The dragons in GoT drive me nuts because the warfare is just “medieval (kind of) but with dragons! In fact they could/should completely change what Daenerys’ armies do.
- It took almost no time at all for aerial warfare implementers to realize that they should bomb targets at night. You achieve surprise and you make it incredibly difficult to shoot at you, and the damage is harder to mitigate. In a medieval type environment? No spotlights, no AA beyond bolts that are heavy, require perfect aim, and cannot shoot rapidly. All this daylight air raid stuff is bullshit; Americans did it in WWII to try and achieve precision and that’s irrelevant in this context.
- Related, having a long-range strike when your enemy has none and no real defenses changes the game for campaigning. Daenerys uses them like CAS while her army engages on the ground. But dragons are strategic and not tactical. Any army trying to muster and then move at the speed of foot and ox cart is entirely vulnerable to dragon fire. Especially— again— at night when they are in camp. Daenerys needs scouts to find the enemy army and then, when it’s dark, burn them all alive in camp.
Her foes here would be reduced to insurgent warfare because assembling any meaningful force in the field would just make them a target. And in fact, this happens when one side of a war has complete air superiority (Afghanistan, Iraq).