Pakistani Air Force personnel stand guard in front of 14 JF-17B aircraft
AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
In an acquisition that will significantly alter the military balance in the South Caucasus, Pakistan is selling 40 fourth-generation JF-17 Thunder fighter jets to Azerbaijan. The move will undoubtedly worry neighboring Armenia.
Azerbaijan has officially expanded its order for JF-17s from 16 jets to 40 as part of a $4.6 billion defense agreement, the Pakistani government confirmed in a
post on the social media platform X on Friday. It is Pakistan’s largest-ever defense export contract and undoubtedly a boost for the aircraft, which Pakistan co-developed with China.
Azerbaijani media
reported in late May that Baku had increased the number of jets and the value of the deal from $1.6 billion to approximately $4.2 billion. However, such reports were not immediately publicly confirmed by either Baku or Islamabad. Azerbaijan took delivery of its first JF-17 on September 25, 2024. Baku is receiving the latest version, the JF-17C Block III, equipped with active electronically scanned array radar and other systems and weapons typically found on advanced 4.5-generation aircraft.
“While the fourth-generation fighter has some notable operational limits, such as the lack of complete stealth compared to fifth-generation fighters and certainly six-generation ones in development, from Baku’s perspective, these are likely outweighed by numerous upsides,” Sam Lichtenstein, Director of Analysis at the risk intelligence company RANE, told me.
“First and foremost is that the JF-17 is a cost-effective option compared to many competing Western or Russian options, and acquiring more would also help upgrade Azerbaijan’s older and less capable Soviet-produced aircraft,” Lichtenstein said.
“With continuing Western sanctions on Russia and uncertainty over whether Russia’s defense industry has sufficient capacity to provide new systems, or even replace certain key parts, acquiring more JF-17s enables Baku to skirt concerns about acquiring more military capabilities from Russia,” he added.
“Furthermore, the JF-17 is compatible with a number of Turkish systems that Azerbaijan already has, making it even more attractive.”
The acquisition is an enormous upgrade—both quantitatively and qualitatively—for the country’s air force, which hitherto relied on just over a dozen aged MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters and subsonic Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes. According to Azerbaijani media, the JF-17s are not going to replace these older aircraft instantly, which makes sense given that Baku recently had its Frogfoots
upgraded to carry Turkish weapons.
The deal will undoubtedly set off alarm bells in Yerevan. Armenia had previously sought to enhance its modest air force, which lacked any fighter jets, through the acquisition of expensive Su-30SM Flanker fighters from Russia in 2019. While it initially sought 12, Armenia has only received four to date.
Far from deterring Baku, these Flankers sat idle when Azerbaijan pulverized Armenian positions with modern Israeli and Turkish-made drones during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. The jets also failed to deter Azerbaijan in subsequent border clashes and the Azerbaijani military’s September 2023 lightning offensive that captured the entire Nagorno-Karabakh and displaced its Armenian population.
Now, with Azerbaijan acquiring 40 JF-17s, it will have ten times more fighters than Armenia—and that’s not even counting its current fleet of MiG-29s or its extensive and expanding arsenal of advanced Israeli and Turkish drones.
“From Armenia’s perspective, Azerbaijan’s expansion of its fighter aircraft only worsens Yerevan’s weak military position compared to Baku,” RANE’s Lichtenstein said.
“Despite signing a peace deal in March 2025 designed to resolve their decades-long conflict, Azerbaijan is requiring Armenia to make contentious constitutional changes that are delaying the agreement’s official signing and implementation,” he added. “This delay, which is likely to persist until after Armenia holds general elections in 2026, leaves the door open to another military escalation as Baku grows impatient with Yerevan and calculates that it will engender little to no blowback from the West, Russia or other key external powers.”
Despite sweeping Azerbaijani claims over sovereign Armenian territory, a full-scale invasion of Armenia seems unlikely. Nevertheless, there could be more ground incursions and border clashes, especially if Baku seeks to link up with its western Nakhchivan exclave by establishing its self-styled Zangezur corridor overland through Armenia’s southernmost Syunik frontier province.
“With the threat of another conflict still on the table, Armenia is likely to leverage its growing defense partnerships with France, India and Iran – alongside an ongoing attempt to reduce tensions with Russia – to try to mitigate against Azerbaijan’s military dominance,” Lichtenstein said.
Armenia long relied heavily on Russia for discounted military hardware. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 94 percent of Armenia’s arms imports between 2011 and 2020 came from Russia. That drastically changed after Armenia suffered a disastrous defeat in the 2020 war. Yerevan has since sought to diversify its defense sources, reducing arms imports from Russia to as low as 10 percent by 2024.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently blamed the Ukraine war for delays in supplying Russian armaments to Armenia in recent years but still scrutinized Yerevan’s growing defense ties with France, saying “it does raise questions.” France recently sold Armenia Caesar self-propelled howitzers, a deal that both Azerbaijan and Russia criticized.
It’s unclear if Armenia will ultimately turn to France for multirole Dassault Rafale fighter jets to match Azerbaijan’s JF-17 procurement, especially given the prohibitive price tag for Yerevan, which invariably has significantly less to spend on armaments than its oil-rich rivals.
“While Yerevan will likely pursue multiple lines of effort, it is likely to focus on acquiring India-built Su-30MKIs given that they are far more cost-effective than French Rafales,” Lichtenstein said. “Moreover, while much is still unclear about last month’s confrontation between India and Pakistan, accusations that India’s fleet of Rafales did not perform as strongly could also affect Armenia’s calculus.”
India builds the unique Su-30MKI variant of the Russian combat aircraft under license. It may soon export some of these aircraft and doubtlessly sees Armenia as
a potential customer. Yerevan has already made record-breaking deals for Indian-made weaponry since the start of this decade. Furthermore, as previously
outlined in this space, New Delhi is the ideal candidate for upgrading Armenia’s existing Su-30SMs and making them compatible with various Indian-made munitions and weapons.
“India would likely also be interested in supplying these systems to counteract Azerbaijan’s acquisition of fighters from Pakistan, India’s arch-rival,” Lichtenstein said.
“Separate from acquiring new fighters to try to compete with Azerbaijan in the air, Armenia is also likely seeking to upgrade its air defenses with systems from India, Iran and/or others.”
