YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 22, ARMENPRESS. The session of the Military-Industrial Committee of Armenia was held in the government led by Prime Minister Nikol Pahsinyan, the PM’s Office told Armenpress.

The PM opened the session and noted: “The development of the military industrial complex is declared by the government as a priority, and we need to make serious changes and record results here. For this purpose, of course, it is necessary to make both structural changes and find opportunities in order to greatly increase the financing of the sector.

In fact, we need to do the following for the development of the military-industrial complex: we must have a clearly working mechanism of our scientific potential, private investments and public administration system, and this issue should be under our spotlight in the near future. Of course, we view the creation of the ministry of high technologies industry in Armenia in this context which is an important, but not sufficient condition so that we can reach major changes in the field. Here the issue of cooperation with our scientific potential and also the analytical work of the defense ministry, the General Staff for the needs of our Armed Forces, even if the resources, be they a lot or less, of course, it’s important if they are a lot, but in case of being a lot, the targets should be determined right, we should decide right what kind of developments, research, production, ammunition and equipment we need, and the development, production and upgrading of what part of hem we can implement in Armenia.

Overall, of course, today we have some capacities in Armenia, but the volume of these capacities and the real production cannot seem satisfactory and enough. In general, I think that while discussing the problems in this field, as well as in the remaining fields, we need to discuss not the difficulties, how difficult it is to solve this or that issue, but we need to form our goals, and all our actions should derive from the priority to reach these goals. The geopolitical, military-political atmosphere existing today in our region doesn’t enable us to live with the logic of “getting alone”, because with this logic we just consume the resources we have.

We need to think of developing our resources and here we need to be ferocious first of all towards ourselves. Yes, we must make very serious, even non-popular, voluntary solutions in order to be convinced that there is no idle in our state system which receives state funding by doing nothing. Eliminating them with extreme cruelty is our key task, no matter which sector it relates to, especially in the fields of military industry and technologies. Here we should really be able to propose technological solutions. By saying a technological solution I imagine the following: the important is not the tank, but the problem we want to solve through the tank. Therefore, not the tank, but the problem and its solution are important. Our thinking must be to find a way that will solve that problem no matter what is its name, tank or something else.

Therefore, our logic in the fields of military industry, science and technology should work in the following way: we need to understand our problems, our solutions and refuse from the traditional perceptions over these solutions and tools in order to ensure certain technological progress and change”, the Prime Minister said.

Head of the State Military-Industrial Committee Avetik Qerobyan said the delegation of the military-industrial complex this year participated in the IDEX International Defense Exhibition and Conference in the United Arab Emirates for the first time in a separate pavilion. He said the Armenian pavilion created a great interest, and Armenia’s products were under spotlight also thanks to the brilliant performance of the Guards of Honor, the Military Orchestra of the defense ministry and the Yerevan Drums musical group. Avetik Qerobyan informed that the investors of the Middle East are greatly interested in the Armenian military production which is a good base for attracting investments and expanding the export markets of the Armenian scientific-technological production.

Thereafter, the session participants discussed the programs and future actions aimed at developing the military-industrial complex.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan