ArmInfo. The military budget cuts in Azerbaijan are connected with the sliding oil prices and the April failure in Karabakh, Alexander Iskandaryan, Director of the Caucasus Institute, said at a news conference in response to ArmInfo's question, on October 5.
"Actually, Azerbaijan had been preparing for the April events during the last 22 years. It spent about $20 billion on arming during the last 4-5 years. One can say that during the April events, Azerbaijan's armed forces acted right technically, using special units. Training of a special unit fighter is as expensive as training of a pilot. There was another factor in favor of Azerbaijan - the element of surprise. Nevertheless, the result of the military attack was 'two potato fields,'" the expert said.
In his words, another reason of the budget cuts is a serious political pressure, which does not mean, however, that Azerbaijan will not make more attempts to escalate the situation in the future. As for the media reports about Azerbaijan's plans to buy Iron Dome, an Israeli-made mobile all- weather air defense system, Iskandaryan said Baku will never buy such system, first, because it has no money and, second, the given system is helpless against Iskander missile systems.
To note, according to draft budget 2017 Azerbaijan is going to allocate 1 bln 615 mln 359 thousand 858 manats (nearly $1 bln) on defense. This is by 613.4 mln manats (27.5%) less than in 2016. In 2015 Azerbaijan's military expenses were nearly 5 bln dollars. President Ilham Aliyev was noting in his speeches that Azerbaijan's revenues have declined 4-fold because of drop of petrol prices and it is necessary to reduce expenses.