Tribal Wars

Russian bombers targeted Georgian oil pipelines

From today's WSJ, a reporter in an empty field in southern Georgia found a line of craters left from Russian air strikes. The only target of interest in the area is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which pumps 850,000 barrels of crude oil a day from neighboring Azerbaijan to Mediterranean sea ports. One bomb missed the pipeline by 10 feet.

Russia has categorically denied attempting to bomb pipelines on Georgian soil. Georgian officials were unable to furnish definitive proof the craters were caused by Russian bombs.

But the physical evidence of a recent air attack, witnessed by a reporter, is compelling.

The line of craters left by the alleged Russian attacks runs through the middle of a hilly, mostly uninhabited plain some 15 miles south of Tbilisi, near the town of Rustavi. The area lacks military or even human targets. The only sign of civilization is a small farm surrounded by haystacks and grazing herds of cows and sheep. The 45 craters -- each some 60 feet across -- scar the hillside like footprints left by a giant.

Close by lies the BTC pipeline, operated by British oil company BP PLC and buried at a depth of nearly six feet. It is identified only by small markers spaced out at one-kilometer (0.62-mile) intervals along the pipeline's route.

Mr. Janjgava said another raid Tuesday appeared to have been aimed at a second pipeline, known as Baku-Supsa, which brings Azerbaijan oil from the Caspian Sea to a terminal in Georgia's Black Sea town of Supsa.

The craters are concentrated in an area close to where BTC and the Baku-Supsa line intersect, near BTC's 15-mile marker. There were no other reported Russian attacks for many miles around.

The raids suggest Russia wasn't only aiming to humiliate its neighbor militarily but also to damage its reputation as an energy corridor.

Russian air power proves decisive

McClatchy's Tom Lasseter reports from Georgia on Russian attack jets routing Georgian troops:

Until Russian jets showed up, Georgian tanks and infantry looked to be on their way to defeating rebel forces in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

But Georgia's ground troops couldn't do much against Russian aircraft, whose repeated bombing runs drove them from Tskhinvali on Sunday and chased them along the road toward the town of Gori. In the early morning hours Tuesday, it suddenly seemed possible that all that remained of the war was for the Russians to brush past Gori into Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

At first, news of Russia's aerial attacks came in fragments. An airfield was hit, a radar station demolished. But by Monday, as bombs fell among the withdrawing Georgian forces, it was only too clear what the Russians had been up to.

The early strikes had made it impossible for Georgians, who in the war's first day had shot down four Russian aircraft, to mount an effective response. Now Russian jets could dominate the skies.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nagovitsin, the deputy head of the Russian military's general staff, put it bluntly: "I can report on Russian supremacy in the airspace. Georgian aircraft stopped flying."

Outside Tskhinvali, Georgian soldiers huddled beneath trees and bridges, trying to stay out of the line of sight of passing Russian jets. In addition to military trucks, troops were being moved around in civilian buses and vans. In Gori, soldiers worked out of a university building.

They had to hide; there was no answer to the Su-25 fighter jets, TU-22 bombers and others streaking nearby, looking for prey.

Russian General staff says

From AFCEA Nightwatch:

The Russian General Staff provided a fairly reasonable wrap-up of force status at day’s end.

-In the west, near Abkhazia, Georgian militias have been disarmed. Regular Georgian forces have withdrawn, abandoning the last footholds Georgia held in Abkhazia. All of Abkhazia is under Abkhazian control for the first time in nearly 20 years. The Russians control the western part of Georgia as far south as the port of Poti, in Georgia proper. They have not withdrawn as of this Watch.

-Opposite South Ossetia, the South Ossetians control their entire province. The Russians have advanced to the outskirts of Gori, Stalin’s birthplace, but have not advanced nor withdrawn. The Russians reported that south of Gori, the Georgians have assembled a division echelon force of three infantry brigades, an artillery brigade and an armored brigade to defend Tbilisi. (Western open sources do not credit the Georgians with a brigade of armor, only a single tank battalion.)

-The Georgian air force no longer exists as a combat capable force and the Georgian Navy lost one fourth of its missile boats.

War in the Caucases

AFCEA Nightwatch: Former commander of Russian forces in the Transcaucases says the Russian military has performed poorly. "The Russian General Staff has failed to learn the lessons of the Chechen War," said Yuriy Netkachev, general-lieutenant (two-stars) retired, military professor.

He noted that Russian exercise Kavkaz (Caucasus) 2008 was the 58^th Army’s dress rehearsal for the intervention that took place over the weekend.  He asks how are they performing and answers, “Not too well, unfortunately.” His argument proceeds by a series of questions, paraphrased below.

 1. How come the Russians lost a strategic bomber and a Su-25 attack aircraft to Georgian air defenses in the first hours of fighting?

2. How come the deputy commander of the 58^th Army was wounded on the first day of fighting? Netkachev asked further, “Why was General Khrulev operating within the troops' combat formations?  Where was the security force?  And indeed was there one?  Khrulev was accompanied in his vehicle by journalists.  The TV guys were probably constantly calling people.  Yet it is already clear that the Georgian special forces, trained as they are by US instructors, react to emissions from telephones and radio sets.  Where is the principle of the secure command and control of troops?  The army commander is directing thousands of people, does he have any time or need for journalists in an engagement?”

 3. When and how did the Georgians get proficient at flying the Su-25 and at firing missile air defenses? Netkachev said he thought it obvious that they were helped by Ukrainian mercenaries.

 4. How come Russian forces went to war half dressed, in tee shirts and without combat gear? He wrote that Russian military incompetence was broadcast around the world by Russian TV.   He also criticized the Navy for hold anti-terror exercises with the Georgians instead of preparing for a proper military blockade.

Nightwatch also has this:

The Russians appear to have committed two task groups of about 10,000 or more men in each zone. A Russian press source reported there were 9,000 soldiers and 350 armored vehicles in the Poti-Senaki area south of Abkhazia. The force in the South Ossetia area is at least that large. The total Georgian ground forces strength is just under 27,000. The President ordered all formations to fall back on the defense of Tbilisi today. However, remaining Georgian helicopters attacked into South Ossetia. Later, they were reported destroyed by Russian air attacks. The Russians and other sources continue to report sniper fire by Georgian “raiders.”

The Georgian contingent from Iraq arrived in Tbilisi today aboard US C-5 transports.

A deputy Chief of the General Staff clarified the air campaign to date. 

“According to information from the conflict zone, Russian aircraft from 4th Air Force and Air Defense Army also are delivering strikes against Georgian positions.  That army has around 60 Su-24 front bombers, 100 MiG-29 fighters, 60 Su-27 fighters, 100 Su-25 attack aircraft, 40 L-39 light attack aircraft and 30 Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft as well as 75 Mi-24 attack helicopters and other aviation equipment.”

 “Su-25 attack aircraft and Su-24 front bombers were placed in action for this.  In fact, they destroyed all of  Georgia’s combat aviation at its base locations.  They delivered a missile and bombing strike against the military airfield near Tbilisi and bombed the Tbilaviastroy Plant in a suburb of the Georgian capital, where Georgian Su-25 attack aircraft were being repaired and modernized.”  The Russian announced today that they achieved complete air superiority.

 

Study: Israeli Strikes Would Only Delay Iranians

Israeli air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities would at best only delay Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability, according to a new paper (.pdf) by the Institute for Science and International Security, authored by former UN weapons inspector David Albright and others.

A potential military strike would do more harm than good since it would probably cause Iran to embark on a crash program to develop nuclear weapons using clandestine facilities, the paper’s authors said.

The paper’s authors contrast what would be required to destroy Iran’s facilities with the ease with which Israel demolished Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and the Syrian reactor in September of last year. Trying to compare a strike against Iran with Israel’s other counterproliferation efforts, “neglects the important differences between a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program and a reactor-based program, and fails to account for the dispersed, relatively advanced, and hardened nature of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities.”