Every military conflict also serves as a testing ground for weapons manufacturers — whose products truly perform under real combat conditions. But on the South Caucasus stage, arms news carries its own subtext.
“India is preparing to deal a serious blow to Azerbaijan by planning to send $720 million worth of weapons to Armenia,” blares the Indian news site India.com — all puffed-up and theatrical. It’s practically Bollywood: Military Edition, complete with a fairytale-style hero slaying seven with one strike, and the Roman “Veni, vidi, vici” — all rolled into one. In Armenia, great hopes are pinned on Indian weapons. For one, there aren’t many alternatives. And ever since India began collaborating with Russia in the defense sector, Russian media have been enthusiastically hyping Indian-made arms — with a zeal better suited for more noble causes. Leaks about weapon deliveries were carefully fed to the press, likely in the hope that Baku would panic — and…
But India’s recent aggression against Pakistan has forced many to reassess. Most notably, the reputation of Indian weaponry has turned out to be — to put it mildly — quite overstated. Five fighter jets shot down, including a French-made Rafale, obliterated artillery positions, and more — the fascist regime of Narendra Modi had to accept Trump’s peace terms not from a position of strength, but necessity.
It’s also worth remembering that military exports follow a different logic than consumer goods. With exports of cars, clothing, or jewelry, the international version is often superior in quality to the domestic one. In arms manufacturing, however, it’s the opposite: the best versions are kept for a country’s own military, while the export models tend to be “stripped down.” In other words, as was the case with France, India will not be sending Armenia its most advanced or effective weaponry. Meanwhile, on the Pakistan border, India deployed the best equipment its military-industrial complex could produce.
And we all saw just how well those “best examples of Indian weaponry” fared — as Pakistan’s military simply steamrolled them. If those were the top-tier arms, one can only imagine the downgraded versions headed to Armenia. Good enough for parade acrobatics perhaps — but hardly fit for real war. Not to mention, after its trial by fire with Pakistan, India will need to patch up its own depleted arsenals — and Armenian shopping lists will fall far down the priority chain.
So Yerevan would be wise to face facts: this Bollywood war fantasy isn’t getting a happy ending.
Nurani
