![]() ![]() It can cost more than $10 million to build a new Su-25. As part of a potential $9-billion program, officials hoped to invest in new communications, anti-tank weaponry and air-defense systems. In the war’s aftermath, Tbilisi reformed its 33,000-strong armed forces. “They also did not have any ‘smart’ weapons and lacked electronic countermeasure systems.” ![]() “They lacked sophisticated aiming devices and did not have sufficiently long-range missiles that could be launched outside the enemy air-defense envelope,” the Australian Air Power Development Center noted. There were other problems with Russia’s Rooks. At least three fell to Georgian air defenses.Īn Australian air force newsletter speculated that the radar-warning gear on Russian Su-25s wasn’t tuned to the frequencies of Georgia’s Soviet-vintage surface-to-air missile systems, meaning the Russian pilots never knew when a missile was incoming. Meanwhile Russian Rooks attacked Georgian troops and, in an ironic twist, even bombed the Tbilisi factory that had produced them. Georgia’s roughly 10 Su-25s flew a few missions in the early hours of the war before effectively going into hiding in the face of overwhelming Russian air superiority. ![]() Then in 2008, Russia and Georgia went to war over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. As recently as 2001, Georgia offered to upgrade Russia’s 300 or so Su-25s at the Tbilisi plant. Workers assembled a few incomplete Su-25s to expand the Georgian air force’s inventory of mostly leftover Soviet Rooks. Georgia struggled to make use of the Tbilisi factory. ![]()
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