Book Mention: 7 Seconds to Die

Sounds pretty grim, like some kind of hard-boiled spy thriller.  Unfortunately the actual story is even more grim.  7 Seconds to Die is a history of the little-known Second Nagorno-Karabakh War that happened just four years ago.  What seemed like a resumption of a nasty border dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan turned into a swift forty-four day clean-sweep victory for Azerbaijan.

So how did this happen?  Holding the high ground in the mountainous border region, Armenia rested on its laurels with what they imagined to be similar Soviet-era military technology as Azerbaijan.  Unbeknownst to Armenia however, Azerbaijan was re-equipping and re-training for the 21st Century with drone technology supplied by Turkey and Israel.  If this all sounds like a dress-rehearsal for the current Ukraine conflict, that's because it is.  The chief difference with the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War is that only one side had embraced the new drone technology.  The result was like a 1945 WWII armored division going up against green WWI troops from 1914.

The questions now are, why have so few people heard of this war, and what lessons can we learn from it?  For most of us here in the West, largely reliant on Western news media during the tumult of 2020, the war was over so quickly that it never quite made headlines.  As to the lessons, beyond "Don't rest on your laurels!  Keep up on technology and training," you'll have to read the book for specifics.