Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

[arakeretzig]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

I still don't get what they mean with "long-range precision-guided weapons", is it long-range(3500-5500km) missiles? long range artillery? precision-guided air-to-ground bombs?
They always make an announcement to tease us alittle bit without details

[Vardan]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

we do not need as much distance 500-750km is more than enough.

[Mos]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

I hope we get more modern weapons though, with latest technology. For example, getting some advanced drones would be very nice.

[burjuin]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

we do not need as much distance 500-750km is more than enough.

Are our potential opponents only Azeristan?

[arakeretzig]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

I'm guessing we don't have AWACS planes yet? that would be a major game changer. It'd be awesome if the Russkies some day bring one to erebuni.

[Joseph]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

I'm guessing we don't have AWACS planes yet? that would be a major game changer. It'd be awesome if the Russkies some day bring one to erebuni.

My guess is that the Russian share/ and would share information received from the Gabala Radar Station.

[Mos]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

We should lobby so that Russia cuts military ties with Azeris, like how in US Armenians lobbied against military aid to Azerbaijan.

Russia equips Azerbaijan with AK-74M rifles
February 22, 2011 - 19:05 AMT 15:05 GMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - The first AK-74M rifles will be assembled in Azerbaijan by the Russian license in late 2011, Adviser to Azerbaijani Minister of Defence Industry Azad Mammadov said.

"At present, the licensed assembly of AK-74M rifles is under development in accordance with the contract signed with the Russian concern Izhmash. The first rifles assembled by Azerbaijani specialists will be available by late 2011," he told ARMS-TASS correspondent.

The 10-year contract envisages annual production of 12 000 rifles.

[Joseph]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2011-02-22-wikileaks-armenians-can-t-be-defeated-by-azerbaijan

Wikileaks: Armenians can’t be defeated by Azerbaijan

by Emil Sanamyan

Published: Tuesday February 22, 2011

Washington - "Azerbaijan, even with its focus on improving its military capability, is unlikely anytime soon to structure a force large or well-equipped enough to overcome the terrain advantages enjoyed by the NK Self-Defense Force and the Armenian army," former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Anne Derse argued at the end of her tenure in Baku.

According to the July 2, 2009 cable that is part of Wikileaks cache and was first published by Russkiy Reporter on February 22, Azerbaijan assumes "a much rosier scenario for NK than it has any plausible reason to expect."

Derse served as U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan from 2006 to 2009 and is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania.

In a January 2009 cable, also published by Russkiy Reporter today, Derse also notes that Azerbaijani "President's rhetoric has vastly outpaced the results" of Azerbaijan's military build-up.

The Washington view

Derse's analysis is in line with U.S. assessment of the balance of forces in Karabakh that former U.S. officials and experts have communicated publicly, their assessment unaffected by Azerbaijan's ballooning military spending expected to top $3 billion in 2011.

Ross Wilson, another former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan (2000-2003) and currently with The Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS), and Steve Blank of the National War College offered similar analysis during a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on February 18.

Blank stressed that Ilham Aliyev is "sadly mistaken" if he believes, as he often says publicly, that Azerbaijan could successfully undertake a military operation to capture Karabakh. Blank suggested that his conclusion was based on an in-depth and recent analysis by a group of Western experts.

"Any military campaign will seriously set back Azerbaijan's interests in the region including with respect to solving this [conflict] and I say that in part because I don't think a military effort will succeed," Wilson said at an earlier event at Georgetown University.

"This is extremely difficult terrain, the Armenians hold the high ground and it is very, very difficult to try to take that kind of territory without truly overwhelming force" which Azerbaijan does not possess, Wilson noted.

Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon official, argued in May 2009 that in addition to the terrain and other physical limitations, Azerbaijan would be facing "Karabakh Armenians [who] have a clear record of superiority in operational art [that] they would exercise in the inherently advantageous role of defenders of a skillfully prepared position."

The realities on the ground "should persuade any rational Azeri not to resort to war. Even the most favorable battlefield outcome would leave Azerbaijan immeasurably worse off than before," Merry wrote.

He warned further that "it is not out of the question that the existence of an Azeri state could hang in the balance, as in a major renewed war it might be in the combined interests of Armenia, Russia and Iran to redraw the map of the eastern Caucasus. Unlikely, but history is replete with precedents."



(c) 2011 Armenian Reporter

[Joseph]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan



"He warned further that "it is not out of the question that the existence of an Azeri state could hang in the balance, as in a major renewed war it might be in the combined interests of Armenia, Russia and Iran to redraw the map of the eastern Caucasus. Unlikely, but history is replete with precedents.""

[Eddo211]

Re: Nagorno-Karabagh: Military Balance Between Armenia & Azerbaijan

"He warned further that "it is not out of the question that the existence of an Azeri state could hang in the balance, as in a major renewed war it might be in the combined interests of Armenia, Russia and Iran to redraw the map of the eastern Caucasus. Unlikely, but history is replete with precedents.""

Exactly my point that I was trying to make earlier, without sounding like a warmonger.