Forum: F-22A Raptor

As I've been saying for years, and have made clear on this forum, far more than China, Russia represents a clear and present danger for the United States and the West (I've been right about the Russians as I am now about the F-35 Flying Turd). If nothing else, Russia's disproportionate aggression against Georgia - which admittedly badly miscalculated its forway into South Ossetia - makes clear Russia's plans to consolidate and expand its power. It is a blessing in disguise because we know now, and not too late, that we cannot stop production of the F-22 at only 183 examples. It also makes clear that the USAF and the USN have been right all along, contrary to what that idiot Gates has been saying, for having "next-waritis". We must be as prepared to take on rag-tag bands of terrorists as we are to take on a major world power such as Russia which may interpret our preoccupation with the so-called "war on terror" as a strategic weakness they can take advantage of. The choice between being prepared to fight a low-intensity conflict versus a major war is a false one; we must be prepared for both. And so in answer to the imbecile Gates I say: guess what, buckaroo? That next war you spoke so derisively about? It is happening NOW...

P.S. - Imagine if Georgia, as had been contemplated, were a part of NATO? If I were the USAF, I would be lobbying to send F-22s somewhere nearby. Don't forget that the Georgians have/had 2,000 of their troops in Iraq. They put their military where their mouth is. Are we prepared to do the same for them?

One squadron, perhaps two, of Raptors would put a stop to that real quick. Once the Raptors established air supremacy, U.S. ground attack fighters and bombers could decimate advancing Soviet, sorry, Russian armor (pictures of long columns of Russian tanks in roads have spurred fantasies of what a few well-placed CBU-105s could do to them).

Where is our unbeatable unmatchable F-22? Georgia freedom needs you!

No, where are an additional 200,000 US ground combat troops backed by at least 50,000 deployable self sustaining EU troops. That is what is lacking. Not fighters which we have in abundance to deal with the Russian air force committed to this.

-DA

Russian jets, unchallenged, sow terror among Georgian troops

By Tom Lasseter, McClatchy Newspapers
Mon Aug 11, 6:02 PM ET

TIRDZNISI, Georgia — The Russian fighter jet screamed low to the earth and peeled off so quickly that the bomb wasn't visible until it hit the ground. The explosion shook everything and sent a shower of debris flying over the head of a young Georgian soldier.

The soldier, lying against an embankment on the side of the road, shouted in a panicked voice for everyone to stay still. His palms were flat on the dirt in front of him. "It's Russian MiGs," the soldier said, his eyes wide.

For three days, Russian jets and bombers have unleashed a massive aerial campaign against Georgian forces that, more than anything, dramatically changed the war's direction.

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.

"We have good artillery, but not good antiaircraft systems," said Sgt. Ucha Chulukhadze , a Georgian soldier who was standing in a small shelter on the side of the road. To speak with a reporter, he and other soldiers insisted on walking across the street, where there was shade and they'd be less visible.

The soldiers looked tired and unsure what would happen next.

"If no one stops them"— the Russians— "then they will do worse here than what they did in Chechnya," said Eldar Durglishnti, a reservist who'd been called up for the fighting.

When a car load of journalists started to leave, one of the soldiers walked up to the window with a plea: Call the Red Cross and tell it that he was getting cell phone calls from soldiers who were stuck in bunkers in Tskhinvali.

A group of Georgian soldiers who were standing next to a truck down the road, its tires flat, heard the boom of an airstrike in the distance and scrambled to take cover.

"It's coming again," one of them hollered, looking at the sky.

Later in the afternoon, a Georgian sergeant was sitting on a curbside in Gori, recounting what he'd seen Sunday in Tskhinvali before his unit retreated. Moving his hand through the air like a plane, he mimicked the sound of bombs falling.

"There people were dying," said the soldier, who gave only his first name, Dato. "They dropped bombs everywhere . . . they destroyed us."

A group of people had gathered at the hospital across the street, many of them female soldiers, to check the lists of wounded and dead posted on a wall. Tracing the names with their fingers, the women spoke in low voices.

When a soldier hobbled up, his hand bandaged, a friend looked back and explained, "he was shot," which meant that he'd heal to fight another day.

Those who were caught by the bombs of Russian jets wouldn't be seen again.

An ambulance doctor, Levan Makashvili, was reading a newspaper in the hospital's parking lot and trying to keep his mind off the war for a few moments.

The aftermath of the bombings, he said, was terrible.

"The ones with head wounds," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "they frequently die."

Georgia Conflict Could Revive Big Military Spending, Analyst Says

By Christopher Hinton

NEW YORK (Dow Jones) -- A prolonged conflict in southwest Asia between Russia and Georgia could eventually benefit military contractors that build heavy weapon systems such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co., one analyst said Monday.

"No less than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978, [the] events of the past several days are a bell-ringer for defense stocks," said Paul Nisbet, an analyst with JSA Research, an aerospace equity research firm. "We strongly urge purchase of aerospace/defense issues, a sector which has declined with the broad market since the start of the year."

Heavy weapon systems, such as the F-22 Raptor being built by Lockheed (LMT) and Boeing (BA), along with ships, tanks and artillery, will be in higher demand as the U.S. positions itself to check the growing challenges posed by Russia and China, Nisbet wrote in an industry note.

I heard that Georgian air defenses shot down something like 10 aircraft, possibly including a TU-22. Also that Russia confirmed the loss of 3 SU-25s.

Anybody got some solid info on aircraft downings? No mention of Georgian aircraft so far, except about them using SU-25s in their attack as well. The only film clip I've seen(if indeed from the area) were of an SU-25 firing a heap of 57mm rockets and some MI-24s flying around, the nationalities not clearly visible at the time.

Georgia Strikes Back With Air Defenses

Aug 11, 2008
By David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie

If the land war in Georgia so far seems to be going decidedly in favor of the Russian army and navy, the Georgians seem to be racking up a lopsided score with their air defenses.

Over the weekend, the Russians made a successful advance on land through South Ossetia to the outskirts of the Georgian east-west transportation hub of Gori. There also was a one-sided naval battle - that resulted in the sinking of a Georgian gunboat - in the Black Sea off the coast of the second breakaway enclave of Abkhazia.

However, Georgian air defenses appear to be taking a steady toll on Russian aircraft. Russia has admitted to losing a total of four aircraft (the Georgians claim 10) in the conflict. So far they've admitted to the destruction of three Su-25 Frogfoot strike aircraft and a Tu-22M3 Backfire bomber that was flying a reconnaissance mission.

Photos from the combat area show the wreck of the Tu-22 and a Frogfoot as well as a picture of the Backfire pilot in a Georgian hospital. The pilot was Col. Igor Zinov, a 50 year-old Tu-22M3 instructor pilot stationed at the Russian Flight Test Center at Akhtubinsk. (See Aviation Week's defense photo gallery for photos.)

"Ergo, the Russians are using their A-Team, as expected," a U.S. analyst says.

Other analysts say the Georgians are probably operating the SA-11 Buk-M1 (low-to-high altitude) and the (low-to-medium altitude) Tor-1M mobile air defense missile systems.

"The Russians have gone to great lengths to try and implicate the Ukraine in the Russian Air Force losses, even going as far as to suggest that an SA-5 sold to the Georgians by the Ukraine was responsible for the Backfire loss," a second U.S. analyst says. "That's clearly not the case, but shows the Russian attempt to bring the Ukraine into the periphery of this event by implication, and to attempt to explain how one of their premier long-range attack assets could have been shot down so easily.

"The Russian press has been making lots of noise about the BUK and TOR systems, and I would say that the BUK is the most likely culprit for all of these aircraft losses," the analyst says. "If so, it points out a major flaw in the Russian plan - not gaining [and] maintaining pure air superiority [and] dominance over the battlespace by taking out the Georgian air defenses and air defense network before they went into the conflict."

Russian-built and designed air defenses are apparently exploitable, as was shown in the Israeli Air Force's total shut down of Syrian air defenses prior to bombing a suspected nuclear site. But Russia apparently has yet to apply the digital keys to unlock the Georgians' network.

During the months before the conflict, the Russians claimed to have shot down several Hermes 450 UAVs (made by Israeli-based Elbit) with fighter aircraft stationed at least temporarily in South Ossetia.

The Russians say they shot down a Georgian Frogfoot outside the town of Eredvi in South Ossetia today. The Russians - in a stunning piece of irony - have twice bombed the Su-25 Frogfoot manufacturing plant on the outskirts of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

So if the Georgians over-estimated their ground forces, "it appears that the Russians underestimated the Georgian air defense abilities in this conflict, and have paid the price," the second U.S. analyst says.

Georgia's foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, and deputy interior minister, Eka Zguladze, will be in Brussels tomorrow for emergency talks at NATO headquarters. The two officials will meet with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and address the North Atlantic Council.