"Georgia and Russia" Topic

This is interesting. How does one get to the Blue Fez?

McKinstry, PM Bill and he will give you the secret handshake.

Barin, if you want to go down this route I suggest you do the same.

Let's let the politics go across to the Blue Fez, and keep the technical/wargaming aspects here.

Geoff
Who's just been inspired to make some modern Russian tank crews

that is really interesting Geoff

Seems my 15mm contemporary forces will soon see action… I have a bunch of your lovely T80 just watching me from the shelf….

Geoff,

You REALLY need to get that DANA off the shelf now, need it now more than ever (and useful for Libya during the Toyota Wars)….

I actually have a modern Georgian army I was putting together a few years ago in 15mm, time to move it up the priority list…..

Already emailed Chas to find out what happened to it. Got modern Germans with G36 here (close enough?) and Russian tank drivers in padded helmets (upper body only).

What about those pickup-sized troop trucks?

Lightly gaming an exent where no one knows where it's giong seems a little caluse. Much the same as I feel gaming modern US conflicts.

US forces in Georgia currently are most of a company of Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team's 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, a USMC training detachment and some USAF ground support guys who were helping transit out the GANG troops this week.

There are also a couple of hundred US citizens working in Georgia as consultants (both in the civil and military fields). My company just had two guys there who left last week – good timing!

Col Warrior – well, there's a subject for Tuesday; Metal Storm Part 2 – Georgians and Georgians against Russians (and we can give the Russians an Idaho National Guard unit out of Moscow ID to make things fair).

The mindless American media does not have time for this boring war stuff.

Edwards admits to having a girlfriend, Kobe receives standing ovation at Olympics, Paris made silly commercial, a couple people protested in China. That is REAL news.

"I would tend to say "rhetoric", not "ideology". they're all for their own hegemony, for instance."

Yeah, Kle, you are right there.

Okay so what figures would you use in 20mm 6mm for Gorgisn infantry?

Lightly gaming an event where no one knows where it's going seems a little caluse

Depends on your view. It's a scenario. Is it any less callous than gaming a historical event where one side was entirely wiped out? You could ask if it is more or less callous then gaming the Indian Wars, or WW2, or Vietnam. Does knowing the final outcome make it any different?

If you choose not to game recent or current events, that is your decision. We sell a lot of modern kit to serving soldiers who like to game modern periods. Others I know won't game anything post-1900 as it feels too close to reality.

Regarding 15mm…

I do run the 15mm Modern Group at:

link

There are a lot of pics of Russian and Eastern European armor and infantry, though I have been lax with updates (though I have been working on a large update).

I stripped down all my modern Russian armor about a year ago, to re-do the three-tone camo scheme, need to get them re-done. I have QRF modern Russian infantry painted up (with pics in the group above), and purchased Peter Pig Regulars with caps and AK's for Georgians (to be painted in US woodland camo), with a lot of vehicles to use with them. this was a few years ago, and since then the Georgian army has changed their kit a bit (including a lot more US helmets showing up), and the addition of AK replacements from the US, Germany and elsewhere.

But for 15mm, this conflict (and any other in the former SU) is easily doable. QRF has the largest selection of armor out there by a long shot (with hundreds of models available), including a lot of uncommon vehicle types. They also make a nice selection of helo's and close support assets (including the Hind and SU-25). There is also a solid selection of armor and infantry from other manufacturers (a lot of focus on US and British in Iraq & Afghanistan, including insurgents, etc.)

Old Glory & QC/Battle Honors have the next best selection of armor, Old Glory make pretty nice T-72's (without ERA), T-55's, BRDM-2's in a few variants, BMP-1's, BTR-60's and a lot of variants, etc.

QC/BH have a nice selection of newer Russian/Soviet armor, including T-80's with and without ERA, BMP-2's, ZSU-23-4, T-62's, etc.

Peter Pig have a large selection of infantry types, and some additional vehicles not made elsewhere. You can easily game any of the regional conflicts in 15mm.

But, for anyone inclined to other scales, you certainly can't go wrong with 20mm (given the nice selection of imported Russian & Eastern Europe produced kits), 6mm & 28mm (and even other scales), lot of options available out there, am just inclined towards 15mm myself.

"Lightly gaming an event where no one knows where it's going seems a little cal(lo)use"

Well, for my part at least, I have been utterly fascinated with the conflicts in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the ethnic uprisings in Azerbaijan and elsewhere started in the late 80's. This includes all the conflicts that have occured since, including the Armenia-Azerbaijani war, Chechen Wars, Georgia-Russia clashes (Pankisi Gorge, etc.), etc.

The Balkans and Caucauses provide interesting scenarios for wargames, given the complex history of the regions, the similarity in kit and tactics, etc. Certainly I do not intend to be callouse at all, there is a war going on, and people are currently dying, but from an operational and tactical standpoint, it does provide a lot of interesting scenarios between two modern states (which is something you don't see too often any longer).

Paul

So, we have the Russians with WP gear on one side, I'm thinking T-72 and T-80, including reactive armour. What kind of AT capacity does Georgia have? Anything western? If they are friends of NATO, they should have AT-4 for example. Will old WP AT gear take out WP tanks? Will NATO AT gear? Or is this where we find out?

Looking at the TV footage, I've seen T-80 with ERA, BMP-1 (not 2?), BTRs and what looks like 2S3 152mm artillery pieces on the ground so far.

It has been mentioned above that Georgia has old FSU equipment, more recently supplemented with western equipment. Would be interesting to know what they are currently using.

link Wiki reference, but indicates the 'normal' mix of ex-Soviet satellite equipment, T-72, BTR/BMP. Global Defence talks about a NATO 'train and equip' program in early 2000, but not what was supplied other than purchases of T-72s.

I'm generally ignoring newspaper articles, which get themselves heavily into the politics of it all, while misidentifying artillery pieces as tanks or personnel carriers!

Top Gun Ace, the "pod" is the gunshield for the NSV :)

Today an italian news showed some russian footage of knocked out "georgian" tanks. On lookede like a T90 (wide turred) and seemed kncoked out by tank fire and not by RP salvo (no brew up, I would say sabot round). I think that maybe somoen as supplied Georgian tankers with some good rounds. Also If I recall ukranian modified T72 uses a 120mm gun that fires NATO rounds…

I'm a tad confused, isn't this current affairs? I thought CA was banned from TMP?? Or is modern discussion the new CA and I just haven't caught on yet?

When does CA fall back to being just modern? :-)

We've done our best to steer the politics across to the Blue Fez (CA) board, and keep this one for discussing the tactics and equipment in use. Appreciated, it may not appeal to some, but then I'm not really into Napoleonics either.

"I'm a tad confused, isn't this current affairs? I thought CA was banned from TMP?? Or is modern discussion the new CA and I just haven't caught on yet?"

It becomes CA territory when someone who inists they share a biased rant pipes in ;-)

Such as:

"Death to Mongol Blooded Russian invaders, Long Live Georgia!!!"

"Georgians started this war and will pay the price for crossing Russia"….

"I think Putin is orchestrating this whole war behind the scenes as an excuse to get out of the Beijing smog early"….

You get the picture…. ;-)

OTOH, so far we have not strayed into the above territory and are mainly focused on the equipment, TO&E's, OOB's, etc. on both sides….

Regarding armor/mechanized forces, have been downloading every pic I can find, and watching news reports out of Russia, and here is the list so far:

Russia (58th Army):

T-90, T-80, MT-LB (both as an Artillery Tractor towing 122mm field pieces, ambulance and APC), BMP-2's (have not seen any BMP-1's), 2S3 152mm SPG, BM-21, BTR-80, BRDM-2 (with monster truck tires :-), lots of GAZ, KAMAL and URAL trucks.

Interesting thing about the Russian armor, on the MBT's, SPG's and APC's, no three-tone camo, all over green. Seeing the three-tone mostly on BRDM's and softskins.

Georgia:

T-72's, T-55's, BMP-2's, Otokar Cobra (very cool vid out there of this in action), DANA 152mm SPG, 2S3 SPG, BM-21 GRAD, RM-70 MLRS, MT-LB, tons of soft skins, including police and civilian pick-up trucks.

Georgia has several other vehicles in its arsenal, including BMP-1's and BTR-80's, though I have not come across any pics or vids of them in action as yet.

Most Georgian armor in overall green, with the exception of the T-72's, which are in a NATO type brown-green-black scheme (though in much smaller patches than the standard NATO scheme)

Which mark of Russian tank is shown with the reactive armour in most of the news reports?

blankfrank,

If it is the vids/pics I am thinking of, when the Russian army was first crossing the border into South Ossetia, those would be Russian T-72B's with Kontakt-5 ERA. I initially confused these as T-90's (from the brief frontal shots), but they are definitely T-72B's with the K5 ERA package.

There were a few T-80's I saw in Russian reports this morning, but I believe this unit had not entered South Ossetia as yet.

Russian media is also reporting that forward elements of the 76th VDV division have entered South Ossetia…

Saw a whole column of Georgian infantry in Land Rover 110/Defender hardcab/soft back pick-up types on spanish tv today! All with Fritz helmets and AK's or something else with a banana mag? Israeli Galil's? They appeared to be in Woodland BDU's , vehicles in black and green.
Must dig out 20mm Modern Russian armour……..probably need some T-80's with reactive stuff…..

Consider this – this is the country and the president GWB wanted to be in NATO. If they were in NATO we'd probably have a nice world war by now.

Conversely, if Georgia was in NATO, the Russians would have been a lot more hesitant to intervene. Maybe more dangerous, maybe less.

It might be a nice wargaming setting later on, but I'm very upset now. I know quite a nymber of people in Ossetia and in Georgia. One of my colleagues is Ossetian, and he has absolutely no idea what happened with his relatives.

True enough, but it's the same for all wars that we game.

Unfortunately, I think that once the South Ossetians decided to try for independence, it was inevitable that they would be eventually ground like wheat between Russia and Georgia. You really never want to be the people living in a small, weak region between two larger governments that both desire your land.

However if to fullfill his schemes means destroying the cities without any care for civilian population smth. is very wrong. Give me a reason why it is different to Jugoslavia or Chechnya.

It's exactly like Chechnya, and you'll note that the West did exactly nothing about Chechnya… Nobody except the Russians recognizes South Ossetia or Abkhazia as anything but part of Georgia. As such, this is effectively a civil action by Georgia, and Russia has invaded territory of a foreign nation.

In Yugoslavia, that was really just an example of the West stomping all over a weak nation that we don't like and has no close allies. There wasn't any basic reason that the Yugoslav government was unjustified in fighting internal rebellion.

Basically, we want this current war to be like Chechnya, and the Russians want it to be like Yugoslavia. Time will tell.

-Kle.

So, does it seem to anyone else that the Russians still fight like it was the mid-'60s? Poor co-ordination of air and ground forces, air strikes mostly with iron bombs and even rocket-pods, seemingly terrible SEAD, heavy artillery preparations followed by frontal assaults?

Is their doctrine really that bad, or are they just too broke to manage anything better? They seem to fight like the world's most powerful, best-equipped 3rd world nation.

Not that Georgia seems to be much better, but they're at least kind of a small place.
-Kle.

BBC via ABC

"'Port destroyed'

In the latest fighting, Russian aerial bombardment destroyed the Black Sea port of Poti, Georgia's foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Russia completely devastated the port of Poti on the Black Sea, which is a key port for the transport of energy sources from the Caspian Sea and is close to the Baku-Supsa pipeline and the Supsa oil terminal," the statement said.

The statement was titled: "Russia destroys Georgian port in Poti. Civilian population at risk from Russian aggression."

Russia's military said it was sending reinforcements to the area.

Reports said Russian warplanes had carried out up to five bombing raids around the Georgian town of Gori, close to the border with South Ossetia.

Georgian troops have been massing in the town as they prepare to go in to battle.

A BBC reporter in the town said the targets of the raids were a number of Georgian military bases and described scenes of panic as civilians and troops ran for shelter.

Georgia will bring its entire Iraq contingent of 2,000 soldiers home as soon as the United States can provide transport, the commander of the unit said."

Conversely, if Georgia was in NATO…

KLH, I know you were only answering previous comments, but can we keep the politics to the politics board (aka Blue Fez) and stick to the wargaming/miniatures/TO&E aspects on here, so this thread doesn't have to be shut down.

It's always going to be a fine line. Let's just make sure we keep it one the one side here. I'm sure Bill will be able to direct those who wish to debate the other side to the correct place.

Is anyone getting to any of the Georgian government websites with a .ge extension? I realize it may just be overload, but I also wonder if we are seeing some cyberwarfare at work.

Don't think that is a factor we can effectively wargame :-)

WJ,

I have been going to the Georgian Times for local info, it is up now, but has been up and down, and strangely it seems most every story pertaining to the war since Friday's offensive into South Ossetia has been removed. They were doing a fairly regular update yesterday….

geotimes.ge

Have not been able to reliably get to other Georgian sites since late yesterday, been getting most of my news from Russian sources.

Just watched some footage on BBC News 24 of a trainload of Georgian BMPs(?) on the move. If the Russians are prepared to bomb a port, airfields and bases, surely the rail net is an obvious target if only to disrupt troop movements. A western airforce would probably knocked down the bridges at the very least.

It may be that the Russians are trying to achieve limited objectives, but they might not have the assets or capability in place.

Take that to the other place.

There is no Yugoslavia and there hasn't been for a long time. And we don't like them (the Serbs) because they let an insane megalomaniac Dictator engage in mass rape, ethnic cleansing, and genocide – just like Hitler. The war won't be over until all the war criminals – all those who served as paramilitaries – are hung.

Hoi, take it elsewhere.

Gents,

Detailed map of troop dispositions here (in Cyrillic):

link

Just adding to Paul's list of vehicles:

Yahoo had 2 pics of what appeared to be a column of BMP1 yesterday (8-8-08). The gun tubes looked shorter and fatter than that of the BMP2. Can't find the pics today.

Earlier, Yahoo had one pic of BMP1 with applique armor on turret, looked to 73mm gun.

Also saw pics of what looked like several BMD1 captioned as being on Russian border, waiting to advance.

Gents, tons of updates coming in from Russian media (can't confirm everything):

Fighting is now raging in the Kodori Gorge between Abkhazian and Georgian forces, with Russia providing air support to Abkhazia

The Russian Black Sea Fleet is moving into a position to blockade the Georgian coast, and a possible Marine landing is being prepared

There are reports of a naval engagement between Georgian and Russian Corvettes, with a Georgian La Combattante II OR P 269 Lindos corvette being sunk

There have been reports of tactical ballistic missile strikes by Russia on Georgian territory

Rian in Russia is confirming that a Tu-22M Backfire and Su-25 Frogfoot were shot down in the first day of hostilities (Georgia is claiming up to 12 Russian aircraft downed).

Video from yesterday of a Georgian Su-25 falling out of the sky:

link

Lots of new video in English coming out of Russia Today (much of this can be seen on You Tube):

link

kyoteblue,

I will work on getting a translation made, may be tommorow as it is approaching a late hour here, and with daybreak in the Caucauses have been glued to Russian TV trying to get updates. Will post anything substantial when I come across it.

Irishserb,

You are correct about the BMP-1's, Geoff e-mailed me a vid offline, and he had the correct ID. Have seen video of BMD's (both 1's & 2's). The BMD-2's are part of the 76th VDV Air Assault Division that are preparing to move into South Ossetia in force (advance elements are already involved on the ground).

The video I saw of BMD-1's, strangely enough, were in the employ of Abkhazian forces in the Kodori Gorge region. Lots of speculation that Russia is pouring in supplies to the Abkhazi military/militia and may already have troops in Abkhazia.

You guys seem to forget a simple fact,by nato expansion in the post soviet era .you proove the reds were right.Old soldiers arise an ol mother RUSSIA arises.Western plan for encirclement….oh afghan ,irag ,lets do georgia(home of . Stalin)…lets really rouse the old soviet fears,rattle the sabres,see what happens.Stupid war ,stupid politics all way round. My fear is that Russia presses war like they shoulda in Chechnya….a few Nuclear disasters make the area untenable.

kyoteblue,

Not a problem at all.

News is now hitting the western media that Georgian forces have completely pulled out of South Ossetia, this may be the winding down stage leading to a ceasefire, here's to hoping.

Russian media is reporting that the Black Sea Fleet has complete control of the Georgian coast, no report of marine activity, just the naval battle that occured when Russia intercepted Georgian vessels heading to the Abkhazian coast.

Still reports coming in of Russian airstrikes on the outskirts of Tbilisi

Hopefully we are now in the final stages of the conflict, with Russian forces in control of South Ossetia and Georgian forces having withdrawn. Fighting in Abkhazia is still continuing, so we will see what effect this has on a cessation to hostilities in the region.

Reports are now coming in (via Western and Georgian press), that up to 4,000 Marines from the Russian Black Sea Fleet have landed in Abkhazia

Additional reports of fighting between Abkhazian forces and Georgian Special Forces in Kodori Gorge

Reports that the US will be providing airlift assets to the Georgian contingent in Iraq, to move the 2,000 troops there home quickly. This is a bit unsettling, as I have no idea where they plan to disembark, but given that Russia is bombing all the military airfields in Georgia and has air superiority over Georgian airspace, the thought of US transports in the area is concerning…..YMMV

Good video here discussing the situation in Abkhazia, and touching on the naval engagement that took place earlier today:

link

maybe that airlift will be a good way to gewt air superiorty back via strong escorts and BARCAP.

Arrigo,

That is something that simply won't happen, the US nor any NATO nation is going to put fighters over Georgian airspace at this time.

Morning update,

Have been up all night following the news out of the region. Things were rather quiet for a while, but a few hours ago, when it seemed events may be starting to wind down, it appears to be heating up again.

- Reports of Georgian forces evacuating South Ossetia are being condtradicted by Russian media. A Russian reporter was injured in a firefight in Tskhinvali within the last few hours

- A war of words is brewing between Russia and the Ukraine. The Ukranian government is threatening to prevent the Russian Black Sea Fleet from returning to its bases in Ukranian Crimea

- Massive fighting is being reported in and near the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia. Reports that Georgian reinforcements are being sent in, and that Russian forces are involved on the ground

- Reports are coming in of a massive Russian bombing campaign targeting up to 15 Georgian cities today, this is the heaviest air attack since the war began

- Disturbing report (and one that I cannot confirm with more than two sources), that there is a Russian ground attack under way within Georgia itself, with the town of Gori being the target. I am trying to find additional information to confirm this, as this would be a serious escalation

Will be away from the PC for a while today, but will post some updates when I get back.

A war of words is brewing between Russia and the Ukraine

Nothing new there :-D