Another ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been interrupted by yet another conflict, and as we have said before, this will continue over and over again, how can there be a real ceasefire if Azerbaijan doesn’t take Naka? And in the recent conflict, drones have once again come into play, and after beating up Armenian anti-aircraft weapons and armored forces, they are starting to take on the trenches and foxholes.
According to is social media pictures show that the Azerbaijani drone in the air sneak attack, with a cross frame aimed at the trench, and then a precision weapon down, the soldiers on the ground suddenly drowned in smoke. From the pictures, this drone is of average height, and it seems that the other side doesn’t even have basic air defenses anymore, allowing the drone to travel to and fro, and the soldiers are only passive.
I’m sure this group of soldiers is not the only one who was named by drones in the trenches, which should be common, so does it mean that digging trenches is no longer useful in modern warfare? After all, in traditional military doctrine, soldiers dig trenches for basic tactical defense techniques. Many veterans will tell you that on the battlefield, as long as you’re not firing, then you have to dig trenches, or dig a foxhole. Because when the other side comes under fire, the best bulletproof vest is useless, not as useful as a randomly dug out foxhole a few dozen centimeters away.
Even after the trench warfare of World War I was over, the World War II era had a variety of tanks with rapid assault capabilities, but with terrain and anti-tank guns, infantry anti-tank trenches were still very useful. For example, in the classic Battle of Bastogne, American airborne troops without armor, is the use of forested and hilly terraces and foxholes to carry through waves of German attacks.
In the modern age of precision strike weapons, however, trenches seem to be of little use, as they provide protection for soldiers from a planar perspective, but from an aerial, three-dimensional perspective, they have no defensive power against precision strike weapons. The defensive role of modern trenches is drastically diminishing, including some tunnels, and drilling and smart cruise missiles are capable of striking outside of conventional ballistic trajectories. The current situation in the Asian-Asian conflict is still because the Arab side does not have powerful air warplanes, otherwise just a round of fixed-wing manned fighter strikes would make it impossible for light infantry to dig trenches at all.
No wonder it is said that modern warfare digs not trenches but graves, and that soldiers are instead unable to get out of foxholes and are even more inflexible than in the open. In other words, infantry in modern warfare has no place to hide under the precise strikes in the air, and if they stay in the armored carriers or infantry fighting vehicles, they are still not safe. In a fortification or bunker it’s even more of a live target and there’s no way to run. So this also shows a problem, against the air precision strike is how important, like Armenia does not have a systematic air defense force, the improvised air defense is gradually exhausted, the ground target is almost like a target. Now Azerbaijan is just a lowly U.S. military, without a large number of fighter jets, can only rely on drones to slowly remove, if the country is using absolute air power, it is estimated that a few days can bomb a Naka battlefield.
Of course, counter-drone precision strikes aren’t that difficult for countries with some air defense capability. For example, electronic jamming, in the worst case, full-band jamming is not used by everyone. You can also use a variety of air defense weapons to hit drones, or long-range anti-drone takeoff airfields, and with man-portable air defense weapons and anti-aircraft artillery can also be used in time to intercept incoming precision strike weapons, after all, like TB-2 such drones mount also only 2. So modern warfare is really a systemic confrontation, and if any of the weapons in the system are missing, then it’s a lame tactic, and it’s easy to end up with an asymmetric advantage over the other side.
Considering that at present the Armenian infantry digging trenches is basically useless, it is better to quickly shrink the force to prepare for a street battle, the current lack of armored forces and anti-aircraft weapons, the significance of field warfare is no longer much, rather than preserving the living forces. Of course, Armenia’s last hope is the Russian mediation, but for now, it is difficult for Azerbaijan to stop without taking Nagorno-Karabakh, unless a third party is able to impose a stronger force.
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