A handful of soldiers shelter behind an embankment, oblivious to the fate about to enfold them. A missile streaks out of the sky, followed by an explosion. The smoke clears. Bodies lie in the sand.
Grainy video images released by Azerbaijan’s armed forces to show off their recent rout of Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh are being studied closely by western military analysts as a remarkable demonstration of death by “suicide drone”.
The rekindling of long-frozen conflicts, from the Himalayas to the Caucasus mountains, highlights an evolution in modern warfare, with the deployment of digital age and “hybrid” weaponry. It has raised fears of what other threats are on the way.
A Chinese unit in the Himalayas was reported last week to have used a “microwave”
