Conflit du Qaradaq (Arémnie-Azerbeïdjan)

Citation :

https://mobile.twitter.com/Blue_Sauron/status/1372594695390556164

Citation :

https://mobile.twitter.com/khalfaguliyev/status/1377209866524229632

Spoiler:

Citation :

The U.S. Army Goes to School on Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

The U.S. Army Is Using the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict to Study Drone Warfare
8 - 10 minutes
Report
Off-the-shelf air power changes the battlefield of the future.


When Azerbaijan took over the skies in its fight with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh last fall, winning the air war with commercial Turkish and kamikaze drones, one thing started to become clear to U.S. Army strategists: It’s becoming easier to hunt and kill troops than ever before—and to do so on the cheap.

With inexpensive, combat-ready drones proliferating on battlefields all over the world, in the not-too-distant future unsuspecting soldiers might get killed just by getting out of their positions for a moment to go to the bathroom.

“You can see video of tanks being hit by an unmanned aerial system, artillery positions being hit by an unmanned aerial system, troops being hit by an unmanned aerial system,” said Col. Scott Shaw, the outgoing head of the Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group.

What has become apparent after Azerbaijan routed Armenia last fall, he said, is that not only will the U.S. military no longer enjoy uncontested air superiority against peer rivals like China—something Defense Department officials have long resigned themselves to—but that poorer nations can buy themselves a respectable air force mostly off the shelf.

“What’s clear in that conflict is that a less funded nation can do combined arms warfare,” Shaw said. “You don’t have to be the United States or Russia. The price point to entry into combined arms warfare is lower than initially thought. You don’t need something like the United States Air Force, a superbly trained, spectacular capability, in order to conduct potentially a local air-to-ground or air-to-air activity.”

During the six-week conflict, Azerbaijan deployed Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones and loitering munitions, many of them Israeli-made, to shrink the battlefield and chip away at Armenia’s armored forces as well as the logistical tail that hadn’t even reached the front lines.

As Azerbaijan rolled up more territory in the disputed region, propaganda videos showing the destruction of Armenian convoys and ammunition depots became a calling card of the new military approach. In the waning days of the conflict, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev even touted a laundry list of Armenian equipment purportedly destroyed or captured, including nearly 250 tanks, 50 infantry fighting vehicles, and four Russian-made S-300 missile defense systems, as well as 198 trucks and 17 self-propelled artillery units. In mid-October, Aliyev credited Turkish drones with helping his military to destroy more than $1 billion worth of Armenian equipment.

But it’s not clear how those numbers translate into truth. Shaw said the tremendous amount of disinformation flying around on open-source networks made it difficult to figure out everything that happened in real time.

It’s also still not clear to experts that drones definitively tilt the balance toward attackers or defenders. Some think that the war in Nagorno-Karabakh is another sign that the days of the U.S. military relying on overwhelming “shock and awe” bombing campaigns, like those that marked the start of both Iraq wars, are over. Instead, the United States should prepare for a knock-down, drag-out fight, similar to attrition wars of the past.

“Basically they’re telling themselves a story through convergence and military shock and awe that they’re going to be able to create effects on an opponent that we know through history simply does not happen,” said Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at CNA and a fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, referring to the U.S. Army’s current operating concept for future wars.

Automation is likely to move beyond the skies, too. Shaw, an infantry officer by training, sees weaker militaries following the U.S. lead by deploying unmanned ground and sea vehicles. “If it comes by air, it’s going to come by ground and eventually by sea,” Shaw said. “These unmanned systems are just going to proliferate because they’re cheaper, and they’re just going to get smaller and smaller.”

U.S. defense planners are already moving in that direction. Mark Esper, the former defense secretary, sought to reach the Trump administration’s goal of a 355-ship Navy by investing more into research and engineering for unmanned vessels. It’s not clear yet how the Biden administration will approach the future size and composition of the fleet, but the Navy and Marine Corps released a road map for the use of unmanned systems this month.

Meanwhile, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming more lethal. Shaw noted that drones will increasingly resemble aerial tanks—flying, armored beasts that can pack a devastating punch. And as drones become harder to kill, troops on the ground will potentially become easier to kill, with battlefield surveillance also getting cheaper. That means the Army, which hasn’t changed its camouflage face paint pattern for more than two decades, needs to find new ways to avoid being spotted, and killed, even by a weaker opponent.

That’s creating new challenges for the U.S. style of maneuver warfare. Even communication over FM radio, which was standard operating procedure for U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades, will need to be rethought as countries like Russia are getting much more skilled at locating—and striking—units that are careless about staying unmasked on the electromagnetic spectrum.

“We need to be thinking about greater camouflage than just this,” Shaw said. “You can hide a vehicle wherever you want to hide it. Here’s what you can’t hide: the tracks that go into the position, the tank tracks, the mud rucks, or whatever. Same thing with footprints. So at the tactical [level], we’ve got to figure out how to mask our movements, mask our position, mask our headquarters.”

Shaw’s unit, which spent most of the past two decades sending specially trained advisors downrange to fight threats including improvised explosive devices in Iraq and information warfare in Europe, is closing in May, part of a previous reorganization effort by then-Defense Secretary Esper last year. An Army analysis assessed the need to use the group’s resources and manpower to prep for a major-power war.

But Shaw is busy briefing other service leaders, such as Army Training and Doctrine Command chief Gen. Paul Funk, on what he and his soldiers have learned from hours of poring over footage from the Nagorno-Karabakh fight. He has brought on a historian to write a full study of the group’s history.

And he’s hoping that the lessons from the group’s 20 years in business will stay in the Army’s bloodstream, even as service leaders turn their attention away from the wars of the Middle East to deal with an increasingly assertive China—which has also disrupted U.S. planning with increasingly accurate ranged missiles. The Army, which has long enjoyed a firepower advantage in static positions, will have to think about reinventing the wheel to be a constantly mobile force, avoiding detection and incoming fire.

“If survivability moves are constant, that increases your rate of consumption for food, water, fuel. People have to sleep,” Shaw said. “We’re going to have to have leaders who are comfortable operating under the uncomfortable.”

This makes thing a lot more complicated... from r/armenia

Spoiler:

Citation :

https://twitter.com/Caucasuswar/status/1418637253283352580

Citation :

The Battle of Shusha City and the Missed Lessons of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War

- Modern War Institute
17 - 21 minutes

There has been no shortage of attention paid to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Commentary and analysis have produced a range of claims about what the six-week-long war means for the future of combat. What has been almost completely left out of these discussions is how the war offers stark reminders about the urban character of warfare in military campaigns.

While the situation in the disputed region has been called a frozen conflict, major combat actions between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have occurred over the region several times in the modern era—to include from 1988 to 1994 and in 2014. When Azerbaijan attacked into Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2020, the world watched closely.

Most of the reporting and analysis on the war focused on the technological superiority of the Azerbaijani military. Some commentators claimed that the advanced technologies and tactics used by Azerbaijan to decimate Armenian forces—such as the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle or Israeli Harop loitering munition (often called a kamikaze drone)—and use of proxy forces demonstrate a change in the character of warfare, show that the relevance of armor and static militaries may have come to an end, or provide the best hint of the future of war.

Despite all the coverage, the lessons missed about the Nagorno-Karabakh War are the ones showing how urban warfare remains a key part of modern combat. The most important battle of the Nagorno-Karabakh War occurred in the city of Shusha. Once Shusha fell, Armenia surrendered and entered a lopsided agreement, ceding massive amounts of their previously held territories.

City on the Hill

The greater Shusha region, consisting of the city of Shusha (Shushi in Armenian) and ten surrounding villages, sits within the heart of Nagorno-Karabakh. The city has been at the center of Azerbaijani and Armenian fighting for centuries. It holds cultural significance to both groups.

Often described as the “cradle of Azeri culture,” Shusha was home to Azerbaijani intellectuals, poets, and writers and houses important cultural sites such as mosques and mausoleums. It also holds Armenian religious and cultural history, serving as a fortress city in the Middle Ages and still home to famous Armenian sites such as the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, the church of Kanach Zham, and a monastic convent. The city has changed hands multiple times.

Most recently, Shusha was forcefully taken by Armenia in 1992. At that time, the area was estimated to have contained over twenty-three thousand Azerbaijanis and just over sixteen hundred Armenians. During and after the battle, most of the city was destroyed and much of the Azerbaijani population was killed, was expelled, or fled. At the start of the 2020 war, the city’s population was reported to be around five thousand people, almost all ethnic Armenians.

Shusha sits perched high above other towns and cities in the region. Its views and mountainous terrain give it a strategic advantage with which the entire occupied region can be kept under control. The city is also a formidable natural fortress. Steep cliffs drop off from the edges of the city on three sides and a lone major road passes north to south along the western edge of the city. The largest city in the disputed territory, Stepanakert, is fifteen kilometers to the north along this winding road, but the straight-line distance between the two is just a few kilometers, and Shusha has the advantage of sitting several hundred meters above Stepanakert in elevation.

The city’s location provides an ideal defensive buffer zone for Stepanakert—not only the largest city in the region but also the capital of the Armenia-backed and self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh—and a critical defensive node along the Lachin corridor, a mountain pass and road that provides a link from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. Given its undisputed cultural significance and key geographic advantage to both Azerbaijan and Armenia, controlling Shusha was a major objective of both parties during the 2020 conflict.

Taking the City in 1992

When Shusha last changed hands in 1992, Armenian forces seized it from the defending Azerbaijanis. By that point in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994), rampant fighting in the region had been waging for four years. One of the main reasons for the mission to seize Shusha was because Azerbaijani forces were firing heavy artillery at Stepanakert from it and reportedly moving to launch a ground attack from the Shusha region.

The Armenian operation to seize Shusha started in April 1992 with several weeks of artillery fire targeting Azerbaijani defensive positions and city fortifications. Next came multiple small attacks in the surrounding villages to draw the defenders of Shusha out of their fortifications and reduce the overall strength of the city’s defense. The Armenians eventually cut off and isolated the few hundred remaining defenders in the city—including by reportedly scaling cliffs. By the time they realized they were under full assault, the Azerbaijani defenders were unable to use their artillery to repel the attackers because the two sides’ forces were too close to one another.

The successful main assault, which began on May 8, included an estimated one thousand soldiers supported by dozens of armored vehicles, tanks, and helicopters. Despite heavy street fighting, to include tank-on-tank engagements, the city fell within twenty-four hours.

Taking the City in 2020

In September 2020, Azerbaijani and Armenian forces used tanks and launched airstrikes across the line of contact, the unofficial border between Azerbaijan and the Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh. The early fighting clearly demonstrated Azerbaijan’s military superiority, especially in open terrain when using advanced unmanned aircraft systems and long-range munitions.

In October 2020, after gaining control over most of the previously Armenian-controlled territory south of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan crossed the line of contact and started moving ground forces further west. By mid-October, Azerbaijani conventional forces had captured a key Armenian-controlled town, Hadrut, as they moved toward the Lachin corridor connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh.

By October 22, the Azerbaijani Lachin offensive had closed to within six miles of the town of Lachin and the vital corridor. The loss of the corridor would have severed any means by which Armenia could support forces inside Nagorno-Karabakh. In retaliation and most likely to divert pressure away from the Lachin corridor, Armenian forces launched a counterassault using dismounted forces in the heavily wooded mountain areas and set ambushes along main supply routes, even capturing seven Azerbaijani BTR-70 armored personnel carriers.

At some point between October 28 and October 30, Azerbaijani special operations forces deployed to isolate Shusha and disrupt the city’s defense. According to some reports, four hundred of these Azerbaijani forces marched for five days through the forests and ravines, being especially careful to avoid the heavily guarded Lachin corridor and surrounding villages. They divided into groups of one hundred, reportedly so that they could approach the city from multiple directions and toward different objectives.

Many of the soldiers climbed, without fire support, the steep rocks and cliffs left unguarded by the defending Armenians who seemed to believe the Azerbaijani forces would mainly attack up the main roads. The cover of darkness, ongoing Lachin offensive, and failed imagination of the defenders appeared to enable the Azerbaijani special operations forces to make their decisive move to covertly pierce the Shusha defense through seemingly unpassable forests and mountainous terrain.

On October 30, military clashes were reported just five kilometers east of Shusha. The city had already been under sporadic artillery fire since early September, causing most of the city’s residents to flee to neighboring Stepanakert. At this stage of the battle, the defending Armenian forces still held the tactical advantage as they had control of the mountains surrounding Shusha. Azerbaijani forces were ambushed and suffered heavy losses in the ravines leading up to the city and when they attempted to approach the city by road, they were exposed to frequent artillery, rockets, and far ambushes.

Late on November 4, reports came in that Azerbaijani light infantry were fighting for the road that nears the village of Dashalti at the bottom of the Shusha’s southern cliffs. By that day, Azerbaijani forces had also secured the mountain range south of Shusha and key portions of the Lachin corridor connecting Shusha to the town of Lachin. Azerbaijani forces also increased the shelling of the Armenian defensive positions surrounding the city with mortars.

Late in the evening of November 5, some of the Azerbaijani special operations forces had reached the main road and were able to block reinforcements attempting to aid Shusha’s defense. This, combined with the destruction of a key bridge over the Hakari River, meant little, if any, aid would come to Shusha as the town was clearly surrounded from at least three main directions. The Armenian authorities, recognizing the loss of control over the area, closed the Lachin corridor to civilian traffic—leaving eighty reporters trapped inside the battle zone.

On November 6, Azerbaijani conventional troops reached the outskirts of the town. Early morning reports surfaced that Argishti Kyaramyan, the former head of the Armenian National Security Service who had been appointed the military commander responsible for organizing of the defense of Shusha, had left the city. Not long after reports of Kyaramyan’s departure emerged, Azerbaijani forces penetrated Shusha. Once inside, they established additional blocking positions and ambush sites around the city to further prevent the defending Armenians from being reinforced or resupplied. Other soldiers also successfully captured Dashalti, the village just south of Shusha, providing immediate access to the main road into Shusha.

As Azerbaijani forces began to enter the city, they engaged the defending Armenians at close range in heavy street fighting. The Armenian forces inside the city were reported to comprise over two thousand troops, along with armored vehicles and heavy artillery. The Azerbaijani dismounted forces destroyed several tanks and BMP infantry fighting vehicles using rocket propelled grenades and portable antitank guided missiles. They also used heavy fires, reportedly including the Belarussian Polonez multiple launch rocket systems and artillery pieces that were at this point relocated closer to the city’s boundaries.

On November 7, foggy weather struck the area. This significantly limited Azerbaijani forces’ use of aerial observation and strike assets that had given them such an advantage throughout the war. The inclement weather prevented the employment of the TB2 Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles, enabling Armenian forces to maximize the use of their armored vehicles—T-72 tanks, and BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles—for counterattacks inside the city.

Despite the counterattack, the Azerbaijani forces held their ground. They formed a defensive line in the Shusha forests and after repulsing three Armenian counterattacks, returned on the offensive, capturing the building of Shusha Executive Power and beginning to drive out Armenian forces, deliberately clearing buildings and larger areas in the city. The battle for Shusha ultimately came down to building-to-building close combat.

On the morning of November 8, the Artsakh Ministry of Defense reported that intensive fighting had taken place through the entire night along the length of the front line surrounding Shusha. Armenia also claimed that its forces had downed three Azerbaijani TB2 Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles and had destroyed twenty armored vehicles and four tanks throughout the day.

On November 9, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared total victory and control over Shusha, a move that was initially refuted by Armenia. But on November 10, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a lopsided peace deal that included surrendering all areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that had been taken by Azerbaijan during the conflict—to include Shusha.

The Urban Warfare Lessons

The lessons of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War have yet to be fully discovered. This analysis required translating multiple foreign reports and news stories, validating social media announcements and video posts, and piecing together an accurate picture from the partial and sometimes conflicting reports from the frontlines. Military analysts, international relations scholars, and other groups have begun to highlight the unique aspects of the war—from the dominance of a modernized Azerbaijani military equipped with the latest types of drone and fire support platforms to geopolitical practices of proxy warfare by Russia, Turkey, Iran, and others to the use of social media to influence multiple different groups in modern information warfare campaigns.

The war also highlights major urban warfare lessons that deserve attention. These lessons include the following:

Cities remain operational and strategic objectives in war. The capture of Shusha was a major strategic victory for Azerbaijan, and it ultimately decided the outcome of the war. Once Shusha fell, Armenia was forced to surrender out of fear that Azerbaijani forces would be able to target and possibly seize the territory’s capital, Stepanakert, just a handful of kilometers away. Cities have always been operational and strategic objectives in war. They are the centers of political and economic power for nations. They also start, grow, and expand along trade routes, key passes through ground that is otherwise challenging to maneuver through, or coastlines where ports connect global naval supply lines. In short, they are very often built on key terrain, and at the very least they offer control over important lines of communication. As cities grow in number, size, and complexity, some argue that military forces should simply avoid them and the unique challenges they pose. Shusha shows that this is simply not an option. They are unavoidable and militaries must prepare to operate in them to be effective in any war.

A full suite of modern, joint force capabilities is needed to seize and hold decisive urban terrain. Air superiority, bombing, long-range precision strikes, and unmanned aircraft systems are all enabling warfighting capabilities. It was not just the latest attack drones that won the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Urban warfare is also not solely an infantry fight. The decisive operation of the war, the physical capture of Shusha, required combined arms capabilities that leveraged special operations forces, fires, armor, engineers, and infantry in both the shaping and decisive operations. This was especially apparent by the use of fires, mobile protected firepower, and infantry units to clear urban terrain in building-to-building combat. Put simply, it required ground forces to seize and hold terrain and a host of other capabilities to enable it.

Militaries must prepare for both urban offense and defense operations. Both the 1992 and the 2020 battles for Shusha show that militaries must be capable of offensive operations to seize decisive terrain—especially cities—in military campaigns. Equally so, they show that any military that seizes terrain must also be able to defend it. In 2020, had the Azerbaijani forces that seized Shusha not been able to defend it from the determined Armenian counterattacks, their gains would have been lost. The defense of urban terrain may also buy time for a military waiting for another supporting country or the international community to come to their aid. Both battles for Shusha also show that when defending urban terrain, the defender must have layered defensive plans that include broad imagination and wargaming. Both Azerbaijani (1992) and Armenian (2020) forces left the cliffs surrounding the city unguarded assuming they were impassable.

As analysts and researchers study the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, they will continue to unearth valuable and wide-ranging lessons for the future of war. Whether the brief conflict signals a change in the character of warfare is perhaps not yet clear. But one thing in particular certainly is: the war shows that militaries must be prepared to fight for—and fight in—cities.

Revue conflits.com a écrit:

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Guerre du Haut-Karabagh : quels enseignements pour la France ?

revueconflits.com/haut-karabagh-enseignements/
July 28, 2021

La guerre du Haut-Karabagh, qui a opposé l’Azerbaïdjan à la république d’Artsakh soutenue par l’Arménie, a défrayé la chronique mondiale du 27 septembre 2020 à la signature du cessez-le-feu sous patronage de la Russie le 10 novembre de la même année. Résurgence d’un conflit territorial ancien, les hostilités ont pris la forme d’une guerre interétatique, symétrique, comme on n’en avait pas vu depuis longtemps. A la fois classique du point de vue de ses enjeux et des parties en conflit et contemporain sur le plan des moyens employés et des équipements, ce conflit apparaît comme un laboratoire de la guerre de haute intensité.
Une synthèse du rapport d’information sénatorial « Haut-Karabagh : dix enseignements d’un conflit qui nous concerne » par Alban Wilfert pour Conflits.

[NB : Les mots ici entre guillemets sont entre guillemets dans le texte du rapport ou visent à citer les mots de personnes interrogées, l’auteur de ces lignes ne les a pas ajoutés].

Quelles leçons les autres Etats, la France en premier lieu, peuvent-ils tirer d’un tel conflit ? C’est pour mieux le comprendre qu’Olivier Cigolotti et Marie-Arlette Carlotti, membres de la commission des affaires étrangères, de la défense et des forces armées du Sénat ont remis à la présidence de la chambre haute un rapport d’information dégageant « dix enseignements » de ce « conflit qui nous concerne ». Ce rapport, structuré en deux parties, revient sur des enseignements géopolitiques et militaires. C’est ce second temps de la réflexion, sous le vocable « Une guerre du XXIe siècle ? », qui fera ici l’objet d’une synthèse.

Les drones, nouvel avatar de la guerre aérienne
La guerre du Haut-Karabagh a mis en évidence une nouveauté majeure sur le plan de la conflictualité dans la troisième dimension. Alors même que l’aviation et les hélicoptères y ont très peu servi, en raison de leur vulnérabilité aux défenses anti-aériennes et de leur rapport coût/efficacité, voire de la crainte d’une escalade avec la Turquie, le rôle des drones s’est avéré déterminant.

Plutôt que de s’ajouter à l’arme aérienne, les drones s’y sont substitués, jouant les rôles qui étaient jusqu’alors confiés à celles-ci. Présentant l’avantage d’être moins détectables par les défenses anti-aériennes que les avions et moins coûteux que ces derniers, la trentaine de drones à la disposition de l’armée azérie a servi à effectuer des frappes contre des véhicules peu blindés et à servir d’appui-feu, en plus de remplir des fonctions ISR (pour intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, autrement dit des missions de renseignement militaire). En combinant drones « senseurs », chargés de missions ISR, et drones « effecteurs », servant à la désignation d’objectifs et à des frappes aériennes, l’Azerbaïdjan a fait remplir à ces systèmes d’armes la totalité des fonctions classiques confiées aux avions, à moindres frais : la perte éventuelle de drones est bien moins onéreuse. Il s’agit, dès lors, d’un équipement conçu comme « consommable », ce qui s’observe également à travers l’usage complémentaire par l’Azerbaïdjan de 250 « munitions maraudeuses ». Ces loitering munitions importées d’Israël sont télé-opérées et dotées d’une charge explosive, pouvant atteindre une autonomie de plusieurs heures et un rayon d’action de 1000 km, ce qui leur vaut d’être qualifiées de « drones suicides » ou « kamikazes ». Ces armes, dont les progrès de l’intelligence artificielle amélioreront sans doute à l’avenir l’autonomie et l’efficacité, ont notamment servi à la suppression des défenses anti-aériennes ennemies.

L’un des éléments-clés de la victoire azerbaïdjanaise est l’efficacité de son « complexe de reconnaissance-frappe », combinant artillerie et drones avec gain en précision des frappes et raccourcissement de la boucle décisionnelle, accélérant de la sorte les boucles de tir et accroissant leur précision. Jean-Jacques Patry, chercheur à la Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS), y voit une nouvelle doctrine d’emploi des forces, promise à un bel avenir, qu’il nomme doctrine des « salves manœuvrantes », reposant sur le rassemblement de machines communicantes non habitées de manière à leur faire remplir les fonctions d’une flotte d’attaque habitée : « mouvement, brouillage, leurrage, reconnaissance et identification de cibles, destruction et évaluation des dommages »[1]. Si cette guerre n’est pas la première à voir le développement de ce type de dispositifs, dont les Etats-Unis ont déjà fait usage, l’intégration de munitions maraudeuses dans ceux-ci est une innovation de la Turquie, alliée de l’Azerbaïdjan. Ce pays a minutieusement préparé cette campagne interarmées et pensé ce concept d’opération d’usure du potentiel arménien, fondé sur l’usage du binôme drones-artillerie et de munitions maraudeuses, souligne Jean-Jacques Patry[2].

De toute évidence, la France devrait tirer les enseignements de l’émergence d’une telle doctrine nouvelle. Si les forces armées françaises devraient compter un millier de drones armés d’ici trois ans, leur emploi de MALE Reaper et d’Eurodrone reste essentiellement stratégique, quasi exclusivement pour des opérations de haute valeur ajoutée. A contrario, l’Azerbaïdjan a fait un usage tactique d’armes moins coûteuses, « consommables », au profit de ses unités de première ligne.

Un tel constat implique par ailleurs de repenser la défense sol-air (DSA) et la lutte anti-drones (LAD). De fait, dans les armées françaises, la défense sol-air a pâti des coupes drastiques liées à la fin de la guerre froide et au contexte de contrainte budgétaire. Les environnements des opérations extérieures (opex) se caractérisant par une supériorité aérienne française, ces opérations ont favorisé l’abandon des systèmes de défense sol-air à courte et moyenne portée, au point que la spécialisation dans la DSA n’est plus l’apanage que d’un seul régiment français, le 54e d’artillerie. Auditionné à l’Assemblée Nationale en octobre 2019, le chef d’état-major des armées (CEMA) François Lecointre, a souligné le « choix » fait « il y a quinze ans d’abandonner la capacité de défense sol-air d’accompagnement », avant de reconnaître que « le phénomène drone change la donne ». Les auteurs du rapport relèvent donc l’importance que devront revêtir DSA et LAD dans la prochaine loi de programmation militaire. Il faudra en effet se prémunir contre des attaques combinant menaces conventionnelles et éléments plus « rustiques » et nombreux tels que des drones et munitions télé-opérées. En effet, une telle combinaison posant de nouveaux défis en termes de détection, qui devront être relevés par des radars de nouvelle génération, et de neutralisation, impliquant une évolution des moyens de défense, d’autant plus que l’autonomie des drones va croissant. Pour ce faire, la France fait depuis 2014 l’acquisition de moyens mobiles de lutte anti-drones (MILAD) et de fusils brouilleurs destinés à équiper forces terrestres, aériennes et navales tant en métropole que sur un théâtre d’opération extérieure. Toutefois, cela ne fera pas tout : il s’agira également d’arriver à la supériorité par la saturation de l’espace aérien. Cela pose d’emblée la question de la guerre de haute intensité.

A lire également : Conflit au Haut-Karabagh : le point de vue de l’Azerbaïdjan

Les défis posés par la guerre de haute intensité
Les sénateurs le soulignent, la guerre du Haut-Karabagh est l’un des premiers conflits interétatiques du XXIe siècle, ravivant le modèle de la guerre classique, symétrique, mais non sans innovations. Elle a vu, écrivent-ils à plusieurs reprises, le retour de la manœuvre, avec une armée azérie à l’offensive, alternant actions de fixation et de contournement et mettant en œuvre tous les matériels à sa disposition.

Le concept de haute intensité, qui a fait beaucoup parler de lui au sein des états-majors ces dernières années, renvoie à une guerre qui changerait d’échelle, touchant aussi bien les domaines politique, économique ou diplomatique que le militaire, « tous les champs et milieux de confrontation, en soumettant nos forces et nos zones arrières à des menaces multiples de désinformation, brouillage, menace aérienne et en provoquant l’épuisement rapide des stocks de pièces et de munitions, voire des pertes humaines élevées », selon les mots écrits en octobre 2020 par le général Thierry Burkhard[3], qui a récemment succédé à François Lecointre au poste de chef d’état-major des armées.

Le récent conflit constitue un exemple de guerre de haute intensité, très consommatrice en termes économiques, humains et matériels. On compte 4000 morts chez les militaires de chaque camp, un chiffre considérable si on le rapporte aux 40 000 naissances célébrées chaque année en Arménie. Si les pertes matérielles sont six fois plus importantes chez les Arméniens que chez les Azéris, ces derniers ont toutefois assisté à la destruction de 26 de leurs drones. Ainsi, alors que la supériorité « 3D » est assurée aux armées occidentales dans bien des opérations de guerre asymétrique qu’elles mènent à l’étranger, ce conflit est l’occasion de réfléchir à de futurs conflits où elles n’en jouiront plus. En effet, c’est le matériel utilisable en opex, plutôt que celui qui devrait servir à une potentielle guerre de haute intensité, qui est privilégié depuis des années par la France dans ses choix budgétaires. Par conséquent, ses forces armées ne comptent plus guère de moyens de minage anti-chars mécaniques ou de moyens de déminage lourds si ce n’est un modèle d’engin blindé du génie… vieux de quarante ans. Le développement du matériel destiné à la haute intensité doit donc, désormais, être planifié, pour retrouver une dynamique de croissance des stocks. En amont, les programmes d’armement doivent tenir compte des modes opératoires nouveaux de nos adversaires potentiels en étant en mesure d’adapter rapidement les défenses. Ces programmes doivent être souples, aptes à des adaptations qui viseraient à y intégrer des éléments d’innovation. L’arbitrage entre la « masse » et la technologie doit aujourd’hui être repensé, arbitrage au centre des enjeux du programme Titan de rénovation du segment lourd de l’armée de terre ou encore de programmes franco-allemands autour du char MGCS (Main Ground Control System) et de l’artillerie CIFS (Common Indirect Fire System). A titre d’exemple de cette alternative entre précision et saturation, l’Azerbaïdjan use de lance-roquettes multiples et de missiles balistiques, quand la France recourt au lance-roquettes unitaire (LRU). Or, dans un conflit de haute intensité, la saturation de l’espace aérien est essentielle, ce qu’a compris l’Azerbaïdjan qui a privilégié la « masse » en usant avant tout de drones « consommables ». Il faut, selon le général Burkhard cité par les auteurs, préférer à la « très haute technologie » des systèmes d’armes qui « soient toujours relativement résilients et stables et qu’en plus, ils soient capables de fonctionner en mode dégradé ». Les équipements doivent être en mesure d’apporter un soutien direct sur le théâtre d’opération, d’aider à la réactivité.

Surprise stratégique et complexification des conflits : le visage des hostilités au XXIe siècle ?
Au même titre que la prise de Mossoul par Daesh, que l’annexion de la Crimée par la Russie (2014) ou que l’engagement de ce dernier pays en Syrie (2015) ou encore, dans un autre registre, que la pandémie de Covid-19, la guerre du Haut-Karabagh est une illustration du risque de surprise stratégique. La notion de surprise, qui a toujours été au cœur de la stratégie dans la mesure où elle donne l’avantage à celui qui prend l’initiative, est encore d’actualité.

Ces opérations courtes, préparées dans la discrétion, permettent de mettre la communauté internationale devant le fait accompli, notamment dans le cas de conflits hybrides, gelés, qu’on ne pensait plus susceptibles de dégénérer en guerre ouverte. En ne laissant qu’un temps de préavis très bref, de quelques semaines dans le cas de la guerre du Haut-Karabagh, entre les premiers signaux d’alerte et le début du conflit proprement dit, l’attaquant bénéficie d’un avantage certain sur une défense qui n’a pas eu le temps de s’organiser. Seul un travail du renseignement, impliquant non seulement des « capteurs » en quête d’informations mais également des moyens d’analyse et de recherche, peut permettre de se prémunir contre ce genre d’opérations.

De fait, alors que les investissements effectués par Bakou dans la défense ces dernières années se sont montrés considérables au point de porter le pays à la 9e place mondiale des dépenses militaires rapportées au PIB, on y a vu un moyen pour lui de rééquilibrer les forces en présence par rapport à la guerre précédente qu’il avait perdu plutôt que le signe d’un conflit prochain. La vente d’armes à l’Azerbaïdjan comme à l’Arménie était soumise depuis les années 1990 à un embargo, embargo toutefois trop peu contraignant pour empêcher toute importation. Des preuves photographiques ont été apportées de la présence d’équipements fournis par des sociétés canadiennes. Dans le même temps, l’Azerbaïdjan renforçait ses liens avec la Turquie quand l’Arménie voyait ses relations avec la Russie se détériorer : la dégradation du contexte international et le retour des « Etats puissances » peuvent faire dégénérer des hostilités gelées en conflits ouverts. Le partenariat avec la Turquie s’est en effet avéré une aide précieuse pour l’Azerbaïdjan qui a notamment pu compter sur l’envoi de 1500 à 2000 mercenaires djihadistes par son allié, tandis que l’Arménie avait à ses côtés quelques combattants français et libanais d’origine arménienne. Le phénomène du mercenariat n’a rien de nouveau, ayant au contraire connu son apogée à la fin du Moyen Âge et au début de l’époque moderne. Toutefois, il monte aujourd’hui en puissance, à l’instar notamment du groupe russe Wagner, présent en Syrie et sur le continent africain, en dépit du droit international humanitaire qui exclut les mercenaires des garanties de protection comme le statut de prisonnier de guerre, et de textes réprimant cette activité, signés par certaines puissances dont la France. Le caractère symétrique, interétatique, de tels conflits, n’empêche pas qu’une composante hybride, faite d’interférences d’acteurs, étatiques ou non, étrangers aux parties en conflit, vienne les complexifier.

A lire également : Penser la stratégie. Entretien avec Martin Motte

Notes
[1] La « salve manœuvrante » : une avancée décisive dans les combats des 20 prochaines années en attendant l’ère des essaims autonomes, Jean-Jacques Patry, FRS, Défense & Industries, n°15, avril 2021 (cité dans le rapport).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Général Thierry Burkhard, Cahiers de la RDN sur la Vision stratégique de l’armée de terre (octobre 2020) (cité dans le rapport).

Shugan188 a écrit:

Tu lis les sorties médiatique des dirigeants iraniens ça te rappelle un autre pays....