Discussion summary
Medieval-style fortifications are reappearing in the Sahel and other regions, influenced by modern warfare and security concerns. These structures are seen in places like Ukraine, Germany, Afghanistan, and Latin America.
What the discussion says
- Fortifications are a response to modern threats like drones and insurgencies.
- Some compare these structures to historical castles or Roman forts.
- There is interest in the strategic and security implications of these fortifications.
“Medieval-style fortifications have come back in the Sahel.”
“Drones enable deep battlefield surveillance, reducing surprise attacks.”
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- Hacker News
- Is there anyway to actually read the article without paying?
- It's not just Africa. Take a look at the Ukrainian battlefield and you will see a similar trend: kilometers of trenches with some concrete bunkers here and there; even longer anti-tank ditches; along them dragon's teeth-type anti-tank obstacles; along them several rows of concertina razor wire; plus anti-drone netting along logistical routes. then there's vehicles with layers of cages, spikes and metal plates all over them to protect against drones, to the point where they look like medieval rams. with all the high tech precision weapons and satellites and drones, people sometimes forget that wars are about dealing and withstanding kinetic force.by iammjm
- But that is precisely because there are drones. Drones are what allows both sides to see so deep into the battlefield that it's basically impossible to make a surprise attack now. Your advance units start getting hammered as soon as they move into the "dead zone" (within range of drones from the contact line), and so is the logistics.by int_19h
- Coincidentally, this morning I happened to be in a hotel room where there was a TV-set showing some random TV channel, and there was a documentary showing that medieval-style fortifications have come back in the form of the new building of the US embassy in London, which is surrounded by a moat, presumably for fear of terrorists.by adrian_b
- The seat of the German parliament will be secured by a trench too (view the article for an image)
https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/mitte/article228419835/Sch...
by stephbook - The UK built [1] castles in Afghanistan recently too.by rjsw
- More of a Roman fort I'd say.by pigpop
- In many of Latin America big towns and most of border towns, most middle-class houses are tiny versions of fortresses.
It is a sign of police incompetence, government collapse and the fact that those places are ruled by gangsters.
by diego_moita - The great revelation of Google Street View for me has been that such is more or less the world norm. Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent.
The tragedy is that so few, at least here in the US, see the liberating value in them.
- by fsagx
- "Newly walled towns are a sign of shrivelling state authority" was my thought when I saw the walled off Capitol.
It is sad when the government needs walls to protect itself from its own people, a sign of weakness. To add to the irony the Capitol used to be, quite literally, the "people's house."
by ufocia - > shrivelling state authority
Sure, but state authority alone is no substitute for cultural norms.
- I thought walled towns died not due to state authority becoming stronger, but because offensive weaponry simply became effective enough to overcome walls. Walls can protect you from men with swords, but not from heavy artillery or bombers. Today, wouldn't a fleet of cheap drones render a wall moot?by 0xcafefood
- > I thought walled towns died not due to state authority becoming stronger, but because offensive weaponry simply became effective enough to overcome walls.
Yes, but people will also say that "Security through obscurity is not security" and then in the same breath sneer derisively at how leaving ssh on port 22 is just amateur hour stuff.
- Depends on who you want to protect against.
For example if you want to protect against hordes of teenagers stealing everything from an Apple store, you just need a button to deploy barbed wire at all entrances and exits, and then a few guards with rubber batons beat the shit out of everyone.
When the state is weak, communities take the law into their own hands, which is why we see this medieval-style fortifications appear again.
by dist-epoch - Not everyone has bombers. There are other examples of relatively recent use of forts. This apparently withstood an army with artillery but lacking bombers for 50 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffna_Fortby graemep
- The article is more talking about landscape fortifications like trenches, ramparts, moats, and berms that slow down trucks.by jubilanti
- That was always a bit of a myth. Walls are not meant to stop things from getting destroyed, they are to prevent easy entry. Even in antiquity the ability to lob something over a wall existed, but if you were in range to do so, the defenders on the walls were in range to lob things at you, structures within the walls could be hardened to resist damage from things lobbed at them, and ultimately lobbing things over walls simply didn't win conflicts. Even the strategic bombing of WW2 wasn't sufficient to bring any side to its knees - only boots on the ground or the imminent threat thereof actually got the job done.
Further, the disappearance of walls does not coincide well with developments in weapons technology. Walls adapted to the introduction of gunpowder and explosives, with fortresses being key parts of strategy well into the 20th century. Even medieval fortifications with minimal upgrades still proved reasonably effective in modern conflicts. Walls are very good for their intended purpose.
The disappearance of city walls was not due to technological but rather social progress. The early modern period saw the development of strong central states able to field large armies. These states did not want a lot of fortified cities that could close themselves off easily from either a foreign invader or from their own government. Instead the national army would defend cities as needed, operating from fortresses in strategic locations and setting up temporary fortifications as needed. Cities were redesigned to make it easy to march an army into them. At the same time, population growth and changing economic systems meant cities rapidly grew, far outstripping the limited space available within medieval walls. Again, detached networks of mutually-supporting forts were simply more economical than contiguous walls. Finally, the changing world meant that you were simply no longer worried about wandering war bands pillaging settlements. Most of what walls were needed for could be done more economically with fences and legal markers.
by jjk166 - Yes, but while the moat surrounding the US embassy in London will not deter drones, it will prevent any car from reaching the proximity of the building.
A car can carry a much higher explosive load than even a lot of cheap drones. Moreover, in London a car will become suspicious only when it is already close to the embassy, and there is little time available to react, but drones should be detected much earlier.
by adrian_b - ISIS-style soldiers usually have light-weaponry because they need to be mobile. Having heavy artillery or bombers will make them an easy target for an organized army which they are very not equipped to fight. Their advantage is in there ability to hit in random unprotected areas with little damage but to do it constantly and unpredictably.by csomar
- But they also protect you from more low level lawlessness and if the law situation inside and outside the wall are the same (because of stronger states) they stop being worth maintaining.
Think in the US, the cops wouldn’t survive against a couple of machine guns and a drone strike, but they are still useful for security purposes.
by reillyse - ACOUP, which is shared on HN regularly, has a series on fortifications too: https://acoup.blog/2021/12/31/collections-fortification-part...by red_admiral
- Fortifications never went anywhere.
Just in this century, the US used fortified camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so did the French in Sahel. And the Ukrainians fortified Dombas and effectively prevented the Russians to take it quickly. Then the Russians fortified the Zaporizhzhia frontline (the Surovikin line) which stopped the Ukrainian counter offensive in 2023.
And talking about Africa in particular, the border between Morocco and Algeria, and also Western Sahara, has been a fortified wall for the past 40 years now.
by stymaar - For a long time, basically since WW2, the assumption was that fortifications are at best a delaying measure, and worst case, the attacker can go around them (mobile warfare, blitzkrieg and all that).
In the past decade, however, the changes in battlefield tech resulted in a situation where fortifications can be genuinely impregnable.
by int_19h - by bob1029
- A government fortification protects against military attack.
A city fortification protects against basic lawlessness in the absence of a government protective order. It’s a sign of personal level violence
by digitaltrees - For anyone with an interest this article is cut down and pared slice of a portion of the work of Dr. Olivier Walther and Dr. Steven Radil, geographers at the University of Florida.
A somewhat longer article of theirs is Why African Borderlands Keep Burning (April 15, 2026) - https://africanarguments.org/2026/04/why-african-borderlands...
and a recent paper Mapping the long-term trajectories of political violence in Africa (MARCH 2026) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06502
by defrost - Thank you very much.by subscribed
- Thank's it adds a lot to explain why something like this pops up in the Economist of all places
> The United States and its allies should align its efforts accordingly. That means accepting longer time horizons, investing in less visible cross-border mechanisms over high-profile bilateral wins, and recognising that the periphery is now the centre.
oh boy
> African governments understand this dynamic, which is why regional organisations like the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and even the juntas of the Alliance of Sahel States increasingly emphasise multinational responses.
Not to be too much of a panafrican commie here, but AES left the Ecowas months ago I hope(?) the authors were aware of this? Seems like worth mentioning, perhaps it means something who knows. I guess we learn more about what to think about the Shael states when the US or France invades them again in a few months from now.
by lyu07282 - Thank you for the extra links i was think this article seemed to be missing context or a conclusionby xphos