Sudan's RSF paramilitary, under pressure, widens the war with drones and a new ground push

Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary struck the area around the capital Khartoum with drones for a second straight day on Thursday, while the Sudanese army (SAF) said it had repelled a ground assault in the central region of Kordofan that involved more than 250 RSF combat vehicles. The pattern on the public record is widening from a losing position, not a march.

On Wednesday, RSF drones hit Atbara, Bahri, ad-Damir, Khartoum, and el-Obeid, per Al-Monitor's regional analysis. On Thursday, the same outlet reported drone strikes around Omdurman, just across the Nile from Khartoum, continued for a second consecutive day. Al-Monitor also reported the paramilitary has stepped up operations in North Kordofan, a central region west of Khartoum, and opened a fresh front in Blue Nile, a southern state on the Ethiopian border.

The ground fight is where the analytical anchor sits. On Thursday, SAF said it repelled a major assault on Jabra al-Sheikh, a position in Kordofan, that involved more than 250 RSF combat vehicles, with surviving fighters retreating toward Darfur. Sudan Tribune, citing military sources, reported that government forces also repelled two follow-up RSF assaults near el-Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital. Al-Monitor framed the wider RSF campaign as an effort to blunt recent SAF advances in Kordofan while opening new fronts elsewhere.

The paramilitary did not widen the war from a position of strength. It widened it after a string of military losses and defections, per Al-Monitor's reporting. Drones around the capital, a 250-vehicle armored thrust in Kordofan, and a new front in Blue Nile are three different ways of forcing the army to fight on more fronts at once, each a response to the same underlying pressure. The same logic explains why RSF drone strikes on the capital triangle have continued even as the paramilitary has lost ground in Kordofan: pressure on one front becomes pressure on every front.

The geography makes the trade-off legible. Kordofan sits between Khartoum and the Darfur region to the west, where the RSF has long had its base of support. Blue Nile lies to the southeast, on the Ethiopian border, and gives the paramilitary a new line of attack that pulls SAF units away from the Kordofan fight. Omdurman, Bahri, and Khartoum itself form the capital triangle, the political center of gravity for the war. A paramilitary losing ground in one theater can still impose cost by hitting all three at once, even if the drones are not battlefield decisive on their own.

The 250-vehicle figure, and the claim of a retreat toward Darfur, are SAF reporting, echoed by Sudan Tribune and the Long War Journal, a think tank focused on paramilitary and armed-group analysis. The RSF has not, in the cited reporting, confirmed the size of the assault or the retreat. Reuters and Al Jazeera have separately reported SAF advances in western Sudan that they describe as a turning point in the war. The outlets disagree on framing; they do not disagree on the direction of travel on the ground.

The civilian cost of the drone campaign is the part that does not show up in the military arithmetic. Drone strikes on population centers around the capital and on el-Obeid, a regional hub, are not just battlefield tools. They put the capital triangle on a footing the war has not seen in months, and they do so while the paramilitary is also trying to open a new front several hundred kilometers south.

The falsifier for the "widening from a losing position" frame is on the map. If the RSF holds new ground in Blue Nile or keeps a foothold in the Kordofan cities it is contesting, the pressure-driven-widening read breaks and the paramilitary is back to being on the offensive from something closer to a position of strength. The next 72 hours of reporting from Blue Nile, where SAF has not yet publicly engaged the new RSF push, will be the first real test.