[nvelty]

Massed conventional armor didn't fare too well in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. China has a large amount of long-range fires and has invested heavily in UAVs - these were the decisive things for Azerbaijan. Hopefully their planners have been studying that conflict and adjusting accordingly.

[rsj_hn]

UAVs are fine against poorly equipped opponents, but they require a radio link from the home base which can easily be cut off. Iran's electronic warfare team was able to seize control of a US stealth UAV and redirect it to land in the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–U.S._RQ-170_incident

It then reversed engineered the UAV and sold access to it to China and Russia - and any other taker, which ramped up these nation's UAV program.

It's one thing when you are flying drones over afghanistan, but against an enemy that can marshall even basic electronic warfare countermeasures, the link between the UAVs and their control center will be severed, making them worthless.

Autononomous drones, OTOH, look very promising.