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The fact is no amount of weaponry is going to make Georgia able to withstand an attack by Russia. When you are a small country next to a nuclear superpower, you have to know your place and make a few sacrifices. It’s not fair, but that’s how the world has worked since the dawn of man.

Afghanistan, a small nation, had some limited success in brining a neighboring superpower to its knees.

Russia is a nuclear power. But it is not a superpower. Russian military equipment has fought US equipment before. It is indeed possible for some F-16's to knock out a hell of a lot of Russian made aircraft given proper training. Even a Georgian pilot with a Raptor could probably take down as many Russian jets as he could carry ammo for if we were to someday export those.

It is definitely possible for some M-1 Abrams to go through a hell of a lot of Russian armor. And that is without anti-tank mines.

It is definitely possible for Stinger missiles to take out lots and lots of Russian helicopters and aircraft.

All this has been done before against Russian equipment. Many of those who invaded Georgia were thugs and undisciplined paramilitary.

We and the Georgians could make it very painful for another invasion of Georgia if we wished.

American equipment has only fought outdated export versions of Soviet equipment, ie Iraq and Yugoslavia, and always with overwhelming odds in our favor, ie force multipliers like satellites, jamming planes, etc. The jets/tanks/etc used by Russia itself are an entirely different story.

If the US invested an enormous amoutn of money in the Georgian military (I’m talking tens of billions of dollars, not a few million), then Georgia would be able to give the Russians a bloody nose. But unlike western countries, that wouldn’t deter Russia. If the US suffered the same numbers of casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan as Russia did in Afghanistan or even Chechnya, millions of Americans would be storming the whitehouse and the president would have no choice but to call it off. THe Russian leadership has no such worries. The Russian population is so depressed that they regard large casualties as acceptable. Secondly, you can’t just give a lot of advanced equipment to someone and expect them to know how to use it. It takes years to develop the necessary training. LOok at how poorly Egypt/Syria did versus Israel in ‘67 despite having some fairly advanced equipment.

The simple truth is that there is no way for Georgia to defend itself against Russia. Russia knows it and the US knows it, the only one who doesn’t seem to know it is Sakashvili.

I don’t think it makes any difference to follow along Russia’s narrative and address their complaints. Russia’s response to missile defense for Poland was something like, “We will bomb you as a priority.” For Russia, if you make it more difficult for them to kill you, they consider that a threat.