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by extraAccount
1908 days ago
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The recent conflicts including the recent nagorno-karabakh is a very interesting change of pace in modern warfare. Ukraine and Syria taught us that you still need a standing army and money to handle conflicts which involve a bunch of different armed ideological groups, foreign sponsored fighters and local terrorists/rebels. Azerbajan, Syria, most African countries and Russia are paying mercenaries to not have their names on certain conflicts and not lose nationals. And the Armenia vs Azerbajan conflict was interesting because it is one of the first nation vs nation, army vs army war. Since both had decent Air defence systems, very few aircraft were directly used to fight or drop any bombs. Instead, they used missles, drones and suicide drones, which were more accurate then missles and cheaper than actual drones. None of these conflicts so far really touched on the use of a Navy, because the conflicts were all local or in neighboring countries. So maybe its telling that navies are only useful with how China employs them, to enforce and scare of fishermen in their own waters or deterr other navies (like the Phillapines vs China sea debacle). And to transport troops across continents. All us this + cyberwarfare and propoganda is this new era. |
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If you are at all interested in how conflicts are going to proceed in the early 21st century, reading up on this war is essential:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict
One thing that was mentioned is suicide drones. The umbrella term is 'loitering munitions', as they describe a wider range of platforms with similar intents. You can read more about them here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition
For reference: The US has the Switchblase 600, a man-portable anti-armor drone/missile with a ~50mi range and ~40min of loiter time total, with a 'dash' speed of 115mph. It's controlled via touchscreen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade