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The Trojan Horse at the gates of Artsakh

Posted on April. 21. 2021

“Never attempt to win by force
what can be won by deception.”
 Machiavelli/ Pres. Ilham Aliyev

Z. S. Andrew Demirdjian

In the game of chess, sometimes a player sacrifices an unimportant piece (e.g., a pawn) as a lure in anticipation of capturing a more valuable piece (e.g., a castle) in the future move from his or her competitor. This type of stratagem is called “deception” viewed from all angles.

         
Basically, deception is a trick or scheme used to get what you want. Deception occurs when you deceive, a word that comes from the Latin de, meaning “from” and capere, meaning “to take.” When you deceive someone, the result may be “to take someone for a ride.” That is one way of describing deception as how Azerbaijan and Turkey bamboozled Artsakh Defense Forces into a devastating defeat.

        
  The practice of deception in warfare dates back to early history. Explicit examples of it can be found in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Medieval Age, the Renaissance, and the European Colonial era. Additionally, it was employed during WWI and WWII. In modern times, the militaries of several nations including the United States have evolved deception tactics, techniques, and procedures into teachable principles, which are introduced to the cadets at the United States Military Academy, also known as West Point.   

         
Essentially, military deception is considered an attempt by a military unit to gain an advantage during warfare by misleading the enemy decision makers into taking actions that are detrimental to their own soldiers and positions. Deception is usually achieved by creating an artificial situation of war via psychological operations, information warfare, and visual deception such as by using decoys, dummies of weapons, or other methods of entrapment.

       
   As a form of disinformation, military deception also involves psychological warfare closely connected to operations in which attempts are made to conceal from the adversary critical information about one’s capabilities, activities, losses, while deception reveals false information in an effort to mislead the adversary.  For example, unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan refused to disclose its casualties during the war in an attempt to hide its losses.

  
        Moreover, Azerbaijan engaged in war propaganda by issuing graphic videos showing Armenian positions, weapons, infrastructure, civilian quarters, and the like being pulverized in a blaze of fire by their suicide drones, remote piloted by the Turkish and Israeli experts.

         
The humbling defeat of Artsakh War in 2020 has caused a widespread disillusion with the Armenian military experts. What had happened to the overly confident generals, commanders, and the like, who assured people of nothing but a smashing victory should next time Azerbaijan were to attack?

        
  The loss to Artsakh has been staggering: 5,000 soldiers, thousands of civilians bombed in their own homes, over 190 Armenian settlements in towns and villages became under Azerbaijan’s control, seven regions used as buffer zone were lost, Artsakh lost 950,000 heaters (3,562 Sq. miles) of its territory including the proverbial city of Shushi. Almost one third of its territory now is occupied by Azerbaijan.

         
Plus, the future of Artsakh is unknown due to President Aliyev’s threats and grim determination that “Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” namely, it is part and parcel of Azerbaijan.

         
What went wrong? Well, in this article, a scrutiny and a soul-searching journey as to why Armenians have lost the war to Azerbaijan/Turkey made me discover very disturbing, even mindboggling facts –a few amazing causes only military experts had noticed and commented on them.

    
      According to military analysts Nicole Thomas, LTC (Lieutenant Colonel) Matt Jamison, Capt. Kendall Gamber, and Derek Walton stated the following observation in a recent article: “The resounding success of UAS [unmanned aerial systems] in the Nagorno-Karabakh War marks what many consider to be a turning point in modern warfare. For the first time in recorded history, nearly all battle damage was inflicted by unmanned platforms.”
      
    Artsakh’s defeat has been attributed also to some grave blunders such as sending green troops to the front; using of outdated, outmoded Soviet weapons; the debilitating grip of COVID-19 disease on the troops; the grind of 44 days of fighting with no fresh replacements of the front line soldiers; low morale; lack of ammunitions; misfiring or disoperation of the S-30 anti-missile Soviet weapon; failure to use Iskander missile giants,; being outnumbered, outgunned by the coalition of Azerbaijani, Turkish, Syrian 4,000 mercenaries, ISIS jihadists, Israeli experts; Pakistani volunteers,  and so on.

     
     Azerbaijan also engaged in heinous psychological warfare tactics of Gengis Khan by instilling fear in the Armenian soldiers through decapitation of the captives who were still alive while the Western so-called civilized world stood on the wayside.

    
      Despite a long list of shortcomings, nothing has been mentioned of Artsakh’s military forces being outsmarted, outmaneuvered by the war strategists of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Israel. The Armenian military force strategists were deceived, duped, and destroyed in plain daylight. As a result, this has turned the tide of war against the Armenians. Nicole Thomas et. al, has also this to say:

       
   “These improvised UAS [by Azerbaijan] were repurposed as decoys and flown to the front lines to force air defenses to give away their location and enable targeting by [Bayraktar]TB2s. When the Armenian air defenses targeted, engaged, and destroyed the perceived threats, they inadvertently broadcasted their positions to Azeri unmanned aerial attack platforms that flew at higher altitudes—enabling the Bayraktar TB2 and kamikaze drones to destroy higher-payoff targets like the Armenian air defense systems”.
 

        
  Six days into the war, Armenia had already lost its important positions high in the mountains. Artsakh has a natural defense against the enemy in the form of high terrain (mountainous rugged land) and thick forests. This enviable, confidence building position was neutralized by the Azerbaijani war strategists.

   
       Within six days, Azerbaijan already claimed to have wiped out 250 armored vehicles, 250 artillery pieces, and 39 air-defense systems, including a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system, etc. The weapon that enabled Azerbaijan win the war was the UAVs, which badgered the Armenian forces constantly no matter how high and hidden their positions were in the mountains of Artsakh. 

     
     Unbeknownst to Armenians, the “Trojan Horse” stratagem was used by Azerbaijan to mislead the Artsakh Defense Forces (Trojan Horse in Greek mythology, the hollow wooden horse in which Greeks hid and gained entrance to Troy during the Trojan War). Thus, the Trojan Horse symbolizes a subversive group or device placed within enemy ranks as a concealed stratagem meant to deceive, disrupt, undermine, subvert, or destroy an enemy or rival.

      
    One of the deadly Azerbaijani deception tactics consisted of employing decoys in the form of sending out low flying drones, –which in fact were meant to lure the Artsakh Defense Forces to shoot them down and in so doing disclose their military positions. The result was that the Artsakh forces rendered themselves later vulnerable by becoming exact targets for Azerbaijani killer drones to neutralize their positions.

        
  If the Armenians had known about military deception, they would not have come out to shoot down the low flying decoy drones, and in the process, they would not have betrayed their  camouflaged positions to become the identified targets for the killer drones later to strike. Or better yet, they should have moved to a new location right after bringing down the enemy drone and finding out that it was a decoy.

       
   The Azerbaijani Trojan Horse has deceived Artsakh’s military decision makers. As a result, they lost the war, including a huge swathe of their territory after having battled the adversary for nearly 30 years.  Unequivocally, the naivety of the commanders of the Artsakh Defense Forces is inexcusable, if not downright guilty of gross negligence by falling into the trap of the enemy.

      
    Most war analysts have already come to the conclusion that Artsakh lost the war mainly because Azerbaijan had the Turkish and Israeli drones deployed on suicide missions. Based on past military experience, the following common sense steps are presented to deal with misleading military activities such as the deployment of decoy drones:

       
   I. Conduct a quick analysis of the contents of the “Trojan Horse” or decoy drone your troops had shot down to determine its possible mission.

   
       II. If it is a decoy drone, then move the troops along with their weapons as quickly as possible to another nearby location hidden from the adversary.

  
        III. Try to watch for another attempt by a high flying drone to establish a connection with the first low flying drone –for they are out there to get you.

       
   IV. Alert all military position commanders of the military deception Azerbaijan/Turkey/Israel is carrying on misleading the Artsakh Defense Forces.

      
    V.  Send the greenhorn, inexperienced military decision makers back to school to stop them from jeopardizing the lives of their own troops on account of their negligence or incompetence.

      
    VI. Replace the deadwood military decision makers with military personnel of great knowledge and experience of warfare in the cadre of the late commander (aka Komandos) Arkadi ter-Tadevosyan to ensure the same blunders would not occur in future wars with the adversary.

     
A military commander is supposed to be a commissioned professional solider who has gone through formal education and extensive training in the area of old and modern warfare. For example, cadets at West Point have to study in their four-year program the war strategies, tactics, and schemes of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, Charlemagne, to mention a few notable figures in history. How is it that the Armenian commanders had missed Azerbaijan’s costly deceptive tactics? Sun Tzu goes as far as to say that “All warfare is based on deception”.

    
     The best recommendation one would make under these circumstances is to demand Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to replace those deadwood army personnel with conscientious and patriotic individuals after having court marshaled them.

   
       The ship of Artsakh has struck ground in the 2020 war. To pull itself out of the quakemire requires serious preparation. What is in store for Artsakh? Without groping for an answer, readiness in two critical areas: one is in acquiring latest unmanned aerial weapons for existential battles against the combo of two genocidal adversaries, the league of Azerbaijan and Turkey sworn to be “one nation, two states”; the other one is to enlist Armenian commanders who would serve for love of country rather than for power, prestige, and personal gain.

      
    The dawn of post-modern warfare has begun with the Artsakh War in 2020. For the first time in the history of high-tech warfare, UAVs caused a decisive victory over the adversary. It has shown that as a model war lessons can be learned from it. Taiwan, India, the United States, and others have extensively written on lessons to learn from Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020.

      
    The improved capability and versatility of UAVs to be used for decoys, reconnaissance, and destruction has been well established in the latest war between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. Given UAVs relatively low cost and high capability, Artsakh can include “killer” drones in its arsenal of weapons either by purchasing them from China or by producing them locally.

       
   The decreased human risk and stand-off capability have changed the equation in armed conflicts. Now, small countries like Armenia and Artsakh can face Goliaths like Azerbaijan and Turkey with the new air technology since victory does not depend on the size of the army rather on the capability and maneuverability of the UAVs against the adversary.

     
     In sum, let this article serve as a public indictment of the Armenian military top brass for letting the Armenian nation down. They should be court marshaled for the highest felony class. As for the Artsakh military decision makers, we have to depend on local professional officers with a strong passion for patriotism to lead the army into victory. In addition to acquiring modern weapons, we need to enlist active or retired military personal from the Armenian Diaspora to serve as honorary military advisors for the Artsakh Defense Forces.

     
     We need dedicated military leaders to boost our confidence and foster long-term resilience and self-reliance. Then, and only then we would have confidence to regain parts of our ancestral province of Artsakh currently in the hands of Azerbaijan by defending against Trojan Horse schemes and by even employing them on our own adversaries.