How Indian Arms are Redrawing the Map of Power from Armenia to Azerbaijan

The Caucasus Crucible:

How Indian Arms are Redrawing the Map of Power from Armenia to Azerbaijan

For the crew of the Azerbaijani T-72, the end came without warning. One moment, their Soviet-era behemoth was the apex predator on a tense Caucasian frontier; the next, it was a superheated coffin, ripped apart by a high-explosive warhead fired from a launcher built 3,000 kilometers away in India. The strike on December 6, 2025, was not a random act of war; it was a calculated, lethal demonstration. For the first time, weapons from New Delhi had decisively altered the tactical reality in a conflict far from India's borders, providing a stunning battlefield validation for its burgeoning defense industry.

This single event encapsulates a much larger story: the strategic recalibration of alliances in the South Caucasus, the battlefield validation of India's Make in India defense policy, and the emergence of New Delhi as a consequential new power broker in Eurasia. As a distracted Russia leaves a power vacuum in its traditional sphere of influence, and as new strategic blocs form, India has stepped onto the stage, not just as a merchant of arms, but as a shaper of regional destinies.

This article dissects the profound implications of the burgeoning India-Armenia defense deal. It examines how a devastating defeat in 2020 forced Armenia to seek new allies, how India seized the opportunity to counter its own rivals, and how this partnership is now playing out amidst a great game of strategic corridors and geopolitical competition. It is a story of how a conflict in a remote mountain range has become a critical theater for 21st-century power dynamics, challenging the established order and heralding the rise of new global players.

2. The 2020 Defeat: A Catalyst for Change

To understand India's strategic entry into the South Caucasus, one must first grasp the lessons of Armenia's devastating defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. That 44-day war was more than a territorial loss; it was a brutal awakening that shattered Yerevan's long-held security assumptions and directly catalyzed a dramatic pivot in its foreign policy, creating the very opening India would come to exploit.

The 2020 war was a grim showcase of modern warfare's evolution. Armenia, relying on an arsenal of outdated Soviet-era equipment, found its forces systematically decimated by Azerbaijan's superior technology. Azerbaijani forces effectively deployed a formidable combination of modern Turkish and Israeli drones, which proved lethal against Armenian tanks, artillery, and ground troops who lacked adequate air defense. The conflict starkly illustrated the fatal gap between 20th-century conventional forces and a 21st-century drone-centric military doctrine.

More critically, the war exposed the frailty of Armenia's traditional security guarantee. Russia, its long-standing ally and primary arms supplier, was either unwilling or unable to intervene decisively. Preoccupied with its own military challenges and the escalating conflict in Ukraine, Moscow's response was muted, leaving Yerevan exposed. This failure had a quantifiable impact. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia's share of Armenian arms imports plummeted from 94% between 2011-2020 to just 10% by 2024. This abandonment forced Armenia to urgently seek new, more reliable partners, creating a strategic vacuum in a critical region.

3. India's Strategic Entry: A New Arsenal for Armenia

And fill it, India did—not with diplomatic platitudes, but with crates of advanced, battle-ready hardware. New Delhi's move to arm Armenia is not merely a commercial transaction but a calculated strategic decision, representing a significant step in projecting Indian influence into a critical Eurasian crossroads. Faced with an existential threat and abandoned by its traditional ally, Armenia found in India a willing partner ready to supply the modern weaponry it desperately needed to rebalance the military scales.

The Tools of a New Partnership

According to a report by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), Armenia signed over $1.5 billion in defense contracts with India between 2022 and 2023. The deals provided Yerevan with a suite of domestically produced Indian systems designed to counter the very threats that proved so devastating in 2020.

• Pinaka Multi-Barrel Rocket Launchers (MBRL): A formidable area-denial weapon, the Pinaka is capable of firing a salvo of 12 rockets in under a minute. Its key advantage is a "shoot and scoot" capability, allowing it to fire and quickly relocate before enemy counter-battery fire can target its position.
• Swathi Weapon-Locating Radars (WLR): Developed by India's DRDO, this mobile radar system is designed to detect and track incoming artillery and rocket fire, precisely calculating the point of origin for effective counter-strikes.
• ATAGS (Advanced Towed Artillery Gun Systems): This 155mm artillery gun boasts an impressive range of up to 48 kilometers and a high rate of fire, providing Armenia with powerful long-range strike capabilities.
• Akash Air Defense Systems: A medium-range surface-to-air missile system designed to neutralize aerial threats like fighter jets, helicopters, and drones—precisely the systems Azerbaijan used to dominate the 2020 war.
• ZADS Anti-Drone Systems: A contract with Hyderabad-based Zen Technologies provides Armenia with a modern system specifically designed to detect, track, and neutralize hostile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
• Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM): India has supplied a variety of anti-tank missiles, including the Konkurs system produced under license, to help Armenian infantry counter armored threats.

A Contrasting View

While Armenian commanders have publicly praised the effectiveness of Indian weapons, this view is not universally shared. Russian military expert Alexei Khlopotov, in a March 2024 interview with Caliber.Az, dismissed the Indian hardware as faulty "scrap metal." He argued that the purchase was a purely political move by Armenia and that the weapons were unusable. Khlopotov claimed that India's defense industry "thrives only under the control of foreign supervisors" and that the weapons supplied to Armenia were "simply not brought to fruition."

Regardless of this debate over quality, the arms deal itself has sent a powerful geopolitical message. It has cemented a new strategic alignment and demonstrated India's readiness to act as a security provider in a region of vital interest.

4. 'Make in India' Meets the World: A Doctrine Takes the Stage

The India-Armenia defense deal is more than a reaction to a regional conflict; it is a flagship example of the Indian government's "Make in India" policy taking a geopolitical form. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi has explicitly linked its goals for domestic defense manufacturing with a more assertive foreign policy, using Indian defense exports as a key instrument to achieve strategic objectives.

Countering the "Three Brothers" Alliance

A primary motivation for India is to directly challenge the strategic nexus of Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan, informally dubbed the "Three Brothers." This alliance has direct implications for India's national security. Azerbaijan has consistently supported Pakistan's narrative on the Kashmir issue, while Pakistan has reportedly provided military advisers and support to Azerbaijan. An analysis from the Observer Research Foundation noted that by arming Armenia, "India has overtly positioned itself on Armenia’s side...and has consequently opted to resist Azerbaijan and its backers including Turkey and Pakistan." This makes the South Caucasus a new theater for India's long-running rivalry with Pakistan.

Asserting Global Power Aspirations

This reveals New Delhi's new playbook: leveraging arms exports as a primary tool of statecraft to build influence, create dependencies, and elevate its international standing. With its defense budget rising to US$74 billion, India is transitioning from one of the world's largest arms importers to a significant exporter. This shift is a core component of its ambition to be recognized as a major global power. As seen in the Cold War with the United States, providing military hardware, spare parts, and training creates a patron-client relationship that enhances the supplier's geopolitical leverage.

Economic and Industrial Ambitions

The economic logic is equally compelling. Exporting defense systems helps achieve economies of scale, lowering the per-unit cost of manufacturing for India's own armed forces. The revenue generated funds further research and development, driving innovation within the domestic defense sector. To support this, New Delhi has established two new defense industrial corridors in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, creating an ecosystem for producing and testing advanced weaponry.

This drive for domestic industrial strength is not an end in itself; it is the engine powering India's ability to project influence and secure its interests in the critical trade arteries of Eurasia, a high-stakes game now playing out in the Caucasus.

5. The Great Game of Corridors and Connectivity

But why is a remote, mountainous region half a world away so critical to New Delhi's grand strategy? The answer lies not in the territory itself, but in the maps of future trade. The stakes in the South Caucasus extend to the control of future Eurasian trade routes—a geoeconomic great game of immense strategic importance to India.

At the heart of India's interest is the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC). This ambitious multi-modal network of ship, rail, and road routes is designed to move freight between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia, and Europe. According to an analysis by Major General Jagatbir Singh for the United Service Institution of India, the INSTC's primary benefit is that it "effectively outflanks Pakistan," providing a desperately needed overland route to European and Central Asian markets that is not subject to a veto from Islamabad.

However, this ambition faces a direct threat from an emerging flashpoint: the Zangezur Corridor. Following its victory in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan has been demanding the establishment of a transport corridor running through Armenia's southern Syunik province. This would connect mainland Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave, which borders Turkey, creating an uninterrupted pan-Turkic trade route. For Iran, this prospect is an existential threat, as it would sever Tehran's land border with Armenia. Iranian officials have vehemently opposed any changes to internationally recognized borders and have threatened to use military force to prevent it.

For India, the Zangezur Corridor represents a dual threat: it not only creates a rival, pan-Turkic trade route that would bypass Iran and undermine the INSTC's viability, but its contentious nature also threatens to plunge a key node of India's planned corridor into a wider conflict, making it an unacceptably high-risk environment for long-term investment. This has turned the Zangezur Corridor into the "next time bomb" in the region, one that directly jeopardizes India's connectivity ambitions.

6. The T-72 Paradox: A Question of Doctrine over Design

The dramatic destruction of an Azerbaijani T-72 by an Indian rocket system presents a fascinating paradox. How can India champion its advanced weaponry by destroying a Soviet-era T-72 tank while its own army continues to operate thousands of the same "archaic" model as the backbone of its armored corps? The answer offers a crucial insight into modern warfare: military doctrine can be as important, if not more so, than the design of the hardware itself.

The vulnerabilities of the T-72 are well-documented, particularly from its poor performance in the Ukraine war. The tank's most notorious flaw is its ammunition storage system—a carousel of main gun rounds located directly beneath the turret. A direct hit can trigger a catastrophic chain reaction, blowing the turret clean off the hull in a deadly "jack-in-the-box" effect that is almost always fatal for the crew.

Despite these known flaws, the Indian Army continues to rely heavily on the T-72. In November 2023, it issued a Request for Information (RFI) for its "Overhaul II of Tank T-72" program, aiming to restore the aging fleet to a "near-zero hour" state of operational readiness. This is not due to ignorance, but rather a different philosophy of deployment, a distinction often drawn in military circles. In Ukraine, the Russian military often employed its tanks in Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), which were heavy on armor but critically light on infantry support, leaving their flanks exposed. In contrast, as military observers online often point out, the Indian Army's doctrine emphasizes combined arms formations. A typical armored brigade operates on a "2+2" model, comprising two armored regiments and two mechanized infantry regiments. This structure ensures that tanks are always supported by infantry, whose job is to protect them from enemy anti-tank teams and drones.

Therefore, while the T-72 hardware has known weaknesses, its battlefield effectiveness is heavily dependent on the tactical ecosystem in which it operates. The Indian Army's bet is that its superior combined arms doctrine and training can mitigate the inherent design flaws of the tank, providing a compelling explanation for the T-72 paradox.

7. The Road Ahead: A New Balance of Power

The initial arms deals between India and Armenia are likely just the first phase of a deeper, long-term strategic relationship poised to permanently alter the region's power dynamics. As Yerevan continues its policy of diversifying away from its dependence on Moscow, New Delhi is positioned to become its premier security partner, with future deals that could give Armenia a decisive military edge.

Negotiations are reportedly underway for a follow-on deal worth up to $4 billion. This potential agreement includes some of India's most advanced military hardware, most notably the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile and the Sukhoi-30MKI multi-role fighter jets. The BrahMos, arguably the fastest supersonic cruise missile in the world, would give Armenia the ability to strike high-value targets deep inside Azerbaijan with near impunity. The acquisition of a fleet of Su-30MKIs would provide a significant boost to its air power.

Analysts suggest that the acquisition of such advanced systems would be a game-changer, making Armenia the regional "Don," as one commentator put it. This potential shift in the military balance is precisely why Azerbaijan has officially protested India's actions, claiming they hinder peace and promote militarization. Furthermore, Armenia has expressed a strong interest in moving beyond simple purchases to joint production and technology transfer. This would deepen India’s strategic footprint in the Euro-Asian region, potentially giving it a manufacturing and logistics hub at a critical geopolitical crossroads. The future of the South Caucasus is now inextricably linked to India's strategic calculations.

8. Conclusion: A New Chapter in a Contested Region

The smoldering wreckage of an Azerbaijani tank in the Caucasus highlands, destroyed by an Indian rocket, serves as a powerful symbol of a new geopolitical reality. In a few short years, India has moved from the sidelines to become a central player in one of the world's most contested regions, fundamentally altering the balance of power and challenging long-standing alliances.

The battlefield success of the Pinaka rocket system has provided a crucial, real-world validation for India's defense industry, proving its products are not just paper tigers but combat-effective systems capable of shaping the outcome of a war. Seizing a strategic opportunity, India has adeptly filled the security vacuum left by a weakened Russia, establishing itself as a key security partner for Armenia and directly challenging the Turkey-Azerbaijan-Pakistan alliance. This partnership is a cornerstone of India's broader ambition to become a major global power, skillfully wielding Indian defense exports as a potent instrument of foreign policy.

However, significant challenges loom. The unresolved and highly volatile dispute over the Zangezur Corridor remains a ticking time bomb that threatens to plunge the region back into a wider conflict, jeopardizing not only regional stability but also India's long-term ambitions for the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

Ultimately, a decades-old conflict in a remote mountain range has become a critical theater for 21st-century power dynamics. It demonstrates the rise of new, assertive powers like India who are no longer content to be passive observers. They are ready to challenge the old order, reshape alliances based on pragmatic national interest, and write a new chapter in the great game of geopolitics.