The Russians claim that they're upgrading their T-72's with gear to deal with IR ATGM's, but like many Russian claims it is to be taken with a grain of salt. The T-90 is supposedly armed with the appropriate sensors and devices for dealing with IR and laser-guided missiles and the Russians claim it can deal with Javelin, but how well it works in actual combat... (shrug).Originally Posted by reed11b
In any event, Javelin is good, but would not have been effective in this war because the rugged terrain was controlled by the Ossetian irregulars, who would have simply taken out any hunter-killer teams that tried to set up there. I am not sure how well you are familiar with the mountainous terrain of the region, but once you get away from the foothills that you saw near Tskhinvali, the terrain goes pretty much vertical and it's pretty much impossible to move through it without serious mountaineering gear or on the established roads -- which were under the control of the Ossetian irregulars. The terrain makes Afghanistan look like Florida ruggedness-wise. Once tanks reach the plains, then you have the problem of the sheer size and bulk of the Javelin system plus vulnerability to air strikes plus tanks and artillery using HE on you. It is not until you get to the cities that the hunter-killer teams would become effective, and Russia avoided sending tanks into the cities and towns until it was clear that the Georgian military had evacuated them.
In short, Javelin is good but it is not a "magic bullet" by any means. If you control the rugged terrain beforehand (which Georgia did not), you can do a Hezbollah and gopher into the hillsides along the only usable routes for tanks, but Georgia did not have that option here. You may be able to get a few hunter-killer teams into place despite all of this via some serious mountaineering, but the size and bulk of the Javelin system means that they couldn't bring many in, they'd be able to take out a few tanks at best, and the Russians would just push the burning tanks off the road into the gorge and keep going.
Finally, regarding NATO, treaty obligations, and so forth, treaties are worth the paper they're signed on in the real world. Nations uphold things like mutual defense treaties when it is in their national interest to do so. If it is not in their national interest to do so, they say "Sorry, you're on your own." That is real world, as vs. fantasy land. I have been thinking hard and cannot think of any NATO state that would see going to war against Russia over Georgia as being in their national interest. Even if Georgia had actually been a NATO member, the response of many major NATO states would have been "Sorry, but you incited this by shelling Tskhinvali, so you're on your own," which, given that NATO actions require unanimity, would have tabled any NATO response. Even under the more stringent standards of U.S. tort law, if you consider the NATO treaty as a contract, Georgia's shelling of Tskhinvali would have been considered "bad faith" and thus rendered that self defense clause null and void (is it self defense if you yourself started the war?). Some folks here seem to have an overly ambitious notion of the power of paper. Sorry, folks. In international relations, it all boils down in the end to enlightened self interest and power. The paper is useful only insofar as it makes explicit such. Otherwise, it is just a piece of paper. In the case of the current Georgian action, Georgia having that piece of paper in hand would have changed things not a lick -- it is not in the self-interest of Europe to start WWIII over Georgia, and thus it would not have happened.
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