How to Combat Myanmar Junta’s Escalating Air Campaign?

By Khin Nadi 3 November 2022

The Myanmar junta’s marketing campaign of lethal airstrikes in resistance strongholds has sharply escalated in latest weeks, with day by day assaults inflicting heavy casualties on resistance forces, ethnic allies and civilians. In unique interviews with The Irrawaddy, Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd, a Burmese-American professor at Hawaii’s Asia Pacific Middle for Safety Research and former US Military lieutenant colonel, and Zay Thu Aung, a Myanmar Air Drive defector, discuss their expectations of the junta’s air marketing campaign within the coming months and the way resistance pressure can fight the more and more lethal aerial menace.

The Irrawaddy:Myanmar resistance forces and allied ethnic armed teams are going through lethal junta airstrikes which have intensified during the last month in Kachin, Sagaing, Kayah and Karen. The air assaults are anticipated to escalate within the dry season. What do you foresee within the coming months?

Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd: That is the expectation – that the regime will enhance airstrikes as a result of that’s all it has now. They will now not win on the bottom, so air energy is the one factor they’ve left. Nevertheless, airstrikes are costly. Every sortie can value US$200,000 to $350,000 relying on the kind of munition used. Given the regime’s dire monetary and financial situation, a query arises as to how lengthy it might probably preserve such pricey assaults.

How will the junta’s escalating aerial marketing campaign have an effect on the individuals’s revolution, which is wanting funds and anti-aircraft weapons to defend individuals? Are there another choices for protection?

The revolution is continuous regardless of the army’s brutal assaults and arrest of Folks’s Protection Forces [PDFs] and civilians. A big proportion of Myanmar’s populace continues to withstand and reject the army. Elevated assaults by the army have solely elevated the individuals’s dedication and resolve to withstand and reject army rule. The assaults look like fuelling the individuals’s anger and motivation to reject the army. The Myanmar individuals will innovate methods to beat this new improvement [airstrikes], simply as they did with earlier assaults.

There are a lot of methods to disrupt an airstrike, along with capturing plane out of the sky. Plane want pilots, gas, elements, wheels, runways, and many others, to fly. If any of those parts are disrupted, they can’t fly. Gasoline and elements need to be provided and transported from someplace – realizing when and the place provides clues to areas of vulnerability within the provide chain. The resistance coalition doesn’t want to attend for anti-aircraft missiles. With cautious planning, the resistance can disrupt and forestall these plane from flying. I consider within the Myanmar individuals’s ingenuity and functionality.

What can the civilian Nationwide Unity Authorities, PDFs and allied ethnic forces do to beat the junta’s escalating airstrikes?

Nearer cooperation, joint operations, joint command, and good intelligence.

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A rising variety of unarmed civilians and youngsters have been killed within the junta’s indiscriminate aerial assaults. What can the worldwide neighborhood do to stop additional such atrocities?

What is occurring to unarmed civilians and youngsters is heartbreaking. These struggle crimes are additional proof that the regime army is now not knowledgeable army group however has change into a militant organized crime syndicate. Folks each right here and overseas can’t tolerate this militant organized crime syndicate in Myanmar. The NUG and Myanmar’s abroad diaspora neighborhood have to talk loud and clear to the worldwide viewers. Messages of unity and shut cooperation among the many resistance coalition are crucial in attracting elevated help from the worldwide neighborhood.

The Irrawaddy additionally requested Zay Thu Aung, a former captain within the Myanmar Air Drive who defected following the coup.

What individuals can anticipate from the junta’s air marketing campaign within the coming dry season?

Zay Thu Aung: At present, the junta is launching air assaults repeatedly on resistance forces. And it will solely worsen. It should perform extra aerial assaults within the dry season because the skies clear for air reconnaissance missions. It should goal base camps of native resistance forces and ethnic allies with aerial bombardment after reconnaissance. Ethnic allies and PDFs not within the entrance line may very well be caught off-guard. I consider the regime will bomb at surprising occasions, at evening or early morning.

Why do you suppose there was a spike in lethal airborne assaults lately?

The junta’s air pressure supplies both shut assist or conducts joint operations with infantry troops. Assaults utilizing the air pressure alone are known as unique air missions. These missions normally intention to chop assist channels to the enemy’s administrative mechanism. We might see this kind of assault launched on base camps of PDFs and ethnic allies. If we take a look at the [Oct 23] assault on the KIO anniversary live performance, many thought this type of occasion wouldn’t be focused as a result of they historically entice giant crowds from even distant villages. Sometimes they function artists, revelers and bystanders. However the regime doesn’t care about all these individuals. In the event that they suppose the enemy is gathering, they may bomb the occasion. Of their heads, they don’t contemplate whether or not it’s a struggle crime or not, they solely take into consideration making the enemy endure and gaining a bonus.

How a lot do you suppose the junta’s new deal with air energy will have an effect on the revolution?

The principle issue would be the army technique of PDF commanders and the way effectively they put together. Regardless of how threatening, any weapon is proscribed in its vary and [target] space. We will consider whether or not to maintain individuals collectively or separated in camps, and the way we are able to keep away from [junta] reconnaissance. We will contemplate what to do on the bottom together with precautions and security measures. I consider that if [resistance] floor commanders take into consideration these items and make plans, will probably be troublesome for the regime’s assaults to be efficient. Nevertheless, the primary energy of the army nonetheless lies in its military. As soon as the military collapses, the air pressure and navy can do nothing.

Are there any choices for protection towards junta airstrikes?

We have to have consciousness of the air assaults, each on the entrance strains and behind. Villages should additionally pay attention to the risks. And the precautions should cowl all the things from counterattacks, security measures, and motion of weapons and ammunition to particular person duties throughout the air assaults. And don’t assume that they won’t assault you. The regime is not going to launch floor offensives to grab bases as a result of it’s wanting troops and going through land-mine assaults and ambushes. That’s why it’s now focusing extra on the air pressure. In Sagaing area, we hardly ever see regime troop columns marching round as earlier than. These days, they’re stationed in bases and airlifted to surveilled targets, the place they launch assaults earlier than being picked up once more by helicopters. That is how they raided the Pale Folks’s administration hub [on Oct. 25]. They don’t go away their individuals within the space after the assault.

What have you learnt concerning the regime’s air reconnaissance?

It deploys UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] drones and MPU plane to observe targets utilizing EOIR [Electro-Optical and Infrared] methods for evening imaginative and prescient and surveillance. With these, it fastidiously surveys the areas to estimate the variety of individuals, ambush patrols and placement. Primarily based on this information, senior officers draft plans and report back to their chief of workers, who draw up an in depth scheme of assault. That’s how they launch the [air] assaults. So, we should not suppose they have no idea this place and won’t come and assault right here. We must always put apart that pondering. I urge all of our NUG, ethnic allies and PDFs to be in your guard.

Many individuals anticipate the resistance to make use of anti-aircraft weapons towards regime airstrikes. What are your ideas?

It doesn’t matter what anti-aircraft weapons we use, it gained’t cease them. The regime [leadership] doesn’t care concerning the lives of particular person pilots or troops in any respect, solely their very own lives. Regime forces may also blindly comply with no matter orders they get. So, I don’t suppose anti-aircraft weapons capturing down regime plane will do something to scale back or cease the air assaults. And since it isn’t simple for us to get anti-aircraft weapons, we have to suppose strategically about [different] methods to maximise the junta’s struggling.

Will the junta broaden its capability for aerial assaults?

Sure. Russia lately gifted 4 extra Ka-28 submarine-hunter helicopters it had pledged to ship a while in the past. The regime additionally has two newly arrived Su-30SME jets. And the junta has ordered FTC-2000G midrange fighter jets from China after sending a gaggle of air pressure pilots to China for coaching. I urge the worldwide neighborhood to assist halt supply of recent plane, together with the FTC-2000Gd and Su-30 jet-fighters, to Myanmar.