Was the victory of Azerbaijan in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war inevitable?

In war, technological innovation plays a significant role. How significant is the question. This thesis investigates the determinants of Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 Nagorno- Karabakh War through the analytical framework of Stephen Biddle's Military Power. It tests whether the widespread notion of a decisive "drone war" adequately explains the outcome or whether victory is better understood through force-employment dynamics of modern conventional warfare. By applying a single-case qualitative design combined with Biddle's formal model, we get an amalgamation of empirical data from the conflict with the simulated scenarios, from which we can evaluate the effects of defensive depth, exposure, reserve mobility, and drone employment on the likelihood of breakthrough. The findings reveal that while drones played an important enabling role, they did not independently determine the result. Instead, the decisive factors were rooted in combined- arms integration, operational discipline, and the exploitation of Armenian weaknesses in depth and reserve employment. Drones acted as accelerators amplifying the effectiveness of Azerbaijani force employment by constraining the defender's ability to reinforce and adapt but they did not replace the need for ground maneuver and coordinated firepower. The study...