Those who want to win do not prepare for wars of today — they prepare for wars that are to be fought tomorrow.
As it appears, this golden rule of military art is carefully adhered to in the power corridors of Turkey, which is now playing its own complicated game in the multisided war in Syria.
The recent developments in Idlib, the last rebel-held enclave in Syria’s northwest, showed that the Turkish military is hightailing rapidly towards the future, with its massive use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Turkish air attacks against pro-regime forces in February and March saw swarms of killer drones essentially turning into a key force that inflicts shattering damage to more conventional forces of the past — armored vehicles, manpower, artillery — at a rather low price.
Experts and observers across the world have little doubt that this was an obvious glimpse into the future of war –a future that belongs to sophisticated unmanned systems backed by the most advanced technologies of electronic warfare and reconnaissance.
For Ukraine, an eager buyer of Turkish killer drones, this is also a valuable lesson in the golden rule of military development: It needs to invest more into smart unmanned weapons to get a chance to succeed in a war of the future instead of spending billions on preparing for hostilities of the last century.
Retaliation in Idlib
The multisided war in Syria continues for almost a decade, and it has claimed at least 380,000 lives.
Since 2018, an agreement between Ankara and Moscow keeps Idlib, the last rebel stronghold, as an enclave harboring at least 3 million civilians living amid horrible conditions. The status quo is backed by Ankara, which seeks to avoid yet another exodus of refugees into Turkey caused by a general offensive by Syrian regime forces backed by Russia.
But, unsurprisingly, Moscow and Damascus turned out to be bad at observing cease-fires.
In early 2020, the forces of President Bashar al-Assad supported by Russian air power launched a new offensive in Idlib. They particularly made advances near Saraqib and Maarat al-Numan in a bit to uphold control over the highway M5 connecting Aleppo and Damascus.
The ill-fated Syrian air attack on Feb. 27, which also likely involved Russian jets, eventually ended up killing 33 Turkish servicepersons. This was yet another pivotal point that posed Ankara and Moscow to the brink of overt armed confrontation on the Syrian soil.
A Turkish military vehicle drives on the M4 highway, which links the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Latakia, near the village of al-Nayrab, about 14 kilometers southeast of the city of Idlib and seven kilometers west of Saraqib in northwestern Syria on March 21, 2020. (AFP)
With fire and fury, the Turkish contingent in North Syria launched a devastating campaign against the Syrian Army, the formations of which were declared as legitimate targets.
Very soon, social media were swarmed with monochromic video footage showing Turkish killer drone strikes wiping out convoys of Syrian armored vehicles and artillery pieces.
The Turkish military made good use of their brutal display of power in Idlib — published video evidence showed the destruction of dozens of Syria’s Soviet-produced tanks T-55, T-62, T-72, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as 2S1 and 2S3 self-propelled artillery pieces and Pantzir-S1 and ZSU-23 Shilka anti-aircraft systems.
Within just a few days in late February and early March, Turkish killer drones destroyed over 100 Syrian armored vehicles and weapon systems and killed 2,200 soldiers, according to the Turkish military.
However, as many observers note, these figures cannot be independently verified.
The Syrian regime, in its turn, reported three Turkish combat drones downed.
Asil milletimiz emin olsun ki; İdlib’de barış ve huzur için toprağa düşen Aziz şehitlerimizin hesabını sormaya devam edeceğiz!#MSB #TSK pic.twitter.com/hutEL7g0Ey
— T.C. Millî Savunma Bakanlığı (@tcsavunma) February 29, 2020
Regardless of an exact death toll and damage evaluation, there is a general understanding that the Idlib attacks were an example of effective air warfare, in which killer drones, rather than piloted jets, played a key role.
“My understanding is that Turkey compensated for its inability to fly jets over Idlib by using drones, lots of drones,” says Aron Lund, a fellow with U.S.-based think tank The Century Foundation.
“This seems to have had a serious effect. The Syrian government has not had to contend with airstrikes before. They have always had air supremacy.”
As Lund notes, however, the extent of Turkey’s success should not be overestimated, as Syrian rebels eventually lost Saraqib. But “Turks made their point very forcefully: Assad’s forces took serious losses.”
By mid-March, another cease-fire was declared in Idlib, with Russian and Turkish military police forces agreeing to jointly patrol areas near strategic highways M4 and M5.
Drone swarms
The Turkish drone swarm was reported to have used 70- and 160-millimeter munitions MAM-C and MAM-L, light, small-sized and therefore very suitable for killer drones.
Guided with a laser ray, these weapons could carry high explosive, armor-penetrating, or even thermobaric warheads, which made them a cheap and effective force against Syrian heavy armor.
What’s important, the drone fleet had very strong ground support from jamming systems Koral produced by famous arms giant Aselsan, which effectively surpassed Syrian and Russian air defense radars.
In many cases, the Turkish drones showed outstanding results working in tandem with rapid-firing systems T-155 Firtina and KS-300 multiple-launch missiles, quickly detecting and spotting enemy targets — and putting them into the hands of Turkish artillery.
Turkish officials in late February claimed the Idlib strikes to be the first time a nation used such a massive swarm of killer drones to such a wide extent. They never disclosed any quantities, but, upon various estimated by independent observers, it had nearly 100 vehicles deployed and engaged in action in Idlib.
Among Turkish drone systems identified are ANKA-Ss, the Karayel, and the Bayraktar TB2s (known well in Ukraine) produced massively in Turkey over recent years under strong patronage of Turkish authorities.
The Turkish military sought to operate a massive killer drone fleet for decades. But after years of unsuccessful attempts to purchase American-produced systems and bitterly frustrating experience with Israeli systems, Turkey after 2007 decided to turn itself into a killer drone manufacturer.
In many ways, considerable progress was achieved thanks to years of massive investment and also the talent of Selcuk Bayraktar — a U.S.-trained engineer and a son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Over the next decade, Turkey mastered the technology of killer drones and started producing their own systems, like Bayraktar TB2s, for its armed forces. It continues investing a lot into its drone fleet — in September, the Turkish government said it would invest over $100 million into Selcuk Bayraktar’s company Baykar Makina to increase to the production of Bayraktar TB2s drones to 92 units a year.
For the export market, Turkey proposed a cheaper, effective alternative to American or Israeli machines. In 2018-2019, Ankara sold as many as 12 Bayraktar TB2 systems to Ukraine at $69 million, which constituted nearly $5.7 million for one drone system, with all necessary technical maintenance and training for operating crews guaranteed by the manufacturer.
At the same time, the United States sells to its allies its Reaper MQ-9 drones (which are operatively close to the Turkish alternative) at nearly $16 million apiece, as many observers note.
The Bayraktar TB2 drone is pictured on December 16, 2019 at Gecitkale Airport in Famagusta in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). (AFP)
A no-man’s war
Beyond doubts is the fact that the latest battle of Idlib as a telling illustration of the importance of unmanned aviation in wars of the nearest future.
And this is also something that Ukraine, which seeks to resurrect its own airpower, should be drawing far-reaching conclusions from, says Mykhailo Samus, an expert with Kyiv-based Center for Army, Conversion, and Disarmament Studies.
“Ukraine shouldn’t invest in purchasing 5th, or even 4++ generation jets,” he says.
“We’d better prepare to unmanned aviation as our next step. Especially when it comes about attack, bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft… Investments must be focused on drones instead, and Turkey illustrates the success of such an approach.”
But at the same time, it is very important that drone swarms are operated with close and effective support from air defense reconnaissance and radio-electric warfare grid, the same way it worked out in Idlib, he adds.
“With all this available, drones become an ideal tool of war — they are cheap, they can be manufactured in masses, they do not pose a risk of losing a human pilot,” he says.
“And they are capable of inflicting very sensible damage to an enemy by destroying its critical infrastructure, vehicles, strongpoints, and fuel and munitions depots. This is a truly advanced technology, and I am glad to see Ukraine and Turkey working closely on this.”
And in general, right now Ukraine needs to follow the proven trend and invest as much as possible into a full-fledged technologization of its armed forces, particularly its maritime power, he adds.
“We need to be preparing for a next-generation war,” Samus says.
“Instead of planning and building vessels under old concepts of the traditional fleet, we need, in an asymmetric manner, to build robotized, automatized, autonomous platforms — surface, submarine, aerial systems.”
“And this way the Ukrainian fleet will be able to get away from this circle of despair when we invest all the money into a corvette that will be sunk within five minutes. Instead of that, we can create hundreds and thousands of automatized platforms that would change the situation in the Black Sea — and the same principle is applicable to aviation.”
