Since its establishment on 30 June 1970, the Egyptian Air Defence Force (EADF) has been steadily developing and upgrading its defence and armaments systems to meet the evolving need to protect Egypt’s skies from current and potential threats.
This ongoing development drive has made it one of the strongest air defence forces in the world.
A crucial aspect of the EADF’s strength has been the local adoption and development of advanced technology and locally driven research. Egypt’s political leadership has placed a heavy emphasis on this, and the EADF has put it into practice, EADF Commander Major-General Yasser Al-Toudi told Al-Ahram Weekly.
“A technical research and development centre was founded in the EADF by a group of EADF officers eminently qualified for the task, having completed Master’s and PhD programmes in diverse scientific disciplines,” Al-Toudi said.
They formed the cornerstone of a programme of technological transfer and modernisation in the EADF, he said. The aim was to ensure that Egypt possessed the capacity to manufacture its defence systems domestically by the local adoption and development of advanced technologies in joint development and manufacturing projects that would eventually see the 100 per cent use of local components.
Examples of the types of weapons systems manufactured by the EADF include radar systems, command and control centres, identification systems, target drones, and anti-drone systems. These and other equipment were developed and built in collaborations between EADF research centres and the civilian authorities, while benefiting from the existing industrial base of the Arab Organisation for Industrialisation and the Ministry of Military Production.
“EADF fighters have ascertained the functionality of these items in the field,” Al-Toudi said, adding that “the EADF always bears in mind the need for unconventional solutions to any technical problems that might arise because of the complexity of the technologies used and rapid developments in the nature of aerial hostilities.”
He said there was a constant tension between air defence systems and modern aerial offensive warfare, which uses weapons ranging from fighter jets and helicopters, remotely controlled drones, ballistic missiles, air-to-ground stealth weapons, and various forms of artillery.
Countering such an array of assault weapons requires integrated air defence systems equipped with diverse reconnaissance and warning systems, including early warning aircraft and airborne (balloon) and ground-based radars, supported by various monitoring and control mechanisms to ensure the timely discovery and identification of hostile aerial activity.
Such assets are complemented by pro-active elements, from fighter planes and anti-aircraft missiles to heavy artillery and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), to provide air defence for key concentrations of ground forces and vital military and strategic assets.
Another key element of the air defence systems is the automated command and control centres that operate at various levels in coordination with the EADF and the Army’s Electronic Warfare Corps.
“The political leadership and the General Command of the Armed Forces are determined to support the EADF by ensuring that it is equipped with the latest reconnaissance, warning, pro-active, and command and control systems so that it can respond effectively to all contemporary threats and challenges and remain an impregnable bulwark against any hostile encroachment into Egyptian airspace,” Al-Toudi said.
Noting that in this age of open skies due to advances in satellite communications, reconnaissance systems, global information networks, and modern split-second analytics systems, he stressed that the key to defence resides not only in the quality of weapons and equipment, “but also in our ability to develop our thinking on how to deploy these weapons and this equipment efficiently so they can perform their given tasks most effectively.”
This entails developing “our armaments systems through the efforts of our own people and constantly improving the skills and capacities of our fighters so they can achieve the element of surprise by virtue of their high combat-readiness.”
“We subscribe to the principle that hidden strengths can deliver double their value, whether that hidden strength is a new defence system or the ability to activate an unexpected and innovative military tactic,” Al-Toudi said.
Given the growing importance of information technology, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence (AI) in military applications, the EADF has taken important steps to secure command and control centres and air-defence systems and equipment against cyber- and electronic warfare.
Al-Toudi lauded the dedication and collaborative spirit of teams from the EADF’s Technical Research and Development Centre, the Egyptian Armed Forces technical units, and other experts from Egypt and abroad who have worked together to design and implement these measures and to spread cybersecurity and information warfare awareness among all the officers of the Armed Forces.
The EADF celebrated its 54th anniversary in June this year, remembering the time 54 years ago when it completed its defensive missile wall around Egypt and succeeded in downing two Israeli Phantom fighter jets and two Skyhawks and capturing three Israeli pilots.
Over the next seven days, the EADF downed a total of 12 enemy planes. This unprecedented feat has gone down in military history as the “week it rained Phantoms”.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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