The current conflict in Sudan has become not only a battlefield of force but a struggle over attribution, narrative control, and regional positioning. In such environments, what classical military theory describes as the “fog of war” is intensified by modern information disorder, where claims of responsibility often precede verification. Recent allegations by Sudanese authorities that drone strikes on strategic infrastructure, including Khartoum International Airport, originated from Bahir Dar in Ethiopia fall squarely into this pattern. However, when assessed against operational constraints, battlefield structure, and known drone capabilities in Sudan, these claims are not supported by technical evidence and are operationally implausible.

To understand why such claims arise – and why they fail to hold analytically – it is necessary to examine the structure of aerial warfare inside Sudan through the lens of asymmetric warfare. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have developed drone capabilities during the conflict, but these remain limited in range, sophistication, and system depth. Their operations rely on short- to medium-range platforms acquired through external supply chains and deployed from shifting frontlines inside Sudan. This is not a conventional airpower system; it is a fragmented, mobile, and opportunistic capability designed for battlefield fluidity, not strategic long-range projection.

Within this structure, RSF-controlled or previously seized airfields in Merowe, and Nyala function as temporary operational nodes – staging grounds for logistics, coordination, and localized drone deployment. From these positions, RSF forces can conduct strikes within the Khartoum theatre, including attacks affecting Khartoum International Airport when systems are positioned within range. But this capability is strictly territorial. It does not extend to sustained or precise long-range drone operations originating outside Sudanese territory. Hence any claim of cross-border launch from Ethiopia collapses under basic operational logic: range limitations, command-and-control requirements, and the absence of demonstrated long-distance strike infrastructure make such a scenario technically untenable. This point is decisive. If RSF capabilities already explain the pattern of strikes around Khartoum through localized deployment, then external launch theories are not merely unproven – they are unnecessary. The internal battlefield structure fully accounts for the observed operational reality. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), by contrast, remain anchored in conventional airpower based on institutional military aviation. This produces a structural asymmetry: SAF operates centralized air capabilities, while RSF operates decentralized drone warfare embedded in fragmented terrain. The result is not symmetric war but layered conflict, where overlapping systems generate competing narratives about the same events.

It is precisely within this fragmented battlespace that attribution becomes politically useful but technically unstable. The “fog of war” is no longer incidental – it is strategic. In the Sudan conflict, competing actors – mainly SAF, deploy what security studies define as strategic narratives: deliberate attempts to shape the perceived origin and meaning of violence under conditions where verification lags behind political urgency. Allegations of Ethiopian involvement, including cross-border drone launches, function within this logic. They are tools of pressure, framing, and diplomatic positioning facilitated by Egypt and other Middle Eastern stakeholders, not confirmed operational facts. From an operational standpoint, there is no verified evidence of cross-border drone operations launched from Ethiopian territory in this conflict. And RSF’s drone warfare remains an internally generated capability embedded within Sudan’s territorial fragmentation.

This internal explanation is further reinforced by the limitations of Sudan’s integrated air defense environment. The country’s air surveillance and interception capabilities have been significantly degraded by years of conflict fragmentation, equipment loss, and divided command structures between competing military actors. As a result, low-altitude, small radar-cross-section drone activity is difficult to consistently detect, track, or attribute in real time, particularly in contested airspace around Khartoum. In such conditions, the evidentiary threshold for confidently asserting long-range cross-border launches becomes significantly higher. Without continuous radar tracking, forensic drone recovery, or verifiable flight-path data, attribution relies heavily on inference rather than technical confirmation. This further weakens claims of external launch origins when internal deployment already explains observed strike patterns.

The attribution to Ethiopia also fails on political grounds. Ethiopia is currently absorbed by internal restructuring, managing post-conflict stabilization, economic recovery and preparations for upcoming elections. In this context, external military escalation into Sudan would represent a high-risk, low-return strategic rupture with no coherent alignment to its present priorities. The claim is therefore not only unsupported – it is inconsistent with Ethiopia’s actual strategic incentives. Hence, SAF’s Ethiopia hypothesis fails to make sense – both operationally and strategically.

To understand why such narratives persist, the analysis must move to the regional structure in which Sudan is embedded. The Nile basin is defined by a security dilemma in which defensive actions by one state are interpreted as strategic threats by another, producing cycles of mistrust and counter-alignment. Egypt’s water security doctrine is built on the existential centrality of the Nile, making downstream stability a core strategic imperative.

Within this structure, Sudan occupies not a neutral position but a structurally intermediate one. Its internal fragmentation repeatedly produces external alignment effects that converge with Egyptian strategic preferences, particularly regarding constraints on Ethiopian upstream autonomy. Egypt does not control Sudanese decision-making, but it functions as a structural pole in a hydropolitical system where geography and dependency generate recurring strategic convergence. This is not episodic influence but a systemic logic that Egypt has also expanded beyond Sudan and Eritrea in recent years, enforcing its encirclement strategy against Ethiopia through overt alliances and covert subversive operations colluding with Eritrea, “peacekeeping operation” in Somalia and “port infrastructure development agreements” in Djibouti as well.

This system operates through what contemporary conflict analysis describes as networked pressure structures, where influence is exerted indirectly across multiple conflict theatres rather than through formal alliances. Here, Egypt operates through a strategy best understood as layered encirclement and proxy pressure projection, designed to constrain Ethiopia’s upstream water security governance by influencing instability inside Ethiopia and shaping conflict trajectories across adjacent states rather than through direct intervention.

Within this architecture, Sudan is not an autonomous arena but a recurring pressure theatre within Egypt’s wider security perimeter. Its chronic fragmentation repeatedly creates openings through which downstream strategic objectives become structurally advantaged, particularly in relation to limiting Ethiopian upstream autonomy. This is not control in a direct sense, but a consistent pattern of systemic advantage produced by Sudan’s longstanding political instability and complex geography. So at a structural level, Egypt functions as the primary structuring power of the system, ensuring Sudan’s chronic fragmentation produces systemic effects that consistently align with its downstream security priorities: reduced upstream consolidation, sustained instability along the Nile corridor, and preservation of strategic leverage in hydropolitical negotiations. Sudan therefore functions as a recurring pressure interface against Ethiopia, where instability itself becomes strategically consequential. This is not coordination; it is systemic asymmetry produced by geography.

In recent months, Egypt’s rhetoric toward Ethiopia has become noticeably more assertive, reflecting heightened sensitivity over Nile governance and downstream water security. Public messaging has increasingly emphasized urgency and strategic red lines, with recurring references in Egyptian discourse to severe consequences in the event of unilateral upstream actions. Senior diplomatic statements, including remarks attributed to the Foreign Ministry, have also signaled openness to “serious measures” and resolve to block Ethiopia out of Red Sea presence and governance “Until Judgment Day” in response to Ethiopia’s firm stance on the technical operational autonomy and governance of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and its strong pursuit for sovereign access to the sea. Within this escalating rhetorical environment, Sudanese allegations linking Ethiopia to drone activity inside Sudan take on added regional significance, as they risk reframing an internally driven conflict through an externalized Nile-security lens. Even in the absence of verified technical evidence, such claims can function within the broader regional discourse to increase diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia and draw it further into Sudan’s internal crisis dynamics, thereby intersecting with Egypt’s more forceful public posture on Nile-related disputes.

Hence, these dynamics produce a conflict environment in which Sudan’s allegations against Ethiopia – subsequently echoed in Egypt’s official statements and amplified through Arab League channels – are not only politically motivated but also inconsistent with the operational realities of RSF’s internally generated asymmetric air capabilities around Khartoum. RSF’s drone warfare, constrained yet sufficient within Sudan’s fragmented battlespace, does not require external launch explanations to account for observed strike patterns. In this context, cross-border attribution claims function primarily as instruments of political narrative construction rather than technical description, shaping perception in ways that exceed available evidence and operational necessity.

The central conclusion is therefore clear: Sudan’s conflict is not defined by any verified external aerial escalation involving Ethiopia – a country that has consistently called for peace in Sudan – but by the interaction of asymmetric warfare, informational fog, and deep structural regional pressures. The conflict is driven primarily by internal fragmentation and competing domestic military dynamics, while external attribution claims reflect the political use of uncertainty rather than confirmed operational causation.

By Horn Review Editorial