How drones reinvented the proxy war

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | Steven Feldstein

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham executed an 11-day offensive in Syria during late 2024, overthrowing Bashar al-Assad's regime through coordinated suicide drone operations. The Al-Shaheen Brigade spearheaded the assault, deploying custom quadcopters and turbojet drones with 100-kilogram warheads to collapse defensive positions across Aleppo and Homs before December 7. This insurgent victory demonstrates how low-cost commercial unmanned systems, additive manufacturing, and second-tier supply networks have democratized precision strike capabilities previously reserved for major powers.

Between 2020 and 2025, global drone incidents escalated from 6,380 to 58,272, while total fatalities rose from 11,379 to 32,769. Ukraine logged nearly 55,000 drone events, while air operations in Gaza claimed over 53,400 lives. Unmanned technology fundamentally reshapes conflict. Covert external support, including Ukrainian military intelligence sending 20 experienced drone pilots and 150 first-person view drones alongside Turkish supply networks, enables non-state forces to rapidly dismantle conventional state militaries worldwide.

Comment

The integration of cheap first-person view munitions by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's Al-Shaheen Brigade exposes the operational obsolescence of traditional mechanised armour formations lacking organic close-in active protection systems. Syria's Fourth Armored Division found its heavy armour defence lines rendered ineffective when confronted with low-altitude, distributed suicide drone swarms operating beneath standard tactical air defence radar horizons. This shifting capability curve demonstrates that commercial component integration now enables non-state actors to bypass heavy fire support requirements and achieve local operational shock.

A comparable doctrinal disruption occurred during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, where Azerbaijani Bayraktar TB2 and Harop loitering munitions systematically dismantled Armenian ground fortifications in the Lachin corridor. Just as in that conflict, cheap air-delivered precision munitions in Idlib negated massed static deployments, confirming that unshielded ground formations remain critically vulnerable without integrated counter-UAS capabilities.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If non-state forces like the Al-Shaheen Brigade can achieve local air dominance using improvised FPV suicide drones, does heavy armour retain tactical utility on the modern battlefield without organic counter-UAS air defence vehicles attached to individual maneuver elements?

The pattern suggests that heavy armour remains essential for breakthrough operations, but its survivability now depends entirely on combined-arms integration with short-range air defence and electronic warfare assets. The operational collapse of Syria's Fourth Armored Division demonstrates that armoured platforms deployed without point-defence screening will be rapidly attritioned by loitering munitions. Consequently, tactical doctrines are likely to shift toward pairing main battle tanks with dedicated anti-drone escort vehicles rather than abandoning heavy armour altogether.

Share your assessment in the comments below.

To read in details click here