Quote Originally Posted by Ratzel View Post
I can't understand why the Georgians would try to fight Russia using tanks? The Georgian Army should be a Army of 6 man cells, with the best shoulder fired weapons money can buy. I didn't hear about one Russian tank being hit by an anti-tank weapon? Why?
Indeed, it seems they missed some of the key lessons of Chechnya. Trying to take on the Russian Army in a conventional fight was an exceptionally bad idea. It looks to me like the Georgians wanted to use armored shock to quickly overpower the South Ossetians, but they appeared to have no contingency plan for the rapid response from the Russians. Light infantry could have hidden until the Russian main body had passed and then attacked the Russian LOC. This would have slowed the Russian advance and taken some of the Russian combat power away from the units facing the Georgians further south.