David Tonoyan (27 December 1967-) was Defense Minister of Armenia from 10 May 2018, succeeding Vigen Sargsyan.
Biography[]
David Tonoyan was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union in 1967, and he joined the Soviet Army in 1986 before joining the Armenian military and serving at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium from 1998 to 2007. From 2010 to 2017, he served as Deputy Defense Minister, and then as Minister of Emergency Situations from 2017 to 2018 and as Minister of Defense from 2018. He strengthened Armenia's military-society ties, expanded the military-industrial complex, reduced the number of corruption cases, and ended the Soviet Army hazing process of Dedovshchina in the Armenian military. In 2020, he supervised the creation of a National Militia, which would have up to 100,000 soldiers and consist of men and women under the age of 70 wishing to volunteer.