Friendly fire downed Russia jets in Georgia-report

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia lost six planes in its war with Georgia last August, not four as was officially announced, and at least three were downed by "friendly fire," a Russian military journal reported.

Russia defeated neighbouring Georgia and briefly seized large chunks of its land in a five-day war after the U.S. ally tried to retake the pro-Moscow rebel region of South Ossetia.

But the war uncovered serious deficiencies in the Russian armed forces, prompting doubts among some analysts as to whether Moscow would be able to defeat a bigger enemy and spurring the Kremlin to accelerate long-delayed military reforms.

The authoritative Moscow Defence Brief said Russia lost six planes, not four as the government announced at the time, in a report citing military sources and media reports that is to be published on Thursday in its quarterly edition.

"The absence of cooperation between the Russian Army and Air Force led them to conduct completely separate campaigns," said the journal, published by the independent Moscow-based think tank, the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

"Pilots were not fully apprised of the situation on the ground, received inexact and late intelligence, and at the start of hostilities ... they did not even have exact information on the structure and strength of the Georgian Air Defence Forces." Official data provided by deputy chief of the General Staff Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn showed Russia lost three Su-25 ground attack aircraft and one Tu-22M3 long-range bomber.

But providing crew names, exact times, locations and types of aircraft, the Moscow Defence Brief argued that Russia in fact had lost six aircraft in combat during the five-day war.

The two aircraft that were lost but not mentioned in official reports were Su-24M front-line bombers, the report said.