Author: Rose Khoyetsian

On Nov. 9, an armistice was signed to end the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The conflict was relatively short lived, lasting from Sept. 27 to Nov. 9, but it proved to be an intense inter-state conflict fought by two heavily armed opponents. Both sides employed advanced military technology, with Azerbaijan proving the decisive victor in the war. The implications of the conflict continue to reverberate well outside the region given its potential significance for regional and great powers alike, while further spurring debates on the character of modern warfare.

Azerbaijan’s successful use of drones proved a tactical sensation, although it broadly confirmed long standing lessons on the devastating effect airpower can have on a large ground force with relatively poor air defenses. The use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in this conflict marks an evolution more so than a revolution in the applications of airpower.

Military establishments look to wars like Nagorno-Karabakh for insights about capabilities, doctrine, operational art and how their forces might fare against similarly armed adversaries or perhaps those with far more capable militaries. The United States is on a quest for defining conflicts, like the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, to shape the direction of its future investments, and consequently looks to wars such as the Russian conflict with Ukraine, or Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan, for lessons learned.

In terms of capabilities, it seems clear that remotely operated systems offer the advantage of airpower, sensors and precision-guided weapons to small and middle powers at a dramatically discounted price compared to the cost of manned aviation. This technology is diffusing much more rapidly than customized counters, or air defense systems designed to deal with it. The latter will eventually catch up, but in the interim, drones, especially loitering munitions drones, present a significant challenge for modern air defenses and ground forces. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict helped settle the question on whether legacy air defenses, such as the dated Soviet systems employed by Armenia, could be suitable or adapted to dealing with contemporary drones. The answer is decidedly negative, especially when combinations of drones are used for target identification and strikes, or via swarming tactics.

Another approach would emphasize the quantity of cheaper or disposable systems in Western militaries, trading out expensive boutique capabilities for numbers able to withstand attrition. However, legacy systems generate inertia in defense acquisition, and it is more likely that militaries will choose to better protect what they have than try to revamp their forces. A useful addition to standing militaries would be capabilities available in large quantities, based on cheaper or disposable systems.

Doctrinally, the war offers useful lessons, especially for Western audiences. Modern militaries tend to worship at the altar of maneuver warfare, and the U.S. in particular is vested in the cognitive effects of maneuver on enemy forces, or in doctrinal parlance, the ability to “impose multiple dilemmas.”

However, the diffusion of cheap, high-quality sensors on the battlefield negates many of the benefits of terrain and camouflage and can easily be backed by a reconnaissance-strike package. This raises doubts about the ability of maneuver to generate cognitive dilemmas for great or even middle powers. Similarly, dispersing forces may have negligible effects against loitering munitions, and as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict illustrated, terrain offers fewer advantages against such systems. Dispersal makes sense tactically, but in terms of operational design, the proliferation of cheap means of surveillance suggests that forces will have to accept much higher levels of attrition, especially against firepower-heavy militaries like Russia’s.

Many analysts, including myself, had expected terrain to be a significant factor in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and, in early analysis, for Armenian forces to fare much better in the conflict. In some ways this was accurate, given that Azerbaijan advanced in the south where it was easiest for ground units, but not in the north. Yet on the whole, this thesis was proven incorrect, and expectations that Armenia might fight to a stalemate seem incredibly rosy in retrospect. Azerbaijan was able to attrition Armenia’s defending forces with airpower. They in turn were ill-prepared for the war, lacking good lines to fall back to. 

There was considerable lag between the degradation of Armenian forces and Azerbaijani territorial advances, but momentum quickly shifted two weeks into the conflict. Early on, Azerbaijan appeared unable to translate tactical success into significant gains, which explains in part the surprise (including my own) at how quickly they were able to put Armenian forces into a precarious and untenable position a few weeks into the war.

Could Armenia have fought differently and won this conflict? The short answer is probably not, although it most certainly could have fared better. Armenia was disadvantaged from the outset given the quantitative and qualitative superiority on the Azerbaijani side, together with considerable Turkish support for Baku. Armenia’s political leadership appeared to be delusional about the military balance and the potential course of a war, while insufficiently investing in the right capabilities, force structure and prepared defenses. The problems were structural. For example, rather than buy more advanced air defense or electronic warfare systems, they invested in old and used OSA-AK air defense systems from Jordan. Azerbaijan had used drones and loitering munitions against Armenia in the four-day war of 2016, yet over the four years separating these respective conflicts, the Armenian military failed to adapt in almost every respect.