Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in an interview with the Russian magazine “National Defense” spoke about how the Azerbaijani army used various types of unmanned aerial vehicles in the 44-day Patriotic War.
In particular, the head of the Azerbaijani state said: “To the second Karabakh war on a scale and with such effectiveness, unmanned aerial vehicles have not yet been used anywhere. We started purchasing UAVs for a long time, more than 10 years ago. These were the means of defeating Israeli production. We mastered them and applied them during short-term hostilities in April 2016. This became a surprise for the Armenian side. But again, returning to what I have already said earlier, we did not exacerbate that conflict, because we did not have intentions then conduct large-scale fighting. Therefore, everything quickly ended.
In April 2016, we used Harop Barragging Ammunition. Subsequently, other unmanned funds of Israeli production began to acquire: Sky Striker (now it’s no secret to anyone, so it makes no sense to hide) and Orbiter – as you said and intelligence, and combat.
At that time, the Turkish Military Industrial Complex has not yet proceeded to the production of drone. But as soon as it happened, we became the first foreign buyers of the BSL Bayraktar TV2, which very effectively showed themselves both in terms of intelligence and in terms of applying accurate blows. But, of course, it was necessary to coordinate and synchronize the combat use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
As for Bayraktar TV2, then in the combat actions of the 44th day war, they were constantly in the air. Of course, sometimes the weather conditions created obstacles, but since mostly the weather was clear, these UAVs were used almost daily, can be with some small breaks. But to coordinate and synchronize the simultaneous use of Israeli and Turkish UAVs, of course, demanded great skills. And they had a different list of goals, since the affecting the power of the intermediate ammunition is higher than that of the missiles that are equipped with Bayraktar TV2. Strategic goals, major military facilities were amazed using Harop, and armored vehicles and other goals are mostly affected by Bayraktar TV2. But the barking ammunition is a weapon of one-time, so very carefully approached the choice of goals, for the attack of which Harop was used.
… Bayraktar TV2, in addition to the drums, also provides reconnaissance functions, so it was important to coordinate their actions with the systems of artillery fire, with aviation, and this, of course, demanded a huge professionalism, perfect skills, because everything was very difficult. Very difficult. And I must say that during the conduct of hostilities, it was here that I didn’t have any errors. “