighting in which the Russian military had engaged outside of Russia since the collapse. There was certain to be an element of trial and error in the operation. And despite its inefficiencies and failures, the ultimate success of the campaign — the achievement of the military objective without unreasonable losses — is clear: Abkhazia and South Ossetia each now host some 3,700 additional Russian troops and have been recognized by Moscow, over Georgian objections, as independent entities. The bottom line: Moscow succeeded in establishing a military reality through the exercise of force on its periphery. In so doing, it achieved its foremost objective of making a credible statement to the rest of the world — particularly Washington and the states on Russia's periphery. The message was not meant to start a shooting war with NATO. After securing territorial integrity, the foremost mission of the Russian military is to ensure that integrity by keeping peripheral states compliant. The military accomplished this in Georgia in relatively short order, without any meaningful response from the West. Of course, Georgia's South Ossetia was low-hanging fruit. Its population has close ties to Ossetians across the border in the Russian Republic of North Ossetia and is almost entirely pro-Russian. How effectively could the current Russian military influence other key peripheral states? Kazakhstan and Ukraine both have substantial strategic depth but also military forces that are in worse shape than Russian forces. In any case, invasion would not be necessary. Merely parking Russian military units on the border would be an unequivocal reminder to Astana and Kiev of a resurgent Russian military — one more lever to reverse the gains of the 2004 pro-Western Orange Revolution in Ukraine. On the surface, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are even more vulnerable to Russian military pressure. Their militaries barely exist and their capitals are each roughly 100 miles from Russian territory. Occupying essentially open ground with no strategic depth, the Baltics would be hard-pressed to defend their territories on their own. Their only saving grace is their NATO membership, which affords them NATO protection under Article 5 by making an armed attack against one an armed attack against all. (At present, a small squadron of fighter jets from another NATO country monitors the airspace of the three small countries.) In short, Russia's campaign in Georgia — blemishes and all — proved that the current force as equipped and fielded could have significant deterrent value in Russia's sphere of influence. Moscow can credibly threaten the use of force precisely because it applied force in Georgia. This is not lost on peripheral states large or small. In each case, the capability to defend against that force is questionable at best unless Article 5 is invoked. By that measure, the Russian military has already regained the fundamental capacity for influencing events with military force on its periphery. And that development is a reminder that, despite the many challenges to reform, a chapter of history remains to be written that will likely include, once again, Russian military power as an element of Russian national power.
- In its target selection process, the air force reportedly was woefully ignorant of Georgia's military disposition (even against locations that were publicly known). In some cases, unused military installations were bombed while critical new locations were unscathed. This was a failure of basic intelligence gathering and indicates poor situational awareness and interservice coordination.
- The Russians apparently attempted no meaningful suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), even though the air defenses were meager. Air superiority belonged to Russia almost by default. The small Georgian air force was composed of eight Su-25 "Frogfoot" ground attack aircraft, and the Russians quickly destroyed the runway at the Georgian air field where they were based. While it was not out of the question for the Kremlin to deem the minimal Georgian air-defense threat an acceptable risk, the lack of any real attempt to hunt down the SA-11 "Gadfly" surface-to-air missile systems that Tbilisi reportedly had purchased from Kiev (which Moscow had to have known about) likely cost the Russians combat aircraft, including a Tu-22M Backfire bomber conducting reconnaissance. Even more important, it called into question the Russian capacity to conduct SEAD.
- Secure tactical communications was abysmal, with commanders reportedly relying on personal cell phones and even reporters' satellite phones. While the Georgian military was not capable of taking advantage of these insecure and haphazard methods, they do raise real concerns about the status of Russian communications equipment. Either useful equipment was not deployed in sufficient quantities or, when it was deployed, it proved ineffective and unreliable. Of these three deficiencies, communications is a particular concern because the Russian military does not have a tradition of initiative by lower level officers and has always emphasized firm unit control by higher command.
