John Antal

Anybody who's been following the news for the past couple years or decades knows that we're on the cusp of one of those terrifying revolutions in military affairs, where the hard-won skills of previous generations gets shredded by new technologies, along with the flower of whatever generation has the misfortune to be on the frontlines. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is clearly the first major action, but before that, there was the almost forgotten 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. This show more book, written in 2021 and published a few weeks before Russian columns headed towards Kiev and were turned back by Bayraktar drones and Javelin missiles, is a mixed bag: a decent summary of a conflict not much covered in the west, breathless and naive transcription of defense industry brochures, and a muddled sketch towards a futurism of the "kill web".

But first, some music!

"Atəş" - a music video released by the Azerbaijani military on the eve of the war, which 'unfortunately slaps' according to a Vice article on the dueling songs of the conflict

First the war. Nagorno-Karabakh was an ethnically Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, which had been an autonomous region since Armenia won the first war in the 90s after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan, flush with oil wealth, spent years preparing for a rapid war of conquest, investing in Turkish and Israeli drones and loitering munitions. In the runup to the war, Azerbaijan's military budget was comparable to Armenia's GDP. Armenia's strategy rested on the strength of traditional defense in mountainous terrain, and hopes of intervention from Russia. At the end of September 2020, Azerbaijan provoked a casus belli and attacked. The coordinated effort involved a wave of obsolete An-2 biplanes converted into flying bombs to activate the Armenian air defense network, which was then comprehensively destroyed by Bayraktars and loitering munitions. With Armenian air defenses degraded and destroyed (and notably, the Soviet-era SAM systems seemed totally unable to deal with relatively low and slow flying Bayraktars), Azerbaijani drones worked down the target list of artillery, command, tanks, and infantry bunkers. Meanwhile, conventional armored forces made attacks through the mountain passes, and Azerbaijani special forces infiltrated and seized the strategic town of Shusha, which dominated the M-12 highway. After 44 days, Russia negotiated a ceasefire. Armenia suffered a crushing defeat, both sides sustained real casualties, approximately 3000 out of 17000 soldiers for Azerbaijan, and 4000 casualties out of an unpublished force for Armenia, and tens of thousands of civilians of both ethnicities were forced from their home.

The strategic narrative that Antal pushes is the kill web, a distributed, automated, rapid and precise expansion of the kill chain that links detection of a target to a weapon system and its destruction. In particular, drones like the Bayraktar enable a low-cost combined reconnaissance-strike package, where a single platform can spot targets, fire missiles at them, and accurately evaluate the results. But this seems like a jargon laden excuse to note that traditional infantry and armor have limited range, undirected artillery is random, and jet pilots are notorious for overclaiming the effects of bombing. The defensive counterpart to the kill web is masking, an all spectrum use of camouflage and mobility to prevent the enemy from acquiring your own weapon systems.

The tech is a read of drones and electronic warfare circa the late 2019s, at about the level that you might get from skimming a Lockheed Martin press release. Antal is obsessed with active camouflage systems, everything from hexagon panels of Peltier junctions to scramble IR silhouettes to metamaterial cloaks that would bend light around soldiers. Plato wrote about Gyges' ring as a cautionary tale, but it would be strategically useful.

My critical take is that we are definitely moving towards a new fighting of war, but kill webs and masking are insufficient theories. Some serious questions I have are:

1) Kill webs rely on high-bandwidth video transmission, while masking requires minimizing electromagnetic signatures. Who transmits and under what circumstances? How can jammers survive against home-on-jam anti-radiation missiles?
2) War is economic. A $10,000 drone is not worth shooting with a $100,000 interceptor, unless firing would protect a $1,000,000 tank or similar asset (and scale for more sophisticated weapons and strategic targets). What is the economic balance of offense and defense?
3) Guided weapons stocks run out very rapidly in most recorded conflicts. How can Western militaries ensure both adequate munitions stockpiles and the ability to rapidly replenish them?
4) What level of command proper for integration of various drone forces? Platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division. Should drones be organic to fire/maneuver units, or a supporting enabler, or both?
5) Are FPV drones the future, or is there a hard counter in terms of jamming, directed energy weapons, or just old fashioned airburst shells? show less

Author manages to put lots of items and warnings in this rather small book.

Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was a conflict taking place in a period of international tension (pandemic (and economical problems throughout the world), EU/US standoff with Russia, escalation of tension in Asia (China, India etc)). From the information available (and author also notes it) Azerbaijan was long time in planning of the war and Turkey was (and remains) region super-power that backed Azerbaijan back in 1990's show more and in this conflict. Author explains the advantages of Azerbaijan military at the beginning, new technology, weapons and most importantly tactics and warfare methods used (developed by Turkey in Lybia and Syria). All of this definitely had impact but in my opinion major contributors to the Armenian defeat were space satellites (Turkish and Azerbaijan), decades used to map the static Armenian defenses and build up military, introduce new weaponry and tactics and train soldiers. Once these activities were completed execution of actual strike missions was relatively routine (as they say sweat saves blood, and it was proved here).

Although UAVs and loitering ammunition were the hype of the conflict (and used by Turkish and Israeli weapon manufacturers ad nauseam) I like how author points out to artillery/missile (high precision and standard) weapon system and highly trained infantry and mechanized forces as elements that must not be overlooked and that actually played important role in the conflict (missile cannot occupy the ground).

While I agree with all of the items and required steps as proscribed by the author (on how to prepare for the next war and what elements to take into account for both attack use and defence) I think author is missing out on a very specific point - logistics and ammunition capacity. As recent conflict shows ammunition (artillery, rocket, personal) expenditure can reach wild levels per day when conflict includes large armies with sufficient reserves and beyond the war-theater supplies. While quick war sounds seductive and all that sexy, conflict involving larger militaries with reserves, capable air-defense and generally able to cover all fields of operations it is very likely it will be prolongated and deadly in terms of overall use of indirect (highly-precise or not) missile and artillery. Attrition of key components like satellites and off-shore observation platforms would render lots of sexy autonomous weapons not inoperable but acting behind the lines in isolated manner. Logistics will continue to play very important role. I wish author gave more insights on this subject besides concentrating on actual direct fire new types of munitions and platforms, because logistic and planning was definitely executed on top level by Azerbaijan and Turkey military commanders.

All in all very interesting book, showing how unexpected use of high end military technology against unprepared opponent (that lost touch with military development for too long) can prove to be deadly and win wars. True problems will come about when equal forces (both technically and in command) collide.

Excellent read, highly recommended to all interested in questions about military technology and application of the same. show less

3.49 stars for this book about the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020. This is a better book than might by suggested by my rating. It’s timely and informative, particularly on the capabilities UAVs offer even mid tier and lower militaries, but also quite repetitive and digressive. It’s also a bit credulous when reporting various claimed innovations forthcoming by Elon Musk as fact (eg “new brain hardware will cure depression” !!! Etc). That’s why I show more dinged it to three stars, but it’s still an important quick read for students of warfare past and future. Available on Scribd at this writing. show less

A pre-nuclear North Korean invasion of the South and American and South Korean effort to stop it. The exciting war fiction focuses on a tank unit that seeks to slow the advance...when I was in Korea in the 1960's, that was the plan: slow the North Koreans until help arrived from the US. In this case, the North Korean leader has a strategy that he feels will get him possession of the neighbor to the south before there can be a reaction. Very authentic stuff from an Army officer who commanded show more a major armor unit in Korea. show less