In early 2017, a Russian drone dropped a thermite grenade on an Eastern Ukrainian military base and caused a chain of explosions that destroyed a billion dollars’ worth of ammunition and infrastructure. In southern Afghanistan today, the Taliban have seemingly developed a home-grown version of “clear, hold, build” to kill security forces, block supplies, and expand their terrain by starving out local populations to occupy abandoned villages. In other words, an advanced military exploited something as rudimentary as dropping grenades from the sky, while an adversary that frequently dons flip-flops managed to integrate limited violence, attrition, and information operations to accumulate strategic gains against coalition forces.
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