Georgia's South Ossetia Conflict - Military Commentary

[Rank amateur]

Cavguy, I was in Estonian military in the middle of 90-s. It was time when in the service was quite many officers who sereved in the Soviet army (in the rank of majors and up). During 1 exercise couple of those Soviet ones worked as advisers to young officers, who had finished Finnish military school. We were playing OPFOR column and moved to west. Half a day our units moved like snails under the instructions of Finnish military school graduates. In front of every possible ambush site recce was sent out. If cou calculate that recce on foot moves 1 km per hour, then it was slow going. Soviet school people got enought and instructed to "bomb" every possible amush site. Finnish ones opposed that there are farms etc. Soviet ones said "Just do it!". After first order, referees reported destroyed ambush. Finnish ones continued this pattern and columns were moving average 40 km per hour and we were showing middle finger to guys crawling out from the bushes. So much about ROE and possible Javelin sites.

The terrain in Georgia offers more potential ambush locations.



Also, Hezbollah countered the bombing of potential ambush locations by spending 5 or 6 years digging in. With only a handful of roads, deep buried IEDs and EFPs would've been effective. Of course, we didn't want the Georgians doing that. Plus, making the Russians angry probably would've convinced them to flatten Tbilisi. "Don't poke the bear" is probably Georgia's only option. To bad we forgot that. It's really too bad they forgot that.

[kaur]

Just to add some backround info to my last post.

Terrain.

Mosaic of Forests, Meadows and Marshes

Almost half of Estonian territory (47.6 per cent) is under forest and woodlands; the area of forest stands has more than doubled during the last 50 years and is still growing.

Forests and woodlands are not evenly distributed in Estonia. The largest forests can be found in the northeast and in Mid-Estonia — a zone stretching from the Northern coast to the Latvian border.

Owing to abundant precipitation and slight run-off, Estonia is rich in wetlands. There are some 165 000 marshes greater than one hectare in area, of which 132 peatlands are larger than 1000 ha. The total area of marshes and swamp forests measures 1 009 101 ha which is over one fifth (22.3 per cent) of the country’s territory. Only Estonia’s northern neighbour, Finland, has a higher percentage (31) of peatland.

Approximately two thirds of the marshes in Estonia began as lakes which were gradually turned into quagmires by the spreading shoreline vegetation. The rest of Estonian swamps were formed by an opposite process, the paludification of mineral land.

http://www.einst.ee/publications/nature/

It's all about TTP, but during the exercise I described, opponent failed.

About foresest. Most of the collective farms are dead. Grandparents, who were mostly peasant are now in the end of their life cycle. Children are useing those farms mostly like summer houses. This all means that there is no need for fields for agricultural purpuse. What happens to the field, if you don't use it? During first ten years there are bushes. After that comes forest.