Interesting article well worth reading in its entirety:
A defense analyst I spoke with, who advises American ground forces, said to rebuild the Georgian military along conventional lines might be the wrong approach. Instead he suggested a different force model, that of Hezbollah. What Hezbollah did so effectively, as was shown in the 2006 Lebanon war, was combine modern weaponry with a distributed infantry force that fought in guerrilla fashion. Fighting as distributed networks, Hezbollah rarely presented an inviting target for Israeli air and artillery attack, but their well trained tactical units were able to swarm at the point of attack of Israeli armored incursions and hit the Israelis hard with precision anti-tank weaponry.
Equipped with top-shelf anti-armor systems, such as the U.S. Dragon and Javelin and the Russian-built RPG-29 and AT-14 Kornet, such a force would perhaps better be able to exploit Georgia’s mountainous and urbanized terrain against channelized Russian armored columns than a conventionally organized combat brigade, as Hezbollah did in south Lebanon. The lessons from the initial Russian incursion into Grozny in 1994 are instructive as well. Fighting in small tactical teams organized around close range anti-armor weapons, the Chechens savaged Russian tank columns. [DOD Buzz]
A lot of people don’t realize this but the US military was not allowed to train the Georgian military to fight a conventional war. The training they received was in anti-terrorism to fight Chechen rebels operating in their territory as well as training for Georgian soldiers conducting operations in Iraq. The Special Forces trainers were not authorized to train and equip the Georgian military for a conventional war in order to not provoke Russia. We now see how well that policy worked.
Now that Russia has invaded Georgia the US military trainers have no reason to no train the Georgian military for a conventional conflict. Considering how small their military is, the Hezbollah model may not be a bad idea but as the article mentions the thing the US military cannot equip the Georgians with is discipline and motivation. That is something they have to do for themselves.








11:27 pm on September 13th, 2008 1
Have talked to guys that were on these MTTs…they were nothing but the usual SF MTT w/plenty of per diem & parting…training was only secondary, as it is with most SF MTTs. SF just likes to concentrate on the “High Speed” options anyway.
The Georgians are some hard troops, but seriously out of their league when confronting the Russians. If we really want to train them up, then we need to skip the SF mindset & go with a conventional training option. Right now there is recruitment for a civilian contractor MTT heading over there…sounds like another State Department “Touchy Feel Good” lark.
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