Between Reform and Risk: Armenia’s Defense Sector in 2025
25.12.2025
The year 2025 became another year of proclaimed reforms, modernization, and important military-political steps for the Armenian Armed Forces. Despite difficult conditions—both external and internal—the army has continued to make certain efforts to strengthen its capabilities, optimize its structure, and adapt to new realities.
Defense cooperation: France, India, and strategic partnerships
Armenia is actively developing defense ties with key partners. In 2025 it became known that contracts with France for arms supplies totaling €278.5 million (concluded in 2024) had effectively been signed, supporting the process of army modernization and the replacement of obsolete equipment. Particular attention is drawn to cooperation with India, Armenia’s largest defense partner. Armenia is purchasing modern artillery systems, air-defense systems, and other weapons from India, and is also gaining access to technologies that will make it possible to develop mobile components of the armed forces.
In 2025 Armenia also signed a number of strategic partnership documents with several countries, including China, opening opportunities to strengthen long-term cooperation, including in the defense sphere. At the same time, despite close military-political relations with France, India, and Greece, no formal strategic partnership agreements have yet been concluded with these countries, although cooperation in defense and political fields is actively developing. As Armenia’s deputy foreign minister has stated, preparatory work is under way to conclude a strategic partnership with France. Work also continues on strategic partnership documents with a number of unnamed EU member states. In December 2025 Armenia and the EU signed the “Strategic Partnership Agenda,” which includes a security component. The EU also approved a €20 million assistance package for Armenia under the European Peace Facility.
These agreements are part of Armenia’s new foreign policy strategy. While a bilateral alliance treaty with Russia remains in force, traditional allied formats (for example, within the CSTO) are currently undergoing a complete reassessment. This creates a unique situation in which Armenia simultaneously has alliance agreements with Russia and is forced to rapidly build a new security architecture, including with Russia’s geopolitical adversaries.
In April 2025 Armenia held its first-ever joint exercises with Iran in the Syunik region. The exercises were conducted remotely: Armenian and Iranian units operated on their own territories without crossing each other’s borders. Nevertheless, the event became a symbolic marker of the importance of bilateral cooperation and coordination in border security. Relations with Iran remain among the most important for Armenia, but a strategic partnership agreement with Iran is also absent, although it remains within the government’s field of vision.
Internal transformation of the army: conscription reform, budget dilemmas, and the price of security
However, strengthening external ties and searching for allies is only one side of the coin. No less significant developments in 2025 unfolded within Armenia around the army itself.
In the spring of 2025, a government-backed initiative by a ruling-party MP was discussed in Armenia that would have allowed conscripts to replace full compulsory military service with a one-time payment to the state budget. The idea sparked criticism pointing to several key problems. First, the draft created inequality and a “caste model,” in which only the financially well-off could buy their way out of service, effectively introducing social division among conscripts. Second, legalized mass draft evasion threatened the country’s combat readiness by reducing the number of trained reservists. Finally, it undermined public trust in the army, which citizens perceive as a pillar of security. The parliamentary committee later rejected the initiative, which I assess as a correct step.
By the end of 2025, a law was adopted reducing the term of compulsory military service from 24 to 18 months. According to the government’s logic, this decision pursues several goals at once. It may contribute to the development of contract service and push the system toward strengthening a professional component. The idea is for the army to rely not on the number of conscripts but on the quality of trained reservists, contract soldiers, and professional NCOs. Finally, it eases the burden on conscripts. One and a half years may be perceived by young people as a less disruptive period, reducing stress in society and making service somewhat more attractive and less burdensome.
However, there are risks as well. The key problem is that shortening the service period by itself does not guarantee an increase in soldiers’ qualifications. If training programs remain outdated and methods ineffective, the reform does not change the outcome. Essentially, if a soldier was poorly trained over two years, he will now be poorly trained over a year and a half. Without a radical renewal of the training base, the difference between 24 and 18 months becomes purely quantitative rather than qualitative. To eliminate such risks, more intensive training will be required, which in turn demands a complete revision and densification of training programs.
Another risk may be the emergence of a “personnel gap” in 2027, when the first 18-month conscripts begin to be discharged into the reserve simultaneously with the last 24-month conscripts. If the inflow of contract soldiers does not become stable and does not compensate for the reduction in conscripts, a shortage of personnel may arise.
In addition, the issue of shortening the service term acquired a political undertone. The opposition and part of the expert community perceived the government’s decision as another populist move and an attempt to improve pre-election ratings, rather than a calculation based on defense needs.
At the same time, the military budget for 2026 was reduced, and the government justified this by the need to return to the 2024 level after the relatively high 2025 budget. However, such a move raises logical questions. If modernization of the army remains a government priority, reduced funding may slow the procurement of new weapons, the renewal of equipment, personnel training, and limit the pace of introducing new systems and technologies, creating a risk of delays in modernization.
Special attention should be paid to statements by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who directly linked the growth of the country’s external debt to large-scale arms purchases. According to him, after 2020 the state was forced to purchase weapons “in large quantities and all at once.” Moreover, in response to criticism, he publicly stated that those who wish could personally see the acquired weapons and built defensive fortifications, proposing that they sign up for special groups to obtain access, after which demonstrations of weapons and fortification structures on the border would be organized. This format of demonstration events for a limited circle of people ensures a positive informational backdrop regarding the government’s effectiveness. The question is to what extent this serves the country’s defense interests more than the domestic political goals of the ruling party.
In this context, the reduction of the military budget looks particularly contradictory: on the one hand, the state acknowledges that the army requires urgent and costly investments; on the other hand, already at an early stage it shifts to a mode of financial optimization. Has the army become sufficiently resilient in 2025 to allow itself a slowdown in funding?
Security and accountability: border stabilization and the results of the parliamentary investigation
At the beginning of the year, external pressure on the Armenia–Azerbaijan border did not ease. March 2025 was marked by an active information campaign by Azerbaijan, which accused Armenia of “violations” of the ceasefire regime. All this was viewed as part of Baku’s hybrid strategy aimed at psychological pressure and the creation of a possible pretext for escalation and the launch of armed aggression against Armenia.
After the signing of the Washington Declaration on August 8, 2025, with U.S. mediation, the situation on the border stabilized. The declaration played a stabilizing role, reducing the threat of immediate escalation, at least in the short term. Possibly, this factor to some extent allowed the government simultaneously to reduce the military budget and shorten compulsory service to 18 months without creating additional risks to combat readiness. It can be said that the declaration not only contributed to border stability but also, to some degree, opened space for internal decisions on optimizing the army.
Despite the diplomatic agreement reached with Azerbaijan, the question of the deeper causes of the failures in the 2020 war remained open throughout these years, creating a demand for an honest analysis within the system.
A separate and telling episode of 2025 was the completion of the work of the parliamentary commission investigating the circumstances of the defeat in the 2020 war. The investigation lasted about three and a half years and was accompanied by promises of a deep and honest assessment of the mistakes made. However, the final report was never published: the document was classified and transferred to the parliamentary archive.
This decision triggered predictable criticism. In modern democratic systems, the analysis of military defeats is viewed primarily not as a search for scapegoats but as a way to identify systemic errors in order to prevent their repetition. In a context where the army is undergoing a costly and painful transformation—from command structures to principles of recruitment and training—the absence of a public review of the 2020 mistakes leaves an open question: what specific systemic conclusions were drawn, and to what extent they are reflected in the current reforms.
Overall, 2025 showed that the Armenian Armed Forces are in the process of searching for a balance between emergency modernization, professionalization, and political constraints. Reforms are continuing, but they are fragmented and accompanied by risks, contradictions, and inconsistency.
Eduard Arakelyan
RCDS
The article was originally published on CivilNet.