Myanmar Military Escalates Civil War with Low-Tech Aerial Assaults
Myanmar's military, known as the Tatmadaw, is dramatically escalating its aerial warfare capabilities through the deployment of commercial paramotors and gyrocopters, according to a comprehensive new report released on Monday. These low-tech flying machines are being used to attack civilians and anti-government forces across multiple regions as the country's devastating civil war continues to intensify.
Expanding Aerial Arsenal with Unconventional Aircraft
The military's use of paramotors, which combine a paraglider with a backpack motor and propeller, was first documented in 2024. The first reported incident involving a gyrocopter, an ultralight one- or two-person aircraft with helicopter-like rotating blades, occurred in March of last year, according to human rights organization Fortify Rights.
The organization has tracked a significant increase in such attacks throughout last year, with pilots manually dropping mortar shells from these aircraft. In some paramotor attacks, pilots reportedly cut their engines during final approach, gliding silently toward their targets to avoid detection.
"The Myanmar military has found new ways to kill civilians from the sky using paramotors and gyrocopters equipped with manually-dropped, unguided explosives," stated Fortify Rights' Chit Seng in an official statement accompanying the report.
Deadly Attacks on Civilians and Infrastructure
In the deadliest documented paramotor attack, two shells were dropped on anti-election protesters attending a candlelight vigil in Sagaing region last October, killing at least 24 people. Another attack in the same region saw a gyrocopter target a hospital, resulting in the deaths of the chief physician and two other hospital staff members.
Fortify Rights confirmed both incidents through interviews with eyewitnesses, though Myanmar's military did not respond to requests for comment on the findings. The Tatmadaw regularly maintains that it does not intentionally target civilians, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The military's seizure of power in February 2021, when it ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, has triggered widespread opposition that has since spiraled into full-scale civil war. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a watchdog group monitoring political arrests and casualties, more than 7,700 civilians have been killed since the coup.
Strategic Advantages of Low-Tech Aircraft
The documented attacks have primarily occurred across Myanmar's central lowlands in Sagaing, Magway, Mandalay, Ayeyarwady, and Bago regions, where largely flat terrain makes low-altitude flight practical. These areas are typically opposition-held territories with limited militia activity and inadequate aerial defense capabilities, making them vulnerable to these slow-moving aircraft.
Despite their vulnerability, paramotors and gyrocopters offer the military several strategic advantages:
- They are relatively cheap and easy to operate compared to conventional military aircraft
- They can be launched from open fields without requiring sophisticated infrastructure
- They can remain airborne for approximately three hours while carrying 30 to 40 mortar shells
- They employ simple release mechanisms for dropping explosives on ground targets
These aircraft supplement the Tatmadaw's existing aerial arsenal, which includes modern jets, helicopters, and drones.
Pattern of Attacks Intensifies During Election Period
According to Morgan Michaels, an analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who runs its Myanmar Conflict Map project, "Paramotors are deployed in areas where armed actors are less sophisticated or lack firepower." Michaels, who has tracked a similar increase in usage but was not involved in the Fortify Rights study, added that these aircraft help reduce strain on the air force, allowing the military to redirect more advanced assets to borderland peripheries where anti-government militias operate.
The Fortify Rights data, compiled from open-source reports and first-hand interviews, indicates that attacks increased starting in July, just before the military government announced it would hold elections. The attacks surged again in December as the first round of voting began.
With Suu Kyi's party banned and opposition largely stifled, critics have denounced the elections, whose third and final round concluded on Sunday, as a contrived attempt to lend legitimacy to military rule.
"The pattern of attacks has intensified in parallel with the junta's efforts to consolidate control over central Myanmar, intimidate civilians, and assert authority ahead of its multi-phase sham elections," Fortify Rights stated in its report.
Hundreds of Documented Incidents
Between December 2024 and January 11, 2026, Fortify Rights documented 304 paramotor and gyrocopter attacks specifically targeting civilians. According to the online Armed Conflict Location and Event Data database, there were approximately 350 total incidents involving such aerial vehicles during roughly the same period, though only about one-third were specifically categorized as targeting civilians.
Michaels noted that while it's established that the Tatmadaw attacks civilians as part of its counterinsurgency strategy, "open source conflict data is not reliable enough to determine what percentage of aerial attacks constitute the deliberate targeting of civilians versus what percentage are aerial attacks that target combatants but inflict undue harm onto civilians."
Revealing Opposition Vulnerabilities
The effective deployment of paramotors and gyrocopters underscores the continued poor equipment of many opposition forces, despite ethnic minority groups and pro-democracy "People's Defense Forces" having captured significant territory from the military.
"It shows that the Tatmadaw can still dominate the battlespace across central Myanmar and opposition groups cannot protect civilians against deliberate or disproportional aerial attacks," Michaels observed.
International Response and Sanctions Evasion
While some countries, notably China and Russia, continue to supply Myanmar with military equipment, many others have imposed sanctions prohibiting such trade. However, in a separate analysis also released on Monday, Amnesty International reported that aviation fuel continues to enter the country via so-called "ghost ships" that disable their location tracking systems to avoid detection.
Myanmar's military government did not respond to questions about the Amnesty report. Fortify Rights has urged governments to reassess sanctions to ensure that components for paramotors and gyrocopters are not slipping through existing restrictions.
"U.N. member states must strictly enforce existing sanctions against the Myanmar military junta and issue new sanctions that effectively prohibit the sale or transfer of arms, jet fuel, and dual-use equipment or technologies," Fortify Rights emphasized in its concluding recommendations.
