Today.Az - Armenia ignores risks when buying CAESAR self-propelled guns from France

Armenia lost the war, it lost a huge number of people and equipment. Therefore, Yerevan's attempts to purchase weapons are absolutely natural. It is another matter which weapons Armenia buys and in which countries. Arms purchases are, among other things, a kind of political orientation. That is, you can't buy weapons just like that, creating a kind of "zoo" - they bought it from the French, this from the Indians, this from the Koreans. This is not a candy counter in a supermarket. An arms buyer should not behave like a spoiled child demanding "I want this, I want that." And this is exactly how Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan behaves. Taxpayers of Armenia pay for these whims, which has a lot of other problems - outdated infrastructure, bad roads, low pensions and so on.

"First of all, because in Russia there is a large system with gunpowder. Any artillery system, like any machine gun and pistol, is just a tool for delivering a cartridge and projectile to the target. The Russians have always had big problems with gunpowder. The fact that CAESAR shoots further and more accurately than Russian systems (at least those that are now serial, and not promising) does not surprise me at all. Therefore, Yerevan's purchase of French self-propelled guns is probably logical. However, in addition to the CAESAR system, there are many other systems in the world that are in no way inferior to it, and sometimes even superior. First of all, we are talking about German and South Korean systems. I think the purchase of French self-propelled guns was caused by Yerevan's flirtation with Paris. It was not a completely rational choice, but rather an attempt, relatively speaking, to please the French. That is, not only and not so much weapons are being bought, but the gratitude of Paris and the hope that it will somehow put in a good word," Ruslan Pukhov said.

The second bottleneck in the purchase of these systems, according to him, is expensive ammunition, which Armenia is unlikely to be able to purchase in significant quantities and is unlikely to be able to create, let's say, a serious supply of them in case of an intense conflict.

"There is another unpleasant detail - despite the fact that the caliber of shells of many Western countries match, French shells are suitable only for French howitzers. An attempt to use some Slovak or Serbian shells will disable the entire system. I think the Armenians hardly calculated all these risks. In short, there is a risk that few of these self-propelled guns will be purchased and they will only ride beautifully on parades, but they are unlikely to be able to exert serious pressure on the enemy in the event of a real combat situation," said the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.