In A Year Of Conflict, Future Of War Looks Much Like Its Past
Date
12/30/2023 12:11:06 AM
(MENAFN- Asia Times) Even well into 2022, long after the war in Ukraine had started, the media were still“reporting the last war,” so to speak. The New Yorker headlined a report on the Bayraktar TB2 drone that was widely considered to have won the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war,“The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare.”
Little wonder, because the TB2 had proved formidable beyond its size, an unmanned drone that carried laser-guided bombs. Throughout the six-week war, Azerbaijan used the TB2 to startling effect, blowing up tanks and troops and then broadcasting video of the attacks.
For a fraction of the cost of conventional fighter jets, Azerbaijan was able to dominate the airspace above Nagorno-Karabakh and win a swift victory.
The rest of the world noticed, and militaries began to reassess what role small, cheap drones might play in future wars. When the Ukraine war started, the Ukrainian military used the TB2s to devastating effect , taking out Russian tanks, trains and even ships – and gleefully posting the footage to social media.
A new era of war had begun, where a drone costing just a few million dollars could prove highly effective against one of the world's most powerful militaries. The financial asymmetry was frightening.
Yet the two major wars of this year have shown that, while such asymmetry exists, the future of war is much more similar to its past.
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