The Junta’s Air War in Arakan: Desperation, Symbolism, and Strategic Miscalculation

Aung Marm Oo

As the war in Myanmar’s Arakan State enters a decisive phase, one pattern has become impossible to ignore: the military council’s growing reliance on air power to strike former army bases it has already lost to the Arakan Army (AA). Far from signaling strength, these attacks reveal a regime that is losing control on the ground and clinging to symbols of authority in a conflict that is steadily slipping beyond its grasp.

On February 7, junta aircraft bombed the headquarters of Strategic Operations Command 15 in Buthidaung Township, territory the AA fully seized in May 2024. Reports indicate that the strikes did not merely hit abandoned military infrastructure but also affected areas where prisoners of war and their family members were being held, with casualties still being assessed.

This was not an isolated incident. In recent months, the junta has repeatedly targeted former military installations across Arakan: from a Regional Military Command site in Minbya Township in January to abandoned battalion bases in Ponnagyun Township last year. Each strike has left behind shattered buildings and unexploded ordnance but little evidence of strategic gain.

To understand this campaign, it must be placed within the wider military, humanitarian, and political landscape of Arakan and Myanmar as a whole.

A Ground War Lost, an Air War Escalated