“Until our army is such that it can be reckoned with, it will be as Aliyev said.” Leonid Nersisyan |: “Until out Army has not reached a point where they will sit down with us and negotiate, everything will be done by Aliyev’s will” Leonid Nersisian on army reforms.
“Until our army is such that it can be reckoned with, it will be as Aliyev said.” Leonid Nersisyan |: “Until out Army has not reached a point where they will sit down with us and negotiate, everything will be done by Aliyev’s will” Leonid Nersisian on army reforms.
Great interview, as always. One of the few proper military analysts that we have.
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1- Azerbaijan’s new military purchases
Reporter: After the 44 day war, both sides began buying arms to mitigate their losses. In your older interviews you have said that It is noticeable, after 2021, that Azerbaijan has become much more secretive about its purchases compared to other years. Please explain what is Azerbaijan purchasing today
Leonid: If we remember Azerbaijan’s military purchases until 2020, everything was published and shown to the people, it had political motivations. But nowadays they choose what to show and what to hide. In terms of purchases that they publish, it’s 1 billion dollars of Israeli anti-air defense systems, 100’s of millions for Israeli drones, and we also know that they have purchased new Turkish Akinci drones, and have modernized SU25 planes in Turkey as well.
It’s the first time that I’ve noticed that Turkey has ever upgraded Russian jets in this manner. It’s a very interesting upgrade that they’ve done. We’ve also recorded 10’s of flights from Israel, very likely drones that they had lost before, and maybe even new types of drones. But we can’t really know if anything new was purchased from them.
2- Akinici Drones
Reporter: We saw Aliyev boast about his purchase of Akinci drones. You have said before that Armenians should not focus on the purchase of these drones because the Caucasian countries have small areas of operations, and it won’t be as effective as many fear. What’s your opinion now on these drones?
Leonid: Against Armenia, the Akinci will probably be used with a glide bomb system, the SOM-2 which Turkey has also sold to Az. Those have a 300km strike area. The Akinci will not need to get close to Armenia’s border, so the slow and big nature of the drone will not have huge disadvantages for it. But, at the same time for me, like the TB2, there is no meaning in striking regions with tactical missiles from a drone. To mention the new modernized SU-25 can also use Turkish glide bombs.
3- Armenias new Air defense system
Reporter: Has our new Air defense protect us from the SOM-2 glide bombs?
Leonid: it is in my opinion that we still have more to do on that road. Globally this is an issue as well, the high quantity use of kamikaze drones to glide bombs, have shown to be a huge issue for many. The main issue is the effectiveness of the entire system, and not just a few. How the different AD will cooperate with each other to take down different types of drones. The use of “maverick” type drones are causing much problems, and Armenia should focus on mitigating risks against those types of drones. But imagine if 10 small kamikaze drones, and 10 glide bombs are sent towards a military target, our systems need to be able to differentiate all 20 different types, and target each of them with different types of AD’s. We can’t use S-300 and AKASH’s for all of them, since it will not only cost us too much, but we will lose our good AD’s agains targets that are only worth 50-100k. Armenia can work and ameliorate a system like this, since the IT in Armenia is pretty forward, and these are simply issues to “tackle” [and not necessarily purchase].
3- the 2023 War
Reporter: We would like to know what the 2023 war losses that were published by Azerbaijan, compared to the fact that they probably gave us false numbers in 2020, how accurate do you think the losses were in 2023.
Leonid: First of all they did not capture the entirety of Artsakh in 24 hours. Very probably it was the Armenian top brass that noticed that with the limited amount of ressources that they had, and the multiple villages that had gotten encircled already, as well as the fall of a few front lines, decided that it wasn’t worth it to continue. However, on the same time, Azerbaijan had significant losses, 200 deaths and 500 injured (according to official sources), which means that at least 1 brigade was out of commission, and with the difference of manpower, military tech and ressources, just shows that the army was able to fight back pretty well. Which might have gone for 10 days, 4 days or a week, but it wouldn’t have won. And Armenia didn’t have the ability to come defend Artsakh.
Reporter: Even if we had the ability to fight, the government would be against intervention. Pashinyan has already “washed” his hands off the Artsakh issue, meaning that they wouldn’t have attacked to help Artsakh
Leonid: If we are talking about the 2022 secessions that Pashinyan did, it came on the backdrop of an invasion by Azerbaijan who had local victories (Sept 2022), and in 2023 the only possible way to help Artsakh would have been a direct attack on Azerbaijan to bring back the only link. And if you aren’t ready to mitigate big risks, you will be in a catastrophic result.
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The question is how we can achieve that in the short term; long term is doable with all the reforms happening and, of course, Armenia integrating with the West.
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Great interview, as always. One of the few proper military analysts that we have.
1- Azerbaijan’s new military purchases
Reporter: After the 44 day war, both sides began buying arms to mitigate their losses. In your older interviews you have said that It is noticeable, after 2021, that Azerbaijan has become much more secretive about its purchases compared to other years. Please explain what is Azerbaijan purchasing today
Leonid: If we remember Azerbaijan’s military purchases until 2020, everything was published and shown to the people, it had political motivations. But nowadays they choose what to show and what to hide. In terms of purchases that they publish, it’s 1 billion dollars of Israeli anti-air defense systems, 100’s of millions for Israeli drones, and we also know that they have purchased new Turkish Akinci drones, and have modernized SU25 planes in Turkey as well.
It’s the first time that I’ve noticed that Turkey has ever upgraded Russian jets in this manner. It’s a very interesting upgrade that they’ve done. We’ve also recorded 10’s of flights from Israel, very likely drones that they had lost before, and maybe even new types of drones. But we can’t really know if anything new was purchased from them.
2- Akinici Drones
Reporter: We saw Aliyev boast about his purchase of Akinci drones. You have said before that Armenians should not focus on the purchase of these drones because the Caucasian countries have small areas of operations, and it won’t be as effective as many fear. What’s your opinion now on these drones?
Leonid: Against Armenia, the Akinci will probably be used with a glide bomb system, the SOM-2 which Turkey has also sold to Az. Those have a 300km strike area. The Akinci will not need to get close to Armenia’s border, so the slow and big nature of the drone will not have huge disadvantages for it. But, at the same time for me, like the TB2, there is no meaning in striking regions with tactical missiles from a drone. To mention the new modernized SU-25 can also use Turkish glide bombs.
3- Armenias new Air defense system
Reporter: Has our new Air defense protect us from the SOM-2 glide bombs?
Leonid: it is in my opinion that we still have more to do on that road. Globally this is an issue as well, the high quantity use of kamikaze drones to glide bombs, have shown to be a huge issue for many. The main issue is the effectiveness of the entire system, and not just a few. How the different AD will cooperate with each other to take down different types of drones. The use of “maverick” type drones are causing much problems, and Armenia should focus on mitigating risks against those types of drones. But imagine if 10 small kamikaze drones, and 10 glide bombs are sent towards a military target, our systems need to be able to differentiate all 20 different types, and target each of them with different types of AD’s. We can’t use S-300 and AKASH’s for all of them, since it will not only cost us too much, but we will lose our good AD’s agains targets that are only worth 50-100k. Armenia can work and ameliorate a system like this, since the IT in Armenia is pretty forward, and these are simply issues to “tackle” [and not necessarily purchase].
3- the 2023 War
Reporter: We would like to know what the 2023 war losses that were published by Azerbaijan, compared to the fact that they probably gave us false numbers in 2020, how accurate do you think the losses were in 2023.
Leonid: First of all they did not capture the entirety of Artsakh in 24 hours. Very probably it was the Armenian top brass that noticed that with the limited amount of ressources that they had, and the multiple villages that had gotten encircled already, as well as the fall of a few front lines, decided that it wasn’t worth it to continue. However, on the same time, Azerbaijan had significant losses, 200 deaths and 500 injured (according to official sources), which means that at least 1 brigade was out of commission, and with the difference of manpower, military tech and ressources, just shows that the army was able to fight back pretty well. Which might have gone for 10 days, 4 days or a week, but it wouldn’t have won. And Armenia didn’t have the ability to come defend Artsakh.
Reporter: Even if we had the ability to fight, the government would be against intervention. Pashinyan has already “washed” his hands off the Artsakh issue, meaning that they wouldn’t have attacked to help Artsakh
Leonid: If we are talking about the 2022 secessions that Pashinyan did, it came on the backdrop of an invasion by Azerbaijan who had local victories (Sept 2022), and in 2023 the only possible way to help Artsakh would have been a direct attack on Azerbaijan to bring back the only link. And if you aren’t ready to mitigate big risks, you will be in a catastrophic result.
The question is how we can achieve that in the short term; long term is doable with all the reforms happening and, of course, Armenia integrating with the West.