The limits of the Myanmar military’s air power

Myanmar’s military ended a year of defeats on multiple fronts on December 20 with the fall of its Western Regional Military Command (RMC) headquarters in Rakhine State’s Ann Township. After a siege of several months, the Arakan Army (AA) announced its capture of this major base at around midday of that day. Graphic footage released by the group shows Myanmar army soldiers in full retreat, many in ragged civilian clothes, most wounded. Some crawled, too frail to escape. As AA troops are seen taking the surrendering soldiers into custody, Myanmar Air Force jets can be heard screeching overhead, providing a gruesome soundtrack. Less than two weeks earlier, on December 8, a similar scene played out in the state’s north, where AA forces ended their long siege of the Border Guard Police 5 (BGP-5) base in Maungdaw, close to the Bangladesh border. Videos of that event also feature airstrikes by fast-moving jets—possibly MiG-29s—as well as smaller aircraft dropping ordnance and multiple drone attacks as AA soldiers advanced. AA forces can also be seen blasting the base’s installations with captured heavy artillery, including 105mm field guns and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, underscoring the evolution of insurgent approaches to warfare, which have become increasingly conventional in style. According to a December 18 report by the BBC’s Burmese-language service, the AA artillery contingent was commanded by Maj. Aung Myint Soe, a Myanmar army officer who defected to the ethnic Rakhine armed group in 2018. The fall of the Western RMC headquarters was a major blow to Myanmar’s military regime, coming just months after the capture in early August of the Northeastern RMC in Lashio. The AA has also seized three of the junta’s Military Operations Command (MOC) centres in Rakhine State: MOC-9 in Kyauktaw on February 10, MOC-15 in Buthidaung on May 4, and MOC-5 in Taungup on December 14. By year’s end, it had also taken Gwa, the state’s southernmost town. It now controls almost all of Rakhine State, and crucially, all of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. The offensive would be a remarkable feat of arms by any measure. But what makes the AA’s gains even more unprecedented is that they were achieved under a formidable aerial onslaught by the Myanmar Air Force (MAF). Almost daily airstrikes on multiple targets around Ann and Maungdaw failed to break the sieges. In Maungdaw, the AA claimed to have even deployed a special forces team to tunnel underneath the base to reach the facility. The AA’s success may well have come at the cost of several hundred fighters in recent operations, but it also makes clear that ground forces can prevail against punishing heavy firepower. Myanmar’s military may be able to hold on in multiple locations in the centre of the country, but its air power is not proving decisive in pushing back the advices of multiple revolutionary forces elsewhere. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing seen at an air force ceremony in Meiktila in December 2021 (State media) The strength of the Myanmar Air Force The fall of the Western RMC came as bad timing for Myanmar’s dictator Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Just five days before, he presided over a ceremony marking the 77th anniversary of the founding of the MAF. In a blustering speech, he claimed that “superior air power not only allows for dominance, control, and suppression of the enemy, but also significantly enhances the morale and combat effectiveness of our own forces.” The footage released by the AA suggests otherwise: there was no control, no suppression, and a collapse in morale. But the ceremony also suggests that the capacity of the MAF to deploy more weapons systems has not seriously diminished. Several new aircraft were formally commissioned into the air fleet, including Su-30 fighter jets, a number of transport helicopters, and what appears to be a Shaanxi Y-8 transport plane, possibly to replace the one that crashed at Mizoram’s Lengpui airport in January 2024 as it was coming to retrieve hundreds of regime soldiers who had fled into India to avoid AA attacks. To celebrate the occasion, Min Aung Hlaing blessed the new aircraft and “cordially greeted the pilots and gave cash awards” for their role in a nationwide campaign of aerial murder. The Myanmar dictator was also seen in the cockpit of a domestically manufactured “reconnaissance” turboprop aircraft called the MTX-1B. State media proudly stated the MTX series were “manufactured by the [military] through reverse engineering technology.” The MTX-1A was first test flown in early 2021, and appears to be modelled on the Chinese trainer aircraft Nanchang CJ-6. There are marked differences between the 1A and 1B, which “was developed with advanced cockpit displays, communication systems and structural upgrades by Air Force personnel and successfully completed test flights in March 2024,” according to junta-controlled media. The 1B could conceivably be configured for ground attack capability. The MTX series are likely being manufactured at the Aircraft Production and Maintenance Air Base in Meiktila. The MAF has also since at least 2010 assembled the Chinese-Pakistani-designed Karakorum-8 at this facility, indicating a still formidable manufacturing base of the Directorate of Defence Industries. Taking into account the manufacture of aerial bombs of many types, including “drop bombs” for unmanned aerial vehicles, the Directorate of Defence Industries has appeared to hold pace with requirements for supplying escalated airstrikes. And jet fuel, despite laudable measures to interdict supply, still gets through. The MAF still has in its fleet multiple Russian-made Yak-130s, MiG-29s, and SU-30s, as well as K8s, Chinese-made Y-12 light transport planes (used to drop ordnance from its windows during low-level passes), and JF-17 Thunder combat aircraft (jointly produced by Pakistan and China and reportedly inefficient). Its deployment of Mi-35 helicopter gunships appears, by anecdotal evidence, to have diminished in 2024, but whether this is due to a shortage of spare parts, vulnerability to resistance forces’ augmented anti-aircraft capacity, or a change in operational doctrine is not known. This is still a sizeable air force—one that is able to maintain a high operational tempo and deliver seemingly increased payloads of munitions with enhanced accuracy through upgraded avionics. It also has the domestic manufacturing base that it needs to keep its aircraft supplied and maintained, and pilots who don’t seem to be squeamish about strapping in every day to fly multiple sorties. Smoke rises from the AA-controlled village of Kyauk Ni Maw in Rakhine State after junta airstrikes that killed 41 people on January 8 (Supplied) Murderous, but effective? No army ever won a war with air power alone. America lost its longest war, in Afghanistan, despite having air supremacy for 20 years, including A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, Apache helicopter gunships, and many other systems for close air support. The Soviets also had complete dominance of the skies in Afghanistan during their war in the country, at least until the US supplied the Mujahadeen with sophisticated anti-aircraft capability. Russia was more successful in its air war in Syria between 2015 and 2018. However, even here, a RAND Corporation study found that the Russian Aerospace Force was “significantly more effective in engagements against the Western-backed opposition than in conflicts against ISIS.” In part, this “reflected Russia’s primary strategic objectives of saving the Assad regime and degrading the Western-backed opposition,” according to the report, which found that ultimately, it was Kurdish forces, supported by US coalition air power, that propelled the rollback of ISIS in northeastern Syria. And despite the Russians’ earlier relative success, in November 2024 they proved incapable of preventing Syria’s takeover by anti-Assad forces backed by Turkey (and Israel and the US). So ground forces are essential to the success of any air campaign. The US coalition targeting ISIS in Operation Inherent Resolve from 2014 to 2019 was successful mainly because it was backing Iraqi forces and Syrian opposition groups, and also deployed Special Force troops. But the US claim that this campaign resulted in relatively few civilian casualties was not quite true. While the coalition estimated 1,437 deaths over the five years of the operation, independent assessments by the monitoring group Airwars put the death toll much higher, at between 8,220 and 13,299 civilians killed. Likewise, the Saudi Arabian coalition air war against the Houthis in Yemen (backed by controversial American and British arms sales) between March 2015 and April 2022 killed 8,983 civilians and injured 10,243, according to figures compiled by the Yemen Data Project. No air war is ever clean, as the past four years in Myanmar will also certainly attest. The utility of airstrikes against anti-regime forces has been mixed at best, even amid an exponential surge over the past year in attacks by fixed-wing and rotary aircraft and, increasingly, drones. Despite facing relentless aerial assaults, Chin resistance forces have succeeded in overrunning the town of Mindat, the Kachin Independence Army has effectively surrounded Kachin State’s second-largest city, Bhamo, and the AA continues to make dramatic advances in Rakhine State. Efforts to retake towns captured by the Brotherhood Alliance, including Lashio, Mogok, Kyaukme, Hsipaw, Namkham, and Kutkai, have also failed. A junta aircraft flies over Namkham in northern Shan State in December 2023 (Myat Pan / Myanmar Now) The military has had more success in Madaya Township, north of Mandalay, forcing the Mandalay People’s Defence Force to withdraw from the western part of the township. But that counteroffensive utilised both airstrikes and ground troops, demonstrating that combined arms is the only viable option to regain territory. Meanwhile, in a bizarre development, there have been recent reports of airstrikes being carried out in Mandalay and Sagaing regions using motor-equipped paragliders. It is hard to know if this deployment is combat innovation or indicative of a depleted air fleet sparking more unusual weapons systems. Elsewhere, the regime has managed to drive resistance forces out of Loikaw, the Karenni State capital, using airstrikes, artillery, and drones, as well as an increase in ground troops. However, due to the steady depletion of its ground forces, it has failed to retake Nawnghkio, some 225 miles to the north in northern Shan State, and its elite Aung Zeya column has been unable to secure the road from the Karen State capital Hpa-an to Myawaddy, on the Thai border, despite receiving air support. One unknown is how many combatant casualties have been inflicted by airstrikes. While junta opponents on the ground undoubtedly account for the majority of the dead and wounded, some regime security personnel have presumably also been lost to friendly fire incidents. According to Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica, total junta casualties between July and September of 2024 were 3,508 dead and 946 wounded (compared to 210 “armed revolutionary forces” killed and 112 wounded); but these figures do not indicate the number of losses resulting specifically from airstrikes. Given the ferocity of the fighting to take BGP-5 in Rakhine State and the advances on Bhamo in Kachin State, it is safe to assume that airstrikes have caused very substantial casualties among anti-regime forces in recent months. It would be an important, if necessarily delicate, conflict analysis imperative to seek a deeper understanding of resistance casualties by airstrikes alone. Among civilians, there is some data available that serves to highlight the deadliness of airstrikes. According to Data for Myanmar, air attacks killed 347 civilians between January 2023 and September 2024 in Sagaing Region alone, out of a total of 1,727 civilian deaths caused by the conflict. This compares with an estimated 239 civilians killed by artillery fire.But even these figures understate the true impact of airstrikes on civilian populations. In a recent report, the Karen Human Rights Group details the crushing effect that nearly four years of junta air assaults have had on the mental health of people living in Karen State. Many of the civilians interviewed for the report said that their villages had been targeted despite the absence of anti-regime forces or fighting in their areas, indicating that a central strategy of the air war is simply to instil terror in its victims. As one woman put it, “I told my sister that if the aircraft came again, I would die just because of hearing the noise, not because I was hit by the shrapnel.” A junta aircraft shot down near the village of Nam Hpat Kar in northern Shan State’s Kutkai Township in January 2024 (Myat Pan / Myanmar Now) The future of air power The future of the use of air power in Myanmar’s ongoing conflict will be determined by two considerations. The first is whether it can prove its effectiveness in denying resistance forces the ability to stage further operations. So far, the military’s approach seems to be to prioritise close air support for troops on the ground, whether on mobile operations or defending static bases. Less evident is any coordinated plan to target logistics lines, base areas, weapons-producing facilities, training camps, or senior leaders. While the military has in some cases been able to direct its airstrikes at sensitive targets, such as high-level meetings, for the most part its attacks appear to be indiscriminate and largely ineffectual in purely strategic terms. The second is whether punitive strikes against civilian targets harden rather than weaken the resolve of resistance forces and their civilian support base. While civilians in conflict areas throughout Myanmar have clearly been traumatised by the relentless bombardment that they have been forced to endure, it is not obvious that this has in any way diminished their resolve. While there is a danger of overstating their “resilience”—a term often used by Western aid purveyors that sometimes dehumanises the immense suffering of ordinary people—resistance forces have shown themselves to be highly adept at adapting to the regime’s ruthless tactics, including by preparing for imminent strikes through early warning systems. This has, in turn, greatly increased civilians’ confidence in their ability to act as genuine defenders of their lives and their rights. The junta’s reliance on air power might be buying it some time, but it has failed at a strategic level to stop multiple resistance advances. While the regime may still have a formidable manufacturing base to maintain its fleet of military aircraft, and a cohort of war criminal pilots willing to fly them, raining death on civilians from the sky is not a viable, long-term strategy. If the events of the past year prove anything, it’s that Myanmar’s revolution will be fought, and won, firmly on the ground. David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues in Myanmar

The limits of the Myanmar military’s air power

The regime’s efforts to halt its many enemies’ advances with airstrikes are proving increasingly futile

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