For more than five years, Myanmar’s military has treated the sky as its safest battlefield. Ground troops lost bases, towns and strategic roads to resistance forces, but aircraft could fly over those losses, bomb the other side and return to heavily guarded airfields.
That sense of military security was shaken on September 10, when six first-person-view, or FPV, attack drones targeted Tada-U Airbase, which shares its airfield with Mandalay International Airport.
The National Unity Government, Myanmar’s parallel civilian administration formed after the 2021 coup, said its forces targeted only the military section, where aircraft used in bombing operations were stationed.
Videos appeared to show drones heading toward fighter jets inside shelters. The extent of the damage remains disputed, but the attack forced the civilian airport to close. State media said all six drones were intercepted “without causing damage or casualties”, yet the airport remained closed two days later.
Invoking war crimes
Military authorities accused the resistance of targeting civilian infrastructure and invoked international humanitarian law – even as Myanmar’s air force faces growing scrutiny over its own bombing campaign.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said in August that its investigations showed a pattern of deliberate aerial attacks on civilians and that it was identifying units and command structures linked to strikes on homes, schools, hospitals, religious buildings and displacement camps.
A new Myanmar Witness investigation identified 96 incidents involving children between September 28, 2025 and April 25 this year, amounting to 214 reported child casualties — 85 deaths and 129 injuries.
Of those, 48 were independently verified using visual evidence. The Myanmar Air Force was the most frequently reported actor, accounting for 61 actor attributions, most involving airstrikes.
A military that has shown no hesitation in bombing children in their homes and schools is now the one invoking the Geneva Conventions and talking about war crimes. That alone is noteworthy.
Asymmetric air war
But Tada-U matters for another reason. The air force has become the military’s answer to a problem it has faced throughout the post-coup war: how to keep fighting in places its army cannot securely hold.
When ground columns stall, aircraft strike ahead of them. When isolated bases need ammunition or reinforcements, helicopters and transport aircraft deliver them.
Even after military regime troops lose a town, aircraft can continue bombing it. ACLED, an independent global conflict-monitoring group, has found that air power remains the military’s clearest advantage over resistance groups and is increasingly used ahead of troop advances.
Myanmar’s resistance still lacks combat aircraft of its own and has only limited air-defense capability, with some forces relying on heavy machine guns and anti-materiel rifles.
The more important change is the use of homemade drones. Resistance units have assembled drones from commercial, often Chinese-made components and locally produced munitions, adapting civilian technology with limited resources.
The military has its own air-defense and counter-drone systems. It operates Russian-supplied Pechora-2M air-defense systems, while the Russian Defense Ministry announced a 2021 agreement to supply Pantsir-S1 systems.
The Myanmar Defense & Security Institute (MDSI), a research group established by former military officers who defected after the 2021 coup, has also reported the military’s deployment of Chinese-made Skyfend counter-drone systems.
Drones are also changing the fighting on the Irrawaddy River. Beginning in late August, forces led by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) repeatedly attacked a large military flotilla carrying troops, ammunition and supplies toward Bhamo, reportedly destroying or damaging much of the convoy.
Resistance-released videos circulating online appear to show drones being used against military vessels during the wider river campaign.
Cheap drones have not totally erased the military’s conventional advantage. What they have done is give resistance forces new ways to reach expensive assets that were previously mainly untouchable.
Aircraft losses have mounted too. MDSI reported in November 2025 that the Myanmar Air Force had lost 20 aircraft and helicopters since the 2021 coup, which it described as the heaviest losses in the force’s history. The tally includes losses from different causes, including mechanical failures and aircraft brought down by resistance forces.
Limits of air superiority
The Soviet-Afghan War offers a historical comparison, but only up to a point.
Soviet forces enjoyed overwhelming air superiority until US-supplied Stinger missiles gave the Mujahideen a far more effective way to threaten Soviet aviation from 1986, forcing Soviet pilots to change how and where they flew. But Myanmar’s resistance has had no such Western arms pipeline.
In Syria, Russian air power helped sustain Bashar al-Assad for years, but it could not save his government when ground forces collapsed in late 2024, and key foreign backing weakened.
The Vietnam War demonstrated the same basic limit decades earlier: bombing can impose enormous costs, but aircraft cannot occupy and hold territory.
To be sure, Myanmar is not Afghanistan, Syria or Vietnam. Its war mixes guerrilla warfare with increasingly conventional battles and territorial campaigns. But aircraft still cannot occupy a town, patrol a road or administer territory. Soldiers have to do that.
Myanmar’s military has therefore been conscripting since 2024. By September 2026, state media said the program had reached its 28th training intake, though authorities have never published a cumulative total.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimated the first 16 batches brought in 60,000 to 80,000 men by August 2025, enough to partially rebuild depleted mobile units and support limited counteroffensives.
Recent military gains have therefore required both aircraft and infantry. Bombing can help clear a route; soldiers still have to take it and hold it.
That is why the Tada-U attack is striking. One of the military’s greatest remaining battlefield advantages is becoming something it must increasingly defend. The resistance cannot match Myanmar’s air force in the sky. However, the attack exposes a different vulnerability: aircraft are very different targets once they return to the ground.
For more than five years, Myanmar’s generals have relied on air power to compensate for what their soldiers could not accomplish on the ground. They still dominate much of the country’s airspace. What they can no longer safely assume is that the aircraft, airbases and supply systems that hold that advantage will remain beyond the war’s reach.
Nyein Chan Aye is a Burmese journalist based in Washington, D.C., who previously worked for the BBC and Voice of America, and writes on Myanmar, the US, China and regional affairs.
