Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army
| Nagorno Karabakh Republic's Defense Army Լեռնային Ղարաբաղի Հանրապետության Պաշտպանության Բանակ |
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NKR Defense Army shoulder insignia
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| Service branches | Army Air Force Air Defense |
| Headquarters | Stepanakert |
| Leadership | |
| Commander-in-Chief | President Bako Sahakyan |
| Minister of Defense | Lieutenant General Movses Hakobyan |
| Manpower | |
| Military age | 18 |
| Conscription | 2 years |
| Active personnel | 18,500 - 25,000 |
| Reserve personnel | 20,000 - 30,000 |
| Expenditures | |
| Budget | ? |
| Percent of GDP | ? |
| Related articles | |
| History | |
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Defense Army (Armenian: Լեռնային Ղարաբաղի Հանրապետության պաշտպանության բանակ, Lerrnayin Gharabaghi Hanrapetut’yan pashtpanut’yan banak) is the formal defense force of the largely unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). Established in 1992, it united previously disorganized self-defense units which were formed in the early 1990s with the avowed goal of protecting the ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh from the attacks by the Soviet and Azerbaijani armed forces. The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army is currently composed of around 20,000 well-trained and equipped officers and soldiers and maintains a "constant state of readiness, undergoing more serious combat training and operational exercises than any other former Soviet army."
The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army was founded on May 9, 1992. It created "its own central command and military structure distinct from the Armenian Army." Its founders included Robert Kocharyan (the former president of Armenia, he was the first commander in chief of the Army);Serzh Sargsyan (current president of Armenia); Vazgen Sargsyan (Armenia's Defense Minister 1992-93, State Minister in Charge of defence 1993-95, Armenia's Prime-Minister 1998-99);Monte Melkonian (responsible for Martuni region);Samvel Babayan (Nagorno Karabakh's Defence Minister from 1994 to 2000) and others. Many of the men who served in its ranks and in the officer corps during the Nagorno-Karabakh War were seasoned veterans of the Soviet military and had fought with distinction in the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
The formal formation of the NKR Defense Army was rooted in the concept of the Jokat (volunteer detachment). With the early outbreak of hostilities prior to 1992, Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh began forming small detachments of volunteers, often self-described as Fedayeen, inheriting the name of the fighters who actively resisted the Ottoman Empire in the final decades of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries.
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Wikipedia