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By Richard Fernandez

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The ghost in the machine 2

August 14, 2008 - 2:17 pm - by Richard Fernandez
Bob Murphy
2008-08-15 17:05:10

The most important thing we can do on the ground now to pull the Russkies up is to take down some of their planes, preferrably combat aircraft though any military transport landing in Georgia should be fair game. At least 10 planes.
With deniable plausibility, of course.
Their dominance of the air must be challenged. With the Russians air umbrella the Georgians cannot begin to stand up to them.
There are all sorts of light, air deployable anti-aircraft systems that can do the job.
Those systems should be vehicle portable so they can go to the places the Russians are targetting.
Accompanying them should be vehicle borne anti-tank systems because the Russkies also need to lose some tanks. At least 40, perhaps more.
As for the Black Sea Fleet, Israel has wonderful fast torpedo/missile boats. I’d say pics in the press of just one Russian destroyer showing its rusty hull bottom as it slipped beneath the waves would be desirable if they bring their fleet into this conflict, though a bit of damage might be sufficient to challenge, a shot across the bows so to speak.
The technology should be the cheapest most portable type capable of doing the job.
The Georgians might need some trigger pullers for those new weapons systems at first but the higher their involvement the better.
A few of their troops should be back in the sandbox or in a US military base getting trained to operate those systems pronto.
And the next round of students after that should be Ukrainian, and Polish.
We need to get anti-aircraft and anti-tank capability into the armed forces of friendly nations asap.
It might well be impossible to stop a concerted Russkie attack in places like Georgia. But they should not escape unscathed.