After unveiling its first infantry fighting vehicle, Georgia will test on March 3 its first domestically manufactured artillery system, President Saakashvili said on Friday.

“Who could have ever imagined Georgia manufacturing tracked combat vehicle,” he said at a televised meeting with a group of students in the presidential palace in Tbilisi. “It was made with Georgian diagrams and by Georgian engineers; no one helped us and no one even had an interest to help us and that was the period when almost everyone blocked arms [supply] for us, because they thought that Georgia was disappearing from the world map in 2008; such situation has changed since then.”

“Tomorrow we are testing Georgian-produced artillery; who could have ever imagined Georgia manufacturing its own artillery? We were begging others: ‘gives us [artillery]’ and we were waiting in queues for [procuring arms], sometimes embargo was imposed on us then removed; we’ve been constantly [in touch] with Israelis [requesting] for their artillery. But now we managed to manufacture better [artillery] system than that of Israel – they will now learn it and get interested – and tomorrow I will test it at a firing range,” Saakashvili said.

He also said without going into details, that Georgia was working on manufacturing of “aerial vehicle, which we will test in coming days”.

A ruling party lawmaker, Givi Targamadze, who chairs parliamentary committee for defense and security, said last month, that Georgia was working on production of unmanned aerial vehicle.