MOSCOW, NOvember 1 (AVN) -- Federal forces in Chechnya have not yet completed the circle around Grozny, a spokesman for the Air Force and Air Defence Army 4 headquarters said on Monday.
According to him, only advance units of the northern and western federal groups have managed to enter the city outskirts, while the eatren group has yet to eliminate guerrillas near the key town of Gudermes.
That is why federal aviation was assigned a mission to slacken guerrilla resistance as much as possible, the spokesman told the Militarty News Agency. Up to 70 percent of all combat missions are performed by aviation, he said, adding that it has inflicted over 50 missile and bombs strikes on guerrilla positions since Sunday.
In course of the anti-guerrilla operation in Chechnya, almost all ways of combat use of aviation were tested. According to Lieutenant-General Valery Gorbenko, the commander of Army 4, aviation supplies the unified federal command with all necessary intelligence data. Information obtained by photographic, electronic, technical, infrared, television and visual intelligence provides substantial additions to data of the secret services a and tactical intelligence.
In order to obtain information, federals are mostly using An-30 and MIG-25 planes of various modifications which are able to operate in the stratosphere, the general added.