I think we will view the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the Israeli wars on Gaza in the past decade (especially the 2021 war) as the beginning of a new era of fighting. The first characterized the predominantly Israeli and Turkish weapons systems against Russian systems. The second was Israeli and American weapons against Iran.
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles
Azerbaijan’s control of the skies, with controlled drones carrying ammunition, as well as so-called “suicide” drone attacks, was the essence of its success in the conflict. The main advantages of the power of modern, large and coordinated drones and the severe damage of the lack of anti-drone defenses were the overwhelming reason for Azerbaijan’s swift victory. The next day, I suspect every major army in the world has made an assessment of its unmanned and anti-drone capabilities.
Here is a good summary of the weapons and tactics used.
Missile defense
Pictures And the Videos Such people will likewise be shown around the world in the aftermath of the 2021 war between Israel and Gaza. In most of the coming wars, I doubt we will see indiscriminate fires on civilian cities that the Palestinians have used in their wars against Israel, but I fully expect to see such aerial battles – missiles and interceptors participate in mass air combat – over infantry, mechanical divisions, and warships in the future. Smart missiles in exchange for smart interceptors will attract huge budgets for research and development in the Ministry of Defense and will be a large part of weapons purchases.
Tunnels
Although the use of tunnels dug under the border into Israel played a major role in the 2014 war allowing Hamas to threaten terrorist infiltration into neighboring Israeli communities and provoke an Israeli ground invasion to destroy them, Israel has since developed the technology to detect it reliably enough that it is no longer a threat. Real. One of the lessons learned from the 2021 war is that attack tunnels are unlikely to play a major role in the way forward.
Arson as terrorism
In the wake of the Iron Dome’s success, Palestinians have begun to use incendiary balloons over the past few years. These have not played a major role in the current war but have sparked hundreds if not thousands of fires near Israeli communities in a very dry area and thus ignited easily over the past decade. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that arson has become a new technique for future terrorist groups to use as a convenient way to inflict a great deal of damage over a vast area while preventing easy identification of the attacker.
Tactics of targeting fighters included in civilian areas
This is of course a major issue that militaries facing terrorist / insurgent groups around the world will continue to deal with. There are a few new technologies used in these wars that militaries might consider in this case in the future. The first is the Israeli approach to communication, sending SMS and “knocking on the roof” – hitting the roof of a building that will be destroyed by empty missiles that do not damage the building itself but indicate that it will. It will strike soon and evacuate anyone inside. This approach was very successful in the 2021 war after moderately successful 2014 when it was first introduced. The Israelis have used them in situations where a large terrorist infrastructure (cyber command and intelligence centers, missile storage, military research and development facilities) was embedded in civilian structures. They have used this on several high-rise buildings in the past week, and reports indicate that there have been no casualties in these operations so far. Obviously, this is not ideal when the more important part of the mission is to hit personnel rather than hitting equipment / facilities, so it is definitely not an all-purpose solution but it did a good job of preventing civilian casualties in cases of damage being essential.
The second method worth discussing is Intentional misdirection used two days ago – Reporting the start of a ground invasion and moving tanks and personnel around the border to sell the story in order to push militants into the underground tunnel system before taking out the tunnels system with air strikes. This particular step likely will not be duplicated very much because such surprises have a limited shelf life. But it is likely that the increasing use of deception to separate combatants from civilians will continue, especially in the era of fake news. Obviously, the use of deception in war is as old as war itself, but I don’t remember seeing it being used precisely for this reason – to drive fighters out of their hideouts within civilian areas. Maybe someone else remembers other examples?
The importance of synchronization
Both the Palestinians and the Israelis, as well as the Azerbaijanis, have shown increased coordination in large-scale attacks. Palestinians launched a massive barrage of rockets simultaneously at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities within minutes and sometimes seconds in an effort to defeat the Israeli Iron Dome in 2021. Likewise, the Israelis improved their coordination of massive simultaneous attacks on Gaza’s tunnel system and a coordinated strike on Hamas leaders Across the strip – both pulled in admirably tight synchronization. One lesson from this is that in the era of missile warfare, we should expect massive battles in the sky over a very short period of time rather than long attacks with a few missiles fired simultaneously over a longer period of time. The other (and this also applies to the Azerbaijani-Armenian experience) is that in an era of advanced communication capabilities, intelligent coordination between different departments operating simultaneously will be crucial. In the case of Israel this was done with Fireweaver system.
This is my analysis of the main military lessons that can be learned from the wars of the past few years.
Please let me know what you think I missed or missed.
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