Russian Air Force after Georgia, part 1

Flight's Moscow correspondent Vladimir Karnozov guest-blogs this week with a five-part after action report on the Georgia Air War, obviously from the Russian perspective. Karnozov is kindly filling in while this blogger is traveling all week on an assignment. Here's part 1.

Russia  to increase military spending. What will the money go for?

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that additional funding for new equipment for the Russian armed forces will be provided to eliminate deficiencies highlighted during the war. Petrodollars are in abundance, but how shall they be spent? Certainly, that's a key question for Kremlin strategists now. Probably, they will set immediate, medium and long-term objectives taking account of the war lessons.

We may expect the following in the short-term:

• The two main workhouses of this war, the Sukhoi Su-24M frontal bomber and Su-25 attack aircraft, will continue to stay in service for quite a long time simply because the capability of the industry is insufficient to replace them in a reasonably short time. It is expected that the Kremlin will allocate additional money to speed up fleet upgrades into recently certified Su-24M2 and Su-25SM versions with improved night strike capability, accurate navigation and extended PGM arsenal.
• Additional measures may include reducing vulnerability for the Su-25, which accounted for three of the air force's four losses.
• Immediate and medium-term actions are expected in relation to the Tupolev Tu-22M fleet. This may well be given a top priority in the view of the humiliating loss in Georgian airspace of a Tu-22M3-R, a spy-plane variation of the Tu-22M3 supersonic swing-wing "Euro-strategic" bomber. On 9 August one Tupolev was downed by a radar-guided missile, most likely the 9K37 Buk [NATO SA-11 Gadfly]. The airplane was flown by top-class military test-pilots (the machine belonged to Valery Chkalov's Main Flight Test Center of the Russian MoD, Russian acronym GLITS), which makes the case even more humiliating for Moscow.

Medium-term

With the war having once again demonstrated the role of air force, the Kremlin could look more kindly upon the wishes of its military pilots. Russia's air force commander voiced those in July:

• funding for a three year purchase contract for Su-34 frontal bombers
  
• more money to buy Su-35 multirole fighters for two or three regiments
  
• accelerating production of the Mi-28N attack and Ansat training and utility helicopters.

Long-term

The war could not have been won without a massive air lift operation on moving 5,000 of paratroopers from Central Russia to Vladikavkaz (from where they marched to Tskhinvali), and deployment of 9,000 paratroopers to Sukhumi (where their presence led to the Georgian troops left the Kodori Gorge without fighting). Although the Russian Transport Aviation proved up to the task, it had to stress available resources.

The An-124 Ruslan and Il-76 fleets are old, needing modernization. At the same time, restarting Ruslan production may look less attractive to Moscow now, in the view of Antonov design house's location in Kiev, the capital of a Georgian ally. It may choose to spend the money on Il-476 (reincarnation of the Il-76) and refurbishing more Il-76MDs with PS90A turbofans (Il-76MD-90).

Less obvious, but nonetheless pressing need is modernization of the vast Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopter fleet: these machines made a substantial contribution into the Russian victory, but did so without much exposure.

Finally, the Kremlin's greater desire to spend extra money on defense may help RSK MiG materialize its dream of selling rejected Algerian MiG-29SMT/UBTs to the Russian air force. This would substantially decrease the debt burden on the company (the debts amount to nearly $2billion), while the Russian air force would get a good number of potent multirole fighters with long calendar lifetimes.