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#32200103 · 19 Jul 2012, 17:40 · · პროფილი · პირადი მიმოწერა · ჩატი
Conscription in Georgia
Posted on July 18, 2012
This is something I want to see abolished. The training, which lasts just twenty-one days, is simply not enough, but after completion of their three weeks, these ‘soldiers’ are now combat-ready. This should mean that they are ready to face enemy infantry, tanks and air support, but in practice they barely have time to become familiar with their personal weapons. Georgia expects its conscript forces to be used in a ‘home defence’ role, which is wonderfully vague but implies that they will be used as a last-line of protection. If the Regular Army could be trusted to keep attackers out of Georgia’s borders, this would not be necessary.
Georgian military mentality seems to be entrenched in the belief that safety is in numbers, no doubt a hangover from the influence of the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union. If you consider the hordes of Soviet troops, ill-equipped, unprepared and unmotivated, being gunned down by their own side as well as by the Nazis a resounding military success then no doubt you’ll be in favour of Georgia’s conscription service. Indeed, I have encountered a lot of opposition from Georgians I’ve spoken to about this, but for a few key reasons besides the fact that they believed I was wrong.
Firstly, Georgians are not very good at listening, and are even worse at being told there is something wrong with their country. Secondly, due to their own military defeats at the hands of the Russians, they believe the Russian military is unstoppable. After all, they say, their army had been trained by the Americans, who have the best army in the world (?) and they still lost. What hope is there after that? Something that is conveniently forgotten by Georgians when evаluating that war is that the Russians didn’t outnumber them; both sides fielded roughly 40,000 troops, including Abkhazian and South Ossetian rebels, not trained or equipped to the same standards as the Russian troops.
Even more interesting, I believe, is that to put together the invasion force in 2008, Moscow had to scour all across the military to find combat effective units, officers and equipment. Read any book on the subject and you’ll find numerous instances of Russian tanks breaking down due to the bad quality of the vehicles, though Georgians seem blissfully ignorant of this. Furthermore, Russian tanks cannot weigh more than 50 tons, due to their mandatory transport by train. Any heavier and they can’t be transported. Compared
When I tell them that should the forces pitted against the Russians have been British, Moscow would have suffered an embarrassing defeat, they scoff and cry ‘ridiculous’. You’ll forgive me for calling them ignorant, but they assume that other military forces around the world are a little like their own; when I say I served in the British Army, they assume I’ve done my three weeks as a conscript so will have more or less the same knowledge as they will, unaware of the years of time and training I put into it. I still laugh when a Georgian proudly tells me ‘I was a soldier’ because he did his three weeks.
The fact of the matter is, the training given to an individual British soldier is far tougher than that of any other army in the world. The British military has always adopted a policy of small numbers, high standards; I’m not saying that every British soldier is better than every American (certainly not the case when units such as the US Rangers, Airborne or Green Berets are taken into account), only that the general training is much harder. Part of the reason for that is that it simply has to be; the US military behemoth is enormous, and Britain has to do more with less. To give you an example, areas of Helmand Province frequently change hands between American and British forces, as per tour requirements. For example, an area that was held by 5,000 US Marines had to be held by just 600 British paratroopers (as recorded by Patrick Bishop, in his book ’3 PARA’, and again in the sequel ‘Ground Truth’), a frequent scenario in Afghanistan. That’s really just for the benefit of people who will accuse me of being biased.
However, tell that to a Georgian and he accuses you of a) lying or b) (predictably) bias. The fact of the matter is, it’s not just the public who feel this way, but the military itself seems to feel almost powerless to stand up to Russian forces. I’ve heard Georgia’s defeat blamed on Russia having too many tanks and planes, and Georgia not having enough anti-tank or anti-air weaponry. A British response would be ‘Alright, those are their assets, these are our limitations. How do we combat them?’. First off, Georgia is a largely mountainous country and, as far as I know, there is also a fair bit of woodland around; both terrains negate those advantages completely. Why, look at Vietnam; covered in trees, and American air support didn’t win the war even with napalm. Or Afghanistan, where the mountains have enabled the nimble infantry of the Mujahadeen and the Taliban to withstand the might of the Soviets in the ’80s and the combined NATO forces in more recent years.
The point is, it’s no good coming up with excuses, not when your country is at stake. But there’s an aspect that I really don’t understand here, too. Georgia fielded around 40, 000 troops in that conflict, and reported only just under 200 killed and 1000 wounded. All in all, those figures aren’t too bad when you think about it, especially when you consider the fact that larger armies during WW2 were being decimated in similar warfare scenarios. But that makes me think; imagine for a moment that London, or New York, was under attack by an invader using conventional military forces. If 40, 000 American or British troops stood in their way, I like to think that the enemy would have to kill a good 90% of them before they’d think about retreating.
I don’t mean to take anything away from the Georgians who fought and died in that war, but it just strikes me that the defence was conducted in a very half-hearted manner. If anything, I’m speaking up for those brave men, since it seems to me like their sacrifice was almost in vain. The city of Gori was yielded without a fight. I can’t help but think that the Georgian people are almost used to the idea of occupation by Russia after being under its control for so long. An attitude of ‘Ah, well…another brief independence…it wasn’t so bad in the USSR…it’ll be alright’. It seems to me that that kind of attitude would cause military apathy. Maybe they thought like that, and maybe they didn’t, who can say? But if they did it’s small wonder that casualty figures were comparatively small when the size of the forces involved is taken into account.
I can understand the point of conscription if you do things in the Scandinavian or Swiss style; they put their young men in for a year, which is infinitely more preferable than three weeks. But there’s a reason why modern militaries instead have a Regular and Reserve forces; you need motivated, well-trained men who can be relied on. Somewhere on this blog I recounted the experience of my friend Lasha, who’d done his three weeks and was called up for duty in 2008. He arrived at the base, and asked a sergeant where his kit was. The sergeant replied ‘I don’t know. Somewhere along here’.
In the British Army, the sergeant is a man usually in his early or mid 30s, a man you aspire to be like, a soldier who knows where everything is, why it’s there and when it’ll move. You can depend on your platoon sergeant because he won’t let you down…and if you let him down, God help you, because you’re in deep trouble (NOTE: to my American readers, sergeants of the US military are roughly equivalent in age and experience to British Corporals. That’s not me saying ours are better, it’s just because you have more ranks than we do, and hence are promoted faster and younger. Your US Army First Sergeants and US Marine Gunnery Sergeants are the American equivalents in age and experience of the British platoon sergeant).
So, anyway, back to Lasha’s story. He was given an AK47 and just ten rounds of ammunition, but when they arrived in Gori, he was told by his platoon sergeant to hand his ammunition over. The sergeant told him ‘he wouldn’t need it’ even though the Russians were barely a mile away. Soon after, they retreated along with the rest of the Georgian forces back to Tbilisi.
Despite Saakashvili’s insistence that he intends to modernise the Georgian Army and model it after the American forces, I don’t understand why he hasn’t copied the NATO model for Reserve forces. It seems the Georgians would rather have a Regular force of about 40, 000 to fight on the front lines and a conscript army of 120, 000 to be used as ‘home-defence’ (their official role). But if conscripts are supposed to be used for home defence, then why was Lasha sent to Gori, which at the time was the frontline?
The point I’m trying to make here is that it would be better to have a Regular Army of 40, 000 supported by a Reserve force of (at least) 20, 000. That’s half as many men again with which to fight the invader, men who are well-trained, well-equipped and not prone to panic (at least in theory…).
Let me explain something else about modern warfare. These days, infantry forces are divided into Light Infantry, Armoured Infantry or Airborne/Air Assault (Mechanised forces are largely being overtaken by their armoured rivals). The Georgian Army can officially field five ‘Light Infantry’ Brigades, but this isn’t light infantry as you might know it. If you’re British or American, then ‘light infantry’ means you’ll more or less everything on foot. These types of soldiers are supposed to be able to everything they’ll need with them, be it food, water, personal weapon/ammunition and specialist equipment, such as anti-tank or anti-air weapons. Light Infantry Brigades, or Divisions, contain very few vehicles. Tanks, APCs (armoured personnel carriers) and IFVs (infantry fighting vehicles) are usually concentrated in armoured divisions.
However, none of this is evident within the Georgian Army. Instead, they have a little of everything across all of their ‘light infantry’ brigades. The troops are not true light infantry, since they are taken everywhere by truck, and nor are the brigades light, as they contain a number of tanks and heavy artillery guns.
The Georgian tank force is not extensive, and it is spread very thinly across all five brigades. Interestingly enough, this was an error also made by the French military at the beginning of the Second World War. The French forces had just the same number of tanks as their German opponents, but the German armour was concentrated in specific divisions (the famous panzer units) that smashed the thin lines of French tank defence. As I said previously, I’ve been told by many Georgians that defeat was determined by the larger number of tanks fielded by the Russian Army; I suppose that’s true to an extent, since the Georgian infantry seemed incapable of dealing with them, but had the Georgian armour been concentrated in dedicated brigades it would have been far more of an even fight.
I would re-organise those five Brigades into the following; two armoured, two (real) light infantry and one airborne (they do have the helicopters to do it, as well as the facilities to train paratroopers). Georgia has a mountain warfare school; why not have one light infantry brigade specialising in this type of combat? It seems to me that at the present each brigade is trying to do a little of everything, but it clearly isn’t working.
As for the Reserve forces, I’m sure plenty of young men could be motivated to join with the promise of extra money for a few weekends a month. I also wouldn’t limit the Reserves to infantry forces; they would also be useful in main battle tank crew replacement, signals, intelligence or even special forces roles (the British Armed Forces have reserve units for the elite forces, including the SAS. The American Green Berets also have National Guard forces).
I’m going to write a letter to this effect to the Ministry of Defence. I’m fully aware that they will ignore it, but it’s better than nothing. I actually sent the same to a Facebook group of Georgian military fanatics, but that was ignored, too. To those people I would say this; if you really care so much about your country and your armed forces, then open your fucking ears. Stop trying to blame defeat on Russian superiority, listen to some constructive criticism and blame your own failures. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but that’s the way it is. There’s talk of another war in the future if the Americans should invade Iran after Saakashvili predictably offered Georgian military bases for American use, which the Russians made angry noises about. If that indeed does come to pass, don’t complain when a young Georgian man who did 21 days training drops his empty rifle and surrenders. For all the fine talk of Georgian fighting spirit and military rhetoric….oh, I can’t be bothered to write anymore, you’ve got the point.
End of broadcast….
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