Georgia’s air force began with an unusual advantage. Aircraft plant No. 31 in Tbilisi, today Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing (TAM), built the Su-25 from 1978; English Wikipedia counts 582 single-seat Su-25s produced in Georgia between 1978 and 1989, plus 180 export Su-25Ks built from 1984. When the Soviet Union dissolved, the new state had a factory able to build and overhaul attack jets, but few aircraft and crews of its own.

By the eve of the 2008 war the fixed-wing force had settled at Marneuli. Vyacheslav Tseluiko, writing in CAST’s study The Tanks of August, lists the air force’s bases as Marneuli, with a squadron of Su-25 attack aircraft and a squadron of L-39 trainers, and Alekseevka in Tbilisi, with a Mi-8 squadron, a UH-1H squadron and a mixed squadron of Mi-8, Mi-14 and Mi-24 helicopters, plus air-defence bases and a training centre with An-2s. CAST counted 10 Su-25s, five of them upgraded to the Su-25KM standard with Israel’s Elbit Systems, 2 Su-25UB two-seaters and 12 L-39Cs.

Marneuli was also where young pilots were meant to become combat pilots. CAST records that more than 150 Georgian servicemen, including at least 30 pilots, took courses at the Kharkiv Air Force University in Ukraine in 2007 and 2008, and that the pilots then returned to Georgia to continue their training at the Marneuli airbase. The sources reached do not say when Marneuli was built or which Soviet units used it before 1992, and no date for its handover to Georgia was found.

The war began on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 with a Georgian artillery attack on Tskhinvali. The EU-commissioned fact-finding mission led by Heidi Tagliavini found that this attack opened the large-scale conflict and was not justified under international law, that much of Russia’s military response went far beyond the reasonable limits of defence, and that no single side bore overall responsibility. Georgia’s official position is that it acted against attacks on Georgian villages and the entry of Russian forces; Russia’s is that it intervened to protect its peacekeepers and citizens.

English Wikipedia says the Russian air force began striking targets in South Ossetia and in Georgia proper after 10:00 on 8 August. Among them was Marneuli: “A Georgian military airstrip in Marneuli was attacked and three persons were killed.” Wikipedia’s article on the town adds that the runway was destroyed. On the same day the Georgian Interior Ministry reported that Vaziani, near Tbilisi, had been hit by two bombs. Over the following days Russian aircraft also attacked the Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing plant near Tbilisi International Airport, and Russian troops entered the base at Senaki.

Georgian Su-25s flew close air support around Tskhinvali, according to English Wikipedia’s Su-25 article, which does not say from which airfield. No Georgian fixed-wing aircraft is reported destroyed at Marneuli in the sources checked; the Georgian ground losses that are reported were helicopters at Senaki and light transports whose location is not given. The dead at Marneuli are not named in any source reached, and whether they were servicemen or civilians was not established.

After the war the air force shrank. English Wikipedia says it was abolished as a separate branch in 2010 and merged into the Land Forces, and formally re-established in 2016, but that its fixed-wing aircraft were left unused until 2020. Key.Aero, reporting on 22 March 2021, said that the aircraft had been stored at Marneuli in southern Georgia.

On 9 June 2020 the defence minister Irakli Garibashvili said Georgia had the resources to repair, restore and even produce new Su-25s, Polygon reported. A contract with TAM, working with the State Military Scientific-Technical Centre Delta, was announced on 24 July 2020 to overhaul and return to service Su-25s, L-39C trainers and Mi-24, Mi-8MTV and UH-1H helicopters, and a new overhaul facility opened at TAM on 16 October 2020. On 6 March 2021 the first restored aircraft, a Su-25UB two-seater, completed its check flight from Tbilisi.

What is at Marneuli today is not published by base. English Wikipedia lists about ten Su-25s and eight L-39Cs for the whole service; neither figure has been confirmed by the Ministry of Defence, and this page does not give a count for Marneuli itself.

Marneuli does not appear among the seven aerodromes of the Georgian AIP, which lists only civil fields. Its presence shows in ENR 5.1, the list of restricted areas. UGR42 MARNEULI 4 is a circle of 1.2 NM from the ground to 3,500 ft, active around the clock “for use of Ministry of Defense”, where flights are allowed only with permission from the central command post. Around it UGR32 MARNEULI 1, a 5 NM circle up to FL140, is activated by prior agreement between the Ministry of Defence and air traffic services.

Two much larger areas, UGR33 MARNEULI 2 and UGR34 MARNEULI 3, reach from the ground to FL250 and are bounded to the south by the state borders with Azerbaijan and Armenia. They are activated by agreement with the Ministry of Defence rather than on a fixed schedule. Tbilisi International Airport lies about 27 km to the north-north-east of the Marneuli zone centre.