Paul Goble
Staunton, December 17 – Although it has been less than six weeks since the Moscow declaration ended the current round of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two Russian analysts have published a book on the role of drones in that conflict, the first investigation of the first conflict in which drones played a predominant role, Dmitry Safonov.
The Novoye voyennoye obozreniye author reviews the just published volume, Military Use of Drones in Nagorno-Karabakh (in Russian, Moscow: Status, 2021, 124 pages, illustrated), an especially timely volume he says because of the key role drones played on both sides in the fighting (nvo.ng.ru/realty/2020-12-17/9_1122_karabakh.html).
“The success of the Azerbaijani army to a large extent was the result of the widespread use of drones of various kinds,” Safonov says. Among the most important were Turkey’s Bayraktar TV2 and Israel’s Nagor.” (For background, see jamestown.org/program/bakus-success-in-using-turkish-drones-raises-question-could-ukraine-use-them-against-russia-in-crimea/).
The use of drones by Azerbaijan has attracted a great deal of attention, but the new book, by N. Novichkov and D. Fedyushko, is the first to try to generalize on their impact on the recent fighting and also to discuss the use of drones by Armenian forces and Armenian efforts to combat Azerbaijani ones.
Sofonov suggests that the book will be of interest both to military specialists and to the general public and notes that it includes more than 100 photographs and diagrams, many of them released by the Azerbaijani defense ministry in real time, showing how valuable drones can be in finding and then destroying opposing forces.
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