Egyptian Air Defense Forces

Suez Crisis

Anti-aircraft guns were one of the Egyptian military strengths of World War II. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, further development of anti-aircraft forces was part of Egypt's military buildup.

In mid-1956 the formation of a good number of units of light and medium anti-aircraft artillery began. Following the outbreak of the Suez Crisis, anti-aircraft artillery forces met with sophisticated technology not matched by arming which dates back to World War II technology, engendering aircraft anti-modern vehicles and soldiers with machine guns in a continuous raids and at low and medium altitudes, but the anti-aircraft artillery soldiers inflicted hostile forces, the largest possible losses in spite of the lack of training and the weakness of their equipment have shot down several aircraft in Cairo, Alexandria and Sinai and set up a trap for the planes tried to bomb the crossings that link the Sinai Nile Valley in the city of Suez, and Port Said forces managed to hold out for several days before the air attacks intensive aircraft aggression triangular, also participated in the popular resistance operations.

Six-Day War

On June 5, 1967 the Israeli Air Force began air strikes on the Egyptian front in Sinai, taking advantage of shortcomings in the Egyptian air defense. In spite of Egypt's access to some anti-aircraft missile bases but did not not only a step on a long road of arming the diverse anti-aircraft, which had to be owned by the Egyptian Air Defense Forces to tighten control and defend the Egyptian atmosphere then, where missed to each of the anti-aircraft artillery different Boaertha and missiles of different ranges and a network of early warning and arms sufficient to defend vital targets the state of modern air fighters encountered in air attacks efficiently and commanders and crews trained to work on the equipment and weapons. Thus, the Israeli Air Force did not face any little resistance except from anti-aircraft artillery, which date back to the manufactured Second World War and that are not suitable for dealing with modern fighter aircraft with high speeds, resulting in a painful loss of life, land and equipment.

War of Attrition

Following the 1967 war, Egypt took the decision to re-organize and develop its armed forces, and included those decisions on Presidential Decree No. 199 issued on February 1, 1968 establishment of the Egyptian Air Defense Forces as a branch of a major and the strength of an independent stand-alone after they had their weapons and units scattered among departments and troops with artillery and rockets were tracing artillery management units and radar warning and operations centers used to belong to the air force and the control points were given follow the Border guard.

And confined all the means and weapons and equipment anti-air attacks under one command to ensure coordination and unification of responsibility and in order to achieve success, and in the June 23, 1969 was appointed Lieutenant General Mohammed Aly Fahmy as the first commander of the newly emerging forces, which carry it upon himself to reorganize the forces and the management of cadres and personnel training and increase their level of tactical and tactical mission and technical, with a broad technological base capable of accommodating modern air defense weapons as soon as possible in order to deprive Israel of air superiority configuration.

Warning Network

Require the development of the Egyptian air defense system, the establishment of long-range warning network to detect any hostile aircraft approaching from the Egyptian airspace and provide enough time to warn of rockets and artillery positions, and secure the necessary current information to operate the equipment and weapons. Egypt succeeded in providing large numbers of multi-media warning and used in coordination and cooperation and promote the complementary network of checkpoints and processing network, given flexible transportation and protection against Israeli electronic attacks.

After the October war

In 1970 Egyptian Air Defense consisted of 4 divisions:

In 1989 a large share of the Egyptian Air Defense Force's equipment was imported from the Soviet Union. As of 1989, the most modern weapons in the air defense system were the 108 medium altitude I-Hawk SAMs acquired from the United States beginning in 1982. These weapons were supplemented by 400 older Soviet-made S-75 Dvina (SA-2) SAMs with a slant range of forty to fifty kilometers and about 240 SA-3s, which provided shorter-range defense against low-flying targets. A British firm helped the ADF modernize the SA-2s. In addition, Egypt was producing its own SAM, the Tayir as Sabah, based on the design of the SA-2. The ADF had mounted sixty Soviet 2K12 Kub SAMs on tracked vehicles as tactical launchers. Sixteen tracked vehicles provided mobile launching platforms for its fifty French-manufactured Crotale SAM launchers. Egypt was also introducing its own composite gun-missile-radar system known as Amoun (skyguard), integrating radar-guided twin 23mm guns with Sparrow and Egyptian Ayn as Saqr SAMs.

Weaponry

It is undergoing extensive modernization with budgetary constraints being the only hindrance. Currently, it is believed to possess the following weaponry:

Regional/strategic perimeter-level SAM

Army corps and division-level SAM

Brigade- and battalion-level SAM

By the end of 2008, With the Support of The United-States (through FMF and private contractorsirms) all missile, radar, observation posts, command and control systems are to be linked into a complex multi-level, national computerized early-warning air defense command (C3I4) via modified EC-130H Hercules (modified to AWACS-like specifications) transport aircraft, EW AWACS "Grumman" E-2C Hawkeye 2000, EW ECM Beechcraft 1900 ELINT, underground sheltered-reinforced fiber-optic network.

Commanders of the Egyptian Air Defense Command