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AzerNEWS Staff

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The worth of armies is measured in their numbers, equipment, and budgets. The worth of Azerbaijan's army should be measured by one thing only, its mission to end the thirty-year-long occupation and the achievement of this goal in forty-four days, despite the presence of a patron power backing the opponent and the absence of endless military involvement typical for much larger military forces recently. The result was not accidental and the product of thirty years of careful planning and preparation which started from the moment when the country experienced its darkest times.

The Azerbaijani Army was not inherited; it was built, almost from nothing, by Heydar Aliyev, the National Leader who, returning to power in 1993, found a republic without a functioning command structure, without trained officers, and without the first victories that any young institution needs to believe in itself. He established the country's first military academy, restored discipline to a fragmented force, and secured the army's earliest successes in the closing stages of the First Garabagh War. What he built was not yet an army capable of full victory. It was the foundation one was eventually built upon.

This legacy was taken up and built on by President Ilham Aliyev. In a little over two decades, Azerbaijan has turned its revenues into one of the most comprehensive military modernization schemes in the region, with equipment, doctrine, and a carefully thought-out strategy aimed at bridging the technology and skills gap that proved so costly to Azerbaijan during the early years of the 1990s. This success is quantifiable in terms unmatched by any other regional military force: the Azerbaijani Army consistently ranks as one of the top military forces in the region and has been recognized in global military surveys as one of the top military forces in the world.

It is, fundamentally, not an army of parades. It is an army that has won on the battlefield, and in 2020, it did so absolutely, where larger powers in recent decades have struggled to do so at all.

Proof can be found in the Second Garabagh War. In just forty-four days, Azerbaijan succeeded in overturning thirty years of occupation, doing so in such a manner that it stands alone among virtually all other modern conflicts in its determination of purpose and conclusiveness of victory. Neither the United States nor Russia, the two military forces in the world best resourced, have managed in recent years to conclude lengthy and expensive wars with such decisive results. What Azerbaijan managed to achieve in this war was something else entirely.

Critical in ensuring such an outcome is a technique that became a game changer for the military in its own right. Azerbaijan became one of the earliest armies to use Bayraktar TB2 Turkish drones and Israeli loitering ammunition together in large numbers. The battle was later termed as a “drone revolution,” where analysts showed how air superiority and precision fire control, when done in tandem, can replace the attrition warfare which has characterized so many wars in the last century while keeping the losses on the attacker’s side minimal.

But technology alone does not make war victories by itself. It serves as just a tool, but not a replacement for the willpower of people. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief set the goal, and then the Azerbaijani soldier implemented it despite being under fire and in the mountains at fortified positions. This difference counts since it is more difficult to produce. You can buy drones but cannot buy the army’s willpower.

There was nowhere this fusion of technology and resolve was more evident than in Shusha. The battle for Shusha has been described as one of the major urban warfare case studies of modern times. The Shusha defenders believed that its 300-meter-high cliffs were unassailable and deployed all their defenses there. The special forces of Azerbaijan climbed the cliffs at night in complete defiance of what conventional military thinking would have regarded as impossible. The fall of the city, which was both strategically crucial and psychologically indispensable, was achieved without any loss on either side, something that rarely happens in urban warfare and forced the surrender of Armenia.

Also noteworthy but seldom remarked upon is what Azerbaijan's military did not do. Throughout the course of forty-four days, it did not strike at civilians and conducted itself in accordance with the rules of humanitarian warfare even as the war it was fighting had thirty years of grievances behind it. This was no accident. It was the result of professionalism on the part of a modern military and the higher morals of a country that refused to forsake its values even while waging a justified war.

The war did not mark the end of efforts; indeed, President Ilham Aliyev’s own evaluation of the strength of the current army being stronger than that which fought in 2020 was no mere rhetorical device but an account of ongoing reforms including the establishment of commando brigades, the modernization of the education of the armed forces via the National Defense University, and the development of closer ties between the armed forces and domestic Azerbaijani defense industries. Indigenous development of systems like the Zarb and Arkan drones reflects a conscious effort to move away from reliance upon imported systems.

The real gauge of an army is not in how much gear it shows off on an annual basis, but in what it accomplishes when required and the integrity it maintains while accomplishing those things. In that light, June 26 is a reminder not of formality but of substance: an institution crafted carefully over thirty years, proven absolutely, and constantly reinforced.