Yerevan: a U-turn from Moscow to Delhi What was Brutyan interested in at Army-2023?

After the signing of the Tripartite Statement on Cessation of Hostilities in Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia in November 2020, Yerevan sharply limited military-technical cooperation with Russia and started looking for new partners. This is evidenced by statements made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to the Armenian National Assembly in 2022.

At that time, Pashinyan, clearly alluding to Russia, stated in public that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of armaments already paid for by Armenia were not being supplied. At the same time, Pashinyan told Armenian parliamentarians that his government had signed contracts with India for the supply of various items of arms and military equipment. In this regard, it is important to note that Armenia's military expenditures have increased this year to a record level and have already reached $1.2 billion, which is much more than the country's defence budgets in previous years.

And in this context, the meetings of Armenian Deputy Defence Minister Karen Brutyan in Moscow last week should be analysed. It should be noted that this particular official in the Armenian defence ministry is responsible for financial management, internal audit control and state procurement.

Brutyan, who took part in the annual International Military-Technical Forum "Army-2023", visited a number of arms stands of India and Iran. While viewing the stands, Karen Brutyan had talks with officials from New Delhi and Tehran. The Armenian official was particularly interested in the Iranian stand, where UAVs were demonstrated, and the stand of the Defence Research and Development Organisation DRDO of the Indian Ministry of Defence, where he was presented with a mock-up of an anti-aircraft guided missile from the Akash surface-to-air missile system (SAM), as well as the stand of the Indian company Brahmos missile.

It should be noted that this particular Indian company is engaged in the production of supersonic missiles BRAHMOS, which was developed jointly with Russia's NPO Mashinostroyeniya OJSC. Also, a representative of the Armenian Defence Ministry met with Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin.

It can be assumed that Brutyan's interest in Indian air defence systems means Yerevan's desire to purchase Akash SAMs. The more so because earlier the media reported that the Indian side offered Yerevan to purchase Akash and Akash-NG air defence systems of its own production.

The 44-day war showed the vulnerability of Armenia's air defence system, which was unable to counteract Azerbaijan's unmanned (and not only) air strikes. The reason for this weakness was that many Armenian air defence systems were outdated. In particular, Yerevan did not have a reliable medium-altitude SAM system, and this niche is still occupied by the S-125 SAM, which was adopted in 1961.

It is assumed that Armenia's interest in the Akash SAM system is mainly due to the fact that it is similar in design to the Russian Kub medium-range surface-to-air missile system and is an Indian modernisation of this system, which was later replaced by the Buk system in the USSR.

In this case, special attention should be paid to providing these complexes with missiles, which are quite expensive, especially for a country like Armenia. And if we take into account that Armenia has Kub SAMs in service, which were previously in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, we can assume that the Armenian defence department has enough 3M9 type guided missiles of the Kub complex in reserve, which they plan to use on Indian Akash air defence systems. As a result of modernisation of the Soviet Kub SAM system to the Akash SAM system by Indian specialists, the missiles to these systems remained identical. It should be noted that part of the Kub SAM system of the Armenian Armed Forces was destroyed (one battery) during the 44-day war, and partially surviving elements of this battery can be seen in the Park of Military Trophies in Baku.

As for the Akash-NG SAM system, it is an upgraded version of the Akash, and its development was based on Indian engineers' experience in the Indo-Israeli MR-SAM and LR-SAM missile programmes. These missiles differ from the 3M9 missiles in performance and other criteria.

All these factors suggest that Armenia will still prefer the Akash air defence missile system among India's proposed air defence systems.