YEREVAN, OCTOBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Armenian rocket forces and artillery have an excellent command of the weapons, Chief of the department of the Rocket Forces and Artillery of the Armenian Armed Forces Colonel Artavazd Yaghmuryan told at “Armenpress” media hall, referring to the question to what extent Armenian specialists have a command of “Iskander” systems.

“Before acquiring the “Iskander” systems, a training of relevant divisions had taken place, after which the already trained staff received the systems in Armenia. There are no complications for its use” Colonel Yaghmuryan said, assuring that Yerevan decides when to use the weapon.

He added that the presence of “Iskander” systems in the Armenian Armed Forces is deterrence factor for the adversary. According to him, the adversary should take into account this factor before making any hostile move.

“To describe the destruction scale of “Iskander” systems I will bring an example: A 152 mm projectile weights 54 kg, which can destroy an entire engineering building. The weight of “Iskander’s” warhead is half a ton with 280 km of high-precision targeting. Now imagine what kind of destruction it can inflict”, the Colonel said, adding that in practice it is impossible to detect and destroy the “Iskander”.  

Head of the Operation and Planning Department of the Armored Services of the Weaponry Department of Armed Forces, Colonel Zorayr Gabrielyan noted that an important factor for defeating in a war is the right use of the weapons. According to him, the Armenian specialists have an excellent command of their weapons.  

Artavazd Yaghrumyan added that the skillful activities of the Armenian artillerists were the main force to stop the advance of Azerbaijan’s major tank divisions during the April war. Some tanks of the adversary were destroyed in their initial locations.

“For years Azerbaijan had announced that it modernized its tanks by Israeli technologies, and that those tanks were invulnerable. During the April operations only one anti-tank operator of NKR army destroyed 5 tanks in one battle. They should ponder much over this fact. One anti-tank volley-fire made their tanks not only to flee, but fire at each other during an irregular retreat”, Artavazd Yaghmuryan added.