When Frozen Conflicts Turn Hot: Learning from Nagorno-Karabakh

Modern War Institute

John Amble

Government, News

4.7 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The ongoing war in Ukraine is giving observers a chance to forecast how future conflicts will take shape. Drones, advanced sensors, and other technologies are playing impactful roles in the fight. At the same time, artillery is demonstrating its enduring relevance in large-scale combat, air defense is reemerging as a criticial capability, and basic concepts like effective camouflage are proving to be as important as they are fundamental. Many, if not all, of these trends were on display more than a year earlier in another war that received considerably less attention but is similarly packed with lessons about the future of war. Dr. Jack Watling joins this episode to discuss the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Note: This episode was originally released in October 2020.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think there needs to be a pretty careful thinking through about how we do camouflage, how we do deception, what a modern combined force is in terms of how units support each other to mitigate some of these vulnerabilities.
0:23.6	Air defence is no longer something that a higher echelon puts in a location and it covers an area.
0:30.6	Localised air defence and layers of air defence mean that that capability has to be absolutely
0:34.6	integrated into the planning cycle of how a battle group moves around.
0:40.8	Hey, welcome back to the Modern War Institute podcast. I'm John Amble editorial director at
0:45.6	MWI, and my guest on this episode is Dr. Jack Watling. He is a research fellow for land warfare
0:50.8	at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
0:54.7	He has been watching the Caucasus region closely over the past few weeks as conflict has broken
0:58.9	out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory.
1:04.1	In particular, he has drawn insights from that conflict about ground combat on the modern
1:08.8	battlefield, specifically combined arms operations and the role of tanks.
1:12.6	He discusses, for example, the saturation of the battlefield with a variety of sensors, challenges associated with electronic warfare, and the importance of camouflage.
1:21.6	These are all things that the U.S. military and those of its allies haven't really encountered during nearly two decades
1:27.5	of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which makes the lessons he discusses especially
1:32.5	important. It is a fascinating conversation that I hope you enjoy. Before we get to it, just a
1:37.6	couple quick notes. First, if you aren't already subscribed to the MWI podcast, be sure to do so.
1:42.4	You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify,
1:45.2	tune in, anywhere you get your podcasts. And second, as always, what you hear in this episode
1:49.9	are the views of the participants and don't represent those of West Point, the Army, or any
1:53.8	other agency of the U.S. government. All right, here's my conversation with Dr. Jack Watley.
2:09.9	Jack, thank you so much for joining this episode of the Modern War Institute podcast.
2:11.4	Thank you very much for having me.
	...

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