On 2 June, news emerged of Israeli defence firm Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) testing out its its medium-range ground-to-ground LORA missile system on behalf of Azerbaijan. The test firing took place at sea on a ship most likely off of Israel’s coast and was aimed at testing out the missile system’s capacities, firing at sea targets with the minimum range of 90 km and maximum range of 400 according to the statement provided by the company.
While no information from official sources in either Israel or Azerbaijan provided immediate comments on the incident, Azeri pro-government outlet Haqqin.az spoke of the news, citing a Jerusalem Post article, hinting at the successful test firing and concluding that “Azerbaijan is the first and only that Israel exported the rocket system to. The LORA operational-tactical missile system was introduced in Azerbaijan’s military in 2018”, stopping short of mentioning any direct connection between the test firing and Azerbaijan.
Armenian military blog Razm.info, however, went one step further and hinted that there it is possible that the testing was done on behalf of Azerbaijan. Experts at the blog state the reasons being that the LORA missile system in the IAI video was shown mounted on a lorry chassis produced by Belorussian firm Volat. Belarus remains an important supplier to Azerbaijan’s military, including and not limited to Volat lorries. The blog also mentioned that the last time LORA vehicles were officially shown in Azerbaijan was in June of 2018.
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