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12-11-2024, 10:38 AM
One year after launch of Op 1027, the escalation of armed conflict throughout Myanmar, & nearing 4 years of repressive rule by State Administration Council (SAC), how much has the nature of warfare changed in Myanmar?.
The answer is—dramatically and in multiple ways, and for varied reasons. There has been military adaptation and innovation in all three branches of the Myanmar armed forces—the army, air force, and navy—and by ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and other resistance forces under the general title of People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), in ways that have transformed the shape of fighting.
In some ways, the past three years of conflict represent a form of revolution in military affairs for EAOs, which have dramatically adapted their doctrine and technological capacity, and has seen the Sit Tat, or Myanmar military, fight an almost total war for survival. Understanding these changes in the nature of warfare is essential for analysts and the media, but also for efforts to understand the security sector and to start planning ahead for deconfliction, future peace agreements, and for human rights and accountability documentation when the timing is right.
The challenges of understanding these changes are daunting, especially as the conflict is ongoing and being waged in multiple locations and extremely complex situations. There needs to be more attention on aspects of the conflict that have a major impact on the course of the revolution and how they impact the civilian population. There are two broad and interlinked phenomena that are useful to understand the evolution of warfare since 2021 and track the trends of change amongst multiple armed actors.
Convergence of Guerrilla and Conventional Warfare: For most of Myanmar’s civil war since the 1950s, guerrilla warfare was mostly the norm across the country: small unit tactics, hit-and-run ambushes, sabotage of infrastructure, occasional storming of isolated hilltop bases. However, there were also periods of semi-conventional warfare when insurgents defended major base areas and the Sit Tat would assault them with divisional sized units: it was a major factor in the creation of the Light Infantry Divisions in the 1960s.
Offensives against Communist base areas in the Bago Yoma or northern Shan State, or against Karen National Union (KNU) bases along the Thailand-Myanmar border, were large-scale operations but brutally low-technology events, an infantry war with light artillery back up and often thousands of civilian porters to carry supplies. So much of the conflict was in isolated hill and jungle country, where domination of the highest summit determined advantage and supply lines.
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/the-evol...myanmar-2/
The answer is—dramatically and in multiple ways, and for varied reasons. There has been military adaptation and innovation in all three branches of the Myanmar armed forces—the army, air force, and navy—and by ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and other resistance forces under the general title of People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), in ways that have transformed the shape of fighting.
In some ways, the past three years of conflict represent a form of revolution in military affairs for EAOs, which have dramatically adapted their doctrine and technological capacity, and has seen the Sit Tat, or Myanmar military, fight an almost total war for survival. Understanding these changes in the nature of warfare is essential for analysts and the media, but also for efforts to understand the security sector and to start planning ahead for deconfliction, future peace agreements, and for human rights and accountability documentation when the timing is right.
The challenges of understanding these changes are daunting, especially as the conflict is ongoing and being waged in multiple locations and extremely complex situations. There needs to be more attention on aspects of the conflict that have a major impact on the course of the revolution and how they impact the civilian population. There are two broad and interlinked phenomena that are useful to understand the evolution of warfare since 2021 and track the trends of change amongst multiple armed actors.
Convergence of Guerrilla and Conventional Warfare: For most of Myanmar’s civil war since the 1950s, guerrilla warfare was mostly the norm across the country: small unit tactics, hit-and-run ambushes, sabotage of infrastructure, occasional storming of isolated hilltop bases. However, there were also periods of semi-conventional warfare when insurgents defended major base areas and the Sit Tat would assault them with divisional sized units: it was a major factor in the creation of the Light Infantry Divisions in the 1960s.
Offensives against Communist base areas in the Bago Yoma or northern Shan State, or against Karen National Union (KNU) bases along the Thailand-Myanmar border, were large-scale operations but brutally low-technology events, an infantry war with light artillery back up and often thousands of civilian porters to carry supplies. So much of the conflict was in isolated hill and jungle country, where domination of the highest summit determined advantage and supply lines.
https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/the-evol...myanmar-2/
