Armenia's small population and limited economic means force the country to come up with creative solutions to address the obsolescence of its military hardware and to introduce entirely new capabilties to its armed forces. Through the years this has led to a highly active R&D industry that has received little media attention outside of its own borders. While most of its projects never progressed beyond prototype status due to a lack of funding, those with a more limited scope (thus requiring less financial commitment) usually had more success. 

 

One of these projects comprises a PKT machine gun that has been adapted to allow to fire it from cover with a thermal sight connected to a screen for aiming. This highly interesting contraption was first shown in use with Armenian forces during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, and was examined in more detail after having been captured by Azerbaijani forces as they overran Armenian positions. [1] [2] Unsightly but efficient in its intended role, the system is a clear example of the adaptive nature that has come to typify the Armenian defence industry.

While these trenches can be a nightmare for any military ground force to approach and eventually overcome, they proved of little defensive value in the face of Azerbaijani Bayraktar TB2 drones, which could fly circles above them and carefully select which positions were worth targeting either with their own MAM-L munitions or precision-guided munitions delivered by rocket artillery. As a result, most trench lines and positions fell to this invisible opponent long before the enemy it was supposed to keep at bay ever came in sight.

Still, a small fleet of UCAVs can only cover a limited area, and several defensive lines found themselves instead facing repeated artillery barrages on their positions followed by mechanised or infantry assaults. While most of these eventually succeeded in dislodging Armenian soldiers from their positions, other positions managed to keep Azerbaijani forces at bay for days or week on ends. This was true especially in the North of Nagorno-Karabakh, where the mountainous terrain and fierce resistance by Armenian forces limited advances made by Azerbaijan for the entire duration of the 44-day long war.

 

 

The weapon used is the PKT machine gun, a variant of the PK that was specifically designed for use as a coaxial mount in Soviet tanks and AFVs (hence its name, PK-Tank). Designed for remote firing from the onset (by means of an electric solenoid trigger), the PKT needed little modification for its new role as a remote weapon system. Another benefit of the PKT is the size of the magazine, which holds an impressive amount of 250 7.62×54mmR rounds. To enable long periods of almost continuous firing before having to bring in additional magazines, a basket for a spare magazine was welded on the right side of the metal structure.

 

Incidentally, Armenia was already in the possession of large numbers of PKT machine guns, with no apparent practical use for them. These PKTs once equipped BRDM-2 reconnaissance vehicles and BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers (APCs), but after most of these vehicles were relegated to reserve status and eventually decommissioned by the Armenian military, their weaponry was put into storage. Rather than leaving this potentially useful armament to rot, sizeable numbers were then converted to remote weapon systems.

The PKT contraption is not the only attempt made by Armenia at designing automated gun emplacements. Another project called for the automisation of anti-aircraft guns for use against ground targets, and a prototype based on the 14.5mm ZPU-2 anti-aircraft gun was actually built. To increase the lethality of the system against armoured targets, a 73mm SPG-9 recoilless rifle (RCL) was additionally slaved to it. This combination could prove deadly against the armour of anything up to a tank, with BMP infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) loaded with infantry likely being particularly suitable targets. 

 

Meanwhile a more advanced iteration of the PKT weapon system concept was also in the works, and first unveiled during the ArmHiTec 2018 military exhibition in Yerevan. [5] This version of the PKT could finally be called truly remote-controlled, with the operator of the box system sitting in the safety of an underground bunker. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, a lack of budget precluded the introduction of this promising weapons system.

 

The only real downside of the box system is that it has to be manually reloaded each time after emptying its relatively small magazine. This could be a dangerous endeavour depending on the location of the gun box, and could entail Armenian soldiers having to climb to elevated positions in the view of the enemy to reload the system for continued use. Although the magazine used likely contains up to 150 7.62mm rounds, these can be quickly spent in anger, given the weapon's firing rate of 750 rounds per minute.

 

 

Although Armenia's PKT contraptions could not turn the tide in a war which was ultimately decided in the skies, and not in trenches, they remain a first-rate example of cost-effective ingenuity in the face of limited means. With its army in tatters after a catastrophic defeat, it is likely that the nation will call on this ingenuity to provide its military with weaponry suitable for the new military balance and the type of warfare witnessed during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. When provided with sufficient funding, Armenia's indigenous military industry could well surprise friend and foe alike, and slowly begin to return the country from the adverse condition it currently finds itself in.

 

By Joost Oliemans and Stijn Mitzer 

 

When the Cold War ended, and the Iron Curtain was lifted, an era commenced of which the unprecedented spread of information is perhaps its most defining characteristic. The proliferation of media (primarily through the advent of the global internet), increased transparency of nations across the world, and what amounts to the commercialisation of the arms trade have all caused a wealth of knowledge to become accessible even to those with limited resources. This has caused the area of open-source intelligence (OSINT) to bloom like never before, with a vast variety of high quality works on pretty much every imaginable topic suddenly becoming available.

By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans

 

Al-Watiya. An airbase few had ever heard of until it became a symbol in the fight of the internationally-recognised government of Libya (GNA) against Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) that seeks to overthrow it. While its capture on the 18th of May 2020 temporarily managed to put the spotlight on the severely underreported Libyan conflict, not the least because of the destruction and capture of two Russian Pantsir-S1 missile systems supplied by the UAE, the full implications of the capture of al-Watiya have gone mostly unnoticed.

More than just a local success story for the Government of National Accord, al-Watiya was a major stronghold in the LNA's offensive line around Tripoli. Tasked with protecting and supporting the Western flank of the LNA's military thrust into Tripoli, what was left of Haftar's prospects of capturing Libya's capital crumbled with the loss of this key airbase. The freeing up of GNA forces as a result of the capture and the subsequent increase in pressure on other fronts around Tripoli made the LNA's and Wagner PMC's position in this part of the country untenable, leading to a chaotic retreat from Western Libya and ending Haftar's long-held dream of capturing Tripoli and installing himself as self-proclaimed president of Libya.

By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans

The Republic of Armenia isn't particularly well known for its military industry, and its arms exports have hitherto remained undocumented. Despite being the host of a promising arms R&D scene throughout much of the 1990s, a lack of funding and orders halted further development before it ever had the chance to really take off. Although offshoots of its designs would later become popular in Chechnya and with criminals throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), this is where the exploits of Armenia's small arms industry were thought to have ended. 

 

By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans

If Azerbaijan starts a war, Armenian tanks will go as far as Baku. (Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defence of Armenia, September 2020)

 

In a way surely different from what the Ministry of Defence of Armenia had envisaged, Armenian military equipment was on full display during Azerbaijan's Victory Parade on the 10th of December 2020. Marching through Baku's Freedom Square, the parade offered a glimpse of some of the equipment used by both sides during the 44-day long Nagorno-Karabakh war. 

 

While the parade segment with military trophies was sizeable, with row upon row fielding yet another type of weapon system ultimately overcome by drone warfare, the Armenian equipment on display was roughly one-tenth of the total amount of weaponry and vehicles captured by Azerbaijan. [1] In fact, even if we assume double the amount of losses confirmed to have been suffered by Azerbaijan, its military would still have captured more military equipment than it lost during the war.

The Libyan Civil War has had a devastating impact on the country's civilian aviation sector, and its two giant An-124 cargo aircraft have not eluded their fair share of suffering. Libya's aviation industry came to a near standstill during the 2011 revolution, and even after the cessation of hostilities it took Libyan airline companies anywhere from months up to a year to restart their operations, while some never flew again. Those that did in doing so expressed their renewed confidence for the future, but insecurity and political turmoil in the wake of the civil war ultimately brought an end to any optimism, and soon the Libyan aviation industry was fighting for its very survival.

 

As the civil war ravaging Libya continued with no prospect of relative stability in sight, the threat of extinction loomed large over the An-124s. At a time when the single aircraft that was still present in Libya was dodging artillery fire left and right, the other An-124 was facing the possibility of being auctioned off by Ukraine in 2017 if the Libyan government failed to pay the $1.2 million it owed to Antonov for storage and routine maintenance of the aircraft since 2009 at the Antonov facility in Kiev.