Jets paint the sky with Azerbaijani flag colors as they take part in the military parade held for Victory Day celebration in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 8, 2025. (Photo by Resul Rehimov/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Anadolu via Getty Images
While enduring a drone attack against Nakhchivan International Airport in its eponymous western exclave on March 5, Azerbaijan did not come under any other fire so far in the Iran war that started on February 28. If that were to change soon, Baku has steadily enhanced its already considerable and diversified air defenses recently with acquisitions of additional long-range ground-based systems and 4.5-generation fighter jets that can combat a multitude of aerial threats.
Azerbaijan officially confirmed that it had introduced its new JF-17C Block III into air force service on July 6 when it released a video showing two single-seat aircraft with external fuel tanks and no weapons. Furthermore, in mid-July, the Azerbaijani Air Force’s new JF-17Cs performed combat maneuvers at various altitudes with older Soviet-made Su-25ML Frogfoot attack planes and Czech-made L-39 Albatros jet trainers.
Baku received its first JF-17 in September 2024. In late May 2025, it increased the number of jets it ordered from 16 to 40 and the overall value of the deal from $1.6 billion to $4.2 billion, marking Pakistan’s largest-ever defense export contract at the time. The JF-17 was co-developed between Pakistan and its ally China. The move is a massive upgrade over Baku’s existing and aging fleet of MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets and will likely give it the most powerful air force in the South Caucasus in terms of both quality and quantity.
Baku’s confirmation of the JF-17 acquisition followed its first public display of HQ-9BE strategic air defense missile systems it recently ordered from China. It paraded the missile systems in public at the November 8, 2025, Victory Day celebration in Baku marking the 2020 defeat of Armenia in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.
These JF-17C and HQ-9BE acquisitions are the most substantive upgrade to Azerbaijan’s air force and air defense in decades. The former in particular is the most consequential fighter purchase Baku has ever made. Its existing fourth-generation MiG-29 Fulcrums weren’t inherited from the Soviet Union. Rather, Baku bought them second-hand from Ukraine, which modernized them before delivery in the 2000s. It acquired a total of 16, including some two-seater MiG-29UB models, with deliveries completed in 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s extensive arms transfer database. Ukraine supplied them along with at least 43 long-range R-73R/T air-to-air missiles per SIPRI.
The JF-17C is a more advanced combat aircraft than these Soviet-era Fulcrums and has several features one would expect to find on a modern-day 4.5-generation fighter jet, such as an active electronically scanned array radar.
As mentioned, the latest video of Azerbaijan’s shiny new JF-17Cs didn’t show weapons of any kind. The SIPRI database also doesn’t mention any deliveries of air-to-air or air-to-surface munitions. It’s unclear if Baku is acquiring the advanced PL-15E long-range air-to-air missile, which has a formidable 90-mile-range, from China.
In 2012, Azerbaijan ordered two second-hand Buk-1M medium-range surface-to-air missile systems from Belarus that Minsk modernized to the Buk-MB version before delivery. Baku simultaneously ordered 100 9M38 and another 100 9M317 missiles for these systems directly from Russia. It’s therefore conceivable that Baku has similarly ordered the JF-17C aircraft from Pakistan and will soon order missiles and munitions directly from China.
The Buk-MBs certainly weren’t the most consequential air defense acquisition Azerbaijan made in the 2010s. Early in that decade, in line with its preference for a diversified arsenal, Baku turned to its traditional supplier Russia as well as Israel to acquire some formidable systems. In an estimated $300 million deal, it acquired two advanced S-300 PMU-2 air defense missile systems from Russia in 2011, along with an estimated 200 48N6 missiles with an approximate 90-mile range.
Around that time, it ordered its first Barak missile system from Israel along with 40 Barak-LRAD (long-range air defense) and 40 Barak-ER (extended-range) missiles with 43-mile and 93-mile ranges, respectively, as part of a larger $1.6 billion deal. Near the end of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, one of these missiles reportedly intercepted an Armenian Russian-made 9K720 Iskander quasi-ballistic missile. Reports in November 2023 indicate that Azerbaijan ordered Barak MX systems as part of a $1.2 billion deal, indicating Baku is satisfied with those systems. Azerbaijan notably conducted live-fire testing of a Barak system as part of an air defense drill to detect and destroy an incoming ballistic missile fired “launched by an imaginary enemy” in the week before its final lightning offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh that saw its ethnic Armenian population flee.
Interestingly, in 2021 amid heightened tensions with Iran, Azerbaijan even briefly considered acquiring Israel’s advanced Arrow 3, an exoatmospheric anti-ballistic missile, which would’ve been a true game-changing capability. It seems it settled for additional Barak batteries instead.
The HQ-9BEs, which came with at least 70 surface-to-air missiles with an estimated range of approximately 155 miles, doubtlessly augment this diversified array of ground-based air defense missile systems. The JF-17C acquisition marks an unprecedented upgrade and expansion of Azerbaijani airpower. Azerbaijani media hailed the latter acquisition and subsequent training flights as demonstrative of the military “addressing a long-standing vulnerability: its dependence on aging Soviet-era aviation technology,” such as MiG-29s that “belong in an era of mechanical radars and analog warfare.”
Little over a week before the Iran war began, Azerbaijani military officials assessed the combat preparedness of the country’s air defense forces. Early in the war, Baku promptly deployed troops and air defenses to its border with Iran in preparation for any crossover fire. In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Azerbaijan with a delegation and proclaimed the country’s readiness “to share its experience and assist in organizing and strengthening the air defense system.” It would be no surprise if Azerbaijan decides to acquire some of Ukraine’s combat-proven and cost-effective anti-drone systems to bolster its defenses against the proliferating global threat posed by relatively cheap drones like the ones that hit Nakhchivan airport in March.
Whatever the case, these recent acquisitions show that the oil-rich, strategic transcontinental country is sparing little expense when it comes to its air defense.