(David Scott Mathieson’s post from the MYANMAR NOW on 11 November 2024.)
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| Femal soldiers of Arakan Army (AA). |
The evolution of warfare in Myanmar: Nearly four years of post-coup conflict have
transformed the way Myanmar’s military and its many enemies wage war against
each other.
One year after the launch of Operation 1027 and the
escalation of armed conflict throughout Myanmar, and nearing four years of
repressive rule by the 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.
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| MDY-PDF commanders with a TNLA commander. |
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.
The early days of the 2021 revolution followed this
model, with hit-and-run ambushes in the Dry Zone, and EAOs and their new PDF
allies striking at isolated bases. Yet this began to change in late-2022, and
most dramatically when Operation 1027 was launched in late 2023, the most
daring coup de main in Myanmar insurgent history.
The Brotherhood Alliance, comprising the Myanmar
National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Arakan Army (AA) and the Ta’ang
National Liberation Army (TNLA), and their constellation of alliances, have
been at the forefront of this evolution.
Increasingly the conflict in northern Shan, Kachin,
Karen (Kayin), and Rakhine states are transitioning from classic insurgency to
either greater conventional warfare or a hybrid of unconventional war and
conventional operations. What does this mean?
In Myanmar’s reality, it could be seen as both
symbolic and tactical: conventional wars are usually cast as two nation states
in open hostilities with each other. The SAC’s multiple protagonists are
seeking forms of new political arrangements that could be seen as inter-state
competition within Myanmar.
This new hybridity of warfare is also strongly
evident in the use of tactics, where EAOs mass main force troops and seize
large patches of territory, including urban areas such as Lashio, Mogok, and
many more.
The fighting in Rakhine has been largely conventional, as the AA has methodically advanced on regime-controlled territory and painstakingly cleared enemy forces out of the area, from the capture of the Hnone Bu tactical base in Paletwa in late 2023 and the Mee Wa firebase several weeks later, to the fall of the Maung Shwe Lay navy base in September, often after prolonged sieges and a combination of infantry assaults and increasing use of drone strikes and artillery.
So, too, the Sit Tat, which is operating almost
completely as a conventional force in its multiple areas of operations, using
its advantage as a largely conventionally configured military that has waged
mostly punitive counter-insurgency operations in the past. An order of battle
largely designed to repulse outside invaders is now being used against multiple
domestic opponents, as it has been for decades.
An in-depth study of the Myanmar military’s counter-insurgency approaches would likely conclude it violated almost all central tenets of fighting insurgencies, and was a hybrid of conventional warfare, pacification, and wanton cruelty.
Many insurgencies also mixed insurgent hit-and-run
tactics with aspects of conventional operations: most revolutionary forces in
Myanmar over decades were all “seeing like a state” and many have been
configured along conventional military lines, often with lineages from British
and American forces, or the strong influence of the Chinese Communist Party in
Kokang and Wa areas, and through the Communist Party of Burma.
In past periods of the civil war in which operating
space was fluid, the military defined white (central authority controlled),
brown (contested space), and black (insurgent controlled) areas, common to many
counter-insurgency conflicts.
However, since Operation 1027, some semblance of a
“frontline” in many spaces has formed, especially in northern Shan State and
since Mogok fell to the TNLA, in response to which multiple attempts at Sit Tat
counter-offensives have been mounted to take back lost territory. Many fighting
areas throughout Rakhine State have also been forms of frontlines, as the AA
methodically besieges military base areas and then overruns civilian towns.
The Myanmar Peace Monitor has mapped some 80 towns
that have fallen to resistance forces, most of them since Operation 1027. This
marks an unprecedented shift to urban warfare utterly unique in seven decades
of civil war. Insurgents don’t go into towns unless they can hold them, which
by and large has transpired. The major challenge will be defending them,
administering them, and then governing. That is a clear indication of the shift
into conventional warfare.
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| A Russian howitzer captured by MNDAA the Kokang Army. |
One major development that illustrates the still
asymmetric nature of the conflict is the Sit Tat’s combined arms approach to
operations, especially in the use of heavy firepower. Combined arms can be
described as “indirect and direct fire to support ground manoeuvre and [close]
with the enemy.” In multiple battlescapes across Myanmar, the military is
utilising heavy firepower from airstrikes and increasingly drone strikes,
artillery, and by naval forces.
Airstrikes have received, rightly, a great deal of
attention, especially because of their dramatic surge following Operation 1027.
Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica has calculated that from May to August 2024, there
were 820 airstrikes resulting in 455 civilians killed and 819 injured. Compare
this to 2021, when airstrikes were employed much less but have gradually risen,
with destructive effects on the civilian population and slowing down, but not
stopping, resistance advances.
Air power began to be more dramatically used during
the resumption of the war against the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) in
2011, and then the several years of spreading armed conflict in northern Shan
State and Arakan State when it was largely Mi-35 helicopter gunships used.
The deployment of air power now is by multiple jet fighter-bombers with, at times, fuel air explosives and precision-guided munitions, used across the country. This is a mixture of low- and high-tech bombing, including using the slow-moving twin-propeller light transport Y-12 aircraft to drop mortar rounds out of windows.
The deployment of drones, or unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), by almost all armed groups in Myanmar has arguably been the
most dramatic element of the revolution in military affairs since the coup.
Widely used by ground troops as surveillance systems before 2021, UAVs have
rapidly entered the order of battle of the Sit Tat for surveillance and target
acquisition for artillery, target correction capability to make fire support
more accurate, and increasingly, for delivering large payloads via weaponised UAVs.
Chinese-made drones such as the Sky O2A, CH3A, and
the Yellow Cat A2 are now all in service, as is the Russian Orlan 10E, and
large Chinese-made agricultural quadcopter drones that have bedevilled many
EAOs during 2024 with accurate and high-temp attacks. In intensifying attacks
against resistance forces in Tanintharyi Region, the Sit Tat has been deploying
high numbers of UAVs to attack ahead of ground assaults. On October 22, the SAC
used drones in its first ever attack on the headquarters of the KNU in Brigade
7, without inflicting any casualties.
EAOs have also made greater use of drones, seen
most dramatically in the fighting to take Lashio in late July and early August.
The MNDAA used hundreds of drone strikes. PDFs are making significant headway
in their use of drones, utilising their technically proficient members to
manufacture craft UAVs, including 3D printer wingspans, and convert smaller
drones to carry mortar rounds.
In several cases, Sit Tat or Myanmar Police Force bases have been almost completely destroyed by drone strikes on security personnel who refused to surrender. While the drone competition has been intensive and fast paced, the SAC’s superior access to Chinese, Russian, and potentially Iranian technology suggest an important asymmetry to consider. Nevertheless, the EAO and PDF innovation in this field could be an important counterpoint to the junta’s air power and artillery.
Artillery is often overlooked in conflict analysis,
but has been essential for Sit Tat operations for many years, especially since
its Artillery Command was significantly expanded in the 1990s, although
Russian-supplied equipment seems to be more efficient than the Chinese-supplied
pieces.
Firebases are crucial for integrated territorial
control across Myanmar, by directing artillery fire at approaching insurgents,
targeting, or protecting, road transport, to protect infantry columns with
“creeping fire” (marching barrages of fire ahead of manoeuvring troops), and in
areas throughout Myanmar to terrorise civilians with random attacks.
Methodically targeting these firebases is a little
known but crucial element of resistance forces’ strategies to consolidate their
occupation of liberated areas.
This can be seen in three concurrent battles over
the past several months involving different resistance forces besieging and
eventually taking control of major hilltop bases. One is the TNLA’s fight for
control of Tawng Hkam, a village in Shan State’s Nawnghkio Township that hosts
the regime’s Artillery Operations Command 902.
Another is the battle for the Mae Taung strategic
hilltop artillery base, which the AA had to capture on October 7 before it
could march on the Western Regional Military Command headquarters in Rakhine
State’s Ann Township. (The AA has reportedly used captured heavy artillery as
part of its ongoing siege of the town of Ann, but this has yet to be
confirmed.)
And the third is the Karen National Liberation
Army’s attacks on the Swe Taw Kone firebase south of Myawaddy, which was
overrun two weeks ago after a siege of several months.
In years past, it was exceedingly rare for EAOs to
attempt to overrun heavily defended firebases, although the AA made a huge
effort in early 2020 to take the Mee Wa base in Paletwa; that effort failed,
with heavy casualties inflicted, but was repeated, this time successfully, in
late 2023.
Recent mapping by the Center for Arakan Studies shows in detail the number of military and Border Guard Police (BGP) camps in each of the 10 townships the AA has overrun since November 2023. Paletwa, including the Mee Wa Tactical Operations Command that fell in early 2024, had 10 installations, while Maungdaw had 25 and Buthidaung 18. These are all major military undertakings by an army with an estimated troop strength of around 40,000 soldiers.
The EAOs have long faced a disadvantage with heavy
firepower. The Brotherhood Alliance and other resistance forces have used
unguided 107mm Type 63 ground-to-ground rockets for several years, even bombing
Pyin U Lwin and Lashio in 2019. AA footage of fighting around Maungdaw in
recent months shows fighters using a range of rocket-propelled grenades and the
venerable 75mm recoilless rifle, a mainstay of Myanmar insurgent forces for
decades.
One ongoing development could be the revolution’s
use of heavier artillery, having seized multiple weapons systems from the
firebases overrun over the past year. These appear to include the
Russian-supplied D-30 122mm howitzer (Moscow delivered some 500 pieces 20 years
ago) which has a range of 15-20km, or the heavier M-46 130mm field gun, and
several variants of truck mounted Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.
The military manufactures most of its own
ammunition for these pieces, large stockpiles of which are now in resistance
armouries. The EAOs and PDFs have also captured multiple 81, 82 and 120mm
mortars, as evidenced by their ample “show and tell” after-action displays of
equipment and ammunition.
The challenge is how do revolutionary forces
repurpose them all without adequate training? Captured Sit Tat troops could
well be employed to instruct EAOs on their use, willingly or under duress, but
it’s not clear how much of the equipment has been disabled or is still
operative. But this also suggests a significant reworking of insurgent doctrine
if captured conventional weapons systems are incorporated into operations.
However, if many EAOs wish to hold onto captured territory, a transition to
conventional defence using heavier firepower is a major element of that change.
The junta’s navy has also been involved in fire support operations across Myanmar in unprecedented volume since the coup, along the Chindwin, Ayeyarwady, Salween and Kaladan rivers and along the Rakhine coast. In late March, the navy bombarded Dhamma Tha, a village on the Gyaing River in Mon State’s Kyaikmaraw Township, destroying 400 civilian homes.
By some local reports, the navy is operating over
30 vessels along the coasts and rivers of Rakhine State, many of which have
been engaged in support bombardments for Sit Tat operations and punishment
attacks on towns that have fallen to the AA. Yet the AA has been remarkably
adept at targeting naval ships, sinking several in early 2023 as the rout of
the Sit Tat gathered pace and soldiers and their families fled the area by
boat.
River resupply convoys from Mandalay to Bhamo on
the upper reaches of the Ayeyarwady River have been targeted: most vessels are
festooned with rubber car tires for added protection. Navy boats have also been
used as direct fire support for ground troops retaking villages along the
river.
Similar to airstrikes, naval operations are
remarkable not because of their use, but the relatively high operational tempo
in multiple locations on a daily basis. Yet as seen in Rakhine, these combined
arms operations have not blunted more conventional forces attacks: they have
inflicted massive punishment, but are not sufficient to fully deter EAO
advances.
The Dry Zone Disorder
One part of Myanmar where the shift to hybrid
warfare is not evident is in the Anya Dry Zone of Sagaing Region, and in the
conflict zones of Magway and Mandalay regions. These areas have hundreds of
armed actors, PDFs and other permutations, with some level of EAO
involvement—KIO forces in the north and the AA assisting some groups in Magway.
Large parts of the Dry Zone are a violent anarchy,
with increasing reports of abuses by revolutionary forces against civilians,
and infighting between armed groups. The patterns of resistance are still
mostly hit-and-run attacks on road convoys, ambushing Sit Tat patrols, police
stations, and some smaller military installations.
Airstrikes and artillery fire on civilians and
insurgents alike are intensive, and a clear tactic of war. The burning of some
90,000 homes throughout Myanmar has been particularly intensive in Sagaing,
which has borne the brunt of the domicide committed by the junta’s forces.
An industry of speculative analysis has emerged of
Western nongovernmental organisations funding research that counts PDFs in the
Dry Zone and seeks to track relations and leadership patterns: a pointless
exercise that produces little insight and provides no real understanding of how
patterns of conflict have changed, probably because the Dry Zone is stuck in a
pattern of violence that has transcended revolution and transitioned to
retribution and vengeance between communities.
The National Unity Government (NUG) has claimed
progress in its local administration in Anya, but the security aspects of these
efforts have contributed to the chaos, creating an overly bureaucratised system
and far too many armed actors with elaborate reporting lines. The currently
fashionable approach to “bottom up federalism” is not working in the Dry Zone,
and the NUG looks incapable of establishing order, let alone fostering a vision
of what a post-SAC security landscape might look like.
Yet there could be grounds for optimism in the Dry
Zone, where recent developments suggest the possibility of reducing inter-group
conflict, creating more productive alliances, and making the transition to
conventional operations.
The All Burma Students Democratic Front has slowly
but steadily expanded in the region, recruiting and training new soldiers and
fostering better cooperation between different PDFs. The Bamar People’s
Liberation Army has also announced recently that hundreds of its troops will be
redeployed to Sagaing Region from northern Shan State.
Both of these groups could potentially inject a measure of discipline and professionalism into the disordered conflict landscape. But the disorder in Anya runs deep, and this lack of cohesion and cooperation only serves to support the Sit Tat’s brutal blend of pacification and punishment.
Yet in so many other parts of Myanmar, the Sit Tat
and EAOs are locked into an increasingly destructive conventional conflict that
has been transformed by nearly four years of fighting. Two elements stand out:
the institutional survival of the Myanmar armed forces through heavy firepower,
and the resolve of many EAOs to continue their offensives to end SAC rule. The
intensity of the conflict and the SAC’s commitment to high-order violence to
survive will likely intensify as the regime continues to lose ground.
(David Scott Mathieson is an independent
analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues in Myanmar.)
(Myanmar Army' Drone-Units training video.)
