On February 18th 2016 it was announced that Russia will provide Armenia with a state export loan of $200 million for the supply of Russian military equipment. As a number of Russian and Armenian experts have already noted, this has been done to maintain the balance of forces in the region. In principle, it is a very logical opinion... But only if you don't think about what this amount of money can buy and what is included in the supply package. Let's compare the characteristics of the weapons Armenia plans to buy and define how these weapons can affect the alignment of forces in the region.
One of the items on the list of equipment is diesel engines and sights for armored vehicles.
V-84MS diesel engines are designed for T72A/B tanks, B1 and other machines on this tank tread. UTD-20 diesel engines are designed for older versions of the BMP-1, BMP-2 and other machines on this tank tread. The warranty service life of these engines is approximately 500 machine hours.
These engines are very popular in countries armed with T-72, BMP-1/2 and other tanks of this kind.
The fire control system 1A40-1 was developed in the mid-1980s and intended to be mounted on T-72B and T-72A tanks. It is significantly inferior to T-90 tanks, as well as the Israeli upgrade of Azerbaijan's T-72 Aslan.
It suggests that the weapons mentioned above are intended simply to maintain the required normal operation of the Armenian military equipment and are not the latest equipment, which would significantly change the balance in the armored forces in the South Caucasus.
Anti-tank weapons are also included on the list. It is represented by the RPG-26b Aglen and guided missiles 9M113M Konkurs-M [modernization of the complex 'Konkurs'].
RPG-26 is an anti-tank disposable grenade launcher. It has a range of around 170 m. It can penetrate 400 mm of rolled homogeneous armor. Thus, this launcher cannot be effective in the destruction of tanks in frontal projection. And a chance to hit, for example, even the obsolete T-72B tank is almost negligible, not to mention the more modern T-90S.
However, any tank has its own weak spots, such as the sides and the hull. But you need to get close to the tank from the side or from behind, which is impossible if the tank is supported by an infantry brigade.
9M113M rockets are intended for the anti-tank complex Konkurs-M. They were adopted in 1991. The missile is designed to destroy heavy and light machinery, equipped with dynamic protection, field fortifications, as well as low-flying and low-speed targets both in day and at night. Its shooting range is 4000 m in daytime and 3500 m at night.
It is unlikely that the new supplies will have any significant impact on the balance of forces on the contact line. Armenian infantrymen would either be killed or leave their positions before they had an opportunity to effectively defeat the Azerbaijani armored vehicles.
Next on the list is an upgraded Dragunov sniper rifle (SVD). This version of the rifle has a new barrel, sights and other changes.
The Autobase-M passive radar system is an interesting point in the Russian-Armenian agreement, one of the most important and expensive. The system is designed for the detection, classification and trajectory tracking of sea and air targets by their radio-electronic emissions.
The system is a good addition to defensive systems such as coastal defense or air defense. Given the fact that the Air Forces of neither side played any role during in the last three-day stand-off in Nagorno-Karabakh, this complex is redundant and meaningless in the confrontation with Azerbaijan. Most likely it is a counterbalance to such neighbors as Turkey.
The multiple rocket launcher Smerch and a Heavy Flamethrower System TOS-1A 'Solntsepek', in our opinion, are the most interesting parts of the list.
The Azerbaijani army already has these systems. And the Armenian side also has Smerch multiple rocket launchers. Both systems will enhance the combat potential of the Armenian army in some way, but it is necessary to take into account that Armenia won't be able to buy enough of them, even at domestic prices. Thus, it doesn't seem possible to achieve numerical parity or even more, an advantage over Azerbaijan on these key systems. With regard to the qualitative superiority – the Azerbaijani Armed Forces have had these systems for a long time. And one of them (TOS-1A) was successfully used against a real opponent in the battles on April 2nd-5th 2016.
The list also includes a variety of engineering equipment and vehicles, including the famous Russian armored car 'Tiger', which has already been adopted by the Armenian army for several years.
Basically, all this is intended more for defense than attack. And even if we take the chances that all the weapons will be sold at domestic prices in rubles, the desire of the Armenian strategists do not correspond to their abilities. For example, the system 'Smerch' is worth about $12.5 million per unit.
Thus, we can say that, despite the fact that the 200-million dollar loan will be able to raise the fighting capacity of the Armenian army to some extent, nevertheless any attempt to gain superiority over Azerbaijan will fail.
The fact that the original list of weapons disappeared from the official Internet portal of legal information when this article was published is also interesting. Apparently, Armenia asked to change the list of weapons in connection with the recent military successes of Azerbaijan. But will such a move be able to help it?
[Armenian mythology has spread nonsense on the Internet that the Azerbaijani side had allegedly two-, five-, ten-fold etc. military advantage over the Armenians in the battles of the early 1990s, "but the fighting spirit of the Armenian soldier" was stronger than the numerical superiority. The only question is where this fighting spirit was on April 2nd-5th 2016? And why couldn't it win and take away trophies, when Azerbaijan used only 10-20% of its forces? - VK]
