Myanmar's Resistance Finally Takes The Fight To Junta's Air Power

But Tada-U matters for another reason. The air force has become the military's answer to a problem it has faced throughout the post-coup war: how to keep fighting in places its army cannot securely hold.

When ground columns stall, aircraft strike ahead of them. When isolated bases need ammunition or reinforcements, helicopters and transport aircraft deliver them.

Even after military regime troops lose a town, aircraft can continue bombing it. ACLED, an independent global conflict-monitoring group, has found that air power remains the military's clearest advantage over resistance groups and is increasingly used ahead of troop advances.

Myanmar's resistance still lacks combat aircraft of its own and has only limited air-defense capability, with some forces relying on heavy machine guns and anti-materiel rifles.

The more important change is the use of homemade drones. Resistance units have assembled drones from commercial, often Chinese-made components and locally produced munitions, adapting civilian technology with limited resources.

The military has its own air-defense and counter-drone systems. It operates Russian-supplied Pechora-2M air-defense systems, while the Russian Defense Ministry announced a 2021 agreement to supply Pantsir-S1 systems.

The Myanmar Defense & Security Institute (MDSI), a research group established by former military officers who defected after the 2021 coup, has also reported the military's deployment of Chinese-made Skyfend counter-drone systems.

Drones are also changing the fighting on the Irrawaddy River. Beginning in late August, forces led by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) repeatedly attacked a large military flotilla carrying troops, ammunition and supplies toward Bhamo, reportedly destroying or damaging much of the convoy.

Resistance-released videos circulating online appear to show drones being used against military vessels during the wider river campaign.

Cheap drones have not totally erased the military's conventional advantage. What they have done is give resistance forces new ways to reach expensive assets that were previously mainly untouchable.

Aircraft losses have mounted too. MDSI reported in November 2025 that the Myanmar Air Force had lost 20 aircraft and helicopters since the 2021 coup, which it described as the heaviest losses in the force's history. The tally includes losses from different causes, including mechanical failures and aircraft brought down by resistance forces.

The Soviet-Afghan War offers a historical comparison, but only up to a point.

Soviet forces enjoyed overwhelming air superiority until US-supplied Stinger missiles gave the Mujahideen a far more effective way to threaten Soviet aviation from 1986, forcing Soviet pilots to change how and where they flew. But Myanmar's resistance has had no such Western arms pipeline.

In Syria, Russian air power helped sustain Bashar al-Assad for years, but it could not save his government when ground forces collapsed in late 2024, and key foreign backing weakened.

The Vietnam War demonstrated the same basic limit decades earlier: bombing can impose enormous costs, but aircraft cannot occupy and hold territory.

To be sure, Myanmar is not Afghanistan, Syria or Vietnam. Its war mixes guerrilla warfare with increasingly conventional battles and territorial campaigns. But aircraft still cannot occupy a town, patrol a road or administer territory. Soldiers have to do that.