Turkey and Israel upgrade Azerbaijan’s Russian military hardware, Forbes reports.
Azerbaijan recently publicly presented Russian military hardware upgraded by Israeli and Turkish military technology companies at a defense fair in Baku in September 2024.
“The upgrades indicate that Azerbaijan wants to keep its older equipment in service and up-to-date, even as it modernizes its armed forces with new advanced drones, also from Israel and Turkey, and modern JF-17C Block III multirole fighter jets from Pakistan,” Forbes writes.
At the September 24-26 Azerbaijan International Defense Exhibition (ADEX) 2024, Baku showcased its upgraded Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft and T-72 main battle tanks. Other older upgraded Soviet-era weaponry displayed at the event included ZSU-23-4 Shilka anti-aircraft guns and 9K33 Osa short-range surface-to-air missile systems. These designs date back to the late 1950s and 1960s.
Turkish Aerospace Industries, also known by its Turkish acronym TUSAS, upgraded the Su-25s. With these new upgrades, the Azerbaijani Frogfoots can launch several Turkish-made guided and glide bombs and even cruise missiles, giving the close air support plane a standoff strike capability. The aircraft’s avionics also received a comprehensive upgrade.
Azerbaijan’s upgraded T-72s were also presented at ADEX 2024. Azerbaijan built its fleet of these Soviet-era main battle tanks through imports from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Slovakia in the 2000s, according to the SIPRI database.
“Azerbaijan also ordered a fleet of newer T-90S tanks from Russia in the 2010s. Upgrading its T-72s indicates it also wants to keep these older tanks in service for the foreseeable future. Israel’s Elbit Systems, which specializes in modernizing Soviet-era hardware and other older armor and aircraft, performed the upgrades,” according to Forbes.
