The Armenian side knows very well what fighters are in Azerbaijan’s air force, and also that those fighters cannot carry out their assigned tasks as they should, which is why Turkey’s F-16s are there. This was stated during a press conference by Artsrun Hovhannisyan, representative of the RA Ministry of Defense, referring to the involvement of Turkish fighters.
Hovhannisyan first noted that back on 13-14 August, when the Turkish-Azerbaijani exercises had ended, the F-16 fighters were not withdrawn from Azerbaijan, remaining at Azerbaijani airbases. On this matter, the Ministry of Defense has raised the issue with the relevant bodies.
Referring to Azerbaijan’s ridiculous statement that there are allegedly no F-16s in the composition of its air force, Hovhannisyan said: “We know very well what fighters are in their air force. And we know well that the fighters in their composition cannot carry out their assigned tasks as they should, which is why the F-16s are there. We know well that they had long been working with the F-16s through exercises. The RA possesses the relevant information, including through radio-technical intelligence means,” he said.
The Ministry of Defense representative assured that all those who try not to take the Armenian side’s official information seriously should expect appropriate surprises, with radio-technical intelligence evidence.
He stressed that the F-16s had been brought to Azerbaijan and were operating. In recent days, reconnaissance flights and tactical solutions were being carried out. “They were brought in because the Azerbaijani air force could not solve that problem; it does not have that level, that experience. Second, other equipment had also been brought from Turkey’s air force, for example Bayraktar and other types of UAVs, which are not comparable to the MiG-29 or Su-25. That is, from the perspective of managing the practical situation, they could not be used. And therefore the F-16 was needed, which could carry out this coordination. We understand very well, we have experience, that the F-16 is in the air, it is working, it is helping the Bayraktar, while on the other side of the border a Turkish aircraft for radio-technical communication and control is flying. By ports, by numbers, we know all that very well; we know how they work in coordination with each other. We know very well that the F-16 alone could, even being at a distance of 60 km at that time, see the Su-25 from the appropriate altitude, because the pilots had that much experience; they knew tactically how to approach. No air defense means could detect them at that moment in that place, but the F-16 could. And we know very well that the AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles in its armament are capable of striking a target at a distance of up to 90-100 km; only they (the F-16s) are capable of striking. The missiles mounted on the MiG-29 were not capable, in that terrain, in those conditions, at that distance, of striking the Su-25,” said Hovhannisyan.
The Armenian side is ready to provide the evidence to international experts. He did not publish a number of how many F-16s are in Azerbaijan, but noted that they carry out their respective tasks in pairs.
