President: Before Second Karabakh war, drones were never used with such efficiency anywhere

"Before the Second Karabakh war, drones were never used anywhere on such a scale and with such efficiency. We started purchasing UAVs a long time ago, more than ten years ago,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an exclusive interview with the National Defense magazine.

"These were Israeli-made weapons of destruction. We mastered and used them during short-term hostilities in April 2016. This came as a surprise to the Armenian side. But again, returning to what I said earlier, we didn’t escalate the conflict, because then we had no intentions to conduct large-scale military operations, so everything ended quickly.”

"In April 2016, we used Harop loitering munition. Subsequently, we started to acquire other Israeli-made drones as well: Sky Striker (this is no more secret to anyone, so there is no point in hiding it) and Orbiter - as you said, both reconnaissance and combat drones,” the president said, adding that at that time the Turkish military-industrial complex hadn’t yet started production of drones. "But as soon as that happened, we became the first foreign buyers of the Bayraktar TB2 UAVs, which proved to be very effective both in terms of reconnaissance and in terms of delivering precision strikes.”

"As for Bayraktar TB2, in the hostilities of the 44-day war they were constantly in the air. Of course, sometimes the weather conditions created obstacles, but since the weather was mostly clear, these drones were used almost daily, maybe with some small interruptions,” the head of state said.

He noted that strategic targets, large military objects were hit using Harop, while armored vehicles and other targets were mainly hit by Bayraktar TB2
(report.az)

www.anews.az