Strength
The South Ossetian military has a total of 16,000 soldiers. 2,500 soldiers are on active duty and 13,500 are reservists.
At the beginning of the 2008 South Ossetia war, the armed forces possessed the following equipment:
- 15 tanks: 5 T-55 and 10 T-72.
- 24 self-propelled howitzers: 12 122mm 2S1 "Gvozdika and 12 152mm 2S3 "Akatsiya".
- 12 howitzers 122mm D-30.
- 6 multiple rocket launchers 122mm BM-21 "Grad".
- 4 anti-tank guns 100mm MT-12 "Rapira".
- 30 mortars.
- 52 armoured combat vehicles BRDM, BMP-1 and BTR-70.
- 6 highly mobile, short-range, low altitude surface-to-air missile systems 9K31 "Strela-1".
- 10 short-range air defense cannons ZU-23-2.
- 4 helicopters Mi-8.
After the 2008 South Ossetia War, some of the tanks that were captured from Georgia's forces have been transferred to the South Ossetian military.
Read more about this topic: Military Of South Ossetia
Famous quotes containing the word strength:
“Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,
Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will,—
But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still
With the sure strength that fearless truth endows.”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
“Here, with whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down and with only the serenity and the calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
““There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet;”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)