page_title: Egyptian Air Defense Forces
section_title: After the October war
hierarchical_section_title: Egyptian Air Defense Forces / SAM Wall / After the October war
caption_attribution_description: English: An Egyptian Crotale P4R low-altitude surface-to-air missile system is positioned in the desert during Operation Desert Shield.
context_page_description: The Egyptian Air Defense Forces or EADF, is the Anti-aircraft warfare branch of the Egyptian Armed Forces. It is responsible for protecting the Egyptian airspace against any hostile air attacks. The EADF was established in accordance with the presidential decree issued on 1 February 1968, which provided for the establishment of the Air Defense Forces as the fourth branch, next to the Navy, Egyptian Ground Forces, and Egyptian Air Force, formerly part of the artillery and under the operation command of the Air Force. Egypt has a modern system of air defense armament, characterized by diverse sources between east and west, which is divided between anti-aircraft missiles long, medium and short-range anti-aircraft artillery systems and early warning radars.
  Officers are mostly graduates of the Egyptian Air Defense Academy, located in Alexandria. The headquarters is in Cairo, and currently the Commander in Chief is Lieutenant General. Ali Fahmi and the Chief of Staff is Staff Major General. Mohamed Darrag. The Egyptian air defense forces consists of 30,000 officers & soldiers plus 50,000 conscripts.
context_section_description: In 1970 the Egyptian Air Defense Force consisted of 4 divisions:
  5th Air Defense Division placed in Cairo. Sami Hafez Anan reportedly commanded this division in 1996–98.
  8th Air Defense Division placed in Abu Suwayr. Division "crawled forward" in mid 1972 or 1973 to establish AA belt on banks of the Canal. (See Dani Asher, The Egyptian Strategy for the Yom Kippur War, 32)
  10th Air Defense Division placed in Alexandria.
  12th Air Defense Division placed in Aswan.
  The current structure of the EADF:
  5th Air Defense Division
  8th Air Defense Division
  10th Air Defense Division
  12th Air Defense Division
  15th Air Defense Division
  Independent 103rd Air Defense Brigade
  Independent 104th Air Defense Brigade
  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.
caption: An Egyptian Crotale P4R low-altitude surface-to-air missile system is positioned in the desert during Gulf War.
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