Russia defeated Georgia and briefly seized large chunks of its land in a five-day war after Tbilisi tried to retake South Ossetia.
But the war uncovered serious deficiencies in the Russian armed forces, prompting doubts among some analysts as to whether Moscow would be able to defeat a bigger enemy and spurring the Kremlin to accelerate long-delayed military reforms.
The authoritative Moscow Defense Brief said Russia lost six planes, not four as the government announced at the time, in a report citing military sources and media reports that is to be published Thursday in its quarterly edition.
“The absence of cooperation between the Russian Army and Air Force led them to conduct completely separate campaigns,” said the journal, published by the independent Moscow-based think tank, the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
“Pilots were not fully apprised of the situation on the ground, received inexact and late intelligence, and at the start of hostilities … they did not even have exact information on the structure and strength of the Georgian air defense forces,” it said.
Official data provided by deputy chief of the General Staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, showed Russia lost three Su-25 ground attack aircraft and one Tu-22M3 long-range bomber.
But providing crew names, exact times, locations and types of aircraft, the Moscow Defense Brief argued that Russia in fact had lost six aircraft in combat during the five-day war.
The two aircraft that were lost but not mentioned in official reports were Su-24M front-line bombers, the Moscow Defense Brief said.
“Of these [six], two aircraft were certainly downed by enemy fire, three were probably hit by ‘friendly fire,’ and it remains difficult to determine who shot down the last one,” it said. Five aircraft fell in South Ossetia and one in Georgia, it said.
The Defense Ministry declined immediate comment. A Georgian Defense Ministry official told Reuters that Georgia had shot down 15 Russian aircraft.
Aside from the downed aircraft, several other Su-25 ground attack aircraft were seriously damaged, though they managed to return to base, the journal said. All of these jets had been hit by shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, it said.
The worst day of the campaign for Russian aviation was the war’s second day, Aug. 9, with a total loss of four planes. A transport helicopter was destroyed in South Ossetia a few days after the end of combat when it collided with and badly damaged a helicopter gunship on landing.
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